Page 5

My vision went white at the edges. I cracked my neck, and the pop was thunder in the quiet room. I slid the card into my pocket. The mug went into the bag. She didn’t need this.

I followed her scent down the hall. Her bedroom door was cracked open, the way she always left it. Like she was afraid of being shut in.

My pulse kicked. I pushed the door the rest of the way open, and there she was.

I paused in the doorway and just looked at her.

The light bled down the hall behind me, red, then green, washing over the room. A streetlamp leaked through her blinds in thin strips. Her nightstand was a mess: a half-empty glass of water, lip balm, a paperback face-down and cracked at the spine. One of her dark romances. My little lamb liked her monsters.

On the screens, she was beautiful. In person, in the dark, with her scent so thick I could taste it, she was something else entirely. A siren. Hair everywhere. Lips parted. She’d moved since I checked the feed. One hand between her thighs. The comforter had already slipped to her waist, and her shirt had ridden up, a strip of soft belly bare in the stripes of streetlight.

I’d come here for a reason. But every cell in my body was screaming a different one. Get in that bed. Consume her. Sink my teeth into her throat. Bond her before she ever woke up, so she’d open her eyes with my mark on her for everyone to see. My Alpha didn’t care about patches or laws. It only knew she was mine, she was right there, and her heat was coming.

My hands curled into fists.

I’d take her to the nest I’d spent the last six months building.

But not yet.

Not like this. When I marked her, she’d be awake for it. She’d beg for it.

I shoved it all down and got to work.

An exact copy of her blanket came out first. I’d slept with it every night for two weeks. It smelled like me now. Woodsmoke, soaked so deep into the fibers she’d never wash it out. I laid it over her slowly, inch by inch.

She sighed and sank into it.

My chest went tight.

My hoodie went into her closet, folded on the shelf beside her winter sweaters, where she’d find it in a few days and not remember buying it. She’d put it on anyway. Her Omega wouldn’t give her a choice. Her rational mind would scream, but her instincts didn’t care about rational. They’d wake up tomorrow wrapped in my scent and decide, without her permission, that this was the safest she’d ever been.

They’d be right.

When I was done, I knelt beside the bed.

I slipped the bag onto the floor so I could get as close to her as possible without anything between us. This close, the heat-sweetness in her scent was a call I almost couldn’t ignore. My knot throbbed, and I had to breathe through it, slow, the mask locking the heat against my face. I took off one glove and turned my wrist over. Then I pressed it to her pillow, right beside her cheek, and dragged it along the fabric. Back and forth. Marking it.

She shifted and I held my breath. Her nose wrinkled. Then she turned her face into the pillow, right where my wrist had been, and inhaled.

A sound rumbled up from her chest. Soft and content.

A purr.

Warmth exploded in my chest.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek until copper filled my mouth.

Fuck.

Carefully, I dared more. I lifted my wrist to her throat. To the bare skin where her patch usually sat, pink and tender from weeks of scratching. I didn’t press. I just hovered there, a breath away, then touched. Once. Gentle.

Her purr deepened.

She turned toward me in her sleep, her whole body curling in my direction like a flower toward the sun.

“Klaus,” she murmured.

Everything in me went still.