Don’t Touch Me

I woke up disoriented, staring at a ceiling that wasn’t mine, in a bed that smelled like fabric softener instead of the mildew I’d grown used to at Brielle’s.

For one blissful second, I forgot where I was.

Then it all came crashing back—Morrison’s slap still a phantom sting on my cheek, the eviction notice, the two suitcases now sitting open and half-unpacked against the wall of a guest room bigger than my old apartment.

And downstairs, somewhere in this house, the man who’d spent six years calling me a pig.

My mate. My stepbrother. My own personal cosmic joke.

I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower, letting the water run hotter than necessary until my skin turned pink and the fog in my head cleared enough to remember the plan. Sixty days.

Keep my head down, save every dollar, avoid Xavier, and get out. That was it. That was the whole plan, and I intended to follow it like scripture.

I got dressed in the plainest thing I owned—leggings, an old college sweatshirt—and headed downstairs, following the smell of coffee and the low murmur of voices.

I stopped in the doorway of the kitchen.

Mom stood at the stove in a robe, humming to herself while she flipped something in a pan.

A man sat across the island, phone in hand, sleeves pushed up, hair still damp from a shower. Sharp gray eyes lifted to mine before I’d even stepped fully into the room. Xavier’s jaw. Silver at the temples.

My stomach dropped before my brain caught up—Jonathan Sterling.

The Alpha whose money had bought his son’s place at Crescent Moon, and everyone’s silence about it.

“You must be Kira.” He said it evenly, no warmth and no hostility either, like he was reading a weather report. “Sheila’s told me a great deal about you.”

“Has she.” I kept my voice flat and took the stool as far from him as the island allowed.

“Kira.” Mom’s voice had that bright, brittle quality it got whenever she was nervous.

“This is Jonathan. My husband.” She said the word like it still surprised her. “Jonathan, honey, this is my daughter.”

“I gathered.” Jonathan’s eyes moved over me once, assessing in a way that made my skin prickle—not the way Morrison had looked at me, nothing like that, but a cataloguing kind of look. Sizing up a variable he hadn’t planned for. “Sheila mentioned you’d be staying with us for a while.”

“Two months. Maximum.” I said it before Mom could soften it into something gentler. “I want to be clear about that.”

Something that might have been the ghost of amusement crossed his face. “Direct. I can respect that.”

Footsteps on the stairs. I didn’t have to turn around to know whose they were—the mate bond gave me about a two-second warning now, a low hum that sharpened into something almost painful whenever Xavier got close.

I hated that my body had started keeping track of him like a second heartbeat.

“Morning.” Xavier’s voice, carefully neutral, aimed at the room in general.

“Good morning, sweetheart.” Mom beamed at him like he hadn’t spent six years destroying her daughter one lunch period at a time. I dug my nails into my palm and said nothing.

Xavier took the stool at the opposite end of the island from me. Maximum distance, same as I’d demanded.

At least he was keeping his word about that much.

Mom set plates down in front of everyone—eggs, bacon, toast, more food than I’d seen at one meal in years—and slid onto the stool beside Jonathan with the careful, hopeful energy of someone hosting the most important dinner party of her life.

“So.” Jonathan cut into his eggs without looking up. “How long exactly is this arrangement, Kira? Sheila mentioned you’d need somewhere to stay after some trouble at your job.”

“Trouble” was one word for it. I decided not to correct him.

“Sixty days,” I said. “I start a new job Monday. Once I’ve saved enough for a deposit, I’m gone.”

“Kira, you don’t have to rush—” Mom started.

“I do, actually.” I kept my eyes on Jonathan, not her. “I think it’s better for everyone if we’re all clear about that up front. I’m not moving in. I’m not becoming part of a family dinner rotation. I’m here temporarily, out of necessity, and then I’m not here anymore.”

I glanced, briefly, at Xavier, who was very studiously eating his eggs and not looking at anyone. “And while I’m here, I’d like it understood that I’ll be keeping to myself. No expectations. No obligations. Just… two people sharing a roof by accident.”

