High and broken and so unmistakablyherthat my body is moving before my mind catches up. I'm on my feet. My hand finds the door handle.
The knob holds.
Barely.
I stand there with my hand on the handle and my forehead pressed to the wood and I breathe.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
She needs you,my alpha says. She's right there. You can help her. Open the door.
I know.
I know she needs me. I know I can help. I know she's right there with nothing but a door between us and that every secondI stay out here she's suffering through things she shouldn't be suffering through alone.
I drop to the floor.
Run my fingertips over the frame.
"I'm right here," I say. Quiet. Maybe too quiet for her to hear.
Silence on the other side.
Then I hear it—a scrape moving across the floor. Slow. Like someone moving on their hands and knees.
My throat closes.
I push my fingers through the gap at the bottom of the door. Stretch toward her.
Her fingers find mine immediately.
Her skin is burning. Her fingers are shaking. She holds on the way you hold on when you're afraid of what happens if you let go.
"Alex." She sounds wrecked. "Please."
My thumb finds her palm and starts moving in slow circles. "I've got you."
"Please come in." I can hear tears in it. "Ineedyou."
"I can't."
Every cell in my body screams to turn the handle, to go to her, to answer that broken sound with everything I am. But I know what waits on the other side of that choice—for both of us.
"I don't understand."
"You will." I keep the circles going on her palm. Slow. Steady. "When your heat clears I'll explain everything."
A cramp hits her. I know because her grip spasms around my fingers and the sound she makes is the worst sound I've ever heard. The sound cuts through me—raw need and suffering that calls to the protector in my blood, making my muscles coil with the urge to break down the barrier between us.
I need you, Alpha. Come help me.
I growl.
Low and wanting and barely controlled. The sound rips out of me.
Her grip tightens.
"I'm right here," I say. I will my voice steady. I drag it back from the edge. "I'm not leaving."
