Chapter Five

Petra sat in the café for a long time after Emmett left, as the staff cleaned up around her and eventually asked if she'd like them to wrap up the leftover pastries, because they were closing. She forced a smile on to her face that probably looked as fake as it felt and said yes, that would be great, because she couldn't bring herself to waste the food he'd bought. Deep within her, her wolf was feeling a kind of profound satisfaction at the idea that he wanted to provide for her, even if it was only by obtaining a ludicrous number of baked goods to eat while they were talking.

She wanted to cry. She'd seen the hurt in his eyes when she talked about breaking the bond. When he'd asked if it was because of who he was, she couldn't lie and say that didn't have anything to do with it. It wasn't all of it, and she'd be lying if she said she hadn't been brutally attracted to him from the beginning, but dammit, she wanted that attraction to come from her, not from some predetermined bond that centered on her being borderline addicted to the smell of him.

Sitting there, breathing in his scent, taking in the harsh male beauty of him, had been hard enough. Gods, but she'd love to do some truly carnal things with Emmett O'Neill. If she'd met him on a night out, maybe she'd even have become one of the myriad women who'd shared his bed for a night.

She'd love to understand how this man could have so many one-night stands and remain on good enough terms with the women he took to bed that she'd never heard any of them speaking of him any way but favorably. She was right on the precipice of begging to become one of them, and sitting across from him, breathing in his sweet-salty seaside scent, had not made what she was doing any easier.

But Petra knew what she wanted, dammit. She didn't want a life with someone the universe had selected without asking her. She wanted someone she chose, someone she grew to love organically, not someone who was predestined for her and whom she immediately wanted to fall into bed with. Not that she didn't. She'd have given up a lot for the opportunity to take Emmett to bed without there being any repercussions. But she knew he'd see it as her succumbing to this so-called "mating" bond, accepting that they were connected that way and meant to be together, and she couldn't do that. Not to him, or to herself. She needed to hold herself together, even if he was haunting her suddenly highly sexual dreams.

She collected the bag of kindly wrapped pastries, along with her handbag, and left the café. Once she was outside, she heaved in several deep breaths of the clear evening air and pulled out her phone.

Francesca answered on the third ring. "What's up, big sis?"

"Something's going on," Petra said, unwilling to describe the situation while standing on the side of the road. "Can I come over? I'll bring pizza."

"Absolutely," Francesca said, sounding concerned. "Is everything okay?"

"It will be," Petra said hesitantly. "It's just that there's a bit of a weird situation going on at the moment. There's a lot to it, and it's wearing me down a bit."

"I'll get some wine," Francesca said with the calm of a Buddhist monk. "We can talk through it with the assistance of alcohol."

"Perfect," Petra said. "I'll be at your place in an hour?"

"Sure," Francesca said. "I'll have a glass poured and waiting for you."

The relationship Petra had with her younger sister was very close. Despite the difference between their ages, they'd always understood each other, and when one had a problem, the other could usually help find a solution that worked for them. Francesca had followed up her counseling degree by getting a job at a telephone service that provided assistance to people in times of desperation, and she thrived in the job that would have driven Petra to distraction. Though they shared a passion for helping people, Frankie was able to emotionally distance herself from the trauma her callers were experiencing enough that what she got from her job was not the emotional burden that Petra would have, but rather satisfaction from being able to provide assistance to, and sometimes even talk down from danger, someone who was struggling. Francesca had a history of taking up multiple social justice causes and giving each a great deal of her energy, until eventually she wore herself out, had to prune down the number of causes she supported to avoid running herself into the ground, and almost immediately began collecting them again.

Last winter, the two of them had started knitting blankets to donate to a local women's shelter that Francesca supported, and they still got together sometimes to watch movies and knit, when they weren't just having dinner to catch up on each other's lives. Come to think of it, Petra had two blankets at home to add to the ever-present box of them at Frankie's house to take to the shelter—she could call and order pizza, drive home and collect the blankets, and pick up the food on her way to Francesca's.

She was almost at her house when she got the feeling that someone was following her. No, she told herself, she was being ridiculous. She checked her rear-view mirror and catalogued the cars behind her by color, white, blue, black, red. She turned two more corners, then checked again. White, green, black. Okay, so the white and black ones might still be with her. She knew little enough about cars that she couldn't catalogue them by model, and they were both common car colors. Well, she was still on a relatively busy street. Maybe they were just going the same way she was. No need to get paranoid. A few more corners, so she was almost home, and she looked again. She was on a quieter street now, in a residential part of town—not somewhere anyone would routinely drive unless their destination was one of the houses in the area. This time only the black car was behind her, a fair way back, not right behind her, but still—she was fairly sure it was the same car. It wouldn't make a lot of sense for someone to still be with her driving home from the inner city. Unless they lived around here, she told herself. She didn't recognize the car, but she didn't know everyone's car in this area. No need, she repeated to herself, to be paranoid.

