The drive took two hours.
Two hours of torture. Two hours of their scents filling my lungs with every breath. Two hours of their hands on me, stroking my hair, rubbing my neck, trailing up my thighs—while I tried and failed to fight the arousal flooding my system. I cried for the first hour. Silent tears that Leo wiped away with gentle fingers, murmuring soothing nonsense that only made me cry harder.
I raged for the second hour. Cursed them with every filthy word I knew, threatened them with police and lawyers and violence, promised them I would never,eversubmit.
They just smiled. They knew. They'd always known. My resistance was pointless—not because they could physically overpower me, though they could. Because my body was already surrendering. Every minute that passed, every breath of Alpha pheromones I inhaled, pushed me closer to the edge.
By the time the SUV pulled up to the cabin, I was a mess. My jeans were ruined. My shirt was soaked with sweat. My whole body trembled with need, with fury, with a desperate terror that warred with an equally desperate want.
I still hadn't seen Mason or Ethan. That thought lingered as Caleb pulled me from the car, as Leo grabbed my bags from the trunk, as they marched me up the wooden steps to the front door of a cabin that looked like something out of a luxury magazine.
The other two were inside. Waiting. I could smell them already, their scents leaking through the walls, mingling withCaleb's and Leo's until I was surrounded, drowning, suffocating in Alpha pheromones.
"Welcome home, little fox," Caleb murmured against my ear. Then he opened the door.
CHAPTER FOUR
AVA
The moment the cabin door swung open, I ran.
I didn't think. Didn't plan. Didn't do anything but react, pure, primal survival instinct overriding the fog of arousal and the weakness in my legs. Caleb's grip on my arm loosened for just a second as he reached for the door handle, his attention shifting away from me for one critical heartbeat, and I moved.
I wrenched free with a strength I didn't know I had, my sneakers scraping against the wooden porch as I twisted my body sideways. Leo was blocking the stairs, his lean frame lounging against the railing like he had all the time in the world, that infuriating smirk still playing on his lips. I shoved past him so hard he stumbled, his shoulder cracking against the wooden post, a grunt of surprise escaping his throat.
Then I was flying down the steps, my feet barely touching wood before I hit the gravel driveway, loose stones scattering under my desperate sprint. My lungs burned with cold mountain air. My heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to bruise. The late afternoon sun was already dipping behind the peaks,casting long shadows across the snow-dusted ground, and I ran through them like they could hide me.
Behind me, someone shouted. Caleb or Leo, I couldn't tell, didn't care. The sound was swallowed by the thunder of blood in my ears, by the ragged gasps of my own breathing, by the singular thought pounding through my skull like a drumbeat.
Get away. Get away. GET AWAY.
The rental car sat near the black SUV, its silver paint gleaming dully in the fading light. The keys—were the keys still there? I'd seen Leo toss them somewhere when he grabbed my bags, hadn't I? Hadn't I seen?—
There.
Through the windshield, sitting on the dashboard like an offering. The keys, still attached to the rental company's plastic tag, right where Leo must have thrown them when he got my luggage from the trunk.
Careless. Sloppy. Unlike them.
Some distant part of my brain whispered that this was too easy, that they didn't make mistakes like this, that I was missing something important. But the rest of me didn't care. Couldn't care. Not when freedom was twenty feet away. My fingers closed around the cold metal of the door handle. Yanked. The door swung open with a screech of hinges, and I threw myself inside, my hip cracking painfully against the center console as I scrambled across the driver's seat. I slammed the door shut behind me, the sound echoing like a gunshot, and jammed down the lock with shaking fingers.
The keys. Where were the—there. Right there on the dashboard. I grabbed them, my hands trembling so badly I nearly dropped them twice, and shoved them into the ignition.
Please start. Please please please?—
The engine roared to life.
A sob of relief tore from my throat.
"AVA!"Caleb's roar shook the windows, so loud and furious it seemed to vibrate through the metal frame of the car itself. I looked up, my eyes finding him through the windshield, and for one frozen moment I couldn't move.
He was sprinting toward me across the gravel, his massive body eating up the distance with terrifying speed. His face was twisted with rage, not just anger but something deeper, something primal. Alpha fury. The look of a predator watching his prey escape. His ice-blue eyes blazed in the fading light, and even from inside the car, even with glass and metal between us, I could feel the weight of his dominance pressing against me.
My Omega wanted to submit. Wanted to unlock the door, crawl out, bare my throat and beg forgiveness for running. My survival instinct told my Omega to go fuck itself. I slammed my foot on the gas.
The tires screamed against gravel, spinning wildly before finding traction. The car lurched forward so hard my head snapped back against the headrest. I barely had time to yank the wheel to the left, avoiding the black SUV by inches, the side mirror clipping a branch as I tore past.
Then I was flying down the driveway, gravel spraying behind me like shrapnel, the cabin shrinking in my rearview mirror.
