Chapter 65: Boyfriend Speedrun, Alpha Cold Shoulder

The Thunderfang omega uniform was soft. The slippers were warm. The man who gave them to her kept kissing her mid-sentence.

Derek looked at her for a second too long. She looked up at him. Something moved behind his eyes that he killed before it had a name.

"I’ll send for your things. Whatever you’ve got at the Starborne manor, we’ll have it transported by morning."

Nova’s face went red. The heat climbed from her neck to her cheeks so fast it should have come with a warning label. Her things. As in, her slave uniform. Things that probably wouldn’t belong in a place like this.

The grand total of Nova Grey’s worldly possessions could fit in a box.

"Or I’ll get you new things. Better things," Derek said quickly.

This man had known her for what, a few hours? He was aggressively taking care of her and it was doing things to her chest that she refused to get emotional about. Was he worried she didn’t like the uniform?

"Thunderfang-issued," he continued. "Also non-Thunderfang issued. Nice quality—"

"Oh," she said, surprised. "That’s alright. You don’t have to—"

"—or I can just call for another uniform because this one is too big—"

"Thank you, Derek. I love it."

He closed his mouth. Opened it. Closed it again. He looked upset.

"Are you alright?" she asked softly after a moment.

He shook his head once, then kissed her on the lips, derailing that train of thought on contact.

"Sky deck," Derek said against her lips.

Before the words registered, he scooped her up. Both arms. Full lift. Zero consultation.

A noise left her mouth that was somewhere between a squeak and a yelp and would haunt her dignity for the foreseeable future.

"I can walk," she managed.

"Hard pass on that."

He was already moving.

The sky deck was all glass. Floor-to-ceiling panels wrapped the room in a panoramic cage of storm, a forest on the horizon, and ocean below.

Derek set her down on a leather couch that lined the far wall and the cushion swallowed her whole.

He knelt in front of her, one hand still on the armrest.

"It’s usually better up here when it’s not—"

She was already clapping her hands, involuntarily. "It’s so pretty."

Then she looked down and noticed he looked very upset again. "Oh, are you—"

He kissed her before the question could finish.

His mouth found hers mid-word and the syllable died between their lips. It was brief. Firm. The kind of kiss that doesn’t ask permission because it already knows the answer and came to collect. His hand cupped the side of her face, thumb brushing below the bruise Celeste had left, and when he pulled back, the look in his eyes was the look of a man who had just confirmed something he’d been calculating since the arena.

Nova’s brain performed a factory reset.

He draped a blanket over her before she could process the kiss, tucking it around her shoulders with a focus that suggested he had opinions about thermoregulation and intended to enforce them. Her hair was still damp and she definitely had a cold or something.

"Thirsty?" He was already moving towards the bar.

"Yes."

He started listing options. Names she had heard through walls and around corners in the Starborne manor but had never tasted. Whiskey. Bourbon. Something called a Stormchaser that he described with the enthusiasm of a man pitching his religion.

"Water, please."

He handed her a water bottle. Opened it for her. That was the moment Nova Grey fully understood she was in big trouble.

"Thank you," she said softly.

He poured himself something amber that smelled expensive and sat down next to her. Close. The kind of close that telegraphed intent, his arm stretching along the back of the couch behind her, his body angled towards hers.

"You’re welcome," he whispered, and kissed her again.

Slower this time. His mouth lingered and the warmth of it traveled from her lips to her collarbone to somewhere behind her ribs that she was going to have to address eventually. When he pulled back, her face was the color of a sunset that had given up on subtlety.

She was still not adapting to the fact that this man was her mate. The word itself felt borrowed, like a dress that belonged to someone more deserving and she was wearing it in the dark hoping nobody noticed. Derek Thunderfang kissed her like it was obvious. She was treating it like a clerical error the Goddess would correct by morning.

He kissed her when she thanked him. He kissed her when she said the view was pretty. He kissed her when she tried to ask if he was alright. Derek Thunderfang was a compulsive kissing, conversation-crashing, cap-twisting mate whose method of communication was working for him.

His arm hooked around her waist, starting to pull her back onto his lap when the door opened.

"Alright, Derek." Astra walked in with the energy of a woman who had been summoned to too many of these meetings and was already billing for her time. "What’s the plan?"

Alpha Thunderfang entered a moment later.

His eyes landed on Nova first. Then on his brother. Then back on Nova with an expression that had been stripped of every warm thing she had seen in it earlier today. The man who had carried her at Alpha speed, held her in his lap, kissed her knuckles, and wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb was gone. What replaced him was an Alpha who looked like he wanted nothing to do with her and was tolerating being in the same room.

Nova understood he probably wouldn’t be very happy with her.

She was wearing his pack’s uniform, sitting on his couch, under his blanket, on his yacht, and she felt like she was doing something wrong because he was the Alpha and she was a slave.

"The slave is due to report to the Starborne princess’s quarters," Alpha Thunderfang said to Derek without looking at her.