Story 7: Claiming What’s Mine


Story 7: Claiming What’s Mine

Chapter 1

I smelled him before I saw him.

Even through the rain and the trees and the two miles of territory between us, that scent hit me like a fist to the chest — sweet, sharp, and already turning toward heat. My wolf surged so hard I had to stop walking and brace a hand against the nearest pine just to stay upright.

Three years.

Three years of keeping my distance. Three years of pretending the bond was a rumor. Three years of telling myself he was better off without an Alpha who had already failed him once.

And now he was here. On my land. In the middle of a storm. Smelling like he was two days from dropping into a full heat that would tear every scrap of restraint I had left into pieces.

I should have turned around.

I didn’t.

I found him near the old boundary creek, soaked to the skin, one arm wrapped around his ribs like something hurt. He hadn’t heard me yet. His head was down, dark hair plastered to his forehead, breathing too fast. The second the wind shifted and my scent reached him, his entire body went rigid.

He spun.

Green eyes wide. Familiar. Furious.

“Stay back,” he said. His voice cracked on the second word.

I stopped ten feet away and raised both hands, even though every instinct I had was screaming to close the distance and put my mouth on his throat.

“You’re on my territory, Noah.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” He backed up until his heels hit a fallen log. Rain ran down his face. “The east pack pushed me out. They smelled the heat starting and decided they didn’t want an unmated Omega drawing every rogue in a fifty-mile radius.”

My wolf snarled at the idea of anyone else catching that scent.

I kept my voice level. “You should have called.”

“And said what? ‘Hey, Kade, the mate you spent three years pretending didn’t exist is about to go into heat and has nowhere to go’?” He laughed once, sharp and bitter. “You made it very clear you didn’t want this.”

I had.

The night the bond first snapped into place I had been twenty-four and stupid and terrified of what it meant. He had been nineteen, all sharp edges and pride, and when I hesitated he had looked me dead in the eye and told me to forget he existed. I had done exactly that. Or tried to.

Standing here now, watching him shake from cold and early heat and old anger, I realized how thoroughly I had failed at forgetting.

“You’re shivering,” I said.

“No shit.”

“Come to the cabin. Dry off. Eat something. I’ll keep my distance.”

His eyes narrowed. “Your distance has a radius of about three years. Forgive me if I don’t trust it.”

A fresh wave of his scent rolled off him then — thicker, sweeter, laced with the unmistakable edge of an Omega whose body was starting to prepare itself whether he wanted it to or not. My cock hardened so fast it hurt. I clenched my jaw and forced my feet to stay planted.

“Noah.” His name came out rougher than I intended. “You’re two days from a full heat, injured, and alone in a storm on land that belongs to the one pack that will actually protect you. You can hate me the entire time. You can tell me to fuck off every five minutes. But you are coming to the cabin. Now.”

He stared at me for a long second. Rain dripped from his chin. I watched the war happen behind his eyes — pride versus survival, old hurt versus the biological reality already rewriting his body.

Finally he looked away.

“Fine,” he muttered. “But if you touch me, I will bite you.”

I almost smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

I stripped off my jacket and held it out. He looked at it like it might be a trap, then snatched it and pulled it around his shoulders. The second the fabric settled over him, my scent wrapped around his, and the bond between us pulled tight enough that I had to lock my knees.

He felt it too. I saw the way his breath hitched and his pupils blew wide before he could hide it.

We walked back in silence.

Every step was a test of control I wasn’t sure I would pass.

By the time the cabin came into view, his scent had thickened again. My wolf was pacing under my skin, snarling, demanding I stop walking, pin him down, and finish what the bond had started three years ago. I focused on the rain. On the mud. On anything except the way Noah kept sneaking glances at me like he was just as fucked by the pull as I was.

I opened the door and stepped aside so he could enter first.

He hesitated on the threshold, shoulders tight under my jacket, then walked in.

I followed, closed the door, and immediately put the entire length of the main room between us. My hands were shaking. I shoved them into my pockets.

Noah turned to face me. The jacket looked wrong and right on him at the same time. My scent was already sinking into his clothes, into his skin. The heat under his own scent was climbing. I could smell the first traces of slick starting to form.

He noticed me noticing.

Color rose high on his cheekbones. He lifted his chin in that old stubborn way that used to drive me insane.

“You said you’d keep your distance,” he said.

“I am.”

“You’re looking at me like you’re two seconds from crossing the room.”

I was.

I exhaled slowly through my nose and forced my voice to stay even.

“There’s food in the kitchen. Dry clothes in the spare room. Shower’s through there. I’ll sleep on the couch. You take the bed. We get through the next forty-eight hours without either of us doing something we’ll regret, and then you can leave and go back to hating me from a safe distance.”

Noah studied my face for a long moment.

Then he said, very quietly, “What if I don’t want the safe distance anymore?”

The words hit harder than the scent had.

My control — the careful, brittle thing I had spent three years building — cracked straight down the middle.

I stayed on my side of the room by pure force of will, but my voice when I answered was almost a growl.

“Then you better be sure, Noah. Because if you give me permission, I am not going to be able to stop.”

He didn’t answer.

He just looked at me with those green eyes full of old anger and new heat, rain still dripping from his hair, my jacket drowning his frame, and I realized with sudden, terrifying clarity that the next two days were going to destroy every last piece of restraint I had left.

And part of me already wanted them to.