Page 40

What I saw stopped me dead in my tracks, a growl roaring straight through my chest.

A human man had Marlowe shoved against the wall, his nose deep in her neck while she winced, whining in fear.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and whipped him around, pinning him against the opposite side. Yet he didn’t cower in fear or show any sign of discomfort other than being away from Marlowe.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” I snarled, my wolf howling at the door of my mind to be released so he could tear the man to shreds. How dare he touch my omega like that?

He barely registered the threat, as though his mind were altered by some kind of drug.

“Tim?” A woman called into the hallway. Her eyes widened in shock when she saw me and she screamed, rushing towards us to pull me off the man. “Get your hands off my husband!”

Nothing, certainly not a human woman, could tear me away from this threat to Marlowe. “I’m teaching him a lesson about keeping his hands to himself,” I snapped at her.

The woman finally noticed Marlowe, still shaking with tears running down her cheeks. Understanding colored her features as the situation became clear, and her anger pivoted from me to her husband. “You mother fucker—Iknewyou’d been checking her out! What the hell did you do?”

The man’s eyes appeared glazed over, and he spoke slowly. “I’m so sorry… I don’t know what came over me.”

I lowered my face into his and bared my teeth. It took every ounce of my willpower not to shift and rip out his throat. “You’re lucky my girlfriend hates violence in her name, otherwise you’d be on your way to the morgue right now.”

He nodded, the stench of fear now coming off him in waves as whatever effect Marlowe had on him began to wane. He mumbled his excuses. “She just smelled so good,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t going to hurt her, I swear.”

I let him go with a final shove and wrapped Marlowe up in myarms, tucking her head under my chin and rubbing her back as I whispered. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

The woman continued to berate her husband while I led Marlowe out to the front, trembling in my arms. “I don’t know what happened,” she said. “I just came out of the bathroom and he…”

“Shhh…” I soothed her. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Elias looked up from his phone where he’d been waiting, and his face contorted from shock to rage at the sight of Marlowe’s distress. “What the fuck happened in there?”

“I’ll explain in the car.”

15

MARLOWE

As soon as we arrived back at Elias’s Greystone, he found the big, fuzzy blanket he’d purchased the other day and wrapped me up in it, and then turned on his electric kettle to make me a cup of my favorite tea.

“Sit on the couch with Archer, I’ll be right with you guys.”

Archer pulled me up onto his lap and began to purr, lowering my head onto his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, I should have gone with you.”

“Into the bathroom?” I joked. The shock of being pounced on by that man had started to wear off, and now the whole incident just seemed absurd. Was I really so potent that now my scent was affecting humans?

Elias handed me a mug—the creamy, light brown color indicating he’d added the correct amount of milk. I took a sip and Archer chuckled. “No, I don’t think we need to go quite that far yet, but at least we could have waited outside the door. I have a feeling, and I think Elias does, too, that there’s more to you than we realize.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Elias reached under the blanket and took out my feet, massaging them as he spoke.

“You’re the only omega I’ve ever known,” Archer replied. “Aside from some much older women, of course. And maybe it’s because we haven’t had any other experiences with your designation, but the reactions you incite in us are overwhelming. And not just for shifters, but vampyrs and apparently now humans, too. It begs the question—what makes you so attractive across so many species?”

“Um, my winning personality, obviously,” I quipped, tossing my hair over my shoulder.

Archer laughed, bopping me lightly on the nose. “Obviously. Vampyrs have a highly developed sense of smell, similar to shifters, so I could understand how one would at least clock your designation in a crowded room and perhaps become interested. When we walked through Sal’s, though, I noticed nearly every human man turn his head and follow you with their eyes. And the second you were alone, one of them approached you.”

“Oh come on,” I replied. “I’ve walked alone ever since college, and I’ve never been bombarded by that amount of male attention before. I mean, I got the occasional pick-up line or cat call, sure. But not like what you’re suggesting.”

“Marlowe,” Elias said. “You were on hormone suppressants before. A shifter or vamp could have picked up on your scent if they were close enough, but not humans. Now though? You’re practically a walking aphrodisiac for anyone with a nose.

I thought about my life before my mom had tricked me into taking those pills. Looking back, it probably was most likely alphas that were the boldest with me as I’d matured. It had always seemed to be the big, scary guys who’d tried to corner me on the street or at the store, sniffing and asking for my number.