Page 17 of Heat Lightning

“Okay, I’ll go let him know,” she said, plopping the towels onto a far counter before exiting through the swinging door.

With a practiced hand, I broke down the roasted chicken and plated it with a drizzle of sauce next to the charred garlic broccolini and crispy rosemary potatoes. Finally, and most importantly, I dumped the basket of air-fried dino nuggets onto a second plate next to a generous squirt of ketchup, a heaping spoonful of boxed mac and cheese, and peas.

Friday was chicken night—of the roasted and breaded-dino variety—because there were usually enough leftovers to carry my client, Mr. Marino, and his six-year-old son, Enzo, through the weekend with minimal prep work on other dishes.

Most of the time, though, I whipped up a few other things here and there so they’d have snacks, too. Just because I wanted to. Mr. Marino was a good employer, a good alpha, and I never minded doing extra when they needed it.

If you asked me how I came to be a multi-millionaire’s personal chef, cooking lunch and dinner five nights a week on one of the most expensive oven ranges money could buy, I’d tell you to get some popcorn and buckle the fuck up.

Because it was a doozy.

“They’re ready,” Gwen said, popping her head back into the kitchen.

“Okay, thanks.” Grabbing the serving dishes, I followed her out and down the hall. “Are you staying to eat?”

Sometimes we had dinner together in the kitchen while Enzo and Mr. Marino ate in the dining room before cleaning up for the night.

Gwen was Mr. Marino’s house manager and personal assistant. Cleaners came in weekly for the massive amount of vacuuming, dusting, and scrubbing it took to keep a house this large clean, but otherwise, Gwen did the laundry, ran errands, and essentially kept everything afloat.

Including me. She was the entire reason I had this job, after all.

“No, I’ve got a shift at the shelter tonight,” she said.

I averted my eyes. “Ah. Well. I hope it’s peaceful.”

Peaceful probably wasn’t the right word. When she wasn’t at Mr. Marino's, Gwen worked as a survivor advocate at a no-questions-asked domestic violence shelter here in Plover Bay that also served as a heat recovery clinic for omegas seeking asylum.

Statistically, the most dangerous time for domestic abuse survivors was leaving their partner, which increased significantly for omegas in heat with nowhere to go.

The stats for alphas were harder to correlate. Rut was an equally vulnerable experience, certainly. The problem was, while omegas went into heat roughly every three months from the time they fully matured, an alpha’s rut was only triggered once they’d met a highly compatible mate, and culminated when the pair sealed their bond through a claiming bite.

After mating, alphas would go into rut with their omega, balancing the heavy physical toll they could have on a partner. They rarely had to consider experiencing a rut without companionship.

I’d always thought that was so unfair. Why did omegas have to manage heat after heat until they found a mate while alphas could go ages, maybe even forever, without the hassle of an unmated rut?

Now, though, I saw the pain in that reality, too.

Still, it wasn’t like alphas couldn’t knot outside of rut—they totally could, if they found a scent match. It just didn’t have the same heightened physiological and reproductive consequences associated with the mating bond that brought on a full rut.

Everything balanced out in the end, though, considering going into rut without a partner could kill an alpha. Their bodies weren’t meant to sustain the raging hormones and shifting blood flow away from critical processes like digestion and brain function for that long.

Death by perpetual knot sounded horrific.

Anyway. All of that to say, most shelters like the one where Gwen worked were catered toward omegas and heats, with the rare mateless rutting alpha thrown in.

Gwen herself was an alpha, but she had a way of being confidently calm and reassuring during times of crisis that wasn’t threatening or arrogant. She was incredibly good at what she did.

I would know. It was how we met.

She gave me a small smile. “Thanks. Yes, hopefully not a busy night. I need to do some shopping this weekend, though, if you wanna come along?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I could grab a few things.”

“Sounds good. I’ll text you.” With a wave, she broke off down the hall that led out to the guest garage—because that was a totally normal thing to have—and I continued into the dining room.

Two hungry faces looked up when I walked in.

“Hi, Max!” Enzo said, bouncing in his seat. “We just got back from piano lessons. Daddy says I’m doing really well. Do you want to hear me play?”