The heat returned at dusk, sharper and more insistent than before. I woke from shallow sleep with sweat already beading on my skin. Slick leaked steadily between my thighs. My hole clenched on nothing, aching for pressure, for fullness. The collar at my throat rubbed lightly with every swallow. Leather warm from my body. Silver ring cool against my pulse. The alphas had left me alone for only a few hours after the war council, but the emptiness felt endless. My body remembered the double knot from earlier, the stretch, the flood, the way my belly had tightened visibly when their knots locked inside me. I could still feel the ghost of it, the way my walls had fluttered helplessly afterward, too exhausted to close.
Thorne entered first. He carried the scent of pine and smoke from the northe
