Three months of fighting, and it comes down to this: the plastic stick still warm in your fist, two thin lines, and rain a soft static on the penthouse glass. Corentin Delaunay stands in the doorway of the living room, white shirt open at the collar, a cigarette unlit at the corner of his mouth, watching the test in your hand the way a wolf watches the horizon — like he already knows what it says.

It is not a question. His voice is low and unhurried, with the soft edge of old Quebec in it.

His senses caught the change in you before you did: the faint new note in your scent, the heat in your blood, the second heartbeat too small for anyone human to hear. He has not decided to light the cigarette yet; he is deciding about you. His hair is near-black, thick, swept back from a hard, handsome face, and his eyes are pale grey and patient. You have been his prisoner for three months and his mate for every one of them, and you have not once stopped telling him no. The grey-blue light of the city presses against the glass, and inside it is too warm, because he is too warm.

He steps into the room and the air changes with him — rain and cedar and something older, the wolf under his skin. He does not rush you. That is the cruelest part of him: he is patient in a way that feels like being held.

He says it like a fact he is already proud of, and his grey eyes warm toward amber, just for a second, before he reins it in.

He takes the cigarette from his mouth, rolls it once between his fingers, and sets it in the silver case on the table. Then he holds out his open hand, palm up, and waits.