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I almost kissed Xeran last night.

And I wanted to. God, how I wanted to.

And how incredibly stupid it was to make a meal for him like that. To sit around the table with him and Nora. To imagine what evenings could be like with the three of us, just like that, going forward.

It would be so easy to slip into a life with him. To wait for him to come home. To watch him and Nora talk through every question she has.

I can feel the effect it’s having on my body to be near him. He might not be my mate like I assumed back in high school, but he has a strong alpha pull, and my traitorous omega body responds to it as if he were my mate, pulling me into his orbit and insisting that I stay there.

At night, when I climb into bed, I have to take deep breaths to calm myself, to remind my body of the hurt and heartache I went through the last time I allowed myself to get near Xeran Sorel.

I play through every insult, every laugh, every time he and his friends would pass me in the hallway, their eyes lingering on me for a moment too long. Always the butt of his jokes.

When I woke up this morning, I realized something—I need to get out of this fucking house. I’m constantly wrapped in his scent, smelling him, feeling the weight of his presence. Going to sleep each night with the knowledge that Xeran would be stripping and sliding into bed at the end of the hall.

Thinking about how easy it would be for me to wait for Nora to fall asleep, walk down to his room, and climb into his bed with him.

I’m even starting to convince myself that it would be worth it, just to have him one more time.

If he’s going to wrap things up here and go back to Chicago, and Nora and I are going to figure out a way to get out of here, then this might be my last chance.

These are the thoughts that run through my mind when it’s late and the omega tug in my gut grows stronger and stronger. And I think that getting out of the house might help lessen it, even make it go away just for a few hours.

And I desperately need the reprieve.

I decide that I’ll go into town. Let his brothers come after me—my powers are back to full strength, and, if anything, my magic has been sparking under my skin, begging to come out. Blasting another one of them might be kind of therapeutic.

But the moment I throw open the front door to leave, there’s someone standing on the porch.

“Uh, hi,” Soren Riggs says, running a hand through his curly red hair and peering past me into the house. “Is Xeran here?”

“Nope,” I say, breezing past him and heading toward my car. I can magic off the tracker that Xeran installed and kill the thing. He left early this morning—maybe wanting to avoid another encounter like the one we had last night. I’m trying to tell myself that I don’t care.

“Hold on a second,” Soren says, glancing nervously between me and the house, skipping along at my side like the puppy I didn’t ask for.

Nora is inside, reading in our room, and I’ve warded the hell out of it. I’m confident that nobody would dare to mess with Xeran’s house, but just in case that’s not true, Nora will be protected.

“No, thank you,” I say to Soren, getting to the car and flicking my wrist. A second later, the little tag falls to the gravel, and I kick it off into the grass. Soren watches with an open mouth, and I can practically see the wheels turning in his head as he puts this together.

“Xeran doesn’t want you to leave, does he?” Soren asks, reaching out like he might touch me, then drawing his hand back at the last second.

“I don’t see why that matters,” I say, unlocking the car and reaching for the driver’s seat.

I can taste the freedom a little drive into town will bring me.

After all, Xeran leaves us in the house every day.

How much different will it be if I just head into town for a bit?

The people in this pack may not respect me, but I’m hoping they wouldn’t just allow me to be abducted by the Sorels in broad daylight.

Once I think the thought, however, I realize that they might just let that happen.

“Okay, okay,” Soren says, shaking his head and running a hand over his face. “I’ll—uh—”

Then, to my surprise, he slides over the hood of the car and to the other side, where he slips into the passenger seat at the last moment before I throw the car into reverse and the doors lock.

I hit the brakes and look at him. “What are you doing?”

“Coming with you,” he says. “Xeran told us about his brothers. That they cornered you.”

“So what?”

“So, I’m coming to protect you.”

“I can protect myself,” I snap, glaring at him. “Get out of my car.”

“Respectfully, no. I don’t think Xeran would like that.”

“Oh, for all the gods ,” I growl, reaching forward and grabbing the gearshift, throwing the car into reverse. Soren curses and grabs the dash as I whip out of there, rolling down the windows and cranking the music.

If he’s going to insist on coming with me, I’m not going to make it a good time for him.

By the time we get into town and I whip into the parking lot outside the market, Soren’s curls have been whipped into a tangled mess on his head, and his freckled face looks green. He gets out of the car with one hand gripping it, like he’s getting off a spinning ride at an amusement park.

I hurry into the market, not concerned about whether or not he’s following along behind me. I realize he is when I start to get some strange looks. People aren’t used to me having a man with me.

It’s not like Soren is very high-standing in the pack. As far as families go, his is rather in the middle, though Soren himself gets a boost from being friends with Lachlan and Xeran.

It’s enough that, for the first time in my life, I walk through the store without anyone “accidentally” bumping into my cart. There are no dirty stares thrown my way. Not even a single whispered comment under someone’s breath.

When he stops to look at the cookies, I continue on, turning the corner. I nearly run into someone heading my way.

“ Seraphina ?”

The name rockets through me. When I look up, I see my mother standing there, a box of pasta held loosely in her hand, her mouth dropped slightly open.

“Where is Nora?” she asks, lowering her voice and quickly shoving the pasta back on the shelf. “How are you? I heard—well, I heard that they took you to… that Sorel boy. The one who left.”

As pissed as I am at Xeran, I bristle at those words coming from my mother’s mouth. What would she know about showing up for people?

“Nora is safe,” is all I tell her, because for the first time in my life, I have the startling realization that it may not be a good idea to share everything with her, especially not when it comes to my daughter. “And yes. Lucian brought me to Declan.”