She pulled into her driveway and quickly let herself in the front door, telling herself she wasn't rushing because she was concerned. The black car drove past just as she was closing the door behind herself, and the windows reflected the sinking sun enough that she couldn't see who was inside the vehicle. Yes, that definitely looked like the same car that had been behind her all along. Could it possibly be someone who also lived around here, or had someone really followed her?

Working for the government came with risks, sure, but having a desk job in the Youth and Community Department wasn't exactly high-risk. She worked with government-sponsored underprivileged youth programs, for heaven's sake. Why would anyone be following her?

She tried to put it out of her head and collected the blankets to take to Frankie's, ringing to order the pizza as she did. Still, her mind was humming with low-level anxiety when she drove to collect the food and then to Francesca's place. The Apex River territory wasn't particularly large, so it wasn't a long drive; some days she walked, but today, she felt like she'd earned the right to drive, given what she'd been through.

Francesca was waiting for her to arrive. She took one look at Petra and gave her a big hug, then took the pizzas. "Come on," she said. "We can talk about whatever's going on while we eat. I have wine."

There was indeed a glass waiting for Petra, and she took a slice of pizza to accompany it as they sat down.

"So," Francesca said, "start wherever's comfortable."

"I met a guy," Petra's mouth said without permission from her brain. "And he smells like the most incredible combination of everything good in the world."

"Oh my god!" Frankie started. "He's your—"

"Yes, yes, it sounds like he's my mate, whatever," Petra dismissed. "But, Frankie, I know this guy. You know him. Everybody knows him. It's Emmett O'Neill, from Blue Crescent."

Francesca stared at her for a moment without even reaching for her pizza, as if expecting Petra to announce that she was joking. "Are you serious?"

"Deadly," Petra said. "The moment I get close to this man, the way he smells, Frankie… it's like this scent was designed just for me, to bring together everything I love. I can't even describe it. It's like the sea, but sweet, but not quite—"

"Hold up," Francesca said. "Let's go back to the part where Emmett O'Neill is your mate."

"I'm not saying I believe in the whole mates thing," Petra said. "I'm just saying that he smells incredible, and whenever I'm around him I start thinking about—well, you know."

"Oh, I know," Francesca said. "As does about half of the pack's eligible females, Petra. What were you thinking?"

"It's not like that," Petra said. "I'm not saying I believe in the whole mates thing, but surely you're familiar enough with it to know that you don't get to choose your mate."

"And the universe picked Emmett O'Neill to be yours?" Frankie said, her voice a full octave higher than normal.

"That's what I'm working with right now," Petra said. "But we had coffee, and we agreed we're going to try to find a way to break this bond—"

"I'm sorry," Francesca interrupted. "You had a coffee date with your mate, who also happens to be the king of the one-night stand among local females, and it didn't somehow end up in—" she waggled her eyebrows "—you know?"

"Yes," Petra said in exasperation. "We had coffee this afternoon, and it was perfectly civil, thank you."

"Gods," Francesca said, "that must have been an effort and a half."

"Oh, you have no idea," Petra replied, thinking of all the times while they'd been sitting in the café that she had wanted to straddle Emmett's lap and breathe in the scent of him before seeing if he kissed as well as his reputation would imply. Before seeing how much more they could get away with in public…

No. No. She needed to calm down before she embarrassed herself. He was just a man, who smelled particularly good, and they were going to find a way to break this bond. Preferably before she slipped up and mentioned that she'd been thinking of him when she touched herself for days now.

"So, now you're going to try to break the predetermined bond of a universe-destined mating, in the process spending a significant amount of time with him, while fighting not to give in to the urge to get busy with the man you're being drawn to like a magnet?" Francesca asked, laughter coloring her tone. "Oh, Pet, you know I think you can do anything, but this might be beyond even you."

"It can't be," Petra said, feeling like she was making some kind of vow, while hopefully not making it too clear that she was almost at the point of desperation. "If a bond can be made, it can be broken, right? So there has to be a way to sever this bond, and I need that, because Emmett O'Neill is not the kind of man I was planning on spending the rest of my life with—no offense to him."

"Of course," Frankie said, this time smiling broadly.

