Chapter 3: The Heat of the Moment
The fluorescent light in the dorm room buzzed like a trapped insect. Jared lay on the bottom bunk, staring at the stained mattress above him. His roommate, a bear shifter named Ben, snorted in his sleep, a rhythmic, grating sound. The photo of his parents on the shelf was just a dark rectangle in the shadows. He couldn’t see their smiles, but he felt their absence like a fresh bruise.
Every time he closed his eyes, he felt it. The bond.
It wasn’t a thread, but a live current, humming just under his skin. One strand felt like ordered, protective stone. Kyle. The other was untamed lightning. Rylan. He shuddered, pulling the thin academy blanket up to his chin. The scent of fox—both of them—still clung to him, no matter how hard he’d scrubbed in the shower. It was in his nose, in his pores. A claiming he hadn’t consented to.
A soft scrape at the window.
Jared went still, his ears swiveling forward. The dorm was on the ground floor. The scrape came again, followed by the quiet, metallic sigh of the old window latch giving way.
The pane slid up. Night air, cool and carrying the smell of damp grass, washed into the stuffy room. A large, silhouetted figure hoisted itself inside with a fluid, predatory grace, landing on the linoleum with barely a sound.
Rylan.
He stood there, framed by the window, backlit by the distant security lamp. He was breathing a little harder, his wild auburn hair messy from the climb. He wore only low-slung sweatpants, his torso bare and marked by shadows.
Jared sat up, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. “Are you insane?” he whispered, voice jagged. “Get out.”
Rylan didn’t move. His golden eyes gleamed in the dark, fixed on Jared. The mocking bravado was gone. In its place was something stark, needy, and utterly frightening. “Couldn’t,” he said, the word simple and rough.
“Kyle will—”
“Kyle’s patrolling the east quad. Duty first.” Rylan took a step forward. The room shrank. “Always duty first for him. Not for me.”
Jared’s back hit the cold wall. He had nowhere to go. The bond was screaming in his chest, a pull that made his muscles tense with the effort to stay still. “This doesn’t fix anything.”
“I know.” Another step. Rylan was close enough now that Jared could see the rapid pulse at the base of his throat, could smell the fresh night air and wild, unrestrained alpha on him. “You smell like fear. And… something else.”
“Disgust,” Jared spat, trying to muster the lie.
Rylan’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile. “Liar.” He lifted a hand, slowly, as if approaching a skittish animal. His fingers brushed the very tip of Jared’s drooping ear.
A jolt of pure, undiluted sensation shot down Jared’s spine. He gasped, a tiny, betraying sound. His ear twitched violently under the touch.
“See?” Rylan murmured. His voice was lower now, a gravelly thing that vibrated in Jared’s stomach. “Your body knows. It’s screaming for it. Mine hasn’t shut up since the shower.” He leaned in, his nose grazing the shell of Jared’s ear. “I can’t eat. Can’t think. All I see is you. Covered in mud. Covered in water. It’s pissing me off.”
Jared tried to summon anger, but it drowned in a rising tide of warmth. “So you broke into my room to complain?”
“I broke in,” Rylan said, his lips now hovering a breath from Jared’s, “because I’m going crazy.” The confession hung in the air, raw and unadorned. “And I think you are, too.”
The last of Jared’s resistance crumbled. He let out a shaky breath, a white flag. Rylan’s mouth crashed onto his.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a claim, hungry and desperate, all teeth and searching tongue. It was fire where Jared had been cold for years. A broken sound escaped him, and he kissed back, his hands coming up to clutch at Rylan’s shoulders. The solid, real heat of him was an anchor in the dizzying storm.
Rylan growled into his mouth, the vibration thrilling through Jared. He pushed forward, lowering Jared onto the thin mattress, his large body covering him, blocking out the buzzing light, the world. His hands were everywhere—tangling in Jared’s hair, sliding down his ribs, mapping his waist through the thin cotton of his t-shirt.
“Tell me to stop,” Rylan breathed against his throat, his teeth scraping over Jared’s pounding pulse.
Jared couldn’t. He arched into the touch, his hips shifting, a silent plea. His thoughts were smoke. His parents’ case, the academy, his careful plans—all blown apart by the need this alpha ignited in him.
Rylan’s hand slid under his shirt, calloused palms scraping over the sensitive skin of his stomach. Jared moaned. The sound seemed to undo Rylan completely. He tore his mouth from Jared’s, burying his face against his neck, inhaling deeply as his fingers popped the button on Jared’s sleep pants.
