Page 91 of The Alpha Under My Bed

Before he could answer, another voice, softer but laced with a bitter edge, cut through the tension.

“You marked her.”

I turned slowly, my eyes locking with Ethan’s—his face twisted with something close to disappointment.

Ethan. Always stuck up Julian’s ass, hoping to earn the man’s approval, trying to be something he was never going to be. I hated him. Always had.

I took a breath—slow, steady, controlled. Deadly.

Ethan sighed, rubbing a hand over his jaw, brows furrowed as if I’d just crushed his last bit of hope. Grief flickered in his eyes. Grief for the fact that I had bonded with my mate.

Julian tilted his head, eyes gleaming with something dark. Something knowing. “So, we’re doing this then?”

My pulse kicked into overdrive, thrumming in my veins like a drumbeat. Warning.

“Doing what?” I asked, my voice low, dangerous.

Julian’s smile stretched, smug and knowing. “Having two omegas.”

The world tilted. Everything inside me snapped.

The air in the room shifted, thickening, as though the very space we stood in could sense the chaos coming.

Julian must have felt it, because his posture stiffened, just slightly, enough to remind me that he knew exactly what I was capable of.

I took one more step forward, slow. Deliberate. Until there was barely an inch between us. I could feel his breath. Feel the tension hanging heavy in the space between us, thick with the promise of violence.

“I will give you one chance,” I said, my voice low. Final. “Turn around. Leave. Don’t fucking come back.”

Julian’s smirk was slow. Unbothered.

“You haven’t even met her yet, Mal,” he murmured. “You haven’t smelled her.”

He leaned in, dropping his voice to something only I could hear.

“She’s your scent match. Our scent match. Our perfect omega.”

The words landed with the weight of inevitability.

Because I had already known.

That phone call had prepared me. I had been expecting this moment, had braced myself for it. I already knew they had found her.

But I hadn’t known who she was.

And now?

Now, I did.

Julian pulled back, his eyes searching, reading every minute shift in my expression. He was waiting for the hit, for the moment it would sink in, the second he would see it break me.

Because even though I had already known this was a possibility—even though I had long since accepted that fate had chosen someone for me, that somewhere in the world there was a scent that would match mine perfectly, that would send every instinct in my body into a frenzy?—

I had never cared.

Because Ellie was mine.

She had always been mine. And nothing about this—not fate, not Pack Cross, not Julian’s smug fucking satisfaction—was going to change that.

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