Page 59 of Stream Heat
My phone buzzed and a message from Reid popped up.
Everything okay down there?
I ignored it and dived deeper. What would it take for Quinn to actually recover? Was pack bonding the only chance?
Search: Alpha pheromone therapy Omega suppressant withdrawal.
Almost nothing, but what there was painted a single clear picture. If Omegas had consistent alpha presence during withdrawal, recovery improved by sixty percent or more. Familiar scents, trusted sources.
Packs. Not randoms. Not one-night stands.
I leaned back, staring at the mess of data. This wasn’t a “maybe it'll work.” It was clinical reality. Pack bonding wasn’t optional. Not if Quinn wanted a life that wasn’t constant agony.
Phone again. Reid, this time calling.
“Yeah.”
“You’ve been down there for two hours,” he barked. “What are you working on?”
I glanced at the monitor, where my tabs looked like a pharmaceutical horror movie. “Trying to understand what we're dealing with.”
“And?”
“It’s worse than she said. The suppressants, they weren’t just strong. They were toxic by design.”
Silence from his end for a moment before he asked, “Meaning?”
“Meaning, obliteration. Not management, not flexibility, not support. Someone wanted her entire biology gone. Total.” I had to steady my voice, staring at Quinn’s rig schematics for something solid. “And the pack bonding thing isn't a cute solution, Reid. If she doesn’t do that, her recovery is fucked.”
Another pause. He sounded almost hoarse. “You sure?”
“Medical journals don’t lie.” I highlighted one of the more brutal studies and read a line out loud. “Alpha pheromone exposure reduces symptoms up to sixty percent. Established packs? Even better.”
“But?”
I knew what he was asking. What about the complications? This was a mess. Real feelings, real consequences. Not just a business arrangement anymore.
“But she needs it. She’s already responding to us. Been there since day one. Her scent spikes when we’re in the room. She’s been unconsciously mixing our stuff into her own space.”
He let out a slow breath. “You noticed that too.”
Of course I did. I noticed everything. The way she’d hidden one of my battered hoodies under her desk, how she rotated the kitchen chairs so they always smelled vaguely like whicheverone of us she was fighting with least. Or how her stress signals bottomed out when we all sat down together, even if the room was silent.
“The real question,” I said, staring at the screens, “is whether any of us are actually prepared for what that means.”
“You?”
I glanced through the new specs on my monitor. Upgraded air filtration for scent hypersensitivity. Light controls for temporary migraine spikes. Audio dampening for crash periods. I’d started to build accommodations for Quinn before any of us admitted to ourselves how bad it was.
“I’ve been prepping for it since she moved in,” I said. “Just didn’t want to admit it.”
Reid’s humorless huff told me more than words could. “Join the club.”
After he hung up, I just sat there, surrounded by evidence of exactly how far in I already was. The upgrades, the research, the string of pre-scheduled supply orders for things I’d never bought for any other housemate. And underneath it all, a quiet, fierce certainty, we’d already bonded to her. All of us.
Maybe it had been real since her first heat crash. Maybe since the day she moved in. Didn’t matter. The only question now was whether Quinn could let her guard down enough to accept it.
I opened a new document and started laying out a plan. If Quinn was going to survive this, it needed to be more than “just” pack bonding. She’d need constant monitoring, environmental control, accommodations built into the bones of the house, not just to take the edge off withdrawal, but to give her a shot at a normal life.
