Chapter 18
Bane
Max leaves the library like the room is on fire.
Not running. Not quite. But close enough that I can see the panic in every line of his body—the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his hands curl into fists at his sides, the slight stumble when he hits the doorway because he's moving too fast for legs that clearly don't want to cooperate.
He doesn't look back.
Good.
Good.
I sit in the chair and stare at the space where he was. The indentation in the leather cushion. The warmth still clinging to it where his body pressed against mine.
What the fuck just happened?
I breathe in.
That's a mistake.
It's still here. Whatever I smelled when I caught him. When my hand wrapped around his arm and his face was inches from mine and his eyes went wide and terrified and—
It'severywhere.
Clinging to the leather. Soaked into the arm of the chair where his sleeve brushed. Hanging in the air like perfume,except no perfume smells like this. No cologne. No product. Nothing manufactured or bottled or bought.
This is something else.
Sweet. Warm. Layered. Vanilla first—rich, not cheap, like the real thing scraped from a bean. Then honey. Golden and thick. And underneath both of those, something darker. Smoke. Burnt sugar. Like caramel left too long on the stove, charred at the edges but somehow more intoxicating for it.
My mouth waters.
Actually waters. Like I'm hungry. Like I'm starving and someone just put a meal in front of me after days of fasting.
I grip the arms of the chair. Fingers digging into leather hard enough to creak.
What. The. Fuck.
I've smelled things before. Perfume on women at galas. Cologne on men at business dinners. Even the occasional whiff of something stronger—pheromones from alphas posturing at each other in boardrooms, that sharp, aggressive scent that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
This isn't any of that.
This is—
I don't finish the thought. Won't finish it. Because finishing it means acknowledging what I already know. What some part of me has known since the first time I walked past his room and caught something faint and wrong andrightin the air.
Max Carter is not a beta.
The thought lands like a hammer. Final. Undeniable.
Because betas don't smell like this. Betas don't make your hindbrain light up like a fucking switchboard. Betas don't make alphas shake and sweat and lose their minds from a single whiff of lingering scent in an empty room.
Only one thing smells like this.
This.
This scent that's making my hands shake and my blood run hot and my cock—
