The memory surfaces whether I want it to or not. The camping trip. Senior year. The three of us in a clearing by the lake, the stars so bright overhead they looked fake, and Judah’s arm around my shoulders as we watched the fire die down to embers.
I’d been fighting my heat for days. Stress-induced, probably—the scholarship to NYU was my only way out, but taking it meant leaving everything and everyone I loved behind. The suppressants I’d been taking weren’t strong enough. I could feel it building under my skin, that familiar ache that always preceded the worst of it.
And then Judah looked at me. Really looked at me, with those ocean-blue eyes that saw everything, understood everything, offered everything without asking for anything in return.
It’s okay, he’d said.Whatever you need. I’m here.
What happened next was inevitable, given the situation and our shared history, the tension that had been building betweenus for years. Biology and emotion colliding in a moment neither of us was prepared for. His teeth on my neck. The bond snapping into place like a lock clicking home.
And then?—
“If you had seen the look on his face afterward…” My voice comes out barely above a whisper. “You’d understand.”
Dom goes very still. “What look?”
“Disgust.” The word tastes like poison on my tongue.
“Mace—”
“Horror. Like he’d just realized he’d made the worst mistake of his life.”
“I wasn’t there,” Dom admits slowly. “Judah told me about the bond after you were already gone. But that doesn’t sound like?—“
“It doesn’t matter what it sounds like. I was there. I saw it.” I wrap my hands around my tea cup, needing something to hold onto. “And the whole town was already gossiping about us anyway. There were no other male omegas at our school. Do you remember how many times the jocks tried to beat me up for being a freak of nature?”
Dom’s expression darkens. “I remember.”
“Staying as Judah’s mate would have destroyed his reputation. His family’s reputation. Everything his parents built, everything they sacrificed—it would have been ruined because he accidentally bonded with the town’s only male omega.”
“Who gives a fuck what anyone thinks?” Dom spits out the words like they’re burning his mouth.
“Judah does.” I meet his eyes steadily. “This place has been his family’s hometown for generations. The Daniels name means something here. I wasn’t going to be the reason that changed.”
The silence that follows is heavy, charged with a decade of unspoken truths.
What I don’t tell Dom—what I can’t bring myself to say out loud—is that the biggest issue wasn’t the town gossip or the social implications. It was the bond itself.
From the moment Judah’s teeth broke my skin, I could feel him. Not just physically present, butinsideof me. Every emotion he experienced bled through to me—confusion, fear, guilt, something that might have been want but was too tangled up with everything else to identify clearly.
We were seventeen. Hormonal and terrified and completely unprepared for the weight of a permanent biological connection. The bond felt like drowning. Like being crushed under the pressure of someone else’s feelings while barely able to manage my own.
Taking the scholarship to NYU was supposed to be just a temporary fix. Distance would dull the bond’s intensity. I’d have time to think, to process, to figure out what the hell we were supposed to do next.
But then the more time passed, the more afraid I became to come back and face what happened. Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. Months into years.
And here we are.
“Judah has basically been frozen in place since you left, you know.” Dom’s voice breaks through my spiraling thoughts. “He poured himself into the family, the house, the business. Puts no attention on himself. That isn’t what someone who regrets their bond does.” He pauses, letting the words sink in. “The guy hasn’t so much as gone on a date in ten years, Mace.”
“That’s—“ I stop, brain glitching as I try to figure out if I misheard. “That can’t be true.”
“Why would I lie?”
The question isn’t even challenging, just a simple statement of fact.
I really can’t do this right now.
“Speaking of past obsessions,” I drawl. “You’re acting remarkably nonchalant about being under the same roof as Phoenix Riviera.”
