She stares up at me. Furious. Wet. Wrecked. "I want to. I want to so bad."
She doesn't. She does something worse. She drops her forehead to my collarbone—not soft, not surrender, more like she's too tired to hold her head up against me anymore—and her exhale shakes through her whole body.
"You don't get to do this."
"I'm doing it anyway."
"You left."
"I came back."
"That's not how this works." Her hands fist in my shirt again, pulling me closer, then shoving, then pulling. "You don't just—Liam, you can't—"
I lift her.
She gasps. Legs lock around my waist on instinct, slick already soaking through to my shirt, and the noise she makes when our hips line up is not a noise a woman in control of herself makes.
"Put me down."
"No."
I carry her past the kitchen. Past the table where I see a single mug. One plate in the sink. No one else has been here. The relief makes me stupid for half a second. Then I see the nest. Sheets. Blankets. Built on the floor in the corner, like she couldn't even have the bed. A noise leaves me that isn't a word.
Star jerks her face away from my throat. "Don't you fucking pity me."
"I'm not."
"That is not for you. That was me surviving you." I carry her to it anyway.
Drop us into it like the hollow she shaped was always for two. Her body knows what to do even while her mouth is still trying to lie. Hips tilting up. Spine arching when my weight settles. Her hands go to my hair before her brain catches them and pulls them down to my chest in a fist.
"I hate you. I really do."
"I know, omega."
"Don'tomegame—"
I kiss her again to shut her up. This one she lets happen. Briefly. Long enough for me to slide my hand under the worn cotton and palm her ribs—too pronounced, too there,I starved her—and for her to make a noise that's half a sob. When she breaks it, she's crying. Not loud. Just the kind of crying that happens because the body can't hold it anymore.
"I don't trust you."
"Then don't trust meyet.Just let me—"
"No—"
"Star."
"No." Her hand on my chest. Flat. Pushing. Not hard, but real. "I'm not your fix. You don't get to come up here and put yourself back inside me becauseyoufeel better when you do it."
The bond doesn't care. It's screaming at me to push her hand away, to take, to claim, to fix all of this with my body the way alphas have fixed nothing for centuries. The man in me—what's left of him—holds. "Then tell me to leave."
She closes her eyes. I take that for what it is. Not a yes. Not permission. The shape of a woman too tired to keep choosing the right thing.
I'll do the choosing for both of us.
I drag the worn shirt up her body and off. She lets me. Her arms go slack over her head. The shorts I tear because I hate them. Hate that they've been against her skin every night I haven't been. She flinches at the sound of fabric giving. "Liam—"
"I'll buy you new ones."