I see her flinch at the mention of my brother and wonder if she’s remembering how he dragged me out of our house. How I called for her, begging for her to help me. For her not to let him take me.

“Well,” she says, shaking her head and raising her hands to push the hair from her face. “You shouldn’t be… staying with that man. You should come home.”

That makes me laugh, as does my sudden bravado. I thought she and I were on the same page, that she had no right to tell me how to live my life.

“If I was, there would be nothing wrong about staying with him—”

“Do you think it’s going to help matters if the town thinks you’re playing the alpha’s whore?” she hisses, loud enough that someone passing by us turns to stare, her eyes widening when she sees who we are.

My blood runs hot, flushing my face. Something worse than embarrassment shudders through me—shame. Shame at my mother, shame at myself. Shame at the fact that this is what my life looks like now.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

We both jump a little when Soren comes around the corner, the expression on his face thunderous as he glares at my mother.

She stammers, “N-nothing—”

“You should be grateful Xeran didn’t hear that, Winward. If I were you, I’d take stock of Seraphina’s friends and make sure you don’t get on their bad side. You got that?”

My mother’s mouth drops open, and she looks between Soren and me, clearly trying to understand this situation.

I hardly understand it myself. After all, Soren happily played along with bullying me in high school, laughing at all the jokes and cutting his eyes to me gleefully to see my embarrassment.

And now here he is, defending me in the middle of the grocery store.

Did Xeran tell him to keep an eye out for me? What did Xeran say to make Soren behave like this? My heart skips in my chest when I think about that conversation, about how the guys have been training up at the house.

They know I’m there. Lachlan and Felix, too. What has Xeran been telling them?

“Understood,” my mother says, lowering her eyes and nodding once before pushing the cart away quickly. My heart squeezes like it always does, wanting to apologize, to reach out to her and make her feel better.

Another sign of how it was so often me taking care of her, instead of the other way around.

“Come on,” I mutter, only thinking of Nora at home now and feeling silly for ever wanting to leave the house, leave her there. “Let’s go.”

“You got everything you needed?” Soren asks, his gaze flitting between the cart and me.

I only nod, and we head for the front where I make quick work at the self-checkout and zip to the car.

“Here,” I say, tossing him the keys, suddenly feeling sorry for what I put him through on the way down here. “You can drive.”

I hear him mutter something that may or may not sound like, “Thank the gods.”

***

“Where the fuck were you?”

Xeran is there the second I walk through the door, the rage on his face quickly turning to confusion when he sees Soren walk in after me, shouldering all the shopping bags.

After that interaction with my mother, I feel empty. Hollow.

“She wanted to go to the store,” Soren says. “Asked me to come with her since you weren’t here.”

Xeran’s shoulders relax. “Oh. Well, next time, I’ll come with you.”

“Okay,” I say, bending down to empty the bags, not meeting his eyes. The room goes silent, and I can only imagine the two men exchanging a look.

“I’ll see you later,” Soren says, and a moment later, I hear the door close.

I’m putting a container of oatmeal in the cabinet when I feel Xeran’s presence behind me.

Closing my eyes, I resist the urge to rest my heated forehead against the cool wood of the cupboard door.

My entire body pulls toward him, yearns for his touch, and at this point, it’s starting to be overwhelming.

“Seraphina, what’s going on?”

There’s not a part of me that actually thinks I’m going to tell him the truth, but then I do, the words falling out of me like dominoes. I turn around and face him, hands bracing on the counter behind me, and when I meet his eyes, I’m horrified to discover there are tears welling in mine.

I tell him about my mother calling me a whore in the grocery store. About the novel experience of not being mocked, followed, or harassed while getting my groceries. I tell him about my brother being the one to drag me from the house, and my mother doing nothing to stop it.

For the next half hour, I tell him about what it was like to live on that street with Nora, to know that everyone treated her differently because of me . How living with that made me feel like absolute scum. How the only thing I’ve ever wanted for her was to live free of the weight of her family.

And finally, when all the words are out of me, I’m left heaving, my chest rising and falling as he and I stare at each other in the kitchen.

Then Xeran does something I don’t expect.

He steps forward, wraps his arms around me, and pulls me into a hug.

The moment he touches me, the sadness inside me rises to the surface, and I cry into his shirt, my body shaking as he holds me against him. I realize I’ve never been held like this before. Not when I was a kid, and certainly not after I became a single mother.

And that realization only makes me cry harder.

“Hey,” Xeran says, pulling back and looking at me when I finally start to calm down. Grabbing his shirt, he uses it to wipe the tears from my face, like he doesn’t care at all that I’ve made a mess of the thing. “Hey, it’s—it’s okay.”

I suck in a breath and nod, even though I’m not quite sure I believe it’s true.

Xeran stares at me, and for a second, I think I might get the apology I always dreamed about after high school. That he might acknowledge the bullying, realize how much it hurt me.

Instead, he clears his throat and says softly, thoughtfully, “As long as it stays in the house.”

I blink at him. “What?”

He nods, working his lips together and looking at the floor. “Yeah—as long as you only do it in here, and you tell nobody about it… we’ll do it.”

“Do… what?”

He raises his gaze to meet mine. I see fear there, along with something else. Something like newly burgeoning trust.

“Magic,” he clarifies. “Keep it in the house, and it’s fine by me.”

It’s not the apology I was hoping for, but it still feels impossibly tender. Like he’s seen right to the center of me and plucked up a tiny piece of my soul, turning it over and showing it to me. Proof that I’m seen.

“Okay,” I say, sucking in a breath, realizing that this new agreement actually is helping me keep the shame from talking to my mother at bay. “Okay, deal.”