MY BROTHER'S BEST FRIEND IS MY MATE.

Levrae I had too much to drink. Not enough to embarrass myself in front of everyone, just enough to make the world feel softer around the edges. Enough to laugh a little too loud at things that weren't even funny. Enough to forget, just for a moment, that I was eighteen years old and already being passed around like a business arrangement. Today was meant to be the day I'll get to meet my mate. The mate I've been waiting and passively preparing for all my life. My birthday party had been beautiful. Father had pulled out everything — the lights, the music, the whole pack dressed up and gathered in the great hall. But my mind wasn't at peace, underneath it was the conversation I had overheard three days ago which sends tension into my body at the thoughts of it. Father's voice was low and firm. The words "arranged marriage" and "alliance" and "Lucas Thatcher." I had smiled through every second of that party just to cover up the tension and unsettling thoughts going through my mind. Now the hall was half-empty, the music was fading, and I was trying to navigate the staircase without holding the railing because I had some pride left. "You're going to fall." I knew that voice even before I turned. The voice that made me have sleepless nights. That was Finn, my brother's best friend and bodyguard. The voice came from behind me, low and unbothered. Like he had been watching me teeter on the second step for longer than was polite and had only just decided to say something. I turned around too fast and grabbed the railing anyway. Finn stood at the bottom of the stairs with his arms folded, dressed in all black like always, watching me with those hunter blue eyes that had absolutely no business being that color. He wasn't smiling. He never really smiled. But there was something in the way he was looking at me that made my face warm. "I'm fine," I said. "You've been staring at that step for forty seconds." "I was thinking." "About the step." "About life," I said, with as much dignity as I could manage. He made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. He came up the stairs and stopped beside me, not touching, just close enough that I could smell him. That scent that has lived long in my memory since I was old enough to know what longing felt like. I didn't mind if he was older than me. "Come on," he said simply. "I'll walk you up." Jonathan had probably asked him to. My brother was always doing things like that — sending Finn to find me, sending Finn to check on me, not realizing that every time he did, he was dropping a lit match into something I had been trying very hard to keep from catching fire. I still remembered the first time Johnathan introduced Finn to us. And I've had a crush on him since then. We walked up in silence. That was the thing about Finn — he never filled silence with noise just to be comfortable. Most people did, he didn't. He just existed in quiet like he was born to it, and somehow it always made me want to say something stupid. "Did you enjoy the party?" I asked. "It was your party." "That's not what I asked." He glanced at me sideways. "It was fine." "High praise," I muttered, and he made that almost-laugh sound again. We reached the corridor that led to my room and I turned to face him, walking backwards. "You know," I said, "for someone who's supposed to be at my birthday party, you spent most of it standing in corners." "I was working." "You were brooding." "Same thing." I laughed. And then I stepped back, misjudged the small raised edge of the hallway runner beneath my heels, and the floor tilted. I had exactly one second to register that I was falling before my back hit warmth instead of hardwood. His arm caught me around the waist. His other hand came up instinctively, and suddenly I was pressed against Finn Lorenzo's chest with my hands gripping the front of his shirt and my face tipped up toward his. We were so close. I don't know which one of us moved. Maybe neither of us did. Maybe the universe just narrowed the distance on its own. But his face was inches from mine and his eyes had gone very still, locked on me in a way they never had before, and then — his lips brushed mine. It was barely anything. And then something happened that I had no words for. It started in my chest, a pulling, blooming ache, like a wound opening and healing at the same time. It spread through my ribs and down my spine and into my fingertips where they were still clutching his shirt. The air between us changed, and I felt it so deeply that my eyes filled with tears before I even understood what it was. The mate bond. I had heard the elders describe it. I had thought I understood it. I had not understood it at all. "Finn," I whispered. My voice came out broken in the most beautiful way. He pulled back, not slowly, not gently either. He stepped away from me like I had burned him, one full step back, his jaw tight, his hand dropping from my waist. "That can't happen," he said. I stared at him. "Did you feel that? You felt it. I know you felt it …" "Levrae." "We're mates, Finn. The goddess — she bonded us, I felt it, you have to have felt …" "Stop." His voice was quiet. That was the worst part. He wasn't yelling. He was calm in the way that meant his mind was already made up. "It can't happen. I'm your brother's best friend. I work for your father. I protect this family." "That doesn't matter…" "It matters more than anything you're feeling right now." He looked at me then, really looked at me, and his eyes were doing something complicated that I couldn't read. "You're eighteen. You had too much to drink on your birthday and you don't know what you're saying." I felt that land somewhere tender. "Don't do that. Don't make me small. I have loved you since I was old enough to understand what love was. You know that. You've always known that." Something moved across his face, fast and gone. "Finn, please." I hated how much I meant it. I hated that I was standing in a hallway on my eighteenth birthday, begging a man to want me back. But I meant every word and I couldn't stop. "I'm not a child anymore. I know what I feel. I know what just happened between us. You can't tell me you didn't feel it too." He was quiet for a long moment. Then: "It's forbidden, Levrae. What I am to your family, what I do — there is no version of this that ends well for you. I won't do that to you." "That's not your decision to make." "It is tonight." He looked at me one more time. His jaw was set. His eyes were unreadable. And for just a second, one single second, I thought I saw something there. Something that looked like it was costing him everything to turn away. But he turned away. "Don't tell anyone about this," he said, his back to me now, already walking. "Not Jonathan. Not anyone. Forget it happened." I stood there and watched him go. I pressed my back against the wall and slid down it until I was sitting on the floor of the corridor, knees to my chest, the mate bond still humming in my body like a bell that had been struck and refused to stop ringing. I was not going to cry. I was absolutely going to cry.