"Just eat your pizza," Petra replied, rolling her eyes. "At least we have a plan now, right? A direction we're going to move in, rather than just tolerating that the universe is jamming us together like a child with two puzzle pieces that don't fit and being unhappy together for the rest of our lives?"

"Why are you so convinced you'd be unhappy?" Francesca asked. "If so many women like him, he can't be entirely awful."

"But so many women like him," Petra said, feeling like she was confessing to a sin. "It's just, he's been with so many girls…" Her voice trailed off. "He'd get bored with me, Frankie. This is a guy who likes variety. I'm just… I'm reliable. I'm predictable."

Understanding lit Francesca's face. "Oh, this is about Regan. You're worried it's going to be a repeat of that."

"I don't recommend being cheated on as a character-building activity," Petra said tartly, "And I don't want to blindly walk into a situation where it's likely to happen again."

"Have you talked to him about this?" Francesca asked, not unkindly.

"Of course not. He'd be so offended. Besides, I barely know the man."

"You know him well enough to consider sleeping with him."

"That's different. Frankie, you don't understand what it's like to be around someone who smells like this! It's like I'm being dragged toward him on a string tied around my insides, every minute of the day. And I don't want to be!" Petra dropped her head into her hands. "I don't understand why this had to happen to me," she groaned. "Why couldn't the universe have picked someone who would just accept whoever it threw into their lap, and do their best to live happily ever after?"

"It does get it right sometimes," Francesca said. "Just the other day, weren't you telling me about the new Blue Crescent Alpha who's mated to that witch you work with? And that they're so obsessed with each other that she fought in an Alpha brawl on his behalf, against a wolf, like, three times her size?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Petra asked, head still in her hands.

"Well, maybe the universe knows something you don't," Francesca suggested. "Maybe there's actually more to him that just being the hook up king?"

"Look, I have great respect for the universe and all it knows," Petra said, "I'm just saying, in this particular case, I think it's wrong. And if I can, I'm going to find a way to fix it."

Francesca let out the deepest of sighs. "All right, if you're determined to undo the work of a higher intelligence because you think you know better, I suppose there's nothing I can do to convince you otherwise."

"Exactly," Petra said with a smile. "So, you might as well stop trying."

They finished dinner and watched an episode of whichever reality dating show was on—Frankie liked them, so Petra put up with them—and Petra got in her car to leave. She only had to drive for about five minutes, but just before she turned down her own street, she thought she saw it again, the black car that had—maybe—been following her earlier.

You're being paranoid, she told herself as whichever black car was behind her—and there was no guarantee it was even the same one—drove past the turn-off to her street. She turned off her car and sat in the driveway for a few moments, trying to pretend she wasn't letting her eyes adjust, just in case there was danger she needed to be aware of. She had her werewolf senses of smell and hearing, at least, but those was somewhat muddled by the number of houses full of people around here.

She didn't run from the car to the door, but she certainly walked briskly, her bag tucked tightly under her arm in case she needed to drop it and shift into her wolf form. After she let herself through the front door, she checked twice that it was locked and did a circuit of the house, closing all the curtains and checking every door and window was locked too. Just because she could turn into a wolf didn't mean she was invulnerable to crime or assault, she told herself. And if whoever was driving that black car really was following her, then maybe they'd stop when they realized that she lived in a house so secure that any attempt to get to her at home would involve a complicated break in.

She wasn't sure if this line of thinking was making her feel better or worse, so she finished and got ready for bed. And, as had been happening the last few days, as though on a clockwork schedule, the moment she prepared to relax and get some sleep, her thoughts turned to Emmett.

Gods, did the man have to be so damn attractive? She'd have been drawn to him even if the bond between them hadn't existed, though admittedly possibly not to this gut-wrenching extent. Every time she saw him, caught his scent, she just wanted to wrap her entire body around his and tell the rest of the world to go to hell until they were finished. Which, if she was being honest about all the things she wanted to do to the man, might take a while.

That was the picture in her head as one of her hands slid beneath the waistband of her panties and gently stroked up the line of her slit. Emmett lifting her up, so she could wrap her arms and legs around him, and kissing her so intensely that her voice was breathy and gasping when she managed to tell him, "Do what you want with my body."

In her imagination, he laid her out on a conveniently located bed and his body pressed hers into the mattress as he devoured her mouth. His hands traced over the lines of her body in her mind, and in reality, she found the swollen nub of her clit and began to draw circles around the hypersensitive flesh. Imaginary Emmett's hands traced the curves of her breasts, her waist, her hips, then pushed her thighs apart, so she was spread open on the bed like a sacrifice beneath him. His hands met at the same place hers currently were, and he traced his fingertips over the places she was wet and swollen, and then leaned down to seal his mouth over her sex, and Petra came at the first flick of his imaginary tongue.

