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Kai’s smile fades. “Because he’s scared. You make him vulnerable. You make all of us vulnerable. That’s what power looks like.”
I take a bite of toast.
It tastes like crumbs and survival.
“Yeah, well,” I mutter. “I didn’t ask to be powerful. I asked for peace, groceries, and maybe someone to split rent with.”
Kai grins again. “Too late. You got four alphas, an active warrant, and the emotional weight of a society that wants to metaphorically collar you.”
“Awesome,” I deadpan. “Next up: deal with the OMB, get my shit from my apartment, and figure out how to fake a new identity while bleeding out alpha pheromones.”
“You forgot step four,” Kai says, stealing a bite of my toast.
I glare. “What’s step four?”
“Let me eat you on the counter.”
I smack him with the rest of the toast.
Then, Kai inhales - deep and dramatic, like he’s trying to summon a ghost.
“I can't lie - you smell like rage and unresolved sexual tension.”
I roll my eyes so hard I nearly sprain something. “I came for food,” I mutter, taking another bite for emphasis. “Not foreplay.”
“Oh,Bambi,” he says, syrup-slick and smug. “With me, it’s always both.”
I choke on a laugh despite myself. “Do youevershut up?”
“Not when I’m winning.”
“Winningwhat?”
He leans in, and I swear, I can feel the temperature spike. His gaze sweeps over me like he’s deciding whether to eat me or frame me.
“Whatever game you’re pretending we’re not playing.”
I don’t have the bandwidth for this. Not while I’m wearing nothing but an oversized Lucian shirt that smells like rejection and smug bastard, standing in the kitchen eating toast in the middle of the night like I’m auditioning for a depression commercial.
But Kai? He’s not just leaning in - he’s practically radiating fuckboy menace. Shirtless, all golden muscle and tattoos and that infuriatingly perfectI woke up like thissmugness.
He smells like sex and adrenaline and chaos, and my bodyremembers him.
But it was different. I was in a haze; heat drunk and blurry, consenting and wanting andneedy, but not particularly mindful of the details.
Now, though?
Now, I drink it all in. Now, I appreciateeverything.
“I’m wearing the shirt of a man who rejected me after knotting me,” I tell him, clearing my throat. “I’m not emotionally compromised - I’m on the verge of setting this house on fire.”
Kai’s grin turns criminal.
“Then let’s throw the match, sweetheart.”
He’s too close now. All warmth and scent and wild alpha energy, and my thighs are already betraying me, clenching on instinct.
He leans down, brushes a knuckle along the hem of the shirt.
