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There’s no more muted almost-awareness that the Null has been suppressing since the day we met. This is the real thing, the whole thing, rushing in to fill every space I’ve been carefully keeping empty. I know because my wolf suddenly isn’t loud anymore. She’s not pushing or pressing or demanding. Instead, she’s gone perfectly, completely quiet. Not submissive. Just… satisfied.

Like she’s found what she was looking for.

No, I think. The word is clear and calm and approximately as effective as telling the tide to stop.

No, I think again anyway, because I am Mia Reyes and I don’t accept things just because they’re inevitable, and I have spent too long building a life that belongs entirely to me, and I am not going to stand in a corridor in the Giovanni estate and let the universe rearrange my future without my permission⁠—

Nash takes one step toward me.

Just one.

And every bit of control I’m holding onto dissolves at the edges.

Crow says something beside me.

I don’t hear it.

Nash is two feet away, and the bond is roaring, and my wolf is so happy that it’s disgusting, and I open my mouth to say something—anything—that stops this moment from risking everything I’ve worked so hard to protect.

“Mia,” Nash says.

Just my name.

Just that.

But it’s more than enough for me to see just how badly he wants this. And I realize I am completely, catastrophically, irreversibly screwed.

19

NASH

It happens between one breath and the next. No warning. No slow build, no gradual awareness; just the sudden, absolute certainty of a door thrown open to a room I’d stopped expecting to find. My wolf goes still in a way he has never done before. Every single nerve ending and cell in my body is suddenly recalibrated to a new purpose. A new reason for existing.

Her.

I’ve known what it would feel like, theoretically. I’ve just never actually felt it, and the theory turns out to be worth nothing because the reality is so much larger. It isn’t romantic, exactly. It’s more like gravity. Like suddenly understanding that a force has been operating on you your whole life and you’ve only just looked down and seen the ground beneath your feet.

Mia stands completely still, staring at me with wide, panicked eyes. The look on her face tells me everything: She feels it too. The same shock. The same recognition. And underneath both of those, working fast to cover them up like she’s shoving furniture in front of a door—fear.

My first instinct is to go to her and pushes me forward a step. My second instinct, which arrives half a second later, is to stay where I am and give her the ten seconds she needs to not bolt.

“Mia,” I say.

“Don’t.” Her eyes are too bright, jaw set hard. She shakes her head once, small and sharp. “Don’t say it.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.” Which is true. I was going to ask if she was all right. But we both know she isn’t, so it’s a hollow question anyway.

She looks at me, and I look back. The mate bond hums between us—new and enormous and completely indifferent to either of our feelings about its existence.

I take one step toward her.

She takes one step back.

I want to tell her it’s okay. That I’ve been waiting for this, hoping for it actually, since the night I met her. That whatever she’s afraid of, I’m not it. I want to tell her the truth, which is that I’d rather have a terrified Mia than a calm anyone else and I am prepared to prove that for the rest of our damn lives.

I don’t tell her any of it. Because she already knows most of it and she’s still afraid, and telling her won’t fix that.

The question of why now bubbles up, but I shove it back. None of that matters nearly as much as the fact that it happened at all.