Page 113 of Run Wild Omega

Wyatt

Ipull into the SAR station parking lot at six forty-five because I can’t sleep.

Rourke’s face keeps flashing behind my eyelids every time I close them. That smug, calibrated smile. The way he looked at Tess like she was a stock portfolio.

I’ve been pacing my cabin since three in the morning, running scenarios, checking the perimeter, texting Kyle to confirm the overnight watch rotation. By five, I gave up on sleep entirely and decided to come in early to review the café security footage on the backup server and make sure the emergency registration filing is ready to go before the eight o’clock deadline.

But when I round the corner of the station, Miles’s car is already parked in the gravel lot.

I kill my engine and sit for a moment, staring at it. The hood is cold, so he’s been here a while. Maybe he came in early to finish the registration documents. That tracks. He’s the one who pushed for the expedited filing, and Miles doesn’t miss deadlines. Ever.

I grab my coffee from the cupholder, step out into the biting morning air, and head up the wooden steps to the converted garage apartment. The door is unlocked. That’s also strange. Miles locks everything. He locks his car twice. He locks his desk drawers. He once lectured Dylan for twenty minutes about station security after he left the front door open during a snowstorm.

I push the door open.

The apartment is warm. The heater is running, and the cedar beams overhead give the space that woody, enclosed quality I’ve always liked. It’s dim inside.

My eyes adjust as I step over the threshold, and I scan the room out of habit.

Two glasses of water on the coffee table, one half-empty. A bag of potato chips, open and stale. A woman’s jacket draped over the arm of the leather sofa.

My chest tightens. I look down the short hallway toward the bedroom. The door is ajar.

I should stop. Every instinct, every ounce of training I have as a medic and a rescuer, tells me to assess before I move. Read the room. Check for threats. But my feet are already carrying me down the hall, my boots thudding against the wooden floor, my pulse climbing into a range I haven’t felt since I was pinned under that boulder on the north face.

I push the bedroom door open.

Tess is on the bed. Miles is beside her. They’re tangled together, the duvet kicked to the foot of the mattress. Her jeans are crumpled on the floor. His sweatpants are around his ankles. Her hair is a wild spill across the pillow, and her back is bare, the curve of her spine visible above the edge of a sheet that’s barely covering her hips. Miles’s arm is draped across her waist, his face buried in her hair.

Apples. Sagebrush. Mountain rain.

Sex.

The scent of her arousal, of his release, of their combined biology is so thick in the air I can taste it on my tongue. It coats the back of my throat, floods my sinuses, and sends a jolt of pure, molten heat straight to my groin.

My body reacts before my brain can catch up. My cock thickens in my jeans, pressing against the zipper with an urgency that makes my vision swim. I can see the bite mark on her throat, the red flush across her collarbone, the bruise on her hip where fingers gripped too hard. Miles’s fingers. On her skin. On the body I’ve been agonizing over for weeks.

The arousal curdles into something darker.

Anger, white-hot and consuming, detonates in my chest. Not at her, never at her. At him. At Miles, who I trusted. Miles, who I brought into this pack. Miles, who sat across from me at the café yesterday and looked me in the eye while we planned a legal defense to protect the woman I’ve been in love with since I was sixteen years old.

And then he took her to bed.

My hand slams against the doorframe. The crack of wood against my palm echoes through the apartment like a gunshot.

Tess’s eyes fly open. She sits up, clutching the sheet to her chest, and her gaze finds me in the doorway. The color drains from her face.

Miles jolts awake behind her, disoriented.

There’s a red scrape down his chest that I can identify, even from a distance, as the mark of her fingernails.

“Get dressed,” I say.

The words come out flat. Controlled. It’s the only way I can keep from putting my fist through the wall.

I turn and walk out.

Behind me, I hear the scramble. The rustle of fabric, the thud of a foot hitting the floor, Miles’s murmur. I make it to the living room before I have to stop. I brace both hands on the back of the leather sofa, drop my head between my shoulders, and try to get my breathing under control.