Chapter 68

The first person to notice the problem was Blake.

It was roughly half a year after they returned from San Diego that Blake realized something even Rhys himself did not yet know. At the time, Rhys had just graduated from university and was living like a virtual recluse, having recently set up a studio of his own.

Originally, he had rented a space in a shared studio for sculptors on Long Island. However, the competing pheromones of the other artists sharing the space bothered him so intensely that he found it impossible to continue working there. If the studio had been occupied solely by Alphas, he might have tolerated it to some extent. But Omega pheromones were mixed into the air as well, triggering a deep, visceral discomfort within him.

At first, he tried to dismiss it as mere oversensitivity. Yet, the ambient pheromones disrupted his focus so severely that he could no longer concentrate. At one point, it felt less like an artistic sanctuary and more as if he were laboring amid a suffocating stench. His insomnia, which had briefly shown signs of improvement, flared up with a vengeance. He was in no condition to keep working.

It was Blake who stepped in to help him secure a private studio. As the only son of Rhys’s maternal uncle, Blake was six years his senior. Because of that considerable age gap, both Rhys and his late older brother, Dylan, had followed Blake around since childhood. After Rhys tragically lost both his brother and his father, his maternal uncle and Blake moved in to fill a portion of the vast, empty space left in their wake.

Blake, in particular, operated in the very same artistic circles as Rhys. After Rhys enrolled in the Pratt Institute, a private art school, he ended up seeing Blake more often than he saw his own mother. Having already established himself as a prominent critic in the New York art world, Blake possessed an extraordinary network. Unlike Rhys, who remained fundamentally detached from other people, Blake was highly sociable and a naturally gifted conversationalist. Without even realizing it, Rhys had spent years observing and absorbing the way Blake navigated public life.

Following Rhys’s graduation, Blake cared for him devotedly, acting almost as a patron. He deeply admired Rhys’s sculptures, always reassuring him that his technique—which preserved a classical beauty rarely seen in contemporary art—would eventually realign with the latest trends. Expressing how eagerly he anticipated Rhys’s first major work as an independent artist, Blake made a habit of stopping by the studio on his way home from work.

“Rhys! I can smell your pheromones from outside the door!” Blake exclaimed one evening, his voice tight with alarm. “What on earth is going on in here?”

That day, as usual, Blake had brought dinner for Rhys, knowing his cousin was prone to skipping meals when entirely absorbed in his work. The moment Blake stepped across the threshold, he frowned, instinctively covering his mouth and nose. He let out a low groan, as though merely breathing the air in the room caused him physical pain.

Half out of his mind from the feverish heat rising to the crown of his head, Rhys had been relentlessly carving marble. At the sudden intrusion breaking his hyper-focus, his pheromones spiked, sharpening aggressively for an instant.

Cursing under his breath, Blake bolted out of the studio. He returned thirty minutes later, armed with heavy-duty deodorizers and medical suppressants. As Blake marched around the room, spraying the deodorizer into the corners, the chemical mist helped Rhys come back to himself a little.

“… You’re here?” Rhys muttered, blinking through the haze. “When did you get here?”

“Earlier!” Blake snapped, though his tone carried more worry than anger. “You looked at me like I was an intruder. I nearly had a heart attack.”

Rhys had never felt any resistance to Blake dropping by before, but today was different. He had just entered his rut, and the mere presence of another Alpha drove his raw sensitivity to its absolute peak. He had no desire to take his irrational irritation out on someone innocent, but he couldn’t stop the sharp edge from bleeding into his voice.

“Go home today, Blake. I’m in rut… I’m in no state to see another Alpha.”

“And do you think I’m comfortable standing here smelling another Alpha?” Blake retorted, staying firmly near the entrance, poised to leave at a moment’s notice. “The pheromones I encountered the moment I walked in were so thick I thought I’d suffocate. I only came to bring you dinner.” He paused, studying Rhys’s disheveled state. “Why didn’t you take a suppressant? You always take them.”

