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I do not.
*
If my father could see me now, he’d have a stroke.
Lucian Vale: bleeding for an Omega I didn’t even claim first. Sharing her.Dividingher. Participating in what I can only assume is a group therapy project disguised as a pack.
Vale men don’t share. Vale men build dynasties. Vale men pass down bloodlines like trust funds and never -never- riskfeelings.
And yet here I am. Feeling.
Unsupervised.
Unclaimed.
Undone.
She should be mine. Singular. Uncomplicated. One alpha, one omega. The kind of bond that ignites cities and burns through contracts. The kind of bond people fear.
Instead, I’m snarling in a hallway while the pack's human Molotov cocktail moans someone else's name through the bond.
I never wanted a pack. Never imagined anything but power and order and one bond so solid it would burn through the world.
But Rhea?She’s burned througheverything. She’s scorched the map of my future until there’s nothing left but her.
And I hate it.
I hate that I’m still here. Still standing. Still fucking waiting.
Worse still? I can’t leave. I can’t walk away.
I’ve tried. God, have I tried.
But she’s in my blood now.
Every breath tastes like her. Every instinct claws toward her. Every molecule in me is screaming mine like a threat, like a prayer, like a biological malfunction.
No matter how hard I fight it, no matter how much I bleed for it -
I belong to her.
*
The bond thrums again -vicious, molten, old as bone.
And she reaches.
Even knotted by another Alpha.
Even filled with someone else’s come.
Even after I shoved her away like the world's most emotionally constipated martyr.
She reaches.
A pull that defies biology, hierarchy, every rule I was raised to follow.
Her bond reaches for mine like it knows.
