I should’ve turned but I kept walking. He didn’t move as I got closer. His back was still to me, head tilted up at the sign. I was close enough now to clock his stillness. He was probably deciding his options, working through them in order.
Pick the lock or kick it in.
Both very plausible.
Then I recognized the black long lashes that I remembered surrounding the most gorgeous sapphire eyes.
Ivan.
His name hit my bloodstream like an electric current. My steps faltered. My grip tightened on the shopping bag.
The scent arrived, not as three separate things, not really. One matched scent, the same notes my body had recognized in Prague and never forgotten. They smelled like me on a good day, champagne, storm-clouds, and caramel. It rolled over the Edinburgh rain and the coffee and the wet stone like a wave that erased everything else.
Something traitorous pulled in my chest. Because he found me and now I had to work out what he wanted.
I'd expected more time for him to find me, not days. Though, thinking about it, I was surprised it took that long.
But I needed more time to prepare. To clean the flat. To shave my legs, not that I could reach my legs anymore, but the principle stands. I needed a speech, something dignified, powerful, something about independence and choices and the right of an omega to raise her child in peace without three Russian Alphas turning up at her door like debt collectors.
All I had done was waddle to the corner shop for ginger and a lemon, because this morning I had a bout of sickness, which my pregnancy book swore should have stopped in the second trimester, but had returned with malicious enthusiasm.
Three…. Where were the other two?
And then footsteps sounded behind me.
Two sets.
I heard them with the part of my brain that had been rewired by necessity.
The first was fast, a half-jog, the gait of a man who was slightly late for something he found exciting.
The second was measured. Longer rhythmic strides.
My body understood, even before my mind finished the calculation, that stopping was the only honest option left. I was already inside the net.
I walked straight into it.
Fergus made a last rattled growl and then went rigid against my chest.
I turned around.
Gregor was six feet away. He looked exactly as he had in Prague. Six foot four and built on a scale that suggested God had started making a regular human and then kept going. His wide, strong shoulders looked like they held Atlas in his past life.
Rain darkened his sandy-blond hair and caught on the scar above his right eye. His hazel eyes held mine as he got closer.
Beside him was Artem.
His hands were shaking. I'd never seen his hands shake. In Prague those hands had held a glass of Château Margaux without a tremor. Now they were still at his sides and trembling.
"Going somewhere, Milly?" Gregor said.
"The corner shop." I held up the bag. "I've been. I'm coming back."
"You slowed down."
"I was being cautious."
"You were about to run."
