Page 18 of Fated to the Wolf Prince

“She’s fine, Alpha. Please,” Reed tried to calm me, but he only had eyes for my mate. “Do you smell anything different? About Kane?”

Brielle blushed and ducked her head, but her whispered response sent my heart thundering, nonetheless.

“He smells good, like cinnamon and oranges.”

“Okay, that sounds good. What about me? Can you take a whiff and tell me what you smell?”

I ground my teeth as he stepped forward, and Brielle leaned away from me to take a tentative sniff.

“Umm… cologne? I don’t know. You smell nice, but—”

“But not as nice as him, am I right?”

“Right.”

That had a rumble of pride rattling through my chest, and she startled on my lap. God, she felt good. Her warm thighs were pressed down tight against my lap, and I had to resist the urge to press up into her heat. So close, and yet so far.

I knew without a doubt she’d be paradise, but I hadn’t earned her yet.

I would, though, if it killed me. Whatever it took to get her to accept my bond, my bite, my dick… I would do it. Just having her on my lap was enough to make me never want to let her go, never let herlookat another male again. She was mine, and the sooner she realized it, the better.

“Mate scent. Gael and I have both known Kane since childhood, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that he doesn’t smell like cinnamon or oranges. Unless I’ve missed something, you two haven’t even kissed, have you?”

She shook her head, but I didn’t miss the embarrassed look she shot her friends, hovering on the other side of the bed. My mate was shy, but I’d get her to open up.

“As I suspected. The mate bonds usually only progress with increased physical and sexual contact. That’s why the very first sign is the physical pull toward your mate. You two are already several steps in, and you’ve barely begun to accept it, let alone progress physically. And today, what we all witnessed at the mixer? I believe that was a power pull.”

Gael snarled and turned on Reed, closing the distance between them with a look that would put a lesser male on his ass. “Just what are you implying, Reed?”

“You know. You’re only mad because youknow, Gael. Think about it. What else is there? She pulledKane’salpha, used his dominance to subdue him and the Russo alpha, without even realizing she was doing it. She’s no psi.”

Gael froze, his gaze hard as ice when it turned on me, enough to bore me into the wall as my breath froze in my lungs.

Not a psi.

Rapid mate bond.

Strongest alpha.

Power pull.

“Omega.” The word slipped between my lips like gossamer silk, and she shivered, turning her wide brown eyes on me.

“What? No.No.That’s not possible. Omegas are illegal, killed at birth. If she were, the Omega Defense League would have killed her before she was a week old. Guys, this iscrazytalk,” Leigh argued.

Brielle clung to my arms, but didn’t say a word. Did she know? Was it true?

“Shit. The ODL ishere.” Reed’s mind was moving faster than mine, and I didn’t think anyone else except him would have put together the signs. Omegas had been gone so long from our world, surely she was safe from reprisal, wasn’t she?

The implications of what he’d said propelled me into motion. Or would have if she hadn’t started shaking again, her body trembling like a sapling in a hurricane against my chest, and I gripped her tighter, unable to stop touching her, even if the horrifying accusation was true.

I kept my place on her bed—I’d known it was hers because of her delicate jasmine-and-apple scent covering the pillows—and debated what to do next. If Reed’s wild theory was correct—that was a big if, though my mind was already latching on to the idea. She was special, and my wolf had known it instantly. But the logistics of it were a big question. How could she be alive? Leigh wasn’t wrong. Omegas were killed no later than three days after birth, no matter what.

And yet, she was showing signs I couldn’t deny. Omega-alpha pairs were the only known pairings that had the ability to power pull, and it would explain how she’d cowed two alphas with a word. I couldn’t dismiss the possibility, at the very least.

Gael was the first to regain his composure. “We have to turn her in.”

THIRTEEN

---