Mercer's eyes narrowed. He read my posture, my stance, the set of my shoulders. Reading me the way I'd read metal in the forge, looking for weaknesses, stress points, places where pressure would cause fracture. I let him look. Let him see exactly what he was dealing with.
"You haven't claimed him," he said. "I can smell it on you. All that want and no satisfaction. He's been running from you too, hasn't he?"
"That's between me and him."
"It's between you and him and me and the senator and about fifty lawyers who are going to make your life very unpleasant if you interfere with this retrieval." He shifted his weight, settling into a stance that suggested readiness without commitment. "Walk away. Find a different omega. This one's already spoken for."
"No."
The word hung in the air between us. Final. Absolute.
Mercer studied me for a long moment. I watched him calculate the odds, weigh the variables, run the cost-benefit analysis that men in his profession lived by. A direct confrontation here would be messy. Uncertain. I had size on him, and he had no way to assess my training. Better to wait. Better to find the omega alone, vulnerable, easier to handle.
I could see the decision form behind his eyes.
"Prove it, then," he said. "Claim him before I do. Because I promise you, the next time I find him without you standing in the way, I won't be as patient."
"If you touch him, I'll kill you."
The words came out flat. Calm. Not a threat but a statement of fact, delivered with the same certainty I'd use to describe the color of the sky.
Mercer's jaw tightened. For a moment, he tensed to strike. The satisfaction of violence warred visibly with tactical disadvantage.
Then he stepped back.
"We'll see each other again," he said. "Soon. And when we do, you'd better have already made your claim. Because the senator doesn't pay me to fail, and I don't intend to start now."
He turned and melted back into the forest, his footsteps fading into the ambient sounds of wind and birdsong. I stood motionless until I could no longer hear him, until his scent had dispersed on the breeze, until I was certain he was truly gone.
Then I turned and ran back toward Dalvin.
The calculus had changed. I couldn't just wait anymore. Couldn't give Dalvin the luxury of unlimited time to process and decide. Mercer would circle back, would find another approach, would catch Dalvin at a moment when I wasn't there to intercept.
I needed to warn him. Needed to make him understand what was hunting him.
And maybe, if I had any chance at all, I needed to make him understand that I was different from every other alpha who had failed him.
Dalvin was standing outside the rocks when I arrived.
He must have heard me coming. Must have recognized my scent on the wind, because he'd emerged from his hiding spot and now stood at the edge of the boulder field, white linen filthy and torn, bare feet planted on the cold stone. Every line of him vibrated with tension, coiled tight, ready to run.
His scent hit me from twenty feet away. Bergamot and heat, sharper now, more urgent. The approaching wave of his cycle was accelerating, and I could smell the fear underneath it, acrid and bright.
"We need to talk," I said. "There's a proxy alpha in the preserve. Someone Vernon sent. He's going to try to take you back."
Dalvin's face went pale. His hands curled into fists at his sides. "I know. I saw him at the ceremony."
"He found your trail. I intercepted him about half a mile from here, but he'll be back. He's not going to stop."
"So what?" Dalvin's voice cracked on the words. "You think that changes anything? You think I should just let you claim me instead because you're the lesser evil?"
"I think you should know what you're dealing with."
"I know exactly what I'm dealing with." He took a step back, putting more distance between us, his eyes blazing with a fury I hadn't expected. "I've been dealing with alphas my entire life. Being traded between them, used by them, owned by them. You're not special, Min-ho. You're just another one in a long line of people who think they have a right to me."
The words hit harder than any punch Mercer could have thrown. I absorbed them the way I'd learned to absorb pain at the forge. Let them land. Let them burn. Didn't flinch.
"I'm not trying to own you," I said.
