Ragon is drawing up paperwork to bind me to him permanently.
Marie would rather I stay unmarked.
A stranger looked at my bare neck and saw a vacancy.
Part of me is furious with him for intruding.
Part of me is furious with myself for caring what he said.
And buried under hurt and anger and confusion, a small, stubborn thought curls up like a seed:
If someone like that can look at me and see something worth fighting for—
why don’t my alphas fight harder for me?
Chapter 17
The rest of the zoo blurs.
Not enough to forget Chase, not enough to stop my palm from feeling phantom cardboard where the card used to be, but enough that I start moving on habit—one foot in front of the other, one exhibit after another.
Ragon keeps a hand on me.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Since he dragged me back from the penguins and tore the card up like it insulted his ancestors, his fingers have settled at the nape of my neck and stayed. Not tight, not throttling—just there. Warm and heavy and unyielding.
Guiding. Claiming. Controlling.
If I step a little too far away, pressure increases. A silentnope. If someone gets too close, his grip tightens. My omega, the traitor, stops spiraling and purrs at the contact.
We pass the lions.
The big male is exactly the stereotype—huge, golden, sprawled on a rock like he owns the sun. His females pace the enclosure in long, lazy arcs.
"Look at that mane," Drake says. "I could do that. Give me six months and some hair vitamins."
"You can barely manage a headband," Eli says. "Please don't emulate the lions."
I lean on the railing, letting my eyes track the lionesses. The way they move around him without ever quite touching, orbiting a gravity they don't question.
Ragon steps closer behind me.
His thumb strokes absent circles at the base of my skull, right where his hand has been resting. The motion is absent-minded, almost. Instinctive.
Heat floods my chest.
I go still, afraid that if I move, he'll remember he's mad at me.
He doesn't pull away.
His fingers slide up into the hair at my crown, combing through gently. It's not the punishing grip from earlier. It's soft. Familiar. The way he sometimes used to pet absently at my head when I kneeled beside his chair.
"You okay?" he asks, so low I have to tilt my head to catch it.
"Fine."
His hand pauses. "Try that again."
