Chapter 132: Who Put My Hormones in Charge?

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I woke up on the fourth morning feeling as though someone had shoved me into an oven and forgotten to take me out.

For several seconds, I lay beneath the blankets, staring at the ceiling while trying to understand why my skin felt unbearably hot and why the simple act of lying still had suddenly become an impossible task.

There was a restless ache beneath my ribs, a dull cramping sensation in my lower abdomen, and an uncomfortable sensitivity that made even my nightshirt feel irritating against my body.

I kicked the blankets away, hoping the cooler air would help, but the relief lasted approximately three seconds before another wave of heat rolled through me.

"What the fuck is this?" I muttered, pushing myself upright.

My head felt strangely heavy, and when I stood, the room tilted enough that I had to grab the bedside table to steady myself.

The hell?

I immediately decided that whatever was happening required a shower, because I was clearly not equipped to handle a medical emergency before breakfast, especially one that involved my body apparently attempting to cook itself from the inside.

I stumbled into the bathroom, turned the shower to its coldest setting, and stepped beneath the water without bothering to remove my nightshirt properly.

The icy spray struck my shoulders, soaking the fabric and sending water running down my face, but instead of calming me, the strange warmth seemed to settle deeper beneath my skin.

My breathing became uneven, the ache in my abdomen intensified, and a damp sensation made me stiffen in sudden alarm.

I looked down, then gripped the tiled wall as the realization slowly caught up with me.

No.

Absolutely not.

My last heat had been three months ago, during the period when Frederick was in a coma, and I remembered every miserable moment of it with the kind of clarity usually reserved for traumatic historical events.

I had been so damn sure I had months before I needed to deal with another cycle, so why was my body behaving as though someone had announced an emergency heat festival and neglected to invite me?

The sweet scent gathering around me only made the situation worse, especially when I realized that even I could smell the difference.

My omega scent had become thicker and more noticeable, clinging to the damp air until there was no pretending this was simply a fever or the consequence of several nights of poor sleep.

I pressed my forehead against the wall, trying to breathe through another cramp, but my thoughts refused to cooperate. Something was wrong, terribly wrong, and beneath the panic, an instinctive need had begun to rise with frightening certainty.

I wanted my alpha.

Specifically, I wanted Lorenzo, which was particularly irritating because I had spent the last three days complaining about his absence and telling myself that I was perfectly capable of entertaining myself without my husband hovering over me like an overprotective security system.

Apparently, my inner omega had reviewed my argument and found it completely irrelevant.

A knock sounded at the bathroom door.

"Alex...sir?" Leon called worriedly. "Are you all right? You’ve been in there for a long time, and I thought I heard you struggling."

I tried to answer normally, but my voice came out rough and unsteady.

"L...Leon, get... Dracula. Please..."

There was a brief silence. "Should I tell him you’re feeling sick?"

"Tell him whatever you need to tell him, just bring him here, I don’t fucking care!" I gripped the wall harder as the discomfort intensified, no longer possessing enough patience to worry about whether I sounded dramatic. "Please, Leon. I need him now."

The concern in Leon’s voice sharpened immediately. "I’m going!"

His footsteps hurried away, and I sank slightly against the wall, allowing the freezing water to run over my shoulders while I waited. I hated how frightened I felt, hated not understanding what was happening, and hated even more that the only thing I could think about was the familiar comfort of Lorenzo’s arms.

The bathroom door opened so quickly that I barely had time to lift my head.

"Alex."

Lorenzo crossed the room without hesitation, still dressed in a black shirt and dark trousers, his pale hair tied back carelessly and his green eyes fixed on me with immediate concern.

He stepped directly beneath the shower, ignoring the water soaking his clothes and the expensive watch at his wrist, and reached for me as though nothing else in the world mattered.

The moment his scent surrounded me, my panic eased just enough for me to move, and I clutched his shirt with both hands, pulling myself against his chest.

"What’s the hell is happening... to me?" I asked, my voice breaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. "Dracula, I don’t understand. I’m burning up, and...and my stomach hurts, and I can’t make it stop."

"Shh, amore mio, I’ve got you." He wrapped one arm around my waist and supported the back of my head with the other, keeping me steady beneath the water while he stroked my wet hair. "Breathe slowly, sweetheart. You’re safe, and I’m right here."

His voice was low and soothing, and I pressed my face into his neck, breathing in his familiar scent as though it were the only thing keeping me from falling apart.

He held me until my trembling eased slightly, murmuring reassurances and ignoring the fact that his shirt was now thoroughly soaked.

I might have teased him about ruining his clothes under different circumstances, but at that moment, I was too busy clinging to him to remember how to be properly insufferable.

When I finally lifted my head, I noticed the tension in his jaw and the troubled expression he had been trying to hide.

"Dracula," I said, narrowing my eyes despite the dizziness and the slick basically dripping down my thighs, "you look like you... know something."

His hand paused against my back.

"Tell me what it is."

He drew a slow breath before answering, and the hesitation was enough to make my stomach tighten for an entirely different reason.

"During your kidnapping, one of the men injected you with a substance. The doctors discovered it when they examined you after the explosion."

I stared at him, struggling to process his words. "What substance?"

"It was designed to interfere with your cycle and accelerate your heat."

For a moment, I could only hear the water striking the tiles.

Then the meaning settled over me, and my fingers tightened around his shirt until the fabric bunched between them.

"You knew?"

His eyes met mine. "Yes."

The simplicity of his answer hurt more than I expected.

"You knew someone had injected me with something, you knew it could make me go into heat early, and you didn’t tell me?" My voice rose, trembling with anger and fear. "You let me spend the last three days thinking everything was fine while you sat on information about my own body?"

"The doctors estimated that your heat would begin within a week, but they warned me that stress and anxiety could accelerate the symptoms. I believed you needed time to recover from everything that had happened before you had to worry about another complication."

"So you decided I shouldn’t know?"

"I made the wrong decision."

I pulled back enough to look at him properly, furious that he wasn’t arguing with me and even more furious that I couldn’t stop leaning against him for support.

"You don’t get to make that decision for me, Lorenzo. It’s my body, and I’m the one who has to experience whatever they did to it. How could you possibly think keeping me ignorant was better?"

His expression tightened, and for once, the formidable Don looked like a man who understood that his intentions did not excuse the hurt he had caused.

"You’re right," he said quietly. "I should have told you, and I’m sorry. I was afraid that the news would frighten you, and I convinced myself I was protecting you by waiting. I should have trusted you with the truth instead."

My anger didn’t disappear, but his apology left me with nowhere to direct the next argument, particularly when another wave of discomfort made me close my eyes and press my forehead against his shoulder.

Someone had tampered with my goddamn body, and I didn’t know why, what they had intended to accomplish, or how much worse things might become before this was over.