The words land in my chest and sit there. The boy who watched his father dissolve and swore it would never be him—standing in a bathroom doorway, bracing himself to walk away from his omega by summoning the ghost of the man who couldn’t. I ache for him. I file it away to examine later, when I’m a hundred miles from his scent and my thoughts are my own again.
“What if you’re pregnant?”
The question is blunt. Direct. Lawyerly. His arms uncross and his posture shifts—straighter, more alpha, the man who negotiates non-negotiables.
“I won’t be. This wasn’t my regular heat. It was triggered by proximity—by you, by the stress of facing a fated mate. An anomaly. Not a cycle. The odds are slim.”
“Not good enough.” His voice drops into the register that means the conversation is over and the verdict is in. “If you are pregnant, you tell me immediately. Not in a week. Not after deliberation. Immediately.”
I hold his gaze in the mirror. The raw terror behind the command—the undisguised fear of a man who just discoveredhe could create a life with the woman he’s about to walk away from—deserves honesty.
“I will.”
He nods once. Leaves the doorway. His footsteps move down the hall toward the great room, and with each step the distance between us stretches, and my body tracks it the way a compass tracks magnetic north. Five feet. Ten. Fifteen. The pull doesn’t lessen. It sharpens.
I turn back to the mirror. Pull the scarf from my bag and wrap it high around my neck—two loops, tight, the silk pressing against the bite mark until it disappears beneath fabric. I spray blocker at my wrists, my throat, my elbows. The French jasmine floods back, thick and cloying, burying his scent under manufactured flowers.
My reflection looks like the woman who arrived here on Friday. Blazer. Scarf. Professional armor, all accounted for. The disguise is flawless.
In my suitcase, tucked between my spare blazer and a stack of legal pads, are two of his sweaters and a dress shirt. I packed them this morning while he was in the kitchen. His scent is concentrated in the fibers—dense, warm, layered with the dark complexity of an alpha I am choosing to walk away from. The withdrawal will come in waves, and when it does, the scent will help. A controlled dose. Enough to take the edge off until I wean myself clean.
That’s what it’s for. Pain management. Practical. Clinical.
I zip the suitcase shut and don’t look back at the bedroom—the wrecked sheets, the dented pillows, the nest I built without knowing I was building it.
We got this.
I pick up my bag, square my shoulders, and walk out of the Vaughn family lodge on steady legs with my chin high and a stolen sweater pressed against my legal briefs, and I do notlet myself think about the way his pinky brushed mine on the mattress, or the crack I put in his foundation over breakfast, or the fact thatfor nowalready feels like the most dangerous promise I’ve ever made.
We got this.