Blake knew very well that Rhys had no interest in Omegas and typically managed his ruts cleanly through medication.

But this time, the medicine had utterly failed. The moment Rhys stopped hammering, a wave of profound sexual desire bloomed, crawling insidiously through his veins. Picking up the chisel and mallet he had briefly set down, Rhys turned his back on his cousin and approached the marble block once more.

“I don’t know,” Rhys admitted quietly. “One day, the medicine just stopped working. But if I only stay home, I feel like I’m going to lose my mind. I thought I should at least work.”

“The medicine isn’t working?” Blake asked, his brow furrowing in genuine puzzlement. “You’re still far too young to have developed a tolerance to suppressants.”

Rhys offered no reply, merely staring back at him with cold, vacant eyes. He silently willed Blake to leave, and quickly. Once he was alone… he could meet Dante again in his imagination. Captivated by that singular, consuming thought, Rhys ignored the question entirely.

Blake watched him for a long, heavy moment as Rhys threw himself back into his sculpting like a madman. Finally, with a sigh, Blake closed the door and withdrew into the night.

The following day, Blake reappeared, carrying a specialized suppressant Rhys had never seen before.

Having stayed awake all night in the studio, Rhys was still wholly immersed in his carving. At that moment, the only coherent thought remaining in his mind was the absolute necessity of recreating the image of Dante exactly as he had first seen him.

Blake was horrified by the frantic, unkempt sight of him and forcibly pulled Rhys away from the sculpture.

“Come back to your senses, Iris,” Blake pleaded, using the intimate family name. “I brought a prescription-only suppressant. Take this and go home to sleep. If you stay up all night like this again, you’re going to collapse the way you used to. You’re an adult now, so learn to exercise some restraint, if only to keep from upsetting your mother.”

At the mention of his mother, Rhys’s defenses crumbled. Reluctantly setting down his tools, he took the heavy pill Blake offered and swallowed it dry.

Usually, no matter how late a suppressant was in taking effect, Rhys could feel the internal heat settle and the phantom desires fade within thirty minutes. Yet, even as he systematically tidied up the studio, nothing changed within his body. The fever burned on.

Blake’s expression grew deeply serious. “We’re going to the hospital right now. There’s clearly something wrong with your pheromone glands.”

“I don’t want to,” Rhys insisted, his voice hardening. “I… I have to finish making this. Go home for today, Blake. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

The only way to drown out the raw heat digging into his core and turning him into a beast was to sculpt Dante. When he recalled the warmth that had embraced him in the ocean and the deep voice that had whispered he was going to be all right, Rhys experienced a strange, profound sense of mental fulfillment. When he focused entirely on the sculpture, he could immerse himself even deeper into the memory, and that desperate satisfaction grew.

In those moments, it felt as though Dante were standing right beside him.

Ultimately, it was only after his rut finally burned itself out that Rhys visited a trait clinic, practically dragged there by Blake. Blake had tattled on him to his family—a petty move for a man his age, Rhys thought bitterly—resulting in his mother joining them as well. The hospital they attended was an upscale, private facility specializing in Alpha physiology, one that the Lindner family had utilized for generations.

There, Rhys was handed a clinical booklet explaining the mechanics of imprinting.

After enduring a barrage of ultrasounds, blood tests, and an exhaustive questionnaire, Rhys stared in utter confusion at the educational material he had been given out of nowhere. Around him, the adults fell dead silent.

Leaving Rhys entirely out of the conversation, his attending physician, his mother, and Blake began a grave, whispered discussion among themselves. Because the clinic’s soundproofing was pointlessly excellent, Rhys couldn’t catch a single syllable of what they were saying. Frustrated, he flipped through the pages of the booklet with irritated hands. It was filled with dry, meaningless medical jargon about Omegas and Alphas. He was just about to snap it shut when his eyes caught on a bold warning printed at the very end of the text:

An imprint with a Beta will inevitably cause symptoms corresponding to the third item. Because Betas are a trait type devoid of pheromone organs, the act of accepting an Alpha’s or Omega’s pheromones is biologically impossible. This absence of reciprocal chemical feedback is one of the primary behaviors recognized as an instinctive rejection by the Alpha or Omega who formed the imprint.

