Not dramatically. Rex doesn't collapse or break down or make a sound. He justsags, all that rigid tension draining out of him in one long, silent surrender, his weight shifting forward into me until I'm bearing some of it.
I hold him.
My fingers card through the hair at his nape. He shivers.
I want to tell him.
Right now, right here, with his face pressed against my neck and his walls in ruins around him.
There's another secret you don't know.
I'm not just a girl.
I'm an omega.
You're my scent match.
That's why this feels the way it does.
That's how I found you at the cemetery. That's why being close to you makes the noise in my head go quiet too, even when we're driving each other fucking insane. Maybe even especially then.
But this isn't the right time.
He's in too much pain right now. Telling him now would feel like taking advantage, like using biology to explain away something that would stand on its own anyway.
And if I’m being honest with myself, I think he already knows.
Somewhere deep down, beneath the denial and the rage and the fucking fortress he's built around himself, some part of Rex recognizes what I really am to him. He just can't name it yet. Can't let himself name it.
So I won't name it for him.
Not today.
But I can do something else.
I pull back just enough to see his face, to reach up and cover the side that isn't masked with my palm, my thumb brushing along his cheekbone. His lashes—so light they're almost white, unlike the pitch black of his dyed hair, which is starting to show platinum at the roots—flutter shut at my touch and he turns his face against my palm, his full lips parting, his breath tickling my skin.
Just for a second, he lets himself have this.
And I kiss him.
Rex goes completely still.
Full system shutdown. Every muscle, every nerve, every thought in his head slamming to a halt like someone yanked the emergency brake on his entire existence.
I feel his lips part slightly in pure shock before he pulls away.
I pull back an inch too.
His one visible eye is blown wide, the pupil swallowing the ice blue.
"What…" His voice comes out wrecked. Barely a whisper, but there's still a growl there. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Shh." I brush my thumb across his jaw, feeling the hard line of it beneath the mask's edge. "Let me calm you down."
I kiss him again.
This time, after a beat that stretches into eternity, his mouth moves against mine.