Twelve years had changed him. He was broader now, thick with muscle, built with the kind of strength that came from physical labor rather than gym memberships. His black hair was longer than I remembered, pushed back from a face that had lost its boyish softness and gained hard angles and harder eyes. He wore the same black as the other alphas, but on him it looked different. Dangerous. Deliberate.
Those hazel eyes hadn't changed. Autumn leaves in amber, warm and steady, and they were locked on me with an intensity that stripped away every wall I'd built.
I knew that look. Had seen it once before, in a moonlit hallway, in the moment before everything fell apart.
No.
No, no, no.
Min-ho couldn't be here. Min-ho was the past, the what-if, the locked door I'd refused to open for twelve years. If he was here, if he claimed me, the scandal would hand Vernon everything he needed. Proof that I was deviant, damaged, unfit. The step-brother angle would dominate every headline. Ourparents would be dragged into the spotlight. Vernon's lawyers would use it to argue that I'd always been compromised, that my escape was evidence of mental instability rather than abuse.
I couldn't let Min-ho claim me. It would destroy us both.
But my body didn't care about logic. Didn't care about survival or scandal or the careful calculations that had kept me alive for a year.
My body remembered.
Heat prickled under my skin, sudden and fierce. My scent spiked without my permission, bergamot blooming into honeyed arousal, sharp with need. Slick gathered between my thighs as every omega instinct I possessed screamed mine, his, yes.
Across the hall, Min-ho's nostrils flared. His pupils dilated. His hands curled into fists at his sides, and I watched his control fracture for just a moment before he locked it back down.
The cameras caught everything.
A hundred thousand viewers had just watched us recognize each other. Had watched my body betray me, had watched Min-ho react, had seen the connection spark between us in real time.
I needed to run. Needed to get away from him before I did something catastrophically stupid.
Movement caught the edge of my vision. Another alpha, standing apart from the crowd, watching me with cold assessment. Tall and broad, military bearing, ice-blond hair cropped close to his skull. He wasn't scenting me with desire. He was cataloguing me with professional detachment, the way a hunter surveys a target before pulling the trigger.
His scent reached me across the distance. Iron and gun oil and absolute nothing beneath it. No attraction, no interest, just cold purpose.
Vernon's proxy. Had to be.
I was trapped between them. Min-ho on one side, his presence pulling at me with the gravity of a collapsed star. The proxy on the other, watching and waiting, ready to drag me back to a life I'd barely survived.
The horn sounded.
The blast echoed off the vaulted ceiling, drowning out the murmurs and gasps of the crowd. The great hall erupted into motion. Omegas fled toward the eastern doors, white linen streaming behind them, bare feet slapping against stone. The alphas held their positions, watching us run, counting down the six hours until they could follow.
I ran with them.
Not east, toward the ridge I'd mapped out in my head during sleepless nights. Not strategic, not planned. Just away. Away from Min-ho and his hazel eyes and the way my body ached to surrender. Away from the proxy with his cold calculation. Away from the cameras that had broadcast my weakness to a hundred thousand strangers.
The forest swallowed me whole. Pine branches whipped at my arms. Roots snagged at my feet. The white linen caught on thorns and ripped, leaving pieces of myself scattered in my wake.
I ran until my lungs burned. Until my legs screamed for mercy. Until the great hall was far behind me and the only sound was my own ragged breathing and the wind through the trees.
I didn't know where I was going. Didn't have a plan anymore. Everything I'd calculated, every strategic position I'd identified, had evaporated the moment I'd looked into Min-ho's eyes.
***
Chapter 4
Min-ho
Six hours of waiting had done nothing to settle the fire in my blood.
The alpha staging area occupied the west wing of the facility, all leather armchairs and mahogany tables and a bar stocked with whiskey that cost more per glass than most people earned in a day. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the preserve, miles of forest rolling toward the mountains, green and gold under the afternoon sun. Somewhere in that wilderness, Dalvin was running.
