Page 5

Trees and cacti fly past on either side of the road. Further out in the distance, animals pause, watching the truck as we speed past, their eyes glinting from the headlights in the inky black night.

Kira sits in the passenger seat, wrapped in my cloak, refusing to look at me.

This entire fucking car is drowned in her scent—sweet and spicy—and it’s driving me wild. I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white, bite my tongue, anything to keep from reaching over and touching her.

I’d forgotten how strong the urge was. The carnal, pulling lust toward her. It tortured me throughout high school. A memory flashes through my mind—Kira, showing up to school, not realizing she was going into heat. Apparently, nobody in her family—her mother and father, both betas, Emin an alpha—had bothered to tell her the omega cycle.

What the scent of her would do to the alphas.

More importantly, what the scent of her would do to her mate.

That word rings through my head, and along with it comes the image of her face, stricken and twisted, the day I publicly rejected her. No matter what I do for the rest of my life, I will never be rid of that expression, hanging in the back of my mind.

If I examine the memory, I can list out all the reasons I had to do it. First, Kira didn’t come from a very high family in the pack to start. Then, around the time all the rest of us were coming to school, proud with the boastful stories of our first shifts, Kira was noticeably silent.

Things only got worse when she started talking about her gift, whispering to herself in class. Then there was the incident—her certainty that her premonition was right. How she’d managed to convince the council to listen to her. How badly everything had gone after that day.

And how I’d rejected her publicly. While we didn’t officially cast her out of the pack, she wasn’t seen again after that, slipping away quietly. Later, once I was firmly in power, Leta informed me quietly of news that she’d been seen in Grayhide territory.

The Grayhides—known for abusing their omegas. Known for the recently appointed alpha, who was too wrapped up in his own ego to take proper care of his pack.

Now, Kira shifts in her seat, and it sends a new wave of her scent through the cab. She was shivering and clearly uncomfortable in her nightgown, that little slip that clung to her body, but I gave her my cloak for my own sake, unsure of what I might do if my eyes caught on her nipples pressing against the fabric one more time.

“Kira,” I try again, voice low like she’s a skittish animal I might scare off. I notice the way she shivers when I speak, and it causes my own shiver in return. My body is hyperattuned to hers, even more so than with the rest of my pack.

I can practically feel her heartbeat. Right now, it skips along, a staccato, a tiny little beat against the inside of her chest.

There are so many questions I should ask, so many things I’d like to know. But the question that sticks in my head has everything to do with the darkening bruise on her cheek, the scabbed-over dash where she was clearly bleeding.

Somebody hit her. And every cell in my body needs to know who it was, so I can end them. Make sure they never have the opportunity to touch her, hurt her, again.

“What happened to your cheek?” I finally grind out, surprised when she actually glances in my direction. Our eyes only meet for half a second, but in that time, she manages to communicate a lot through her look.

Most of which is I hate you .

I slow the car, making the final turn into town, and try to loosen up my grip on the steering wheel. If Skylar was here, she might know how to handle this. My sister was always better at talking than me.

Our town appears on the edge of the horizon, shimmering like a mirage. Except it’s real. I don’t know what Kira feels when she sees it—I imagine it’s nothing good, given her history with the place—but each time I return home after traveling, I have the deepest, most certain sense of belonging. Something deep in my chest, buried in my torso, clicking into place.

“Stop.”

It’s the first time she’s spoken since I instructed the auctioneer to release her from the cuffs holding her wrists together. He’d hesitated, asking if I knew how to handle her, and the look I’d given him was enough to make him shut up and take them off.

I could see that her wrists were red, raw from the metal rubbing on them. For a second, I’d almost reached out to touch her, but kept myself from doing it. Best not to tempt fate any more than we already have.

Her voice comes again, drawing me away from the thought.

“ Stop .”

Because I don’t like taking orders, and it’s not in my instinct to follow them, I don’t stop. But I do turn my head, looking at her as we cross the Badlands boundary and the speed limit decreases.

“I said stop ,” she says, voice rising as she purposefully avoids looking at me, her little hands balled into fists on her lap. Once again, my fingers ache with the urge to reach out and touch her, but I don’t. I keep my hands to myself.

“Kira, I’m not stopping . What’s your plan? Just get out and wander in the desert?”

“Are you going to keep me as a servant?” Her voice shakes, fragile and weak. I remember my comments are the auction—that must be where this is coming from, but surely she knows that was just a ploy. A way to make sure the price on her head didn’t go too high.

I rear my head back, blinking at her. Sure, there might be some packs that still do backwards things like keeping people as property, but she knows we’re not like that.

Or maybe she doesn’t know.

Trying to soften my voice, I say tightly, “No. Of course I’m not.”

“So, let me go, then,” she says, raising her chin defiantly, and I catch sight of those copper eyes again, flashing in the light from the dash. “If you’re not planning on … keeping me. Then let me go.”

I’ve never seen her like this, so sure of herself. Back in high school, she never—not once—stood up to us when we bullied her. Just the thought of it socks me in the throat with guilt, how ruthless Emin was to her. How ruthless we both were, all of us older guys.

“You won’t be safe, Kira—”

“I’m more than capable of handling my own safety,” she clips out, already undoing her seatbelt. “Let me out of this car.”

I stare at her, struck by how beautiful she is, even like this. Hair wild, eyes sharp, jaw pulled tight. What I want more than anything is to unravel her, pull her apart, see what she’s like without all those defenses up around her.

Kira wants me to stop the truck. She wants to get out of it, here on the very edge of town, just past the hardware store and farms. And it looks like she’s not going to take no for an answer.

I could just compel her, use my authority as an alpha to keep her in this car. But I want to show her that I’m someone new—that I’m not the same dick from high school. That I don’t want to cause her any more pain.

So, although it’s the last thing I want to do, and I’m already concerned for her safety, even before she opens the door, I do it.

I slow down, put my flashers on, and pull over to the side of the road. Kira hesitates for a moment, like she also wasn’t expecting me to do it. We’re just inside the city bounds now, and when she jumps out of the truck, her feet land firmly in my territory.

She turns, hand on the door of the truck. We’re suspended like that for a moment, her looking at me, low-lit from the light of the truck and a streetlight down the road. My eyes travel over her, pleading with her to get back in this truck.

But I won’t make her.

Finally, she jerks, like remembering where she is. A moment later, she slams the truck door and turns, waking quickly down a residential street, taking the first left, her arms crossed over her front protectively, like she’s walking through a blizzard, rather than a cool desert night.

The moment she’s out of my sight, my entire body pulses like a wound throbbing. I climb back into the truck, turn off the headlights, turn the ignition, and turn down the street.

I know where she’s going; first, because she’s easy for me to read, every thought playing out on her face, and second, because there’s nowhere else for Kira Argent to go in this town.

She’s going back to the house she and Emin grew up in, to see her parents. Maybe she’s forgotten what it was like when she left, but I’m almost certain they are not going to welcome her with open arms.