And the Alpha lying bare-chested behind her was, without question, magnificent.
She closed the case. Turned back to the bed, and as quickly as she could, laid out the needles along his meridians.
“Ten minutes,” she said, her voice thinner now. “Then, I’ll remove them.”
He didn’t speak, but she saw the minute movement of his fingers against the sheet. The silent answer. The patience.
The ten-minute wait stretched before them. She measured it with her breath—in, hold. Out, hold—counting the seventy-eight deep breaths that would give her the precise time. Her body felt acutely attuned to his, the pre-Heat sensitivity a steady thrum under her skin.
JingYi shook her head to clear herself. She needed to stay, to monitor.Duty.
She lowered herself to sit on the very edge of the bed, careful that not a single thread of her gown touched him. A clinical distance that felt like a lie. The muscles between her shoulders cinched.Focus.She was a healer completing a treatment. That was the only framework that mattered.
She turned to check on him, and the framework dissolved.
He had tilted his head toward her, eyes open. He simply watched her, his expression unreadable but his attention absolute. It wasn’t the evaluating look of a lord or the heated gaze of an Alpha. It was simpler, and somehow more devastating.
He wasseeingher. Seeing the careful performance of her composure.
And that truth was a treacherous warmth winding low in her belly—a recognition that this magnificent man was no longer just her patient, or her husband by law.
He was becoming Alexander. And against every defence she’d spent a lifetime building, she was beginning to want him.
When the wait was over, and she finally rose to remove all the needles, her fingers trembled. She pretended not to notice.
“It’s done,” she murmured. “No adverse reaction. The needles are clean.”
He didn’t speak. With fluid grace that spoke of controlled power, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, facing her. He didn’t reach for his shirt. He stood and closed the distance between them.
JingYi’s breath caught, staring at him as he towered before her, half-clad in firelight and shadow. The heat of him enveloped her, a tangible force. Her gaze travelled up the plane of his taut abdomen, over the scarred landscape of his chest, to finally meet his eyes. A storm brewed there—a carefully leashed intensity that made the air hum. The stillness was gone, replaced by a focus so absolute it felt like a touch.
Slowly, giving her a chance to pull away, he raised his hand. His fingers hovered just shy of her left cheek, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his palm.
Time suspended.
The world shrank to the space between his hand and her face. She felt the rapid flutter of her pulse in her throat, smelled his masculine scent mingling with her own rising sweetness. Want screamed in her veins—a silent pull toward his touch.
His eyes searched hers, a silent question in the storm.May I?
Every instinct, every lesson of survival, told her to retreat. But a deeper, older instinct uncoiled: the Omega’s answer to the Alpha’s call. It was a wantonyesthat terrified her more than any poison.
She didn’t move forward, but she didn’t pull away.
They hung in that breathless equilibrium, on the precipice of a touch that would shatter every remaining pretence between them.
The desire was a living thing in her blood, the fear a cage of old bones.
JingYi broke.
She turned and fled—a lurching, graceless stumble. Not a lady’s retreat but the flight of a wounded thing. Her right leg screamed in protest, the familiar pain shot from shin to hip as she threw her weight onto it, unthinking. She limped into the corridor, each step a bolt of agony.
The door of her chamber slammed shut, a frail barrier against the storm. She collapsed against it, sliding to the floor as her leg buckled. She clutched her knee, gasping, the ghost of his warmth still imprinted on her cheek where his hand had hovered, now competing with the throbbing ache in her limb. The silence was deafening, broken only by her ragged breathing.
Then, the first wave crested—the Kindling, a prelude to an Omega’s true Heat.
It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was a deep, hollow ache, a physical yearning that carved a hollow space beneath her navel. Her mind kept reaching for the Nest—that beautiful, intricate construction of safety and softness in Alexander’s room. The image was so vivid she could smell the dried mountain thyme, feel the promise of comfort. Ofpleasure.
A choked sound escaped her, and she clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. Her body and soul screamed for a sanctuary that existed just down the hall, built by her Alpha husband. The same one her mind knew, with cold certainty, wasn’t intended for her.