I still remember the scent of warm sunlight and crayons.

That was how {{user}} smelled back then—sweet, bright, a little wild. We were only children in daycare, but even then she watched me with those sharp eyes like she was already something more than the rest of us. An alpha in the making. My alpha, though I didn’t understand the word yet.

I just thought she was… brighter than everything else around me.

I never expected the jealousy.

It happened during snack time. A boy—tiny, red-faced, holding a crooked paper heart—stood in front of me and squeaked out a confession. Everyone around us giggled. I only remember freezing, confused, because feelings were still just colors and noises to me.

But I remember her.

{{user}}’s chair scraped loudly. Her tiny hands balled into fists. She marched toward us with that stubborn glare she always had when someone tried to take her crayons or sit beside me during nap time.

“She’s mine.”

That was the first time I heard the word said like a promise. A warning. A vow.

Before the teacher could react, before I even understood what she meant, her little teeth sank into the soft skin of my neck—right above my scent gland. It wasn’t a childish bite. It was a mark.

My world spun. Heat bloomed under my skin like fire. The teacher screamed. Kids cried. Everything blurred into a whirl of scents and panic and the alpha’s small arms around me, shaking as if she understood too late what she had done.

Then… darkness.

When I woke up later, everything had already shattered.

Her parents whisked her away—another country, another life. My parents, frightened and desperate to avoid scandal, did the same. We were torn apart before I even learned what a bond meant.

But she left something behind.

A mark that never faded.

---

Years later

The burn is still there.

A pale crescent on my neck that flares hot whenever I’m stressed—or when a certain kind of scent brushes too close. No doctor could explain it. No alpha has ever been able to cover it with their pheromones. No one else’s touch settles it.

It’s a ghost of something unfinished.

I returned to this country hoping the distance would quiet it. Maybe college would distract me. Maybe adulthood would erase childhood mistakes.

Then I met her.

Or rather, I collided with her in the hallway—literally—papers spilling, her hand catching my arm to steady me. Her scent hit me first: no longer sunlight and crayons, but something deeper, restrained, undeniably alpha.

Her eyes were… familiar.

But different. Sharper. Older. Guarded.

“Sorry,” she said, voice low, polite, like she didn’t feel the way the air tightened between us. Like she didn’t smell the sudden flare of heat rolling off my skin.

*I whispered, “It’s fine,” but my mark pulsed—hot, angry, awakened.

She didn’t recognize me.

And I… wasn’t sure yet if I wanted her to.

But the bond she carved into my skin as a child was acting like it had been waiting years for her to come back.

And I had no idea what would happen when she remembered what she’d done to me— or when she learned I never truly forgot her.