The rejection sickness is eating me alive from the inside out.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. Oakley, probably. Or Corvus. They've been taking shifts checking on me, making sure I haven't completely lost my mind. Too late for that. Lost it somewhere around day seven when I woke up rutting against her stolen panties like a fucking animal.
I ignore the phone.
My bedroom—my sanctuary in the pack house—looks like a war zone. Shredded bedding. Broken furniture. Clothes I tore off my body during the worst of the rut scattered across the floor. And in the center of it all, arranged on my desk like a shrine: items I stole from her over the months.
A hair tie. A pen she chewed on during rehearsal. The script fromThe Duchess of Malfiwith her notes in the margins. A sweater she left in the theater that still smells like lilac and rain, though the scent is fading. Fading. Everything fading except the howling that won't let me rest.
The door opens. I don't turn around. Know it's Corvus by the calculated way he enters—testing the waters, assessing the danger level.
"You have to eat something," he says.
"Fuck off."
"Dorian."
"I said fuck off." My voice comes out as a snarl, my Alpha instincts gone completely feral. "Unless you brought her back, I don't want to hear it."
Silence. Then: "She enrolled in a summer program."
That gets my attention. I turn, ignoring the way the movement makes my vision swim. "What?"
Corvus holds up his phone, showing me a hacked email. Because of course he hacked her email. We're well past the point of pretending we have boundaries.
"Columbus Summer Theater Intensive. Six weeks. Starts in two weeks." His dark eyes are calculating. "She's running."
"She can't run." The words taste like copper and desperation. "The bonds—"
"The bonds are making her sick too." He scrolls through more emails. "Medical appointment requests. Prescription refills for suppressants even though she's not due for heat. She's suffering, Dorian. Just like you."
Good. The thought is vicious, wrong, but I can't stop it. If I'm dying, she should be dying too. We're bonded. Claimed.Mine.
"Where in Columbus?" My voice sounds like I've been gargling glass.
"Theater district. I have the address." Corvus pockets his phone. "The question is what you plan to do with that information."
What do I plan to do? I plan to fix this. To make her understand that rejection isn't an option, that what happened in that claiming suite was inevitable. That we'remeantto be together, biology and fate and everything that matters.
"I'm bringing her back." The words come out flat, final. "If she won't come willingly, I'll make her."
"Kidnapping." Corvus says it clinically, like he's discussing the weather. "That's what you're proposing."
"I'm proposing finishing what we started." I move toward him, ignoring how my legs shake with the effort. "She rejected the bonds. That's not how this works. You can't just walk away from an Alpha's claim."
"Legally, she can. Morally—"
"Fuck morality." The snarl is back. "She'smine, Corvus. Mine. And I will burn down this entire city to get her back."
He studies me for a long moment. Then: "The lake house would work. Isolated. No neighbors. Plenty of space to... convince her."
My heart stutters. "You're helping?"
"I'm not letting you die." His tone is matter-of-fact. "If that means facilitating a legally questionable retrieval operation, so be it. Better than watching you waste away."
The shrine on my desk catches my eye. All those stolen pieces of her. Not enough. Never enough. I crave the real thing—her skin, her scent, her submission.
Two weeks. I can survive two weeks. I have to.
