Page 29 of The Forgery Mate (Taken by His Alpha #6)

B ack at my own loft above my bookstore, I strip out of what’s left of my Knox attire and pull on a pair of flannel bottoms before I stride into the bathroom.

The bulbs flicker a couple of times thanks to the old wiring in a building that hasn’t seen much maintenance since it was built. Then light floods the space, bouncing off the white tile and amplifying every mark on my body.

Naked from the waist up, I grip the edges of the sink as I lean in to study the titanium band locked around my neck. My reflection stares back, wild with a panic I can’t afford, chest mottled with love bites in the distinct shape of Ezra’s mouth.

The purple-red marks bloom across my torso like paint splotches from collarbone to hip bones, evidence of his possession even without the collar. Some are already fading, while others are still fresh and tender when I press on them. But these marks will disappear.

The collar will not.

I trace the smooth edge of the nape guard, the metal cool and unyielding beneath my touch. Protecting the place where Ezra’s teeth will sink in during my Heat, binding us together.

My pulse hammers beneath the metal, my skin flushing, adding new color to the canvas of my body. No one has ever Marked me before, and I can’t ignore the way my body craves the sharp pressure, the pleasure-pain of broken skin, the swipe of tongue.

“Fuck.” My whisper echoes in the bathroom. “You are more than your biology.”

But where Ezra’s concerned, I don’t think I am.

“The collar is just a thing,” I say instead. “Things have weaknesses.”

The words steady me, a mantra from my grandfather during long nights of pick-pocketing practice. Everything manufactured has flaws , he’d say. Your job is to find them .

I push away from the sink, movements sharp with purpose as I stride to the kitchen. The knife drawer slides open with a groan, the wood swollen with age, revealing the neat row of handles lined within. I select the serrated bread knife, its teeth gleaming under the kitchen lights.

Back in the bathroom, I angle my chin up, exposing the collar to the overhead light. I set the knife’s teeth on the band and begin to saw, the sound of the blade scraping over the titanium setting my teeth on edge.

Nothing. Not even a scratch marks the surface when I pull the knife away to check my progress. The metal gleams, untouched, mocking me with its perfection.

I toss the knife into the sink with a clatter. “Dammit!”

I scan the bathroom and settle on my art supplies stacked on the shelf above the toilet. The razor I use for sharpening charcoals sits in its leather sleeve, blade thin enough to slide between pages without leaving a mark. I grab it, fingers trembling as I unsheathe the steel.

The edge catches the light as I turn it in my hand, examining its thinness. It might fit into spaces the knife couldn’t reach, find weaknesses invisible to the naked eye. I slip the blade along the collar’s underside, searching for any microscopic gap where metal meets metal.

My hand slips a fraction, and pain flares hot and bright as the razor slices into the soft skin of my neck. Blood wells, the thin crimson line trickling down to pool in the hollow of my collarbone.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I hiss, grabbing a hand towel from the rack and dabbing at the cut. It’s shallow, thank god, but the bright spot of pain acts as a warning. The collar remains unmarked, blood wiping away to reveal pristine titanium beneath.

The razor joins the knife in the sink, both failures. But I’m not done. Not by a long shot.

I rifle through the drawer beneath the sink, past toothpaste and spare soap until my fingers close around a hairpin. It’s a relic from Lorenzo’s days with longer hair, when he’d sweep it back into a small, elegant knot at formal events.

“Come on,” I mutter, bending the pin straight and inserting its tip into where I imagine a keyhole might be. My grandfather’s voice echoes in my mind with instructions from my childhood, “Feel for the tumblers. Listen for the click. Patience, always patience.”

I work the pin around the collar’s circumference, probing every millimeter, searching for any give, any indication of a mechanism within.

Sweat beads on my forehead, dripping into my eyes and blurring my vision.

I blink it away, refusing to stop even as my fingers cramp from holding the tiny metal rod.

Nothing. The collar remains as impenetrable as before.

With a roar of frustration, I hurl the hairpin across the bathroom. It pings off the shower door before disappearing behind the toilet. My reflection shows a man on the edge, hair wild, blood drying on his neck, chest heaving with exertion and rage.

I splash cold water on my face, the shock clearing the fog of panic enough for my vision to sharpen. Water drips from my chin as I lean in closer to the mirror, tilting my head to examine the collar. A tiny mark etched into the surface of the collar catches the light.

I missed it in my frantic attempts to remove it and bring out my phone to take a picture of it. When I zoom in on the image, instead of a manufacturer’s logo or serial number, I find elegant initials.

E.R. Ezra Rockford.

My stomach drops as if the floor has disappeared beneath my feet. This wasn’t some impulse purchase after I showed up at the gallery. This wasn’t a reaction to my flight-risk tendencies. This was planned. Designed specifically for me.

A memory surfaces with such clarity that it steals my breath.

Ezra’s fingers on my throat during those thirty-one days we spent together, before I ran the first time. We’d been lounging in his bed at Rockford Manor, my head in his lap as he traced patterns on my skin.

“Hold still,” he’d said, thumb pressing under my jaw. “I want to measure you.”

“For what?” I’d asked, laughing at the strange request.

His fingers and thumbs had circled my throat, meeting at my pulse point. “A necklace, maybe.”

