And now, my words rushed out like they couldn’t be stopped. “I needed to hear that I’m not broken. That it’s okay for me to need what I need.”
The mug was warm in my hands as I curled my fingers around it. We were still on this strange frontier, exploring and pushing past the limits I’d not known before. It was terrifying and exhilarating. I set the cup down, voice trembling with new resolve. “I needed to hear that what Harrison did wasn’t so different from many omega’s stories. But finding out that it was shifter blood—not something damaged—that made me want pain…it opened my eyes.” I took a deep breath, holding his gaze as if it were a lifeline. “But make no mistake. I hated that it was his touch that my body responded to. I told him that. There was not enough scalding water to wash the shame away afterwards. No matter how hard I tried. Everything was confusion and sadness. I never stopped thinking of how much I loved you and wanted it to be your hands on me. But at least now I understand that beyond his awful bite, I know my response was an honest one. I don’t have to be ashamed because of something that was done to me.”
The world outside was obscenely bright, the sun hanging defiantly high and white. There was an impossible lightness to it, and it almost matched the feeling inside me. I’d left so much of the past behind in that dim office.
“Juliet,” he said, his voice like a magnet pulling me back to him.
“I thought Imustbe broken for finding pleasure in what he did.” The admission felt like stripping myself bare. “Sick and ashamed. But now… Now I know it’s okay. And yesterday, when I realized that you’re the kind of Alpha who finds pleasure in giving pain…controlledpain, and I can trust you not to take it too far…” My words faltered as the intensity in his eyes stopped them short.
He stood, came around the small wooden table, and pulled me to my feet. His touch was as electric as ever, a surge through my skin that left me dizzy and wanting.
“I cannot wait to mark you again. To feel you in my soul.” His words were a low rumble that made my chest tighten in the best possible way. “Since our bond was severed, I have been like a ship without a rudder, drifting endlessly at sea. Lost. With no way to find true north. Only you can bring me back.”
“I want that more than I can say.”
A smile broke across his face, a warm, genuine thing that melted any resistance that might have clung to me. He took my hands again, pulling me closer, our foreheads touching as he breathed the most beautiful words I’d ever heard.
“You’ll have it. Tonight.”
The way he said it made my skin tingle with anticipation. A promise as vivid as the sky outside the large living room window. His words echoed through me, resonating deeper than anything had in weeks. Maybe years.
“I need to make you understand,” I said, needing to tell him everything before we both went forward. “Losing you was the most devastating moment of my life. When I woke up in that bed and reached for you through our bond and felt nothing, I thought my life was over. I knew I’d made the single biggest mistake of my life. At that moment, I knew what hopelessness felt like. It was like losing a limb.”
“Darlin’,” he whispered, pulling back to look into my eyes. His thumb grazed my cheek with the same care he might have given a butterfly’s wing. “I’m gonna make you mine. Completely. Exactly like before, but more.”
I felt a passion that ignited fierce and wild in my chest. Gripping his arms, I felt the heat of his skin and the promise in his pulse. My own pulse raced as I told him I’d take everything he had to give me. His eyes held my gaze. “I’m desperate for your knot, Bronc. I want it. I want everything.”
He groaned low in his throat, a sound that shot straight through me. Then he caught my mouth with his, a fierce claiming that spoke all the words we didn’t need to say.
The kiss seemed to stretch the morning out, bending time until there was nothing but the pulse of our heartbeats and the warmth of his hands threading through my hair. When he finally let me go, I was trembling.
“Tonight,” he said again, a vow that left me breathless.
His arms wrapped around me, lifting me from the floor in an embrace so fierce and tight it was like he was afraid I’d disappear. It filled me with a kind of liquid warmth that soaked into every part of me.
I buried my face in his neck, inhaling the familiar, grounding scent of him. “We’re going to be the Alpha and Luna this pack deserves,” I said, and I heard the conviction in my voice. The certainty.
He set me down, his eyes burning with something raw and open that mirrored my own. “The way fate ordained.”
I nodded, unable to find words, but they didn’t matter. I could feel his confidence and love in my heart, meeting the wild hope in my chest.
“You know how I hate waiting.” I whined.
His low laugh was a rumble beneath my palms. “You’re killin’ me, Juliet. But I want everything to be perfect. I have some preparations to make. There is a room in this house you haven’t seen. I was waiting for the right moment. It seems that moment will arrive this evening.”
My mind raced as I tried to figure out where this hidden room could be. Honestly, I’d not explored the entire large cabin. There hadn’t been time for that. But my anticipation was heightened, and I felt light as air, reckless with anticipation, as if daring the world to hold us back. “I need to work on my curiosity. I never thought of exploring while I was home alone.”
“It’s not even hidden, sweetheart. You just didn’t pay attention to the door. You’ll see soon enough.”
The day was a shimmering promise that sealed itself around the edges of the world until there was no past and no shame.There was only Bronc and me and the bright certainty that tonight I’d become his, wholly and completely.
Chapter 32
Juliet
Evening settled like a second skin, clinging close as I stood naked in the room that promised both pain and redemption. I waited by the door, wearing the satin robe from the night of my first shift and nothing else, as he’d instructed. My breath was loud in the hush, a stark contrast to the slow, insistent beat of my heart. Shadows leaped on the walls, dark specters in amber light, while a mirror flung my image back at me—stripped of pretense, as raw and vulnerable as I’d ever been. A low table held what was left unsaid, scattered tokens of surrender and trust in the form of leather cuffs and silent promises. The tension was thrilling and familiar. It coiled tight beneath my skin and sang a song of need so sharp I couldn’t draw breath without feeling it. I savored it. Leaned into it. And then he was there, and the very air shifted with his presence.
His eyes, bluer and more electric than I’d ever seen, locked onto mine and set every nerve ending on fire. He closed the distance between us with the quiet assurance of a man who knew exactly what we both needed. His heat was a tangible thing, radiating through the room and melting the last of my restraint.
