“So what happens now?” she asks.
My jaw clenches so hard I’m surprised my teeth don’t crack. “I can’t, Star.”
Even as I’m speaking, my body is screaming, mine. Making my denial a lie. The scent of her arousal hasn’t faded—it’s shifted, sweetened, like she’s already gearing up for another wave. The biological hell of an omega’s heat. No alpha in his right mind would walk away from a newly-bonded omega in the middle of it. Too bad I’m not in my right mind. Haven’t been since I walked through her door.
“Why are you analyzing this?” The questions come out harsher than I intend.
She doesn’t flinch. “Because this is my life. Because, I guess I believe in fairy tales. My grandma used to say that finding your true mate was like finding the other piece of yourself.”
I swallow. Hard. “Fairy tales hurt people.”
“Or save them.” She steps back, and my hands fall away. I hate the loss of contact immediately. She pads across the room, naked and unashamed, and picks up a discarded shirt. It’s mine—one I tossed off last night, and pulls it over her head. Her body in my clothes makes my heart batter my chest, bruising with its rapid beat. “My parents were a bonded pair. Alpha father, omega mother. The real deal. He used to bring her flowers every single Wednesday for twenty-seven years. Not because he had to. Because he couldn’t not.”
She turns back to me, and the shirt hangs off one shoulder, revealing the mark I left there. Fresh. Red. Possessive.
“He always said the bond changed his life. Made him better. Stronger. That having something worth protecting gave him purpose.” Her voice goes soft, wistful. “I grew up dreaming of that. Of my prince. The one who’d fit me perfectly.”
I’m already shaking my head. “Star—”
“All you have to do is deliver my glass slipper, Liam.” She smiles, and it’s teasing, but there’s steel underneath. “That’s what bonding is. A glass slipper that only your true omega can fit. And I fit you. You know I do.”
The metaphor is so fucking ridiculous it should make me laugh. Instead, it makes me want to howl. “And what happens if you lose that omega?”
The smile freezes on her face.
I press on, the words tearing out of me. “What happens when your perfect fit shatters? When the glass slipper cuts your throat open while you’re sleeping?” I’m breathing hard now, the memories flooding in. “My father lost his mate when I was twelve. Cancer. A slow silent death that sliced him a hundredways before she passed. He spent the next few years breathing in empty sheets and sliding into an early grave. No one talks about that side. The perfectly matched pair that gets fucking obliterated. It’s not a fairy tale then, Starlight. It’s a death sentence.”
She stares at me, her brown eyes stretched into long, wide ovals instead of their almond shapes. Good. Let her see the truth. Let her—
“So we’re not supposed to love at all?” she whispers. “Because it might end?”
“We should focus on what we can control.” My voice is granite. “The present. Not some hypothetical future where everything goes to shit.”
She moves closer, her bare feet silent on the hardwood. “The present is nice, Liam. But hoping for the future, believing in it… that’s living.”
“Then let’s live in it.” I grab her wrist, pull her flush against me. Her scent spikes, and I know the heat is building again. I can smell it, that sweet-slick perfume that makes my brain short-circuit. “Right now, you need me. Your heat’s climbing. Your body is asking for things I can give. Let me give them. For a few days. While it lasts.”
Her eyes search mine. “And then?”
“Then we’ll figure it out.” The lie slides out despite my heart’s protest. “But I can’t—” I stop. Force the words out. “I can’t give you more than this. No matter what my body demands. I control my future. Not biology. Not some ancient instinct that turns alphas into walking corpses when their omega dies.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Then she rises on her toes, pressing her lips to the corner of my mouth. “Okay, Alpha. Present it is.”
The way she says it—Alpha, capital A, like a title and a promise and a prayer all at once… I can’t process it. I should push heraway. Should tell her about Bethany, about the contract, about the empire I’ve built that doesn’t have room for a flower-selling omega who believes in fairy tales.
Instead, I kiss her.
It’s softer than before. Not the desperate clash of hormones, but something slower. Deeper. Her lips part under mine, and I taste the sugar-sweet residue of her heat, the underlying flavor that’s uniquely Star. My hands slip under the shirt, finding her skin, and she moans into my mouth.
The sound demolishes my control. I lift her, and her legs snake around my waist. We crash onto the bed this time, the mattress giving under our combined weight. I tear the shirt off her—my shirt—and she’s bare beneath me, all soft curves and desperate need.
“Liam,” she sighs, arching up. “Need you. It’s getting worse.”
I know. Her thighs quake, and slick heat coats my fingers when I test her readiness. The heat cycle is ramping up, each wave stronger than the last. Biological clockwork designed to break an alpha’s will.
My will is already in tatters.
I thrust into her, and it's as if I've stuck my hand into an electric sleeve. She’s tighter this time, hotter, her body clamping down like it’s trying to fuse us into one entity. I rut into her at a brutal pace, driven by the primal need to fill her,breedher, claim every inch of her until there’s no question who she belongs to.
