Riven found me in the library that afternoon. I didn't hear him come in. That should have bothered me more than it did — I've spent two years making sure nothing gets close without me knowing — but the library had this quality where sound moved differently. Thick rugs, floor-to-ceiling shelves, the kind of quiet that felt intentional instead of empty.
I was sitting in one of the deep leather chairs near the east window with a book I wasn't reading, just holding, staring at the same paragraph for the third time and not absorbing a single word of it.
My head was too full.
Four alphas. Four different approaches. Four versions of the same impossible thing I wasn't supposed to want and definitely wasn't supposed to feel pulling at something low in my chest every time one of them got close enough for my biology to notice.
"You're thinking loud."
I looked up.
