I didn't know what to do with that. Didn't have a framework for processing kindness that came without strings, patience that wasn't a prelude to violence. My hands shook as I pressed them against the cold stone, and I couldn't tell if it was from the heat or the cold or the terrifying possibility that Min-ho Irvin might actually be genuine.
A man who would wait.
A man who wouldn't chase.
A man who might, against all odds, actually see me as something other than property to be claimed.
I curled into the corner of my rocky shelter and wrapped my arms around myself. The heat burned through my veins. Min-ho's scent drifted through the gaps in the stone, sharp and green and warm all at once.
I wasn't ready to trust him. Wasn't ready to trust anyone.
But I also wasn't ready to run.
So I stayed. And I let him stay. And I waited to see what would happen when an alpha kept a promise I'd never expected anyone to make.
***
Chapter 6
Min-ho
The signal came just after noon.
Three short whistles, then one long. The pattern Garrett and I had agreed on before the hunt began, a sound that could pass for a bird call to anyone who didn't know better. But I knew better. And the message was clear.
Mercer was coming.
I'd held my position through the morning, watching Dalvin's hiding spot from behind the fallen pine, cataloguing every small sound that emerged from the rocks. He'd stayed inside after our brief exchange at dawn. Hadn't run. Hadn't emerged. Just sat in there, processing, deciding, doing whatever calculus his traumatized mind needed to do.
I'd given him space. I would give him all the space in the world if that's what it took.
But Mercer wasn't going to give him anything except a one-way trip back to Vernon Ashby.
I rose from my position, muscles protesting after hours of stillness, and oriented toward the source of Garrett's signal. Northwest, maybe half a mile out. Mercer had been tracking through the night, then. Slower than I'd expected, but thorough. The man was a professional.
Professionals made fewer mistakes. They were also more predictable.
I moved through the forest with purpose now, no longer tracking but intercepting. The terrain here was thick with undergrowth, rhododendron and mountain laurel forming dense walls that channeled movement along natural corridors. Mercer would be using those corridors. Following the path of least resistance toward the scent trail he'd picked up.
I found that path and positioned myself across it.
The wait wasn't long. Five minutes, maybe seven, and then I heard him coming. Steady footfalls, measured breathing, the quiet rustle of tactical gear moving through brush. He emerged from behind a stand of hemlocks and stopped dead when he saw me.
Drake Mercer looked exactly like what he was. Military bearing, ice-blond hair cropped close, cold blue eyes that assessed and calculated without a flicker of emotion. He wore black tactical pants and a fitted compression shirt that showed off a body built for violence. A scar ran along his jawline, thin and pale, the kind of mark that came from a blade rather than an accident. No pack. No supplies beyond a canteen at his hip and a knife sheathed at his thigh.
He wasn't here to camp. He was here to collect.
"You're in my way," he said. His voice was flat, accentless, scrubbed clean of any regional identity. The voice of a man who had learned to be no one from nowhere. A voice designed to deliver threats and ultimatums without emotional contamination.
"I know."
"The omega you're guarding belongs to Senator Ashby. I'm here to return him."
"He doesn't belong to Ashby anymore. He entered The Chase. That terminates any prior claim."
"Legally, yes. Practically?" Mercer's lips curved into a thin line that passed for a smile on a man incapable of genuineexpression. "The senator has resources you can't imagine. Money. Connections. The kind of influence that makes legal problems disappear and inconvenient people vanish. This is going to end one way. The only question is how much pain happens first."
I held my ground. "The omega is mine."
