Still, I didn’t expect to hear a low sob make its way up the stairs. The sound rings in my ears like a damned alarm. My omega is crying. Mine. Someone made her fucking cry.
With a low growl, I rocket to my feet, and I’m on the move before my brain even catches up. Seth hisses after me, trying to call me back. When I don’t listen, I can hear him frantically calling for a camera to follow me down the stairs.
I barrel down the staircase, storming toward Carissa, who blinks up at me through her tears.
“Goodness!” Carissa’s mother exclaims in an over-the-top voice as I grab hold of Carissa and swing her up in my arms.
My omega buries her nose in my neck, inhaling deeply, her tears soaking into my shirt.
“You should leave,” I tell Iris in a dark voice. “You aren’t wanted here.”
“This isn’t your house, young man,” she sniffs. “And you are interrupting a private conversation between me and my daughter.”
“That conversation is over. And until Carissa wants to see you again, you won’t come near her. You get it?”
Iris rises to her feet, her shoulders pushed back with all the authority she can muster. She’s an older omega, but an omega still, and I’m surprised that she’s acting so aggressively against an alpha.
Then again, she is a mother, and I am holding her child.
“You will put my daughter down. We have things to discuss,” Iris says.
“It will be a cold day in hell when I let you ‘discuss’ anything with her again. Look at her. She’s fucking crying. We’re done here.”
I turn and carry Carissa toward the stairs. Her mother scoffs behind me, protesting loudly. She tries to follow me upstairs, but the producers stop her, reminding her that her guest pass doesn’t include access to the upper floors. I grin triumphantly as I carry her away.
Mine.
***
IT’S NOT UNTIL WE GETupstairs that I realize that Carissa isn’t just crying. She’s shaking, her skin heating, her pupils dilating. Her hand fists into the cloth of my shirt, and she whispers my name.
“What is it, Izzy?” I ask, touching her neck tenderly.
“My heat,” she gasps. “It’s... it’s here.”
Cursing to myself, I carry her into her suite. Beatrice is sitting in the living room with Randy, both of them painting each other’s toenails. Beatrice jumps to her feet when I burst through the door, knocking a bottle of red polish onto the carpet.
“Shit,” she says, reaching for it. “What the hell are you —?” Her words cut off as she sees Carissa in my arms. “Heat?” she asks quietly.
I nod.
“Get Henry,” Carissa gasps. “Conrad. Conrad.”
“I’ll get Henry,” Randy says, getting up and running out of the suite, his bare feet slapping on the smooth cold floors.
“Should I get Conrad?” Beatrice asks, looking doubtful. “I’m not sure it’s the best plan.”
“No,” I growl. “Leave him out of this for now. Let’s get her to her nest.”
Carissa’s body is growing warmer and warmer in my arms, and I’m actually a little alarmed. I’ve never helped an omega through her heat, but I know the logistics; insatiable sexual hunger, strong, raw emotion, and very little awareness of the world around them — those are the tennents of omega heat.
I also know a nest is a key component, so I’m surprised when Beatrice opens the door to a spacious bedroom, bright and open with a four-poster bed in the center.
“Bathroom,” Carissa sobs.
I carry her into the bathroom, where I see a massive set of cushions and blankets piled high in the bathtub. “Nest,” she says with a sigh.
“You gonna get in there with her?” Beatrice asks for the doorway.