Cate doesn't take her suppressants anymore.

They came with the pills Indira give her—and unlike the blockers, she's always known they were suppressants. Even when she was with Luke, who was like, the alpha of all alphas—she never went off of them. The mention of heats sent a flood of memories, none of them good.

The worst physical pain she's ever felt in her life. Every three months—curled alone on her bed. Trembling with enough force to shake her mattress, writhing in a pool of her own sweat. Soul-crushing, body-wracking, excruciating—locked away with nothing, nobody to help her. God, she was more than happy to never experience that ever again.

Fuck her biology. Loneliness smarts enough by itself, let alone being translated to physical pain.

And yet, now that Indira's—gone, Cate realises a fatal flaw in her plan—being that she had never quite had the foresight to ask her where she got those suppressants from. They were illegal, of course, but Indira just had them. Just like how she just had those Supe blockers, or how she she just had a hyper-contagious virus that only infected Supes. (See? You totally can't blame her. Cate had bigger things on her mind at the time.)

Cate had completely forgotten about that itty-bitty nuance of her biology. She'd been repressing it for so long that when she doubles over, mid-sentence, temperature spiking to a bajillion degrees in the middle of fighting you, she has no idea what's going on.

Only that it hurts like nothing she's ever felt before.

Her scent is flooding out her pores and deliriously she thinks shit, poor etiquette as if she wasn't just threatening you to join her else she'd have to kill you maybe-possibly-probably-couldn't-go-through-with-it but, oh God, your kitchen tiles are so cool against her cheek and it hurts, it hurts so fucking badly. There's this agonising, searing void inside of her that she thinks is melting her to slop until she becomes a puddle on the floor.

Hindsight's a bitch, isn't it?