Something shifted.
A new scent rode the wind.
Alpha.
For a second, my body reacted instinctively — a rush of heat, of anticipation, a surge of recognition that came before thought.They’re here.
Except… no.
It wasn’t Roan.
It wasn’t Rhett.
It wasn’t Jay.
This scent was sharper. Colder. Wrong.
Beckett Rylan.
The realization sliced through me like a blade. My stomach dropped even as my pulse spiked. The rain came harder, cold needles against my skin, washing over me as if the storm itself wanted to strip away the heat that had just begun to bloom.
He was close. Too close.
The sound of him — the way he moved — I remembered it from the ice. Controlled chaos. A predator that liked to play before the kill.
Fear threaded through the heat, twisting it, warping it until it became something jagged and confusing. My body still wanted — that primal, achingneedfor an Alpha to find me, tofillme — but my mind rebelled. Every instinct screamednot him.
Not Rylan.
Not the one who had haunted the edges of my safety since the trade.
I stumbled backward, breath shaking, the wind catching my scent and flinging it into the storm. A curse broke from my lips. I should’ve kept the blockers. Should’ve waited forthembefore I?—
Branches cracked somewhere behind me.
That smooth, mocking voice cut through the rain. “You really shouldn’t run alone, Wren.”
My heart lurched.
He was here.
And my body — traitorous, burning — didn’t care that my brain was screamingrun.It responded to the Alpha in him, to the biological gravity that made every Omega weak in the knees when cornered.
I forced my feet to move, mud slipping beneath my boots, pulse roaring in my ears. “Not you,” I whispered, half to the storm, half to myself. “Not you.”
Because yes, I had invited the chase.
But not from the monster who thought he could claim me out of spite.
The fear built fast — sharp, dizzying — but under it was still that molten, desperate ache for therightAlphas. The ones who had earned me. The ones I’d chosen.
So I did the only thing I could.
I ran faster.
And I prayed that Roan, Rhett, and Jay were already on my trail — because if Rylan reached me first, my heat wouldn’t save me.
It would destroy me.
