Page 44 of Reckless: Collision

Well, shit.

“So this is the additional security Malachi insisted on?” Finn helps the guard up, already apologizing. “And no one thought to inform the rest of us?”

“I was handling it.” Ryker’s jaw ticks.

“Clearly.” Cayenne’s fingers tap against my chest, drawing my attention back to her. “Is this how all your pack meetings go? Lots of growling and testosterone?”

“Only the fun ones,” I murmur against her throat.

“If you two are done,” Ryker cuts in, “we need to discuss proper threat assessment protocols. Again.”

“In my defense,” I shift to better shield Cayenne from the cooling night air, “coming across an unknown alpha in our territory after a nightmare isn’t exactly conducive to rational thinking.”

“Inside.” Ryker’s command carries enough alpha weight to make the guard flinch. “All of you. We need to sort this out.”

I push to my feet, pulling Cayenne up with more gentleness than I know I possess. My hands linger on her waist, steadying her. Or maybe steadying myself.

“You good?” she asks quietly, those green eyes searching my face for cracks.

“No,” I admit, because lying feels wrong with her. “But better.”

She nods like that makes perfect sense. Maybe it does.

“Jinx.” Her voice drops to a whisper as the others start toward the house. “Want to work off some of that feral energy?”

And fuck, I want to. Want to pin her against the nearest surface and lose myself in her lemon-sharp sweetness until the past stops haunting me. Until my father’s ghost shuts the fuck up.

But there’s something in her scent. Something under the arousal and challenge that makes the predator in me stir for a different reason. Not prey. Not exactly. But hunted.

I lean close, letting my canines graze her ear where I marked her before. “When I take you again, Glitch, it won’t be about working anything off.”

Her pulse jumps, but her laugh holds something brittle. “No?”

“No.” I breathe her in deep, trying to place that shadow in her scent. “It’ll be about marking every inch of you until you stop smelling like someone else’s target.”

Something flickers behind her eyes—pupils contracting to pinpoints for a fraction of a second, throat muscles tightening in an aborted swallow, a microscopic tremor at the corner of her mouth that vanishes before it fully forms. But her scent betrays what her face won’t—the bright lemon notes suddenly turn acidic and burnt, carrying metallic undertones like blood oncopper wires. The change hits my alpha receptors like a physical blow, triggering a surge of adrenaline that makes my canines ache with the need to eliminate whatever caused that shift.

“Targets are for amateurs,” she says, but her heart races against my chest. Through the lingering haze of my episode, I can scent every nuance of her anxiety—not just fear of being hunted, but something deeper. Something that makes her pull away even as her scent calls to every protective instinct I possess. “I prefer to think of myself as a system error. A glitch in everyone’s carefully coded plans.”

“My glitch,” I growl, and something dark and possessive unfurls in my chest when she shivers.

“Jinx!” Ryker’s voice carries across the yard. “Now.”

I step back, immediately missing her warmth. “We’re not done here.”

Her smile is all sharp edges and hidden wounds. “Oh Havoc, we haven’t even started.”

But as she walks away, her bravado can’t quite hide the way her hands shake. Someone’s hunting my beta. Someone’s made her run far enough and fast enough that she ended up in our territory.

My father’s ghost laughs from the shadows, but for once, we agree on something:

They just made their last mistake.

Chapter 10

Cayenne

The day has deliveredtwo lethal alphas—one feral and one controlled, a gothic omega, and a panic-prone beta into my life. Now, watching them move through their territory with lethal grace, I wonder if maybe Malachi knows exactly what he’s doing by sending me here. These men aren’t just protectors—they’re beautifully broken pieces that somehow fit together into something deadly.

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