Luca Devereux doesn't react to omega scent. Never has. It's the one wall he's never had to defend — until the night he walks into the Den and finds Remy.

Remy is mid-heat, late-presenting, and has already turned away every alpha they sent him. Not from fear. From certainty — that no one was worth it.

He doesn't turn Luca away.

Neither of them has an explanation for that. Luca doesn't do mating bonds. Remy doesn't do pack alphas. What happens in a heat clinic in district thirty-eight is supposed to stay there.

It doesn't stay there.

In the weeks that follow, Luca keeps finding reasons to come back. Remy keeps letting him. Beneath the slow burn and the pack politics and the careful distance they both insist on, something is forming that neither of them knows how to name — and Luca is terrified that if he reaches for it, he'll destroy the only thing that's ever made him want to.

Remy is terrified he'll let him.

What do two people who have never needed anyone do when they start needing each other?

A dark M/M omegaverse slow burn with:
✦ Pack alpha × defiant omega — first heat
✦ Strangers to lovers with a mating bond neither expected
✦ Morally grey alpha who doesn't know how to want things
✦ Forced proximity, pack politics, slow unraveling
✦ Explicit content — 18+ only
✦ HEA guaranteed