Not A Stranger

She didn't answer him.

Amara was off the bed before she'd finished deciding to move, one hand fisting the sheet around her, scanning the floor for her dress with the single-minded urgency of a woman fleeing disaster, not a room. She found it crumpled near the door, yanked it against herself, and had her hand on the handle before Kael crossed the room.

He moved fast for someone his size—two strides, no more—and pressed both palms flat against the door on either side of her, caging her in without a word. She flinched, gasping, spinning to find herself suddenly surrounded by the sheer bulk of him, close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his eyes.

"Wait."

"I have to go." She didn't try to push past him. Couldn't, yet—not with her whole body still humming with the wrongness of everything she'd just learned. "This was a mistake. I need to—I have to go."

He didn't move his hands. Didn't raise his voice either. "You're my mate."

""No." The word came out too fast, too thin. "No, I already have a mate."

Something shifted in his expression—not doubt, not quite. Certainty, if anything, hardening underneath the surprise. "You don't believe that.”

"I don't have to make you believe anything." Her voice shook despite every effort to keep it level. "I have a mate. I'm getting married in three days."

Kael took a step closer, and for a moment she thought he might argue further, might reach for her again the way he had in the corridor—but instead he only studied her, quiet and unreadable, like a man recalculating something.

"What's your name?”

She said nothing. Her hand tightened on the door handle instead, jaw set, refusing him even that much.

He waited. She could feel him waiting, feel the patience of it pressing on her worse than any demand would have, and still she said nothing, jaw set, refusing him even that much.

Kael scoffed. Last night she was eager, filled with raw passion and energy. An eagerness which he hadn't seen in her amber eyes for ten years.

Why was she so stubborn now? Afraid. Different.

Those thoughts triggered him.

“You won't tell me your name?” frustration welled up from inside him. His body, now dried up completely from the heat oozing from his skin. “We spent the night together.”

“Please” her voice came out louder than she had imagined. “Just let me go, Alpha Kin—”

“Kael.” He matched her tone. “For you it's just Kael.”

Her phone buzzed inside the folds of her dress.

She dug it out with unsteady fingers. Grateful for the distraction. Darius's name lit the screen, but for one long second she considered not answering at all. She answered anyway.

"Where did you go, Amara?" His voice came through too loud in the quiet room, wounded and accusing at once. "You disappeared. I've had people looking for you for hours—"

Right before her, Kael's hand found the curve of her waist, unhurried, and his mouth grazed the bare skin below her ear—not urgent, almost absent, like he couldn't help reaching for her even mid-crisis. She should have stepped away. She didn't, some traitorous part of her leaning back into him instead, even with Darius's voice still in her ear.

"I wonder why," she said, low and brittle, cutting him off. "Funny thing, walking in on you and my own cousin."

Silence stretched on the line. Then, quieter, almost pleading: "I can explain. Please. Just come back. Let me explain—I'll fix this, I swear to you—"

"There's nothing to explain."

Darius went quiet for what felt like forever. Then over the phone, she heard him snicker. Cold, deliberate. "You really don't have a choice now, do you? If you want your people to survive in my territory, you need me.”