The night air is cooler than the air in the bar, but it barely does anything to cool the fire burning across my skin. My mind gets hazier by the second, and trying to think and hold on to those thoughts is like wading through molasses, syrupy and thick.
I’m vaguely aware of someone helping me into the truck, but I definitely lose time between getting buckled in and driving home.
All I know is I’m so damned hot. Everything’s on fire, and being closed in with the Alpha’s scents is just making it worse. Every time I breathe in, I get hit with it all over again, and it makes me whimper with desperation and need.
“Lincoln, call Lainey,” Cash says, his voice tight with control. “Tell her she needs to keep Cora tonight.”
I don’t hear any of the phone call, locked in on the feeling of them touching me as I writhe in the passenger seat. It’s like mybody has developed a second heartbeat, need pulsing along and making my head spin.
Their hands are on my arms and my back, and Everett has one hand on my knee, trying to ground me. Everywhere they touch feels like I’ve been branded, like all the heat is racing along my body to concentrate in those spots.
Their voices are deep, rumbling with Alpha authority as they keep talking to me, trying to keep me from losing it completely in this truck.
The desperation just keeps building though. Everything they do to try to ground me just works me up even more, and I can’t help myself. One of my hands slips between my legs right there in the truck.
I hear one of them suck in a breath, but I’m so far past feeling shame now. Not when I finally have something pressing against the aching core of my body, and when my hips are bucking wildly, seeking out more.
It only takes a handful of minutes for me to make myself come like that, just from the pressure, and my scent spikes, which draws an answering reaction from the three of them.
They all groan, arousal shooting through their scents as they watch me whine and whimper and fall apart.
And then—we’re home.
Someone unbuckles me and hauls me out of the truck, and my head lolls to one side as I’m carried into the house and up the stairs to my room.
My instincts are a riot, screaming at me to nest, to prepare a safe place for my heat, and there’s a cold feeling in the back of my mind that it isn’t already done.
As soon as I’m on my feet, I start pulling blankets and pillows from the bed with shaking hands, but it feels wrong. The fabrics don’t smell right, the arrangement isn’t secure enough. Nothing feels safe the way my fucking biology demands.
My blockers were supposed to keep me from going into heat, and I was relying on that, so I’m not prepared for this the way Omegas usually are. I don’t have anything ready. No supplies, no properly scented items.
It’s making everything so much fucking worse, pitching my already volatile emotions into a storm that I don’t know how to weather.
“What do you need?” Cash is asking. He steps toward me, hands out like there’s something he can do. “Harper, can you tell us what will help?”
“I don’tknow!” It comes out sharp, half on a wail because my body is in chaos. My instincts are screaming and there’s the burning undercurrent ofwant want want,but alsowrong wrong wrong.
It’s frustrating, and I wouldn’t know what to tell them even if I knew how to make the words come out. All of it gets to be too much, and I feel like a scream is building behind my teeth.
I snatch for another blanket, hoping this one will magically be the right one, but it’s wrong. More wrong than the others, with a slightly rough texture from embroidery along the edges. It grates against my oversensitive skin, and that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back in this situation.
Tears spring into my eyes and start streaming down my face, and there’s a crushing feeling in my chest that feels like a black hole, swallowing everything up.
I start shredding the blanket in my hands, ripping it into tatters without stopping to think better of it. I grab for the closest pillows and throw them across the room because they’re not right. Every fucking second they’re there, being wrong and bad and terrible, it makes everything worse.
I feel overloaded, overwhelmed by hormones I can’t control. My body aches with need and my mind spirals with the vulnerability of heat.
The scream breaks free, ripping out of my throat, and it feels like I’m trying to claw my way out of my body at this point.
I’m distracted from focusing on Everett, Lincoln, and Cash in my spiral, but something about me sobbing in the middle of the chaos must snap them into protective mode. Everett steps in, grabbing my hands before I can do any more damage.
I twist against his hold, but there’s something firm and demanding in it that does help in the moment.
“Cash, Lincoln, get the softest blankets you can find in the house. Nothing with seams or scratchy threads. Bring them here.” He directs them with his quiet authority, and they dash off to do what he said.
Then he catches my face in his hand again, making me look at him. “I know your instincts are going haywire right now,” he says, his voice pitched low and soothing. “But I need you to tell me what you need. I’ll make sure you have it, but you have to tell me.”
I drag in a breath, trying to force my overheated brain to function. “S-scent,” I manage to sob out. “Your scent. Whatever you have, I just—I need it. Please.”