The bed is empty. Cold.

For a moment, I wonder if I dreamed it all. The heat of his body. The way he growled my name. The feel of his knot, the bite, the whisper of reverence in his voice when he said I was his. It feels like a dream.

But the sheets are rumpled. My muscles ache. The skin at my neck is a little tender, a little sore.

I shift gingerly, pressing my fingers to where he bit me. The bond mark almost throbs beneath my touch. Half-formed.

Beau's not here.

The light seeping through the curtains is soft and golden, the haze of summer morning. Birds call to one another.

I sit up, tugging the sheet, the blankets around me before I sneer at myself. I don't need to nest. I don't need to comfort myself. Beau doesn't need to kiss me goodbye when he leaves. It doesn't matter that we fucked. There "forever bond" didn't happen. We're at the same place as before.

It stings that he's not here. I know it shouldn't. I'm not the cuddling type. I'm not the relationship type. Still, waking up alone, after everything that happened last night, feels like an ache deep beneath my ribs.

Falling back into that untouchable, prickly armor is easy. It's second nature. A nature that I'm trying to break out of, I remind myself. I force myself to breathe. To set side the blankets. To focus on the things Beau said to me. The way he held me. The way he looked at me. The way that any time one of us would get too close to worrying about the bond or what it meant, we'd somehow collide again, driving away the doubt and insecurity by chasing physical release.

You're mine.

I wouldn't change a fucking thing.

Except maybe I would.

I rub my arms. I still feel human. Raw and sore and a part of something I don't understand. In this lonely golden morning, my wolf is quiet, like she's retreated somewhere deep. I try to reach for her, try to coax her back to that place beside my heart that feels a little empty without her. She stays tucked away, safe. It's a feeling I understand. I can't blame her for it.

Showering alone, I feel a little stiff, a little achey. Though the skin is mostly healed over, barely red, the bite still burns under the soft flannel I steal from Beau's drawer. Would it be healed or painless if I was a true werewolf? Do I need an antibiotic? Should I just try biting him just to see what happens?

More questions that I can't answer.

Another fragment of evidence that I'm not made for this world. If I'm honest with myself, I had hoped that this bond mark would solve all of that. Wishful thinking.

I decide that I should ask someone, though, since there's no way I'm going to figure this out myself. Beau, preferably, but maybe Celia or Ava if I can't find him. I dread the idea of talking to Marcus about the details of what his nephew and I have been up to, but maybe he would have another theory about why I can't shift. Why I didn't wolf out and bite him back. He's been the most vocal about the positives of hidden wolves. Maybe there's a good side to all this, too.

When I pad out into the kitchen, I pretend I hadn't been holding onto a last glimmer of hope.

There's hot coffee in the carafe and a note from Beau stuck on it: stay inside.

Two words.

I stare a little longer than necessary. The handwriting is messy—somewhere between printing and a butchered cursive—that makes me think he scrawled it in a hurry, with too much force behind the pen. The carafe is full. He left quickly. No signature. No explanation.

Everything in the kitchen feels too still, too quiet, so I take a mug out onto the deck. It's not technically "inside," but I tell myself that it's not really outside either. The brisk wind off the lake settles me immediately, calls to the little furry presence in my chest. She doesn't uncurl herself, but she feels a little closer.

I listen to the water lap at the shore as I drink coffee.

And then voices rise from the lakeshore trail.

"—if they come back," Nora is saying. Her voice is tight. Low.

"They'll come back," Caleb replies. "That was a scouting run. We're not ready for a full fight, not when our best betas are on babysitting duty."

Me, I realize immediately. I'm babysitting duty. Beau must have asked Caleb and Nora to guard me. Any warmth of affection the sentiment might have inspired fizzles with my growing insecurity. I hold the mug tighter, fingers curling around the ceramic. From their vantage below, they must not be able to see me.

"We're stretched too thin as is," Caleb goes on. "And if the Lunar Pack's going to mount an actual attack, we need to think about our priorities. The deltas. The pups."

Nora makes a soft noise of protest. "I don't like it either," she says. "But he's determined to keep her as his mate."

"Is she though?" Caleb's voice is edged in dislike. "She's not one of us. She doesn't know our ways. She can't shift. She didn't complete the bond. What if this is why they're hunting?" I stare over the lake. The breeze shifts, colder now, slicing clean through the flannel. I don't move. "Something's wrong with her."

"You don't know that, Caleb."

Caleb scoffs. "You said it yourself. Beau promised to never take a mate. And now, this?"

"He still led the hunt," Nora counters.

"But he didn't want to. His head was here, with her, the entire time. You know that. Don't pretend he wasn't distracted."

Nora pauses. "Beau will always put the pack first."

