I swallowed, my eyes squeezing shut as my nightmare mingled with my reality.
Fare’s dead. Lorcan’s my mate.
I gripped my sheets and brought them to my nose. My wolf sighed as I inhaled, the lingering Alpha scent one that comforted her more than I cared to admit.
Lorcan hadn’t so much as glanced my way in the last ten days. He’d kept to himself, only occasionally offering some self-defense tips to Ashlyn and the others.
Fritz wasn’t a fan.
I wasn’t either, but for entirely different reasons.
My wolf didn’t want to share Lorcan. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t really ours; she didn’t understand the concept ofconvenience. She saw him as her mate.
Meanwhile, I saw him as… well, I didn’t know. He wasn’t my enemy. Not really, anyway. He… he was different.
Our conversation after the sparring incident played through my mind, as it often had over this last week and a half.
I still couldn’t believe that he didn’t intend to knot me.
What kind of Alpha doesn’t take advantage of his mate’s heat?I wondered.
A good Alpha,I decided.
It was an oxymoron that I hadn’t known existed.Good Alphas.Who knew that was a thing?
Sighing, I stretched out my arms and legs and considered my surroundings again. The familiarity of my nest helped calm me to an extent, but it didn’t feel like enough right now.
I need to go for a run,I determined. An afternoon with my wolf always helped chase away Fare’s residual touch. Probably because he’d really only appealed to my vampire side.
My inner animal had provided the strength I’d needed to survive him. Without her… well, he’d probably still be alive today. And I would forever have remained a slave in his den.
At least until one of his friends took the game too far. I’d always been the unbreakable one, my hybrid genetics making me hard to kill.
They’d enjoyed taking me to the brink of death just to watch me heal.
Swallowing, I shoved the thoughts of the past back into their beat-up box and slid out of my nest.
I was already naked, mostly because I liked lounging in my Lorcan-scented sheets.
Because my wolf was obsessed withher Alpha.
I released a huff and shadowed into my favorite ice cave on the island, then lowered myself to the ground to shift.
It’d been a few weeks since my last run, which explained why my wolf practically burst out of me. She shook out her coat, then collapsed onto the ice to begin rolling around.
While I could control her movements, I chose not to. It was more fun to give her free rein.
She flopped onto her side with a content pant, then pushed to her feet and fluffed out her coat again.
Ready to run?I asked her.
She snorted in reply and darted out of the cave to begin our usual trek around the perimeter.
Except… she veered a little off course as a familiar scent tickled our senses.
My eyes widened.Wait…
But it was too late. The moment Lorcan’s evergreen aroma settled into her snout, she took off toward him at a sprint.