Gods above. No fantasy—including the ones she'd had about Henry Cavill and Idris Elba—had ever made her come as fast as thinking about Emmett being in charge of her body. The curious thing was while she liked an occasional degree of submission to her partners as much as anyone else, she'd never met someone and had this immediate urge to let them do whatever they wanted to her—on the condition that she had the same privilege, of course. She wanted him to learn every inch of her, and then do the same to him, to wring every ounce of pleasure from his body for as long as she could.

She lay back in the bed, panting and staring up into the darkness. All right, this was getting out of hand. You couldn't touch yourself thinking about someone for this many nights in a row and not call it hypocritical when you were planning on destroying the supernatural bond between the two of you.

Maybe we should just sleep together once before the bond is broken, a little voice in the back of her head suggested. Just to see what it's like.

Go to sleep, she instructed that voice, as well as the rest of her, and leaned over to put on the soothing sleep music Francesca had recommended all those months ago.

* * *

Emmett didn't go to work the next day. Gods knew he had mountains of sick leave piled up that he hadn't taken in the past, so he used one of those days today. Instead, he went for a run to the place where Blue Crescent's territory met the forest that surrounded Mystic City, transformed into his wolf form, and ran.

He ran as though he could outrun the despair that seemed to have made a home inside his chest at the knowledge that Petra didn't want him. He ran as though he could get away from the repeated thoughts of her that, despite this knowledge, wouldn't stop plaguing him. It felt like there was a piece of him in her keeping, a piece of him that he felt as an empty space inside himself. The extended session of mindless running in his wolf form, which was supposed to clear his mind and help him feel a little less humiliated to be mooning over a woman who clearly didn't want him, instead just made him more acutely aware of how intensely he longed for her.

When the sun started to go down, he finally stopped. The ache in his stomach from missing her was now matched by exhaustion throughout his body. Somehow, that more diffuse pain made the central one more bearable. He sniffed at the air, breathing hard. He was fairly sure he'd been to this area before, but not for several years. Fortunately, it was up the more distant of the two rings of mountains that encircled this edge of Mystic City, so he knew if he went down this one and over the other, he'd be more or less back where he started. It had been far too long since he'd gone for a good run in this form. Maybe that was why his wolf had been so antsy recently, so determined to be a part of his every decision—the poor animal hadn't had any other route of expression in what amounted to probably months, between work and training sessions and managing the pack since everything happened with Leo and Della. Luckily, Leo was looking like he might be able to settle into his role as Alpha soon, and Emmett and Raj could stop covering the parts that they'd been doing for him. So hopefully soon, Em would return to being able to run like this more regularly, even if just to keep his wolf under control.

He wondered whether Petra liked to run. Gods, but he'd love to run with her one day. He'd take her to the top of the first ring of mountains, then down to the river and follow it to the waterfall, and they could swim in the pool at its base—

He stopped those thoughts in their tracks, took another deep breath, and headed back down the mountain. He shifted into his human form once he was back in his own back garden; the inhabitants of Blue Crescent territory were used to seeing wolves wandering the streets. He was covered in dirt after his long day running through the forest, and he dove into the shower immediately.

He had only been out long enough to pull on a pair of jeans when a knock sounded at the door. He wandered over to look through the window beside the front door and was briefly surprised to see Raj out front. Then the memory hit him—even though he hadn't gone to work today, it was still Friday, and the three of them were supposed to get together to watch the game the way they did when there was a good one on every few weeks.

"Did you decide to leave off the shirt to seduce me, Em?" Raj asked when Emmett opened the door. "Because I have to tell you, it's working."

"Oh, shut up," Emmett said with a laugh, leading Raj into the kitchen where he could set down the ridiculous amount of beer he always brought to game night, "just in case". "I just got in from a run. I was barely out of the shower when I heard you knock. You're lucky I have pants on."

"Lucky, is it?" Raj offered, throwing Emmett an exaggerated wink. "You forgot we were at your place tonight, didn't you?"

"I completely forgot what day it was, actually," Emmett said with a laugh, tucking Raj's beers into the fridge before uncapping one for each of them and handing one to his friend. "Though if it makes you this happy, I suppose I could leave the shirt off for the night."