The kitchen went quiet in a way that had weight to it.

“Understood,” Jonathan said finally.

Something in his tone made me look at him properly for the first time—and I realized, with a cold drop in my stomach, that he wasn’t looking at me like a mildly inconvenient houseguest anymore.

He was looking at me the way you’d look at a problem you already knew the shape of.

“I’ll make sure to stay out of your way,” he added, setting down his fork with deliberate precision. “Both of us will. Won’t we, Xavier.”

Xavier’s head came up slowly. Something passed between father and son that I couldn’t read—a warning, maybe, or a threat dressed up as a promise.

“Sure,” Xavier said, too evenly.

“Good.” Jonathan’s gray eyes slid back to me, and his voice dropped just slightly, just enough that it felt aimed only at me even though everyone at the table could hear it.

“It would be a shame for things to get… complicated. Given the circumstances.”

My fork stopped halfway to my mouth.

Given the circumstances.

Mom kept eating, oblivious, chattering about the flowers she wanted for the garden.

But I was watching Jonathan, and Jonathan was watching me, and the mate bond in my chest went taut like a wire pulled too tight.

He knew.

He knew about the bond. About Xavier. About all of it.

I set my fork down very carefully and looked at Xavier, who had gone perfectly, unnaturally still, the color draining slowly out of his face.

He hadn’t told him.

Which meant someone else had.

***

Breakfast ended in a blur of scraping chairs and Mom’s determined cheerfulness, and I escaped to the kitchen with a stack of plates I didn’t need to carry, just to have something to do with my hands.

I was rinsing a mug when I felt him behind me. That two-second warning, the bond tightening like a fist around my ribs.

“Kira.”

“Don’t.” I didn’t turn around. “We agreed. You stay out of my way.”

“This isn’t about the deal.” Xavier’s voice was low, urgent in a way I hadn’t heard from him before—not smug, not teasing. Rattled. “I need to know if you told him. About the bond.”

I finally turned, drying my hands on a dish towel just to have a reason not to look at him directly. “Why would I tell your father anything? I don’t owe him an explanation and I sure as hell don’t owe him our business.”

“Then how does he know?” Xavier raked a hand through his hair, and for the first time since the gala, he looked less like the boy who’d tormented me and more like someone actually afraid of something. “I didn’t say a word to him, Kira. I swear it.”

“Maybe he can just tell.” I set the mug down harder than I meant to. “Maybe fathers who raise their kids to be Alpha material have some sixth sense for this stuff. I wouldn’t know. I don’t have a functional parent to compare notes with.”

“Kira.” He said my name like it cost him something, and he stepped closer, close enough that the bond flared hot under my skin, close enough that his hand came up like he meant to catch mine.

“If he knows, this isn’t just awkward anymore. This is—”

I jerked back before his fingers made contact, my shoulder blades hitting the edge of the counter.

“Don’t touch me.”

He froze, hand still half-raised, and something flickered across his face—hurt, quick and unguarded, gone almost before I could name it. He dropped his hand like it had been burned.

“This is what?” My heart was pounding too hard for a conversation about words.

He didn’t answer. Whatever he’d been about to say, he swallowed it back down, and something in his expression shuttered closed the way it used to at Crescent Moon, right before he’d say something designed to draw blood.

Except this time the wall wasn’t cruelty. It was fear, and he was hiding it badly.

“Xavier.” Jonathan’s voice cut through the kitchen doorway, flat and final, the kind of tone that didn’t leave room for questions. “My study. Now.”

Xavier’s eyes held mine for one more second. Then he was gone, following his father’s voice down the hall like he had no choice in the matter at all.

I stood alone in the kitchen, dish towel forgotten in my hands, staring at the empty doorway.

Down the hall, a door clicked shut. Then nothing. No raised voices. No shouting.

Just silence—and underneath it, the mate bond humming low and afraid in my chest, like it already knew something I didn’t.