Blake POV
I smelled her before I reached the door.
Not the soft sweetness she carried before.
Not the frightened, trembling scent of a captured wolf.
No.
This was heat.
Wild.
Fevered.
Pure temptation.
It struck me like a blow to the chest—hot, sweet, dizzying—curling through my veins in a molten rush. My claws dug into the stone wall just to stay upright.
Not now. Not yet. She can’t handle this.
Blaze surged forward in my mind, snarling with a need so fierce it nearly took my knees out from under me.
Mate. She needs us. Go inside. Now.
“I can’t,” I gritted out, pressing my forehead to the cold wood of her door. “If I touch her—if I let her scent any closer—I’ll take her.”
Then take her. She wants—
“No.”
The word cracked, brittle as broken stone.
She did not understand mati
