Chapter six
Liam
Five days. I've been back for five days. No real sleep. There've been blackouts. Twenty-minute crashes in my office chair where I jolt awake with her name half-formed on my tongue. Sleep that heals? Gone. She took it.
My assistant quit yesterday. I snapped at her for breathing too loud. The family thinks I'm losing it. Maybe I am. The lack of real sleep doesn’t help. Three acquisition meetings, a deposition, a quarterly call—skipped. Five freaking days.Where the fuck is she?
She's destroying me, and she's not even here to watch.
The address pings my phone a little after eight. Not from Star. From my P.I., just coordinates and a name.
Your omega is at a house owned byRobert Campbell — Cabin on Aspen Creek Rd.
Robert. Male. Cabin. His. Another alpha.Hell, no.I don't pack a bag. I just go. I drive myself, because if my driver opens his mouth, I'll put my fist through his teeth. Aspen Creek Road hates suspension. Don't care. Every second is another second hehas my omega. The cabin appears around the last bend. Small. Rustic.Masculine. I'm out before the SUV stops rocking.
Whose. Whose porch? Whose name on the deed? Whose hands?
I pound on the door hard enough to scare her. Don't care. Silence on the other side. Just the bond, screaming through the wood.
"Open this fucking door, or I will break it down." The man on this porch is not the man who closed mergers over breakfast. That man is gone.
Then she opens it.
The world stops.
Worn tee. Boy shorts. No bra. The cotton clinging where she's sweat through it. Curls knotted on top of her head. Bare feet. Long brown legs.
Leaner.
That's what hits first. Before the rest. Her collarbones cut sharper than they did six days ago. The shirt hangs loose at her ribs. There's a hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse is going off like a hammer.
I did this.
Dark circles under those fawn eyes. Cheeks I hollowed out. Lips chapped. A faint scratch on her jaw from God knows what—the property, the trees, the splintering wood of a cabin she ran to alone because I left her with nowhere safer to go.
The bond howls.She didn't break. But you broke her. Make it better.
Her nostrils flare. She's scenting me. I see her body register it—the small jolt at her shoulders, thighs pressing together for half a second before she catches herself and locks her knees.
Good. She should brace.
Her scent hits me a beat later and—
Fuck.
It's wrong and right at once. Honeysuckle, that warm spice underneath, threaded through with grief like an acrid perfume. And under all of that, already, the first sweet curl of slick.
"Who the fuck," I say, "is Robert Campbell?"
Her chin lifts.
"None of your damn business."
I take a step. She doesn't retreat.
"Is he an alpha?"
"You don't get to ask that."