Rhys slowly raised his hand, his fingers stroking the printed sentence. As he rubbed the word Beta several times, the face that came to mind did so with such natural, effortless ease that a sudden wave of sorrow washed over him.

“Hi, Iris.”

He remembered it vividly: a bright afternoon beneath California’s blinding sun. A face turning toward him from among a bustling crowd. A man raising a hand—the one holding his coffee—in casual greeting, flashing a white smile that brought out two pretty dimples. Rhys wanted terribly to see that handsome face again, flushed with healthy, sun-kissed color. If only those hazel eyes, radiant like the eyes of a sun god, would look at him just one more time…

In that moment, he felt as though he would do absolutely anything for it.

When would he see him again? Would the day ever come when he could? He didn’t possess Dante’s contact information, and he had no viable way to track him down. If it had been possible, he would have boarded a flight to San Diego months ago, but Dante belonged to a military facility that civilians were strictly barred from entering. There was no way for Rhys to breach such a place.

If I joined the same Coast Guard unit as Dante, could I see him then? he wondered wildly. Even that seemed unlikely, given there was no telling where he would be assigned. It would also take a significant amount of time, and unfortunately, Rhys possessed no connections within the military; finding classified personnel files was out of the question.

The only physical clue Rhys possessed was the blue handkerchief Dante had given him.

The moment his thoughts drifted to the handkerchief carefully hidden away at home, a hot blush stained his cheeks. Curling his pale hand into a fist, he lowered his head and pressed his lips together, looking exactly like a young boy caught in a shameful lie. No one in the waiting room was looking at him, yet he felt an overwhelming wave of humiliation, as though some tremendous, dirty secret had been brutally exposed to the world.

The truth was entirely obscene.

After returning to New York, whenever his rut arrived like clockwork every two months, Rhys had masturbated while burying his face in the scent of that handkerchief.

At an age when most young Alphas should have been actively pursuing Omegas, Rhys had lost all interest in other people. For several years, his sex drive had felt entirely dormant, as if his libido had been surgically cut away. Even when he naturally woke up hard in the mornings, the arousal subsided quickly, leaving him with no desire to touch himself.

But after he met Dante and returned home, an overwhelmingly powerful, monstrous desire rose within him the moment his first post-San Diego rut hit. He had awoken to find himself burning with fever, his lower abdomen clenched in a tight, aching knot. Already fiercely erect, Rhys had naturally wrapped his hand around his length and began to stroke, his mind entirely consumed by the memory of Dante’s smiling face.

He had barely rubbed himself a few times before the climax tore through him, semen spilling out across his skin.

“Ah… hngh…”

He curled his upper body forward at the painfully unfamiliar intensity of the orgasm, gasping for air as he sat up. Panting heavily, his abdominal muscles twitching, he watched in a daze as semen that had been bottled up for years flowed out in thick ropes, carrying a raw, musky smell and a dense wave of concentrated pheromones.

The release lasted for quite a while. Rhys was staring at the unfamiliar, messy sight when, entirely unbidden, his mind conjured an image of Dante positioned directly between his legs.

The instant the fantasy took root, his eyes flushed red, and a powerful, secondary wave of arousal surged through his veins. Even after driving himself to collapse again and again by stroking himself in rapid succession, his body refused to calm down. He touched himself all day long. By the end of it, he was frantically rubbing his face against Dante’s handkerchief, driven into a desperate heat by the faint, fading scent of the sea remaining on the fabric.

After that initial break, whenever his rut arrived, it became a compulsive habit to resolve it through isolation and masturbation. At first, simply stroking himself had been enough to grant a modicum of relief.

From his second rut onward, however, it wasn’t.