Page 33 of Heat Clickbait
The silence on the other end stretched so long I checked to make sure the call hadn't dropped.
"Bring her to dinner," Mom finally said, her voice softer but somehow more terrifying. "Sunday. Two o'clock. Don't be late."
She hung up.
"Your mom wants to meet Callie?" Milo looked like I'd suggested jumping into an active volcano. Which, honestly, might be safer.
"All our families do," Nova said, looking at his phone with the expression of someone calculating escape routes. "My parents are threatening to fly over from London. Blitz, didn't your?—"
"Seven missed calls from my sisters." Blitz had gone pale under his golden tan. "They've started a group chat called 'Intervention for Hermanito.'"
Ghost held up his phone, showing twelve missed calls from a contact labeled 'DNA Donor.' We all knew he hadn't talked to his father in two years, not since the accident that took his first pack.
"This is insane." I started pacing, my energy needing outlet before I exploded. "We can't… Callie can't handle this right now. She's still processing the scent match, still coming to terms with what we are, and now everyone wants a piece of her?"
"Want a piece of what?"
We all spun toward the doorway. Callie stood there in one of Nova's shirts and Ghost's sweatpants, her pink hair a disaster, face still puffy from sleep. But her eyes were sharp, taking in our guilty expressions and the tension thick enough to swim through.
"Your mom did an interview," I said, because ripping off the bandaid was kinder than letting her guess. "About us. About you."
She moved into the kitchen with that careful grace of someone expecting to shatter. Milo immediately pushed a mug of tea into her hands, chamomile with honey, somehow already the perfect temperature.
"Show me."
Nova pulled up the video on his tablet, and we all watched Margaret Cross, looking polished but hollow-eyed, explain to asympathetic morning show host how she'd tried to protect her daughter from this exact situation.
"I removed myself from Callie's life so she wouldn't follow my path," her mother said on screen, hands folded so tight her knuckles went white. "I thought if she never saw me weak, she'd stay strong. But here she is, surrounded by five Alphas, letting biology dictate her choices just like I did."
Callie's face never changed, but I caught the micro-expressions, the tightening around her eyes, the way she pressed her tongue against her teeth, the slight tremor in her hands that made the tea ripple.
"There's more," Ghost said gently. "The media?—"
"I can see them." She nodded toward the window where shadows of news vans were visible through the privacy fence. "How many?"
"Twenty-three at last count," Nova supplied. "Plus documentary crews, independent journalists, and what appears to be a group of sociology students doing field research."
She laughed, but it sounded like breaking glass. "Field research. Like we're animals in a zoo."
"Callie—" Milo started, but she held up her hand.
"My mother hasn't spoken to me directly in three years. But she'll go on national television to discuss my choices?" Her voice stayed steady, but tears tracked down her cheeks, falling into her tea. "She abandoned me to protect me from this, and now she's making it worse by giving them ammunition."
"She's scared," I said, surprising myself with the insight. "My mom just called too. They're all scared because they don't understand. They see the headlines, the viral videos, the speculation, and they think?—"
"They think you're taking advantage." Callie's voice went flat. "Five Alphas, one Omega. The math alone makes people assume things."
"Fuck what people assume," Blitz said with enough force to make us all look at him. "We know the truth. You know the truth."
"The truth?" Callie set down her mug with deliberate care. "The truth is that I built my entire brand on independence, on not needing exactly this, and within three days of meeting you, I was begging for your bites. The truth is that my mother's worst nightmare came true, I fell apart in public over Alphas. The truth is that we don't even know what we are to each other beyond biological compatibility."
"That's not—" Nova started, but she wasn't done.
"Seventeen news vans, Nov. My mother on morning television. Your families calling with concern or threats or dinner invitations." She laughed again, higher, more fractured. "Crash, your mom wants me to come to dinner? I only just learned your middle name."
"Luis," I supplied immediately, just in case she forgot from the heat. "Tanner Luis Bailey. Milo's is Gabriel. Nova's is James. Ghost is?—"
"Theodore," Ghost supplied, so quiet we almost missed it.
