"I know you will. That's why I made you Prime."
The line went dead. I stood there for a moment, phone in hand, thinking about the girl I'd loved since I was sixteen years old. The Omega I'd waited seven years to claim. The woman who was about to walk into a trap she didn't even know existed.
She'd hate us at first. I knew she would. She'd scream and cry and fight like the fierce little fox she was. She'd call us monsters. Call us kidnappers. Call us every vile name she could think of. We'd let her. We'd hold her through the screaming and wipe away her tears and wait for her to understand.
Because underneath all that fury, she wanted this. Wantedus. I'd seen it in her diary. Seen it in the way she built nests even while drugged to the gills with suppressants. Seen it in the way she called our names in her sleep, reaching for Alphas who weren't there.
She was ours.
She'd always been ours.
Soon, she would finally know it. I turned back to the surveillance feeds, pulling up the tracker on her phone. A little blue dot moved across the map, heading toward the hospital where she worked.
"Soon, Red," I murmured to the empty room, to the woman who couldn't hear me, to the Omega I'd loved since the moment I first saw her. "So fucking soon."
Seven days.
Seven days until the trap closed.
Seven days until she was finally, irrevocably,mine.
Ours.
I could hardly wait.
CHAPTER THREE
AVA
I packed too many blankets.
I knew I was packing too many blankets. I knew it was ridiculous, knew it was a sign of everything I was trying so desperately to deny, but I couldn't stop myself. My hands moved on autopilot, folding the fuzzy throw from Target, the weighted blanket, the cashmere throw that I'd somehow become incapable of sleeping without.
You're going on a ski trip, the rational part of my brain argued.The cabin will have blankets. You don't need to bring your own.
My hands kept packing anyway. The cashmere throw went into the suitcase first, nestled at the bottom like a secret. I paused, running my fingers over the impossibly soft fabric, the cream color that reminded me of something I couldn't quite name. I'd bought it weeks ago at that little boutique near the hospital, the one I passed every day on my way to work. It had been in the window display, and something about it had stopped me dead in my tracks. I'd walked in like a woman possessed,handed over my credit card without even looking at the price tag, and hadn't been able to sleep without it since.
I lifted the throw to my face, pressing my nose into the fabric, and inhaled.
Honey. Faint but unmistakable. Honey and sunshine and something green, like fresh-cut grass.
My stomach lurched. That was impossible. I lived alone. I hadn't been near an Alpha in three years, not close enough for their scent to transfer onto my things. And I definitely hadn't been near?—
Mason.
The name surfaced from the depths of my memory before I could stop it, bringing with it a flood of images I'd spent three years trying to forget. Golden hair and warm eyes. A smile that made me feel safe even when it shouldn't. Hands that were gentle when they touched me, that made me want things I wasn't supposed to want.
"There's our girl,"whispered the memory of his voice."Missed you, Red."I threw the cashmere throw across the room like it had burned me.
"Get a grip," I muttered, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes. "It's just a blanket. It doesn't smell like anything. You're losing your mind."
I retrieved it anyway. Packed it anyway. Couldn't bring myself to leave it behind. What the hell was wrong with me? Then the fuzzy blanket went in next, softer than anything I'd ever owned, the color of a winter sky just before snow. Then two of my favorite pillows, the ones I'd arranged in a specific pattern around my head every night.
The week leading up to the trip passed in a blur of fever dreams and cold sweats.
My body was getting worse. Every morning I woke up drenched in slick, my skin burning, my mind foggy with need.The suppressants weren't doing anything anymore, I took two, then three, then four at a time, and still the heat kept building, kept pressing against the walls I'd built around my Omega nature like water against a dam.
I called in sick to work twice. I couldn't risk it, not when my scent was leaking through my blockers, not when every Alpha I passed on the street made my knees weak and my core clench with shameful, desperate want. I told myself I should cancel the trip. Every rational brain cell I had screamed that this was a bad idea, that something was wrong, that I should stay home and ride out whatever was happening to my body in the safety of my own apartment.
