Page 105 of How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates

I laugh under my breath as I move to stand, tucking myself back into my jeans, not bothering to do up the top button. “I’ll get it.”

She blinks at me, flushed and fucked out and still stunned from the knotting. “You don’t have to—”

But I’m already walking to the door.

The kid holding the food gives me a look like he knows exactly what he’s just walked in on, and maybe he does—the scent in here is thick enough to choke on.

“Thanks,” I mutter, handing over a tip and shutting the door in record time.

When I turn around, she’s gone.

I shrug it off and carry the food into the kitchen, and I don’t think—I just open the containers, grab her a plate, and start dishing the food up.

A few moments later, she walks back in wearing a pair of tiny pajama shorts and a cropped tee that exposes the soft curve of her stomach.

There’s no replacement patch on her skin, nothing to block or mute her, and my jaw clenches as her scent hits me full-force. It’s rich and sweet and entirely unshielded.

Mine.

My mouth goes dry.

“There’s more than enough,” she says casually, as if I didn’t just knot her against the wall like an animal. “You wanna stay and eat?”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak as I reach for another plate.

She settles on the couch, flicking some rom-com on as I follow with the plates. I hand her one, then sit beside her—close, but not quite touching.

The screen flickers through a ridiculous scene where some flower shop omega spills water on her alpha landlord and now they’re scent-matched.Classic.

After we eat, she leans her head back on the cushion, eyes fluttering shut for a second as though she might fall asleep. I take her plate without a word, then my own, and walk them to the sink.

Wash. Rinse. Dry.

I stack everything neatly on the side, then lean on the counter, gripping its edge. My pulse hasn’t slowed, and my hands are shaking again. I can still feel her, slick and hot around me, her thighs trembling against my hips as she came undone on my knot like it was the most natural fucking thing in the world.

None of this was supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to come back into my life. She wasn’t supposed to get matched to our pack.

And I sure as hell wasn’t supposed to still want her.

But I’ve been at war since the second her name flashed up on that stupid app. At war with her, with myself, with every instinct that screamedminethe moment I caught even the faintest whiff of her scent again.

And now it’s in the walls, in the fucking air, in mybloodstream. She’severywhere.

The truth is—I’ve been obsessed since the beginning. And maybe she’s right: maybe that makes me just as unhinged as she is.

Fuck.

What if Cam’s right, too? What if this is fate? What if it always was? What if it’s not about the way we broke everything before, but the fact that we survived it?

Two crazy people, one messed-up history, and two other alphas caught in the crossfire.

And still—

I can’t stop thinking about her.

Not just about the way she moaned my name with tears in her eyes and slick on her thighs, and not just about the way her body knows mine. But about the moments in between. The sparkle in her eyes when she’s being a menace. The soft sigh she let out when she curled into the couch just now. The way she saidyourslike it wasn’t a trap door she just opened right beneath me.

Can we make it work? Can we take the wreckage and build something new? Something better? Something fucked-up and beautiful and real?

---