“Need to feel you,” Rylan muttered, almost to himself. His fingers dipped lower, past the waistband, and Jared cried out, back bowing off the bed as Rylan’s hand closed around him. The touch was shockingly intimate, possessive, perfect.
“Rylan…” It was half-protest, half-prayer.
“Shh. I’ve got you.” Rylan’s voice was strained with control. He began to move his hand, a slow, torturous rhythm that made Jared see stars. Then his fingers moved further back, probing, pressing.
Javier stiffened for a second, a flash of instinctual vulnerability. Rylan stilled. “Easy,” he whispered, his other hand coming up to cradle Jared’s jaw. “Just breathing. Just us.”
The tenderness, so foreign from Rylan, shattered Jared completely. He relaxed, nodding shakily. Rylan’s finger, slick now with something from the bedside table—lotion, probably—pressed inside. It was an invasion and a revelation, a filling stretch that completed a circuit Jared hadn’t known was broken. He gasped, clutching at Rylan’s back, his blunt nails digging in.
Rylan was watching his face, his golden eyes black with want. “Look at you,” he murmured, his voice full of awed hunger. “Taking me so well. My little rabbit.”
A firm, decisive knock rattled the door.
They froze.
Before either could move, the knob turned. The door opened, and Kyle stepped inside, closing it softly behind him.
He stood there, a tall, tense silhouette in his standard-issue patrol gear. His amber eyes took in the scene in one devastating sweep: Rylan half on top of Jared, the blanket tangled at their waists, the charged, sweaty air thick with the scent of their arousal.
For a long moment, no one spoke. The only sounds were Ben’s snores and Jared’s ragged breathing.
Kyle’s expression was unreadable granite. Then he let out a long, slow breath, as if releasing a weight. “Get off him, Rylan.” The command was quiet. Final.
Rylan snarled, low in his throat, but he withdrew his hand, pulling Jared’s pants back up with a rough, protective gesture before rolling to sit on the edge of the bed. He didn’t leave Jared’s side. “You followed me.”
“I felt you.” Kyle’s gaze shifted to Jared. “Are you alright?”
Jared could only nod, pulling his shirt down, humiliation and desire warring hotly in his veins. He was painfully, obviously hard. He could see Kyle’s eyes track the movement, could sense the alpha’s own control fracturing.
Kyle leaned back against the closed door, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is a disaster.”
“You think?” Rylan shot back, but there was no heat in it. Just exhaustion.
“We can’t… This can’t happen here. He’s a cadet. We’re instructors. This is our jobs.” Kyle was reasoning with himself as much as with them.
“The bond doesn’t give a shit about our jobs, Kyle,” Rylan said, his shoulder brushing against Jared’s. A possessive point of contact. “It’s here. It’s not going away. I tried to walk away after the shower. Made it about ten feet before I felt like I was gonna puke.”
Jared finally found his voice, small but clear. “I feel it too.” He looked from one brother to the other. The structured detective, a model of restraint. The wild brawler, a force of chaos. Both tied to him. “What do we do?”
Kyle looked at him, really looked at him, and the raw, unveiled want in his eyes was more terrifying than Rylan’s aggression. It was a deep, consuming fire held behind thick glass. “I don’t know,” he admitted, the confession seeming to cost him. “But not this. Not sneaking around in dorms.” He pushed off the door. “Rylan, come on. You’re leaving.”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“You are. Because if you stay, I stay.” Kyle’s jaw tightened. “And none of us are ready for what happens then.”
The truth of it hung in the air, heavier than the desire. Three points of a triangle, drawn together by a force that threatened to incinerate every rule, every boundary, every careful plan Jared had ever made.
Rylan looked down at Jared, his expression uncharacteristically soft. He raised a hand and, with a gentleness that made Jared’s throat tight, brushed a thumb over his swollen lower lip. “This isn’t over, bunny.”
He stood, following Kyle to the door. Kyle paused, his hand on the knob. He didn’t turn around, but his shoulders were rigid. “Lock the window, Jared,” he said, his voice thick. Then they were gone, swallowing themselves back into the night.
Jared lay there in the sudden, hollow silence, the ghosts of their touches still burning on his skin. The bond thrummed, a dull, persistent ache of absence. He looked over at the dark photo of his parents.
“What have I gotten into?” he whispered to their memory.
But for the first time since they died, his hunt for answers wasn’t the only thing keeping him awake.