Chapter 9
Sarah
I wake to the sound of Knox's heartbeat.
Not beside me, though his arm pins me against him, heavy and possessive even in sleep. I hear it threaded through my pulse, a second rhythm layered beneath my own, steady and strong and undeniably his.
The claiming bite throbs at my shoulder—not pain, but awareness, every nerve ending in my body humming with information I couldn't process before. The scratch of cotton sheets against my skin. Salt air drifting through the cracked window. Knox's scent wrapping around me like something physical, pine, leather and underneath it all something wild that makes my body arch toward him before I'm fully conscious.
My eyes drift open and the room floods with color so vivid it steals my breath.
Gold light pools across the hardwood floor in streams I could almost touch. The crimson of Knox's discarded shirt glows against the dresser like a living thing. Outside the window, theforest presses close, and I count individual needles on the pine trees fifty yards away with a clarity that should be impossible.
Knox stirs against me, his chest vibrating with a low rumble that I feel in my bones. "You're awake."
"Yes, everything looks different." I flex my fingers, watching tendons move beneath my skin like I've never seen them before. "And feels different."
His palm spreads across my stomach, pressing me tighter against him. "The bond changes you. Takes a few days to settle."
I turn in his arms and find his dark eyes watching me with something that looks like reverence, and the bite mark at my shoulder pulses once and then twice, matching the rhythm I feel humming through the invisible cord that now connects us.
"I can hear your heartbeat." I press my hand flat against his chest and feel the echo of what I already know, the physical confirmation of what lives inside me now.
His expression shifts—pride, yes, but something rawer underneath, possessive satisfaction that makes my belly tighten with heat.
"My mate." The words scrapes out of him like it costs him something. "You're my mate Sarah. In every way that counts."
I should bristle at that. I spent three years belonging to a man who treated me like property, like something to break and mend at his convenience, like a possession he could control with money and fists and the careful application of fear. But Knox's claim holds no cruelty, no calculation, no threat beneath the words. Just certainty. Just the fierce, absolute devotion I can feel humming through the bond between us.
"Yes I am," I agree, and the smile that splits his face steals what's left of my breath.
The clubhouse pulses with activity when we emerge, and I have to grip the doorframe to steady myself against the onslaught.
Brothers move through the great room with purpose—Finn conferring with Rex over papers spread across the bar, Diesel stacking cases near the back entrance, the sharp crack of someone racking weights in the gym down the hall. But it's not the movement that overwhelms me. It's the scents.
Coffee and bacon and leather. Gun oil and motor grease. Sweat and adrenaline and something else, something I don't have words for yet. Each brother carries his own signature that I can distinguish now—Finn's musk slightly sweeter than Knox's, Rex sharp with something citrus, Diesel bright with the copper tang of youth and eagerness.
And underneath it all, emotion.
Not like Knox—I can't parse the individual threads, can't separate anger from joy or fear from excitement the way I can with him. But I sense the edges of things. Worry beneath Finn's easy laughter. Tension coiling through Rex's shoulders. Diesel's nervous energy bouncing off the walls like a puppy too long without a walk.
"Whoa." I grip the doorframe harder.
Knox's hand finds the small of my back, warm and steady. "Too much?"
"It's like someone turned up the volume on everything."
"Your senses are heightened. Your body's adapting to the bond." His thumb traces a small circle at the base of my spine. "It'll level out."
Diesel spots us and bounds over before Knox can say anything else, practically vibrating. "Sarah! You're up! I made waffles—Betty's recipe—"
"Diesel." Knox's voice carries enough edge to stop him mid-sentence.
"Right. Too much." He backs away with his hands raised, but he's still grinning. "Waffles are on the counter if you want them."
I laugh, and the sound surprises me—bright and genuine in a way that feels unfamiliar. When did laughing get so easy?
Lisa emerges from the kitchen and pulls me into a hug before I can process what's happening. "Congratulations, sweetheart." She pulls back, her eyes sweeping over my face with knowing warmth. "You've got that glow."
