I'm Rhett, Alpha of Tallowridge, and there's blood on the wind again tonight.
The clinic light is on. Of course it's on. That woman has a gift for being exactly where I told her not to be.
Rhett: Fuck.
Rhett: Get away from that wolf. Now.
Garnet: He pulled his bandage off. He's scared, not mean.
Rhett: He's a hundred pounds of scared, sweetheart. That's the worst kind there is.
I get her elbow and drag her back just as those jaws snap shut on the spot where her hand was.
Rhett: You see that? You see what scared does?
Garnet: He wouldn't have bitten me.
Hedda: Fuck, look at that. The stray's on her knees for a sick wolf again.
Hedda: Give her ten minutes and she'll be on her back for it. That's what a stray bitch is for, right?
Rhett: Hedda.
Rhett: Out. Before I put you in that pen with him.
She bangs the door behind her. It doesn't catch. That's all it takes.
The wolf comes off the table like a thrown stone.
He hits the lamp first. Glass pops, the light dies, and then he's between us and the door, ears flat, growling low.
I get her backed against the counter and put my hand over her mouth.
Rhett: Don't move. Don't talk. He's listening.
Her breath comes hot through my fingers, fast and shaky, and mine isn't any better than hers.
Garnet: You're standing on my foot.
Rhett: You're standing in my clinic after I told you not to.
Garnet: We can argue in the dark or wait for the wolf to go to sleep. Pick one.
He paces. Door, wall, table, door. His nails click on the boards like a slow clock.
Every pass makes her flinch, so I put my hand on the back of her neck.
One hard knot, all the way up to her skull.
I dig my thumb in and work down, slow, and her head drops back against my shoulder.
Garnet: Oh. That's. Okay, that's good.
Rhett: You're wound up like a bad hinge. I can hear it creak.
I find her hand in the dark and her fingers go through mine, cold and small.
My hands are shaking. Not a little. She goes still the second she feels it.
Garnet: Your hands are shaking.
Rhett: It's not the cold.
Her thumb moves on the back of my hand, and my head fills up with Cobb's flannel on her shoulders, still warm from him.
Rhett: You wear another man's coat again and I'll burn it with him still in it.
Garnet: You're fucking unbelievable.
Garnet: You won't claim me, but nobody else can hand me a jacket?
Rhett: That's not what I said.
Garnet: It's what you meant. You're jealous.
Garnet: You're jealous of a water boy with a bucket.
I hear my own breathing. She's right, and I hate that she's right, and she says it like she already won.
Her hand comes up and finds my jaw in the dark. She's shaking as bad as me.
Garnet: Tell me you don't feel that.
Rhett: Don't.
Garnet: Then say you don't want me. Say it and I'll stand on the other side of this room.
I mean to say it. I've said it to the pack, to Hedda, to my own mirror. It's the cheapest lie I own.
So I kiss her instead.
The no-mates rule is mine. I wrote every damn word of it, and right now it feels like something a scared man scribbled in the dark.
Her mouth opens under mine, slow, and she tastes like coffee and blood.
Her fingers fist my shirt and she pulls me closer, and her hips come up off the counter into mine.
My cock goes hard against her, and there's nowhere to hide it in the dark.
The wolf hits the door and whines, and the whole clinic creaks.
Somewhere past him, Marn's voice comes muffled through the wood, asking if that's the Alpha in there.
We stop with my mouth still on hers. Nobody pulls back.
Rhett: Not one word about this.
Rhett: The pack doesn't get to think I lost my head over a stray.
It comes out cold. My thumb stays on her neck, soft, like it never got the message.