<h4>Chapter 783: Your wolf is acting out</h4>


    Denzel handed the medicine envelope to Juniper, which he had just picked up from a nearby pharmacy in the central district.


    "Did you have breakfast this morning?" he asked as he uncapped a bottle of water.


    "Yes," she managed. She peered inside the envelope as he held the water bottle out to her.


    "Thank you." Juniper was quick to swallow the suppressants to dull the fire wing at her insides.


    Denzel took the bottle back, his fingers briefly brushing hers, a contact that felt like an electric shock in her current state, before he tucked it into the console behind the gear shift.


    "Where’s your home? I’ll drop you there," Denzel offered, his hands returning to the steering wheel.


    "It’s in the East District of San Ravendale. An hour’s drive from here," Juniper replied.


    As she spoke, her eyes shed a sudden, predatory red. The Alpha wolf within her, feeling cornered by the heat and the proximity of another male, surged to the surface. It was a silent challenge, an instinctive attempt to exert dominance over the Gamma beside her.


    Denzel felt the weight of her Alpha aura filling the cramped space of the car, which would make any other wolf bow.


    Denzel remained remarkably clear-headed. As a Gamma, he was biologically wired to process high-stress pheromones without sumbing to the primal urge to submit or attack.


    He didn’t flinch, even as the Alpha pressure in the car reached a suffocating level.


    "The specific address, June. The East District is too big to drive through blindly," Denzel said.


    Juniper didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she grabbed the water bottle from the console, draining the remaining liquid in a few gulps to cool the fire in her throat.


    Denzel reached for the climate control, dialing the air conditioner to its lowest setting until a chill began to circte through the cabin.


    "Denzel," Juniper said suddenly. Her hand shot out, gripping his wrist with a strength that would have bruised a weaker man.


    He felt the scorching heat of her palm through his skin. Her eyes were no longer hazel; they were a burning, molten red that flickered with the restless energy of her wolf, Kelly.


    "June, your wolf is acting out. Keep it under control," Denzel told her.


    He could feel it now as she began to release her pheromones in a concentrated wave. The scent had a sweet-musk signature of an Alpha in heat that demanded attention and a mate.


    <i>’The suppressants should have worked by now,’ </i>Denzel thought as he pulled his hand back from her burning grip.


    The medicine was high-grade, but Juniper’s Alpha wolf was fighting the chemistry with a ferocity he hadn’t anticipated.


    "June, look out the window. Focus on the breathing," he asserted. "I’m taking you to my ce instead. It’s closer."


    He checked the GPS. The East District was a gauntlet of traffic. At the rate her pheromones were spiking, he needed to get her behind a reinforced door in minutes, not an hour.


    Juniper recoiled slightly, sinking back into the leather seat as his words registered. The sudden rejection of her touch by a lower-ranked wolf, even one as high as a Gamma, sent a flicker of shame through her primal haze.


    <i>’Kelly, what were we just trying to do?’</i> she demanded internally. She bit her bottom lip hard to make sure she would stay in control.


    Kelly didn’t answer with words, just a low whine that vibrated in Juniper’s chest.


    ~~~~


    Finally, they reached Denzel’s house, a secluded residence that offered the privacy Juniper desperately needed. He led her inside and guided her toward a bedroom upstairs.


    "You can stay here until the suppressants fully kick in and you feel more like yourself," he said, standing by the door to maintain a respectful distance.


    "What about you?" Juniper asked as she unburdened herself of the round sling bag, dropping it onto a nearby chair.


    "I’ve some work to tend to outside. Hardly anyone knows about this ce, so you don’t need to be worried about being disturbed," Denzel exined.


    He rubbed the top of his eyebrow with his thumb, a rare sign of the mental effort it was taking to remain soposed in the face of her Alpha scent.


    "If you feel hungry, the kitchen is yours. Cook whatever you need," Denzel added, his voice professional even as the heavy scent of her Alpha heat lingered in the doorway.


    Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heels and disappeared down the hallway.


    Juniper sank onto the edge of therge bed, her hands sped so tightly her knuckles turned white.


    "Kelly, this isn’t right. I feel like I need to crawl into a hole and hide," she whispered, the shame of her lostposure hitting her harder than the fever. "I released pheromones on a Gamma, Kelly! In a car! This is insane. We have to calm down and get out of here the second we can breathe normally."


    ’I can’t help it, June,’ Kelly’s voice was a low vibration in her mind.


    ’All those years, we had a mate to bnce us. Now there is no anchor. My instincts are screaming because there’s nothing to catch the fall.’


    Juniper stayed frozen like that for several minutes, forcing herself to take slow breaths until the room stopped spinning.


    She eventually retreated into the washroom, sshing her face with ice-cold water until the aggressive redness in her cheeks faded to a dull pink.


    When she stepped back out, she was slowly patting her skin dry with a towel. The house was too quiet, the only sound being the hum of the air conditioning.


    "I nned to explore something new in San Ravendale but ended up getting my own discovery. I need to keep taking suppressants for my heat to stay low or I’ll lose myself in front of any wolf. Denzel is a kind soul but not everyone could be like him."


    She stopped by the window and opened it before looking outside to move her mind away from those thoughts.