"Is he in there?"
"Get off my porch, Liam."
Her voice is steady. Her body isn't. The slick scent climbs. Her thighs shake, and she grips the frame to hide it. Doesn't matter. I'm not leaving.
"You ran to another alpha's cabin." I make myself quiet.
"You don't get to—"
"His. Name," I ground out.
"You chose her." Her voice cracks in the middle, and she shoves it back down. "You stood in my shop and told me you couldn't. Then you flew across the world to her. So tell me, Liam—what exactly do you think you get to ask?"
The mention of Bethany should mean something. It doesn't. I'll explain later that there is no Bethany anymore, but right now, I don't care if she knows. Right now, there's a name in the air that isn't mine and a cabin behind her that smells like wood and her grief and—
Faintly. Old. Stale. But there.
Another man.
I move. She puts her hands up, but I'm already through the door, already inside, already crowding her against the wall beside the kitchen because my body decided the conversation is over.
She doesn't yield. That's the part that goes feral in me. Her shoulders are squared. Her eyes are wet, but they're furious. Her chin tilts up the way an omega's chin doesn't tilt when she's surrendering. She's going to make me earn this.
Fine.
"Get your hands off me."
"No."
"Liam—"
"Where is he?"
"He's not here."
I cage her. One hand on the wall by her ear. The other low on her hip, thumb pressed into the dip below the bone where her shorts have ridden up. Her skin is hot. She inhales sharply, and her hips give—just a fraction, just enough—and then she catches it and goes rigid.
"You're soaked through, omega."
"My body's a traitor. That's not new information."
The smarter part of me knows I should slow down. Apologize. Get on my knees. The other part—the part that drove four hours to find another man's cabin and instead found his mate starving in it—is louder.
"Who is he?"
"Mine."
The word punches through me.
I kiss her.
It's not a kiss. It's the door I came here to break down. Teeth, tongue, the whole feral architecture ofno. She fights it for two seconds—rigid jaw, fists at my chest—and then the bond breaks something open in both of us at once. Her mouth opens. A sound comes out of her that isn't language. Her hands grab my shirt.
But she pulls back. Yanks her face away. Breath ragged. "No," she says. "No."
I freeze. My hand stays on her hip. I don't pull off, but I don't push either. The bond is screaming at me to take. The sliver of me that still remembers being a person makes me wait.
"Tell me to stop."
