Chapter 1; The Wrong Kind Of Want

Wren's POV

"Fuck… Wren…"

I heard my own name through the bathroom door, and it was not my mother calling me down for dinner. It was Dante's voice, low and rough, breaking on the second syllable like he could not help himself.

I stood in the hallway with a towel in my hand and my feet frozen to the floor, and for three long seconds I told myself I was hearing things. Then I heard it again, and I knew I was not.

Dante was touching himself in there. I could hear the uneven rhythm of his breathing through the door, the strained sounds he was trying and failing to hold back. The soft wet slide of skin on skin.

Through all of it, he kept calling my name like it was the only word left in his mouth.

"Yeah… be good for me, Wren…" he let out in a hushed tone, rough and almost broken. "Just like that… fuck, Wren…"

My cheeks burned. Heat flooded low in my belly and spread between my legs until I felt myself growing warm and slick without meaning to. The ache there was sudden and sharp, a pulse that made my thighs press together hard.

I should have been disgusted. I should have been terrified. Instead my body answered him like it had been waiting three years for permission.

My mother married Dante's father three years ago, back when I was fifteen and still believed that a stepbrother was just a boy who ate breakfast across the table from you. Alistair Ashworth was kind to my mother in a way that made her laugh again after years of being alone, and I was grateful for that even when his son barely looked at me.

Dante was two years older, already being groomed to take over the pack one day, and he treated me the way an Alpha's heir treats a lowly Omega who happens to share his house. Polite. Distant. Like I was furniture that occasionally needed to be stepped around.

Except for the nights when I got up for water and found him in the kitchen too, and his eyes would drop to my bare legs under my sleep shirt before he caught himself and looked away. I had spent three years convincing myself I imagined that look.

I had spent three years lying awake picturing what it might mean if I hadn't. More nights than I could count, I let myself imagine what it would feel like if he looked at me and actually meant it, if he crossed the kitchen and kissed me instead of turning away and disappearing back up the stairs.

I had a name for it once, back when I was young enough to call it a silly crush and nothing more. It never really faded the way a crush is supposed to.

It just went quiet, hiding itself inside every ordinary breakfast and every polite good morning, waiting for a crack it could slip through.

Now I was standing outside the bathroom door listening to him say my name like it hurt him to say it, and every one of those three years came rushing up my throat at once. The wetness between my legs grew warmer, thicker, until I could feel it dampening the soft cotton of my panties.

My nipples tightened under my shirt. I pressed my thighs together again and still the ache only deepened.

I should have walked away. Any girl with sense would have walked away. Instead I stayed rooted to that spot until the door opened without warning, and Dante stood there with his chest heaving and his eyes wide with a kind of horror I had never seen on him before.

For one endless moment neither of us moved. I felt the heat spreading lower, the slickness between my legs becoming impossible to ignore, and from the way his jaw tightened, I think he saw it on my face before I could hide it.

"Get out." His voice came out cracked and furious, aimed at himself as much as at me.

I ran. I do not remember crossing the hallway or closing my door, only that I ended up sitting on my bed with my heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my ears. Underneath the fear was something worse, something that felt dangerously close to hope.

Between my legs the ache refused to fade. I could still hear the way he had said my name, still feel the ghost of that rough, broken sound, and my body stayed wet and restless long after I should have been asleep.

I did not sleep much that night, and by morning I had convinced myself we could both pretend it never happened. I came downstairs for breakfast with my hair still damp and my eyes down, and I made it through eggs and toast without once looking at him, which felt like its own small victory.

My mother talked about a fundraiser she was planning for the pack, and Alistair nodded along, and Dante said almost nothing, which was normal enough that nobody but me seemed to notice the tension coiled tight in his shoulders.

The moment our parents left for the office, that tension broke.

I was rinsing my plate at the sink when I felt him behind me, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off his skin. Before I could turn around, his hand landed flat on the counter beside me, caging me in without quite touching me.

I found myself pressed back against the cold edge of the refrigerator with nowhere left to go.

"Look at me," he said, and it was not a request.

I made myself look up, and I wished I hadn't, because there was nothing distant in his eyes now. There was something hungry there instead, something he had clearly been keeping on a leash for a very long time, and it scared me how much I wanted to see it let loose.

"Why were you standing outside that door," he asked, voice dropping lower with every word, "if you didn't want to hear it?"

I opened my mouth to tell him it was an accident, that I had only been passing by, but the words dried up somewhere in my throat. He was close enough now that I could count the flecks of gold in his eyes, close enough that I could feel his warm breath against my cheek when he leaned in.

Every rational thought I owned scattered.

"You've thought about it too," he murmured, and it wasn't a question either. "Don't lie to me, Wren. I've seen the way you look at me when you think I'm not paying attention."

My whole body went hot with the truth of it. Three years of stolen glances and midnight kitchens and a want I had buried so deep I thought no one could see it, and here he was, telling me he'd seen it all along.

Between my legs the same warm wetness from last night stirred again, soft and shameful and impossible to ignore.

"This is wrong," I whispered, but even to my own ears it sounded more like a plea than a warning.

"I know," he said, and then his hand came up to brush a strand of hair from my face, so gentle it did not match the fire in his eyes at all. "I've told myself that every single night for three years, and it hasn't stopped a damn thing."

His thumb traced the line of my jaw, slow and deliberate. I felt myself tilting into his touch before I could stop it. He leaned closer until his warm breath fanned across my lips.

"You stood there listening while I stroked myself thinking about you," he said, voice low and teasing and rough all at once. "Did it make you wet, Wren? Did you get all soft and needy between those pretty legs just from hearing me say your name?"

My cheeks burned so hot I was sure he could feel the heat of them. I could not answer. I did not need to. The way my breath stuttered and my thighs pressed together told him everything.

"That's what I thought," he murmured, almost pleased. His free hand settled lightly at my waist, not quite holding me, just reminding me how easily he could.

"Three years of pretending, and all it took was one open door to show me the truth. You want this as badly as I do."

He was so close now that our lips were almost brushing, close enough that one more inch would end whatever careful distance we had spent three years pretending to keep. His thumb stroked along my jaw again, possessive and slow, and the ache between my legs grew sharp enough to make me shift restlessly against the refrigerator.

Then the front door banged open, and my mother's voice rang out through the house, home far earlier than either of us expected, calling out that she'd forgotten her folder for the meeting.

Dante and I flew apart so fast I nearly lost my footing. By the time my mother walked into the kitchen we were standing three feet apart like strangers, both of us breathing too hard to hide it.