Not just, the Beta

The pack's nightclub is still pounding bass three floors below us, and I'm hauling a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound future Alpha through the corridor like he's a sack of wet concrete.

I hate him. I hate him so much right now.

"Sera." Caspian's arm tightens around my shoulders, his breath hot and reeking against my cheek. "Sera, I can make it. Watch."

He tries to straighten up. His legs immediately betray him. I catch him before his skull introduces itself to the wall.

"You absolutely cannot." I readjust my grip around his ribs, fingers digging in. "Gideon's passed out in the booth. Finn's asleep on the actual bar. You're the only one left standing, and you're barely doing that."

He laughs. Caspian Valerius,future Alpha of Valerius Pack, the most feared name in three territories,laughs, head lolling, because this is apparently funny to him.

"Wouldn't have happened if you'd kept up."

"I don't drink on duty."

"It's your birthday."

"It was my birthday. Past tense. It's past midnight."

We reach the elevator. I stab the button with my elbow. The doors open and I shoulder him inside, both of us catching our reflections in the mirrored panel,him a rumpled, flushed mess in a shirt he's unbuttoned halfway down his chest; me sweating through my dress, expression murderous.

'Happy eighteenth, Sera. This is what adulthood looks like.'

The ride up to the penthouse is silent except for Caspian humming something off-key. I don't ask what it is. I focus on not dropping him.

The suite door opens with his key card, which takes three attempts because his hands aren't cooperating. I walk him through the entryway and into the main room, eyes on the couch,the plan is simple, deposit him, leave, go sleep off this entire evening.

I don't account for the rug.

Caspian's foot catches the edge of it. His weight shifts, I overcorrect, and then we're both going down,his shoulder hitting the floor, mine following, and I land half on top of him with a grunt that knocks the air clean out of me.

Silence.

Then Caspian starts laughing again, louder this time, shoulders shaking beneath me.

"That," he announces, "was your fault."

I push myself up onto my hands. "Your rug tried to kill me."

"My rug is fine. Your footing is a disaster." He grins up at me,that unbothered, crooked grin that I've watched him use on everyone from sparring partners to pack elders, the one that makes people forget they were ever angry. "I thought you were supposed to be coordinated."

"I am coordinated. I'm coordinating your drunk body and it's a full-time job."

"I'm barely drunk."

"Caspian."

"Okay. Medium drunk." He shifts, propping himself up on one elbow, and something in his expression goes sly. "I bet I could still take you."

I stare at him. "You can barely stand."

"Didn't say anything about standing." Before I can parse that, his hand shoots out and grabs my wrist, and he pulls, rolling sideways, and suddenly I'm the one on my back with him looming over me, grinning like he's just won something.

"See?"

"You cheated." I push against his chest. He doesn't budge,even drunk, the man is built like a wall. "Get off."

"Admit I win."

"I'll do no such thing."

His fingers find my ribs. I yelp before I can stop myself,and there it is, the thing he's always known about me, the thing I've never successfully defended against. He knows exactly where I'm ticklish and he has zero shame about using it.

"Stop," I'm laughing despite myself, squirming, shoving at his hands. "That's,Caspian, that is cheating,"

"It's strategy."

"It's cheating,"

I manage to hook my leg around his, twist my hips, and flip us. Now I'm on top, pinning his wrists to the floor, both of us breathless. He looks up at me. I look down at him.

The laughter fades.

I don't know exactly when it shifts,when the room gets quieter, when his eyes stop being amused and start being something else entirely. Maybe it's the way his chest rises under me. Maybe it's the two drinks I had tonight, which I didn't think were enough to matter. Maybe it's the fact that we're tangled together on the floor of his suite at one in the morning and there is no one else in the world right now, just us, just this.

His hands are still beneath mine. He doesn't try to pull them free.

"Sera." His voice is lower. The grin is gone.

I should get up.

I don't.

And then his head lifts off the floor and his mouth finds mine, and I stop thinking.

The kiss tastes like whiskey and something warmer underneath, and I make a sound against his lips that I've never made before in my life,surprise or want or both, I can't tell. His hands break free of mine and they're on my hips, my waist, pulling me down, and I don't fight it. I don't want to fight it.

'This is insane,' some part of me says. 'This is insane and you need to stop.'

I don't stop.

His shirt hits the floor somewhere. Mine follows. His hands are rougher than I expected, less careful than I expected, and I realize dully that this is Caspian without his control,the version of him that doesn't calculate, that just takes, and god help me because that's the version currently pulling at the zipper on my dress with his teeth.

"Caspian,"

"Tell me to stop." His mouth is against my collarbone. "Tell me to stop and I will."

I don't tell him to stop.

The dress goes. His slacks follow. The floor is hard under my back and his weight is everywhere above me and when he pushes forward I make a sound that's half cry and half something else,a sharp, tearing pain that flares white and then blurs into something I don't have words for. He stills.

"Sera,"

"Don't stop." I grab his shoulder. "Don't you dare stop."

A groan rumbles out of him, low and animal, and then he moves, and I stop being able to form coherent thoughts at all.

Afterward, the silence is enormous.

Caspian is heavy and warm against my back, his breathing already slowing, going deep and even. I lie absolutely still and watch the ceiling and wait for my pulse to come back down from wherever it's gone.

It takes longer than I expect.

When I finally shift to look at him, he's out. Completely, genuinely unconscious, face slack, one arm thrown over me with the careless weight of someone who has no idea what they've just done.

He won't remember this.

I know that about him. Caspian blacks out when he drinks past a certain point,it's the one vulnerability he has that nobody outside the inner circle knows. He'll wake up tomorrow with gaps. He'll wake up tomorrow on this floor, confused and hungover, and he won't remember.

I will.

I sit up slowly, and my body registers every single thing that happened in the last hour. A dull ache, low and insistent. The ghost of his hands. The marks I can feel already blooming on my hips.

My dress is in three pieces.

I stare at it for a long, stupid moment.

'Tristan.' The name cuts through everything else. 'If Tristan finds out. If anyone finds out.'

The Beta position isn't mine yet. It's expected,I'm a Vance, I've trained for it since I could walk, I've spent my entire life positioning myself for the role,but expected isn't guaranteed, and my brother has been circling that expectation like a vulture for years. All he needs is one mistake.

This would not be one mistake. This would be a catastrophe.

I get to my feet. Every muscle in my lower body protests. I ignore it.

My dress is useless. My shoes are somewhere near the door. I do a rapid survey of the room,the corridor outside the suite is shared only with one other door: mine. It's fifteen feet. Fifteen feet across an empty hallway at one-thirty in the morning.

I can do fifteen feet.

I crack the suite door open. The corridor is silent, lit only by the low nighttime sconces. Empty.

I go.

Fifteen feet. Bare feet on carpet, moving fast, every nerve in my body screaming. My door,my key card is still clipped to my bra strap, thank god. I press it to the panel. The lock beeps. I shove through.

The door closes behind me.

I press my back against it and slide down until I'm sitting on the floor, knees to my chest, staring at the dark room around me.

My hands are shaking.

I press them flat against the carpet and breathe.