No one except?—
Carol.
The thought slithered through my mind before I could stop it. A cabin in the mountains. Fresh air and isolation and someone who claimed to care about me.
Trap, the voice whispered.
Maybe, I whispered back.But maybe it's better than dying alone in this apartment with nothing but my nest and my regrets for company.
I pulled up the text on my phone. Read through the details Carol had sent. The dates. The address. The instructions for getting there.
My thumb hovered over the reply button.
This is a mistake, the voice said.You know this is a mistake.
"Everything is a mistake," I muttered. "My whole life is a mistake. What's one more?"
I typed out my response before I could change my mind:
I'll be there. See you next week.
Send.
The moment the text left my phone, I felt something shift in my chest. Relief and terror in equal measure. The die was cast. The trap was set.
I was walking into it with my eyes wide open. Some small, broken part of me—the part that still dreamed of honey and pine and cedar and chocolate, the part that still built nests and craved knots and whisperedAlphain the dark, was glad.
CHAPTER TWO
MASON
I watched her sleep.
I'd been watching her sleep for three years now, but it never got old. Never lost its magic. Every night, I settled into my chair in the surveillance room, pulled up the feeds from her apartment, and let myself breathe for the first time all day.
There she was. My Red. My Omega. Curled up in her bed like a kitten, her flame-colored hair spilling across her pillow, her face soft and vulnerable in a way she never allowed herself to be when she was awake.
And her nest.
Fuck, her nest.
I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, drinking in the sight of it. She'd added more pillows this week—I'd counted—and the cashmere throw I'd had Leo leave at that boutique she passed every day on her way to work. The one I knew she couldn't resist because it was the exact shade of cream that reminded her of the blanket she'd had as a child. The one she'd left behind when she ran.
She didn't know I'd sent it. Didn't know I'd been sending her things for years, soft sweaters that "accidentally" ended up in her size at thrift stores she frequented, throw pillows that appeared on clearance racks just when she happened to be shopping, blankets and fabrics and textures that called to her Omega instincts even through the suppressants.
She thought she was choosing them herself. She had no idea I'd been choosing for her all along.
On the screen, she shifted in her sleep, a small whimper escaping her lips. My cock twitched in my pants. Three years of watching and wanting andwaiting, and still that little sound hit me like a punch to the gut. The suppressants were finally failing. I could see it in the flush of her cheeks, the restless way she moved, the sheersizeof the nest she'd built around herself. Even drugged to the gills with chemicals designed to suppress her Omega nature, she couldn't fight her instincts anymore.
She was getting ready. Her body knew what was coming, even if her conscious mind refused to accept it.
She was preparing for us.
The door behind me opened, and I didn't have to turn around to know who it was. I could smell them—pine and woodsmoke, cedar and ozone, chocolate and whiskey. My pack. My brothers. The men who'd waited just as long as I had for this moment.
"She's nesting again," Caleb said, his voice rough as gravel. He moved to stand beside my chair, his massive frame rigid with barely contained tension. Of all of us, Caleb had always struggled the most with the waiting. He was a man of action, of violence, oftaking. Three years of watching and not touching had nearly broken him.
"She's been nesting for weeks," I replied, keeping my voice calm. Steady. The Prime's voice. "But yes. It's getting more intense."
