Then he closed his eyes, exhaling a breath that seemed to drain the fight from his body.
“You’re right,” he said at last, and the rawness in his voice caught her off guard. “We made a pact. Maybe that makes us selfish.”
He opened his eyes, gaze steady. “But if you had stayed, wewould’ve explained it. Given you the choice to weigh it, to challenge us—even to refuse it.”
He shifted slightly, something unguarded passing over his face. “Two Alphas doesn’t mean double the cage, Yara.” His voice dropped, low and certain. “It means double the strength. Double the people pushing you forward, not holding you down.”
Then—almost sheepishly, his grin broke free, tugging the edges of his mouth into something irrepressible.
“It also means double thepleasure,” he added, voice dipping into something warmer, “but . . . we’d get to that later.”
Despite his light tone—and the way he moved past the words without lingering—heat scorched her cheeks all the same.
It wasn’t just the teasing. It was the way he said it, effortless and knowing, as if he wasn’t imagining some distant future but speaking of an inevitability already set into motion.
And worse—worse than the glint in his eye, worse than the way her body reacted without permission—was the part of her that wondered.
Wondered what it might be like to surrender to the kind of pleasure only whispered about in the dark.
Wondered if she could ever let go at all.
If she even knewhow.
Kaelen’s solemnity returned, his head tilting slightly.
“You hate being seen as a weak, submissive Omega,” he said, “but you’re so certain I’m merely another power-hungry Alpha. Don’t you realize . . . maybe we’re both fighting the same thing—the prejudice this world thrusts on us?”
The words landed with the force of a quiet blow, harder than expected.
Wasn’t that the truth she hadn’t dared to face?
She’d been so busy guarding herself, so determined not to be reduced to her caste, that she’d done the very thing she despised—shoving him into the same narrow box as every other Alpha who’d tried to claim her.
She prided herself on being different. On defying the chains the world had forged around her.
Yet here she was, clinging to the oldest defence she knew:suspicion.
Still, Kaelen didn’t push, didn’t demand, didn’t try to batter down her walls. He simply sat there, offering something far more dangerous:hope.
His fingers brushed against hers—then lingered, warming her skin.
A slow stroke over her knuckles, featherlight.
A graze that felt hotter than it had any right to be.
A promise not yet spoken aloud.
Her breath snagged low in her chest, a trembling awareness she couldn’t outrun.
When he spoke again, his voice was low. “You’ve spent so long fighting against us. Maybe . . .” She watched his throat worked. “Maybe you could consider what it would be like to have us fightwithyou. Beside you.”
She looked down at their hands, at the space between them that suddenly felt impossibly small—impossibly vast. For the first time, she wondered.
If she stopped fighting and let herself truly see them for who they were . . .
What might she find waiting on the other side?
Chapter Twenty-Six
