The night air clung to Nora’s skin as she strode down the narrow street, the echo of the pack’s words gnawing at her like teeth on bone.

She pulled her leather coat harder around her. Her boots struck the pavement in a rhythm sharp enough to betray her temper, though she tried to breathe it down, to cage it behind her ribs where the wolf already pressed.

They always had something to say. Always pushing. Tell him. He deserves the truth. He’s your mate, after all.

As if she didn’t know. As if every time she looked into his eyes, every time his scent cut through the noise of the world, she wasn’t reminded of it. Her mate. The one thing fate had handed her without asking if she even wanted it. And she—scarred, volatile, stitched together by rage and regret—was supposed to tell him? To risk watching disgust cloud those eyes she had already memorized?

Her jaw tightened until her teeth ached. Her reflection in a darkened shop window glared back: pale skin, sharp cheekbones, and eyes that still carried the faint, unnatural gleam of her other self. She pulled her coat tighter, as though she could hide it all under leather and steel buttons.

“Idiots,” she muttered, voice low and rough. “They don’t get it...”

Her hands flexed at her sides, remembering the way her temper had nearly broken free in the meeting. They thought it was easy—just tell him, just let him in. But they didn’t feel the snarl coiled in her throat at the slightest challenge, the hunger that licked at her when she let her guard down.

The street curved, leading toward the glow of the apartment window she knew was his. Home. Safety. Temptation.

Her chest tightened. What if she told him and he walked away? What if the bond fate had burned into her meant nothing to him? She’d seen rejection break wolves before, drive them hollow-eyed and half-mad. And she wasn’t sure she had enough left in her to survive that.