"I mean—" I search for the words, breathing him in. "I know what happens to me. I lose my mind. But what happens onyour side? What does it feel like to be an alpha in a room with—" I gesture vaguely at myself. "This."
Bane exhales. Slow. Controlled. The kind of breath someone takes when they're deciding how honest to be.
"Your scent right now—even with the blockers still partially in your system—is the best thing I've ever smelled. It's been driving me out of my mind since I walked through that door. Every instinct I have is telling me to protect you. To hold you. To—" He stops. His jaw works and I can feel it against the top of my head. "To take care of you in ways that aren't appropriate to say out loud in a concrete cell."
I blow out a slow breath.
"Say it anyway."
And then, somehow, I find the courage to meet his gaze.
His eyes darken. "My body wants to serve yours. That's the simplest way to put it. Everything in my biology is wired to respond to an omega in heat—to give you what you need. To make the pain stop. To fill you and hold you and keep you safe while your body does what it needs to do." His voice has dropped to something barely above a whisper. "When the heat hits fully, your scent is going to flood this room and I'm going to feel like I'm being torn apart from inside. Not because it hurts. Because every cell in my body will be screaming at me to touch you and I'll be fighting it with everything I have unless you tell me not to."
"Unless I tell you not to?"
"I won't touch you without your permission. I don't care what my biology says. I don't care if it feels like my chest is caving in. You say no and I'll sit on the other side of this room and white-knuckle it until the walls come down."
My throat tightens. "You'd do that?"
"I'd do worse than that for you." The words come out raw. Unvarnished. Like the sedative stripped the last coat of lacqueroff whatever Bane usually hides behind. "I'd endure anything. Any amount of pain. If that's what you needed."
I stare at him. At the hazel eyes and the sharp jaw and feel his zip-tied hands tighten along with the absolute certainty in his voice.Thisis Bane Graves—the youngest brother, the one who called me nothing, the one who kissed me in my room and walked away like it didn't happen. Standing in a cell making promises that cost him everything to keep.
"And the knot," I say quietly. "What does that feel like? For you?"
Something shifts in his expression. Softer. More vulnerable than I've ever seen him.
"I've… never knotted anyone."
The admission sits between us.
"Alphas can have sex without knotting. Most do—casual encounters, hookups. The knot only happens when—" He pauses. Chooses his words carefully. "When the connection is real. When the alpha's body recognizes something in the omega that goes beyond physical attraction. It's not something you can force. It either happens or it doesn't."
"So you don't know if—"
"I know." Quiet. Certain. "With you, I know."
The fluorescent tube hums. My pulse beats against his thumb where it still rests on my neck.
"Bane." I pull back enough to look at him fully. "When the heat hits—whatever I say. Whatever I beg for. Don't bite me. Not here. Not like this. If that ever happens, I want it to be a choice. A real one. Not desperation in this cell."
"I won't." His eyes hold mine. Clear despite the sedative. Certain. "I promise you."
"Even if I beg."
"Even if you beg." His thumb is still on my neck. Still on the spot. He pulls it away slowly—reluctantly, like it costs himsomething to stop touching the place where he could claim me forever. "Not here. Not like this."
We stand there. Holding each other in the flat fluorescent light while the clock in my body ticks toward something neither of us can stop.
An hour passes. Then two.
We sit on opposite ends of the mattress. Not touching. Not talking about why we're not touching. Bane leans against the wall with his eyes half-closed, and I sit with my knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, staring at the concrete floor like it has something to tell me.
It's absurd. Only a while ago his thumb was on my neck and his voice was in my chest and we were talking about knots and bites and permanent bonds. Now we're sitting three feet apart on a prison mattress like strangers on a bus.
Both pretending. Both waiting.
My skin starts to prickle first. Faint. A warmth building in my belly—slow, spreading. Like a pilot light catching. Like embers being breathed on. A slow blow.
