Her chair scrapes back. Whitfield’s blinks, his nostrils flaring as he looks around the room with a confused, slightly alarmed expression. He doesn't have the hardware to identify the scent, at least not yet, but his beta instincts register a sudden, inexplicable spike in the room’s atmospheric pressure.
"Counselor?" Whitfield prompts, his voice hitching slightly as he glances at Jaleesa, then back at me.
Jaleesa stands, and for one searing half-second, the boardroom disappears. Pouring through the cracks of her blocker is something my DNA had been coded to find—blackcurrant, cardamom, and the unmistakable, dark thread of my own alpha signature woven into her.
The paralegal beside her, a beta with a usually stoic expression, suddenly shifts in his chair, clearing his throat and loosening his tie. He looks at his laptop screen as if the text were blurring. The room is becoming saturated with the biological proof of what happened at the lodge.
The court reporter’s fingers falter on the keys. She pauses, her face flushing.
“Mr. Whitfield.” Her voice is steady. Rebuilt from nothing in the space between one breath and the next. “I need to request an adjournment. A scheduling conflict has come to my attention that requires immediate attention. I’d like to reconvene Thursday.”
Whitfield nods and checks his calendar. The paralegal is already closing his laptop, moving with the efficiency of a man who’s been given a silent order.
“Thursday works for my schedule,” Whitfield says. “Mr. Vaughn?”
“Thursday.” The word is gravel. I clear my throat. “Thursday is fine.”
She’s gathering her files. Moving fast but not rushed—the difference between urgency and panic is a performance she executes flawlessly. Her paralegal holds the door. She passes within three feet of me on her way out and the full force of our blended scent hits my nervous system like a closed fist. My hand goes flat on the glass table. My vision tunnels. Her heels click against the carpet—steady, measured, unhurried—and then she’s gone, and the room smells like the ghost of her, and I sit in it with ink on my fingers and a cracked pen and the threadbare remains of my composure.
My phone buzzes forty minutes later. I’m in my office with the door locked, jacket off, sleeves rolled, trying to draft a motion I’ve started four times. Her name on the screen stops my hands.
I don’t open it. For ten seconds. Fifteen. Then I open it because not opening it is its own kind of defeat.
No text from her. The thread is empty. She hasn’t sent anything. My phone buzzed for a calendar reminder—a deposition prep that means nothing, that I’ll reschedule or delegate or ignore, because the only case that exists right now is the one I’m losing against my own biochemistry.
I type a message. Delete it. Type it again. Delete it again. The third time, I send it before the lawyer in me can redact it.
I could smell how much you wanted me from across that table. That’s an invitation I won’t be able to refuse much longer.
The read receipt appears instantly. She was already looking at her phone. Already waiting.
No response. The silence is louder than any reply.
***
I stay at the office.
Past six, when the associates leave. Past eight, when the cleaning crew runs vacuums down the hall. Past ten, when the security guard does his rounds and pauses outside my door, surprised to see the light still on.
The motion sits unfinished on my screen. The cursor blinks at the end of a sentence I’ve rewritten eleven times. My office is immaculate—every file in place, every surface clean, the degrees on the wall arranged in neat, orderly rows. Harvard Law. Order of the Coif. Every accolade proves I earned my position through discipline and intellect.
None of it means shit.
Her question echoes in my head, mocking me. “How are alphas doing?”Not fucking well. I summon my father’s face. The hollow eyes. The untouched meals. The way he’d sit in his study for hours staring at nothing other than her picture. The image overrides the pull. Everyday for a week, I scraped by, holding onto my sanity. Until Jaleesa strode into the office with the proud set of her shoulders and her sucker punched me with her proximity. Daring to wave raw meat before a starving lion. Grinding my teeth I remind myself,again, that I’m not an animal.
It works until eleven. At eleven-fourteen, I’m in my car with my hands on the wheel and her address in my head—not typed into the GPS, not looked up, justthere, memorized from the times I’ve almost driven to her apartment and turned around. Every night since the lodge. Every damn night, the address surfacing in my mind like a verdict I keep trying to appeal.
Tonight the appeal is denied.
Her building is a brownstone in a neighborhood that’s nicer than I expected and less expensive than she deserves. Third floor. No elevator. I take the stairs two at a time and I’m not winded when I reach her door because the breathlessness I’m experiencing has nothing to do with exertion.
I knock.
Footsteps. A pause—the length of a woman checking a peephole and deciding whether to open the door or pretend she’s not home. The deadbolt turns.
She’s in a T-shirt and shorts and her curls are loose and her scarf is gone and my mark is right there—dark, raised, permanent against the mahogany skin of her throat. No jasmine. No blocker. Justher, and the scent hits me so hard my hand goes to the doorframe to keep my knees from buckling.
I don’t wait for her to invite me in. I step across the threshold, into the warm air of her apartment that smells like her and only her, and the relief is so violent my chest shudders.