"Sure," Caleb answers sardonically. "Maybe before. But now? Do you really think he's going to stay objective?"

There's a pause. Then, softer: "You think we should give her up."

"I think," Caleb says slowly, "if the Lunar Pack returns, we have to be willing to make that call. If it's her or Lila? If it's her or the rest of us? Yeah. I know where I stand."

Something cold and frozen creeps down my spine. I can't even blame Caleb for his opinion. What have I done to prove myself to the pack? Made a mess of their gardens and kitchens? Fucked their alpha and didn't complete their quasi-religious binding ceremony? In their eyes, I'm still an interloper at best, a threat at worst.

"Don't say that," Nora says, but her defense seems half-hearted. "It would break him if something happened to her."

I retreat back inside, refusing to hear more, refusing to linger outside the cabin any longer. I think about Marcus, Beau's father and the loss of their mates. It destroyed them. And I can't do that to Beau, I realize.

I can't do that to Beau, because I think I might love him.

Or, at least, I love the little glimpses of his character he allows to break free with me.

Everything is hollow. The light goes gray. Every surface and edge is unfamiliar. I sit at the counter, Beau's flannel still wrapped around me. I've worn it so much that the sunshine and pine scent of it is fading.

I might love him.

The thought is terrifying and strange and amazing and obvious all at once. I don't even know when it started. Maybe it was when he stared me down at the town hall or teased me while he was chopping wood or rescued me on my hiking mishaps or let me wear his clothes. Maybe it was when he fucked me until I couldn't see straight. Or maybe it's just this inexplicably but undeniable bond between us. It doesn't matter.

I laugh weakly.

I love him.

But I don't think love should feel like this. Tight and quiet and lonely.

It would break him.

Nora's right.

I think it would break him if his pack turned on me.

If the Lunar Pack took me.

If I died.

I don't want anything to happen to him, of course, but I don't think it would destroy me to lose him. Not completely. I've survived on my own before. I can survive loss. Heartbreak.

I wrap my arms tighter around myself.

You're mine.

I want that to be true.

God, I want that to be true so badly that it hurts to breathe.

But the truth is stitched into the silence of this empty cabin. I feel it in the ache of this half-mark on my shoulder. In the way my wolf curls so tightly in my chest, I wonder if she's there at all.

She doesn't trust this either.

Not because it isn't real, but because it is.

It is as real and fragile as the love I had for my mom. I think of all the wisdom and hikes and smiles and hippie-isms. Of all the road trips and singing and laughter. Of how I begged her not to leave me, guilted her to keep fighting. Of all the chemo and radiation and vomiting and hair loss. Of all the silent, broken days that followed. Of how I promised myself that I would never feel that pain again. That hollow, aching void of a lost love. I would never let it happen to me again.

I became cold and careful, likable enough to survive but not so much that I ever risked getting hurt. I buried that vulnerable, warm, affectionate part of myself so deep that sometimes I forgot she existed. And Beau unearthed her. Without even knowing she was there, he made me want to start dreaming again.

He was right.

He ruined me.

Because I love him.

I love his smile and that he likes cinnamon in his coffee. I love his stupid little alpha growl. I love how he's a mix of gentle and rough, sweet and dominant. I love how he listens when I talk, how he holds my knee when he drives. How he wants to repair all the broken things. How he cares so much about this pack, his family.

I couldn't love him, if he didn't.

And because I love him, I can't stay.

Because no one protects Beau. Not really. They count on him, lean on him, expect him to bear the burden of this pack. Every loss. Every impossible decision. They love him, but do they know what it costs him? Do they care that he likes a little cinnamon in his coffee? That he has a sense a of humor behind the gray eyes and stern mouth?

So I'm going to shoulder this one, so that he doesn't have to. I'll be the one who makes the hard choice. The one who walks away.

As if Fate can't wait, the cabin door opens behind me, slow and quiet. I don't turn for a heartbeat, because I know what I have to do. If I can gather the strength to do it.

Beau says nothing at first. The half-finished bond thrums low and restless between us.

"Hey." His voice is soft, almost hesitant. And then his scent hits me. Pine and sunshine and that faintly electric—ozone before a storm—scent of a recent shift.

My heart tries to rise at the sound of it, the smell of him. Foolish, hopeful little organ. I hate how easily my body yearns for his, even when my mind knows what has to come next.

"You left early," I say. Quiet. Neutral.

"Didn't want to wake you."

I finally turn. Beau's still dirty from whatever he did this morning. His golden hair is windswept. His thunderstorm eyes lined with the burdens he carries. There's tension in his shoulders, a primal wariness. Like he already knows.

"Caleb and Nora were talking outside," I say.

His jaw flexes.

