“Hurts, doesn’t it?” His voice drops to something that sounds like a mockery of concern and care. It makes my skin crawl worse than the aggression. “Heat coming on without a pack to help you through it. That’s cruel. Inhumane, really.”
“I have a pack,” I grit out through clenched teeth.
“Do you?” He reaches out, and I try to dodge, but I’m trapped between him and the wall. His hand closes around my upper arm. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re all alone. And unclaimed. No bond marks on that pretty neck of yours.”
His grip is iron. I try to pull away, but another cramp chooses that moment to tear through me, and my knees buckle. He catches me, pulling me against him, and the wrongness of it—wrong scent, wrong touch, wrong Alpha—makes bile rise in my throat.
But my body, traitorous and heat-addled, reacts.
Not with pleasure. God, not with pleasure. But with that desperate Omega instinct that screamsAlpha, pack, safe, help,regardless of which Alpha it is. For just a fraction of a second, I lean into him, seeking the relief that any Alpha presence promises during heat.
Then my conscious mind catches up, and I shove away, disgusted with myself, with him, with my own biology.
“That’s it,” Felton breathes, and his grip tightens. “I felt that. Your Omega knows what she needs.”
“Fuck you.” I try to wrench free, but he’s so much stronger, and another cramp is building, and I can feel myself losing more and more of my rational mind.
“Not here,” he says to himself as he starts pulling me down the hallway. “Too public. But I know a place.”
“Let go of me!” I dig my heels in, try to twist out of his grip. “Help! Someone?—”
His hand clamps over my mouth, cutting off my scream, pulling me tight against his body. The sheer size and strength of him is too much for me to fight.
His oily breath brushes against the outside of my ear, and I recoil.
“Shh. We wouldn’t want to cause a scene, would we? Think about your career. Your reputation. An Omega making a scene during pre-heat? They’ll say you were asking for it.”
I fight hard, trying to kick and bite him, but the way he has me held against him leaves little room for movement. My limbs feel heavy, uncoordinated. The heat is making me weak when I need to be strong.
He drags me around another corner, down a service corridor I’ve never been in. The main arena noise fades. My phone is long gone, shattered somewhere back in the hallway.
We reach a bathroom, far from any main thoroughfare. He kicks the door open and shoves me inside. I stumble, catching myself on the sink.
“Please,” I hear myself say, and I hate the plea in my voice. “Please don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?” He’s blocking the doorway, his scent filling the small space, making it hard to breathe. “Help an Omega in distress? Fulfill my biological imperative? Claim what’s fucking mine!” His voice rises to a shout before dropping back down. “You should be thanking me, Willa. By the time your heat fullyhits, you’ll be begging for any Alpha. At least this way, when I bond with you, it will feel good.”
Horror crashes over me. “You’re going to?—”
“I’m going to claim you.” His eyes are wild now, pupils blown so wide there’s barely any color left. “Going to bite you, bond you, before McCrea or any of his pack have any idea what’s happening. And by the time they find you? It’ll be too late. You’ll be mine. Legally. Biologically. Permanently.”
“They’ll kill you.” My voice is shaking, but I mean every word. “They will literally kill you.”
“Will they?” He tilts his head, and there’s something unhinged in the movement. “Or will they be forced to accept that an unbonded Omega in heat made her choice? That’s what I’ll tell them. That you came to me. Begged me to help you. And being the gentleman I am, I couldn’t refuse.”
The cold understanding that Mark Felton is a violent man who has lost touch with reality sends a spike of pure terror straight to my heart. This isn’t just about wanting me. This is about winning. About taking what he thinks belongs to him, regardless of the cost.
He’s not going to stop. No amount of pleading or reasoning will change his mind.
He’s going to do this, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him.
He’s backing out of the bathroom now, and I realize with dawning horror what he’s doing.
“Wait—”
The door slams shut. I hear something rattling on the other side of the door—metal scraping against metal. I can’t tell exactly what it is, but when I wrench on the handle, the door won’t budge.
“No!” I throw myself at the door, pounding with both fists. “No, no, no! Let me out!”
