HOWL

Harrowdale's last omega disappeared nine years ago, and the valley still flinches when anyone asks. Rabid is not a figure of speech here. I have watched what happens to a man when the quiet runs out. I am the medic's apprentice. I have read every alpha's chart in this valley, and I know, down to the week, when the first of them breaks.

Then an avalanche buries the only road out, and I present as an omega on the clinic floor at twenty-four. Sealed in until thaw. No courier, no supply train, no medical evacuation. Just my new scent in a warm room, and three big, careful men learning what it does to them.

Gunnar's words break apart unless I'm near, and the way he holds still about it is worse. Milo has charted my pulse for five years and only now noticed it jumps for him. He wants the one thing he will not prescribe himself. Ryland prices this valley to the ounce, and he cannot name what an hour of me is worth without his voice dropping. The fourth alpha has been gone nine years. I write his name into my count anyway.

My scent can ease an alpha's mind, and nearness is the one medicine I hand out freely. The rest is appetite, theirs and mine both. I will not turn love into a treatment plan, and nobody gets a bite, a bond, or a knot until I say so.

Past the sealed passes, someone keeps a registry of omegas with room for my name. The valley wants me to choose one man before winter chooses for me. Their arithmetic is true. Their answer is still wrong.

All four men. Not always one at a time. I intend to examine every possibility.