I set the coffee cup down. "They're worried about you. About the pack. They think I'm going to get someone hurt."

"They're wrong." Beau's voice is all growl and gravel. His eyes are burning gold.

"Are they?"

He takes a slow step forward. "You're mine, Rhea. That's not changing."

I shake my head, ignoring the happy, helpless flutter of my heart. "You can't protect everyone. Not when you're worried about your human mate waiting helplessly at home. You were right, Beau." The truth is like swallowing glass, like needles in my chest. "I'm a liability. You can't lead this pack while trying to keep me safe. You know it. So do they."

"You're not human," he says, but I hear the uncertainty. Hope wars with doubt. "You could still shift. And if you don't, it doesn't matter. We can make it work."

"How?" I ask, after a pause. "By never letting me leave? By locking me in your cabin every time there's a hint of a threat? Every full moon?"

Beau doesn't answer. His fingers curl and uncurl. His skin shimmers with the coiling of his muscles. So I stand and close the distance between us.

His hands are just as cold as mine. Like we're both silently bleeding out, going into a calm and quiet shock.

"I'm not going to ask you to give up your pack," I whisper. "They need you."

There's something vicious in his reply. "And you don't?"

I smile. My heart shatters with the effort. Because I think I do need him. And he needs me. But his pack needs him more. Needs him here and undivided.

"I don't need anyone, Beau."

Beau stills. A snarl rips out of his chest, all wolf and wildness, as his lips crash into mine. His hand curls tight around the back of my neck, anchoring me in a kiss that's too rough, too desperate to be comforting—but I sink into, embrace it. Because this is the language we've come to understand. Clashing teeth. Ragged breaths. The brutal, physical honesty of touch.

I open to him like I always do, helpless against the pull. His mouth is fire and fury, hot against my lips, my neck, the attempted bond mark. Each press of his lips, his tongue, threatens to coax that delicious, addictive vibration into my nerves. Threatens to make me forget.

It would be so easy, but when his hips push into mine, when he pulls at my clothes, when his breath breaks hot against my cheek, I push at his chest.

"Don't," I whisper. "Don't."

Beau presses his forehead to mine. His hands fall to my waist, like he doesn't know what to do with them. Our mingled breath is ragged.

"You said you would fight for me."

My silent, hidden wolf howls at that. The bitter cry of it echoes through every inch of my body, makes my eyes burn with the tears I can't let fall.

I am fighting for you, I ache to say, but I just shake my head slowly.

Beau pulls back to look at me. Really look. Gold and silver war in his eyes, like the line between wolf and man grows more and more unclear.

"I love you."

I go still.

Not because I didn't know it. I've felt it in every burning touch, every soft look. It's been in the way he listens and protects and cares. The way he makes coffee every morning. The way his eyes burn silver and gold.

"I love you, Rhea," Beau says again. His hands tighten, as if he's refusing to let me go. Not until he gets this out. Not until he fights his very hardest.

"You can't," I say, my heart breaking. There's a painful pressure in my throat, like I won't be able to say anything more, like my body wants to physically resist the hurt I'm about to put it through. But I've spent my whole life making myself ready for this moment, preparing my smooth and unaffected face, forcing smiles. I give him one now. It feels like it might shatter me. "You barely know me. It's just the bond." And because I also know how to be cruel, I add, "It'll fade."

For a moment, I think Beau will shift: the wolf beneath his skin won't accept my refusal. But Beau's control holds out. His eyes cool to perfect, stormy gray.

"It won't," he says. There's an unshakeable firmness to his words, despite the whisper. He steps back, and I feel it like a physical wound. The distance. The restraint. The unbearable kindness of letting me go. He swallows. "But I won't force you to stay."

"Don't—Don't follow me, okay? Don't ask Caleb or Nora or one the betas to shadow me. Focus on protecting your family. I'll leave Jackson for awhile. Give you distance to deal with the Lunar Pack during the full moon without having to worry about me," I say.

Give you the distance to realize that this is the right choice, I mean.

Beau nods but doesn't speak. Jaw clenched, he's too tightly holding to his restraint.

"I'll be okay," I say, softer now, lying through my teeth. "I'll survive this too."

"You shouldn't have to," Beau whispers.

I nod, because there's nothing more I can say. No words that will make this easier. No lie that will dull the ache.

We stand there, unmoving. And then, as if one second longer would make it impossible to let me go, Beau steps back again.

There's a crack in the tether between us, like the threads are fraying.

I hold fast to my conviction that this is the right thing. I force myself to ignore the tight, magnetic force between us, the nearly overpowering gravity to throw myself into his arms. To kiss him.

I leave. Before I break. Before he breaks. Before the half-finished bond can drag us back into each other.

Before goodbye stops being possible.