I’d waved my hand dismissively. “I don’t wear jewelry.”

Because Knox was too stuffy to indulge in anything not functional.

Now the memory burns.

How long had Ezra been planning this? How many nights did he lie awake beside me, measuring my throat with his hands, calculating the exact dimensions needed to trap me?

The bathroom walls creep in, the air too thick to fill my lungs. He plied me with whiskey last night to dull my senses and lower my guard so I wouldn’t fight when he locked me into this trap.

Thirty-one days together. Twelve months apart. Two days reunited. Three months gone. One night back in his arms.

The numbers spin in my head. Had he been counting all along, expecting each departure, preparing for each return?

How many months does he tally before those first thirty-one days? How many years?

Heat surges through me, a tidal wave of rage that crashes against the shore of my restraint and obliterates it.

My fist connects with the mirror before I realize I’m moving, the glass splintering beneath my knuckles with a satisfying crack.

Pain blooms across my hand, but I ignore it as I strike again.

The mirror shatters this time, fragments cascading into the sink in a symphony of destruction.

Blood smears across the remaining shards still clinging to the frame, my knuckles split and throbbing.

The soap dispenser topples next, contents spilling in a viscous puddle that mixes with water and blood to create a marbled mess.

I sweep my arm across the counter, sending my toiletries flying, toothbrush clattering on the tile, and razor skidding under the radiator. Cologne bottles and pheromone blockers smash into the wall, filling the small space with cloying sweetness.

The cut on my neck reopens, a thin trickle of blood sliding down to my collarbone, warm and wet on my skin.

The sight of it slows my rampage as the crimson stain spreads, bisecting love bites, brighter than the bruises.

Is this the kind of pain that drove Ezra to the tattoo parlor?

That put his skin beneath the drum of the needle?

I can understand the appeal of needing to feel something outside of these emotions, something within my control.

My chest heaves with exertion, each breath burning in my lungs as if I’ve run for miles. I brace myself against the sink, mindful of the glass shards as my muscles tremble with adrenaline aftershocks. The bathroom around me stands in ruins.

He said he wasn’t patient. But he’s been building this trap for years.

From that first meeting, when I approached him as Knox, thinking myself so clever, so in control. Ezra had been three steps ahead all along, allowing me to believe I was the hunter when I was always the prey.

And I never saw it. Not once in all our time together did I recognize the depth of his fixation, the careful architecture of his trap closing around me one calculated move at a time. I was too busy protecting him from my deceptions to realize he was weaving his own.

My hands won’t stop shaking as I pick a shard of glass from my knuckle, blood welling in its place. The pain pulls me back from the edge of hysteria threatening to consume me.

I thought I was seducing a little prince. It turns out I was baring my throat to a king.

The buzz of my phone on the counter slices through my thoughts, the vibration sending it spinning on the hard surface.

For a moment, I stare at it, watching it dance and tremble.

My blood drips onto the floor in slow, deliberate taps that count the seconds before I reach for it, smearing the screen with red as I check the caller ID.

Unknown Number.

Not even the courtesy of using his own phone. Of course, Ezra would have burner numbers ready, the mark of a man who understands both power and discretion. My thumb hovers over the screen as a battle between curiosity and self-preservation rages beneath my skin.

Curiosity wins. It always does.

The message appears, simple text without a greeting or a signature

Unknown Number

Did you cut yourself?

My neck throbs in response, the small wound a beacon broadcasting my distress across whatever distance separates us.

How does he know?

The question rises like bile in my throat before the obvious answer presents itself. The collar. It must have sensors monitoring my pulse, my temperature, perhaps even detecting the blood that slips beneath its edge.

Another buzz.

Unknown Number

Don’t bleed too much. I still need you.

The presumption in those six words sends heat rushing to my face, anger flaring white-hot. Need me? Like one needs a possession, a thing to be kept and displayed.

The phone buzzes a third time in my hand, not with a text but an image.

Ezra, lounging in what appears to be his office at Sanctum, golden-hazel eyes staring into the camera as if he can see me through it.

He holds up a small metal device, unmistakably the key to the collar around my throat. Behind the image comes a text.

Unknown Number

Come home, Ren.

Home. As if I belong to him, as if my place is at his side, collared and compliant.

A raw, primal scream tears from my throat as I hurl the phone across the bathroom. It hits the wall with a satisfying crack, the screen splintering into a spider’s web of fractures before the device tumbles to the floor.

My chest heaves with each ragged breath, heart hammering so hard it throbs in my fingertips, in my temples, in the cut on my neck that pulses in time with my fury. Blood and sweat mingle on my skin, salt and copper on my tongue when I lick my lips.

I turn back to the shattered mirror, facing my fractured reflection in the remaining shards. My face is divided into pieces, each segment showing a different aspect of the man I’ve become, wild hair, bloodshot eyes, the gleam of titanium at my throat.

With the back of my uninjured hand, I wipe at the blood on my neck, the red streak smearing across my skin.

I turn my head to stare toward the remains of my phone, its screen still illuminated with Ezra’s message despite the cracks spreading across its surface.

Unknown Number

Come home, Ren.

As if he knows where my true home is, as if he understands the man beneath all the personas I’ve worn.

But how can he when I don’t understand myself?