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He wasn’t going anywhere. Not without hands. But I locked the screen room behind me anyway, two deadbolts, because the last thing I needed was a bleeding Beta crawling down my hallway.

My door. Twenty steps. Her lock.

I ran past the shoes I’d fixed last night. She was crumpled beside the table, one arm flung out, her phone face-down by her fingers. The lid of the box had landed upside down on the rug. I set it back on the box and pushed the whole thing away from her with my boot.

Then I was on my knees.

She was hot against my fingers on her neck. Her pulse was steady. Her chest moved with each breath. A goose egg was already rising at the back of her head where she’d hit the floor. I cupped it gently, and she made a small, pained sound that shredded through me.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, little lamb. I should have thrown his cock away.”

I needed to know if she was hurt. Really hurt. And there was only one way I could know for certain. I lifted her to my chest, her head lolled to the side, her body arching into me.

I peeled the patch off her throat.

Her scent hit me like a tidal wave.

Honey and cherry, but underneath it, the sweetness from last night had bloomed into something thick and urgent. The shock had shoved her body over an edge it had been balancing on for weeks.

Not days anymore.

Hours.

My knot throbbed so hard I had to grip the edge of the table. Every instinct I had zeroed in on her. Here. Now. In my arms. Mine. My rut clawed at the inside of my skin, begging to be let out. My Alpha demanded I wrap her legs around my waist and knot her.

I breathed through the mask. In. Out. Again.

Not like this.

When I had my Alpha in check, I rose with her in my arms, and even unconscious, she turned her face into my chest and breathed me in.

And purred.

Last night had worked. Her Omega had learned it, and once again, she reached for me before she even knew I was there.

I stood with her cradled against me, her head tucked beneath my chin. She weighed almost nothing.

I didn’t put her patch back. I left it on the floor beside her phone and carried her out.

Twenty steps.

I’d spent six months building her a nest. Every pillow, every blanket, every soft thing I’d ever imagined her curled up in. All of it soaked in my scent.

She’d wake up in it.

She’d smell me everywhere.

And when her heat hit, she’d be exactly where she belonged.

Chapter 7

Ru

I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, but the world was already spinning and refused to stop. I held my head as it throbbed. The harder I tried to clear the haze, the deeper I sank. The last thing I remembered was coffee. No, the door. Wait, the box. My eyes flew open as everything came flooding back. Holy moly. Rhett’s bruised face. Ghostface. The hands, sitting neatly in a box.

His hands, holding—

I clapped a hand over my mouth as nausea rolled through me. I pressed my fingers to my temple and didn’t move until it passed.