Because if she can stabilize a feral without a bond, what does that say about what she’d be capable of with one?
A duo deal. Like he’s so precious to her. Like the feral Alpha is the center of her operational universe and everyone else—including the three men whose freedom depends on her willingness to bond with them—are peripheral. Supplementary.Optional.
It irks me.
More than it should.
The Prime in me doesn’t accept secondary status.
If she’s going to be my Omega—our Omega—then I should be the center of her world.
Not second.
Not fucking second to a man whose qualification for the position is that he loves her hard enough to keep his own sanity intact.
I grit my teeth. Align the sights on the next target. The panel slides into position, and I prepare to fire?—
A gunshot rings off.
Not mine.
The report is different—sharper, tighter, produced by a weapon with a different barrel length and a different caliber than the handgun currently lowering in my grip. The round hitsthe target I was aiming at dead center—a perfect bullseye that punches through the holographic overlay and embeds in the physical panel behind it with a precision so clean it would be beautiful if it weren’t also a demonstration of superiority.
I frown.
My nostrils flare involuntarily—the Prime’s automatic threat assessment engaging the olfactory system before the conscious mind has finished processing the auditory data. I catch the twins’ scents first—bergamot and sandalwood, bergamot and black pepper—approaching from further to my right, their pheromone signatures registering with the comfortable familiarity of pack members whose presence my neurology catalogues assafewithout requiring conscious evaluation.
But there’s a third scent.
Also familiar. Newer—the olfactory equivalent of a word I’ve heard once and am struggling to recall, present in my chemical memory but not yet fully catalogued. Wild pine. Smoke. A trace of iron that my brain associates with bladed weapons and fresh kills. The scent carries the particular undertone of Alpha pheromones operating at a frequency that my Prime designation registers asnon-standard—off-spectrum, slightly, in the way that feral-prone Alphas present when their neurological baseline has been altered by prolonged instability.
Speak of the devil.
I turn my head.
The twins are approaching from further to the side—Lucien first, Cassian half a step behind, both in their long coats with their hands positioned in the particular non-resting placement that indicates weapons are accessible but not drawn. They’re scanning the range with the professional attention of men who have entered a space containing gunfire and are evaluating whether the gunfire constitutes threat or catharsis before committing to a behavioral response.
But the culprit of the shot is not the twins.
It’s the hawk fucker.
He stands at the adjacent lane with the casual posture of someone who materialized from empty air—which, given the silent efficiency of his entry, might be approximately what happened. He’s holding a handgun that I didn’t hear him draw and don’t recognize from any standard manufacturer’s catalog—a golden piece with unique writing on it that appears to be in metallic red, the characters running along the slide in a script I can’t identify from this distance but that carries the aesthetic of something custom, personal, a weapon that was made for this specific hand and no other.
He lowers the gun with the measured deliberation of someone who is very aware of the impression he just made and is in no hurry to diminish it.
“If you don’t clear your mind, you’re gonna keep missing.” His voice is easy, conversational, carrying the particular brand of unsolicited advice that would be condescending from anyone else and from him reads as tactical observation delivered without social filter. “And who likes wasting targets?”
I huff.
The sound is expelled through my nostrils with enough force to communicate contempt, dismissal, and the particular variety of Alpha indignation that arises when a stranger offers marksmanship critique to a man who was hitting center mass before his brother detonated his psychological foundation.
“I don’t give a fuck how many targets I have to pay for.”
Hawk whistles. Low, appreciative, the sound of a man acknowledging wealth he doesn’t share with an amusement that doesn’t contain envy.
“Must be nice to be privileged as such.” He tilts his head, those amber-gold eyes scanning the range with an attention that I realize, belatedly, is not directed at the targets. “But when youhave too many targets in the way, it makes it hard to find the enemy hiding in plain sight.”
He raises his gun.
