Chapter 8: Heat

Cavan gave the tin back that night, and Fenny took it without a word.

They did not speak of the morning.

Fenny read at the desk until midnight, and Cavan lay awake in the big bed listening to the pages turn.

At some hour of the deep night the pages stopped.

Cavan woke with the sheet tangled around his legs and the room full of sugar.

It was thick enough to taste. Warm milk and honey and something darker underneath, deep and wet and aching.

He knew that smell, because it was his own.

But this time it was not his.

He sat up, pine smoke rising off his skin without his having asked it to.

On the cot by the window, Fenny lay curled on his side with his knees drawn up and the blanket kicked to the floor.

His shirt was soaked through.

"Fenny."

"Don't," Fenny said into the pillow. "Stay there. Don't come near me."

"Is it a heat?"

"It's a lapse. It'll pass. I took... I took two. I'll take another."

His hand fumbled for the tin on the sill, and knocked it to the floor.

The pills scattered under the cot.

Fenny laughed, high and cracked, and dropped his face into the crook of his arm.

Cavan crossed the room.

He picked up the tin and put it on the sill, where Fenny could not reach it, and knelt by the cot.

"It won't pass," he said gently. "Will it?"

Fenny turned his head.

His glasses were gone. His eyes were wet and glazed and enormous, and the rims were red.

"I've never had one," he said. "In nine years. Not once. I don't know how."

"Then I'll show you."

"You're not a doctor."

"I'm an alpha who's lived through a hundred of these," Cavan said. "From the other side. Can I pick you up?"

A long pause.

Fenny nodded.

Cavan gathered him against his chest, slick and shaking and burning through the cloth, and carried him to the big bed.

He laid him on his back in the center of the sheets and went for the cushions.

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