"Oh, go put some clothes on, you feral dog." Raj laughed. As Emmett was disappearing down the hallway to his bedroom, Raj called, "Any word from Leo? Do you think he'll be able to detach himself from Della's side long enough to take in the game?"

"No idea," Emmett called back, dragging a t-shirt over his head. "I guess we just wait and see."

"Otherwise, it's just you and me once again, Mr. O'Neill." He laughed. "Team Beta on the case."

Emmett snorted and returned to pick up his own beer, then glanced at the clock on the oven. "Do you want to catch the pre-match stuff? Some of it should already be on."

They were settling into their usual seats in front of the television when the knock on the door came.

"Gee, wonder who that could be," Raj said with a laugh, then called in a stage voice, "Alpha, is that you?"

Emmett let Leo in, taking the beers he had also brought from him to put in the fridge, and pulled one out for his friend. "Let's not make this a repeat of the twenty-four-beer evening, shall we?" he said with a grin that he hoped didn't detract from how serious he was. It took a lot to get a werewolf drunk, because their advanced physiology processed the alcohol so quickly, but when Leo had first been mooning over Della, he had managed it with the help of about a case of beer and some seriously questionable liquor.

"Shouldn't need to, now I'm not trying to calm me and my wolf down from fretting over my mate," Leo said with a laugh. He had circles under his eyes, but he looked more relaxed than Emmett had seen him in a long time—an unexpected state for a male who had just taken on the most high-stress job in the entire pack. Though, admittedly, while Leo was looking after Della, Em and Raj had been doing a big chunk of that job for him. He turned to Raj. "And how long's it going to be 'til you get over calling me that, big guy?"

"Oh, I don't know," Raj said with a grin, leaning back so he was reclining along the couch, beer in hand. "Shouldn't be more than a year or three."

Leo rolled his eyes but ditched his shoes by the door, uncapped the beer, tossed the lid on to the coffee table, and took his accustomed seat in front of the TV. "Sorry I was late. I had to get Della settled, make sure she wouldn't need anything while I was gone."

"Leo, she's a witch who nearly burnt herself out, not a paraplegic," Raj said. "Surely, you realize she can stand up to get her own glass of water or something if she needs it."

The three of them carefully made no mention of the fact that she'd come close to burnout by dragging the energy out of Raj's body and into her own to finish the fight for Leo's supremacy over their old Alpha, a skill that not all witches possessed, and most could not use safely, especially under duress—which Della had definitely been in that moment. From what Emmett had heard, though, she was recovering well, though being waited on hand and foot by Leo as much as she would allow.

"The hospital said to keep her relaxed and off her feet as much as possible," Leo said. "That's hard enough in and of itself, so I'm just trying to make sure she has everything she needs close to her and doesn't have to get up much, and if she does, it's not for long."

"You rearranging the entire house?" Emmett joked.

"Making some serious headway." Leo laughed. "You have no idea how hard it is to keep a woman in bed who thrives on activity."

Emmett drained the last of his first beer and uncapped the second he'd brought from the kitchen, tossing the cap on to the coffee table. Leo eyed it.

"Maybe we need to be worried about you hitting the twenty-four-beer mark tonight," he said, sounding like he was only half-joking. "What's up?"

"Oh, he doesn't know," Raj said with a delighted laugh. "My man, you have missed some shit while you've been nursing Della."

"Oh gods, Em," Leo said, looking suddenly like his hackles would be rising if he were in wolf form. "What did you do? Who was it this time?"

"Hey, who says it's about me with a girl?" Emmett protested. He paused and blinked once, then again. "I mean, it is, but it's not what you think."

"Did you mess with someone's partner again?" Leo demanded.

"It's not like that," Emmett insisted. "It's… you know that girl Petra, who the Apex River Alpha brought in to see Della the first day?"

"Oh, no," Leo said.

"Wait for it," Raj said, which did nothing to calm the situation.

"She… I think she's my mate. I caught her scent while we were all in the hospital room, and since then, it's like I can't stop thinking about her. I feel like I'm being dragged toward wherever she is, even when I don't know where that is a hundred percent of the time."

There was a moment of shocked silence.

Finally, Leo spoke. To Emmett's surprise, he looked kind of… happy?

"That's fantastic, man!" he said, rising from his seat to clap a hand on Em's tense shoulder. "Your mate is a werewolf and everything; that takes out so much of the trouble. How is she dealing with it? She must be going through much of the same stuff, I presume."

"Well, I would have presumed so too," Emmett said stiffly. "But number one, she doesn't believe in mates, she just thinks this is some kind of strange scent bond between us, and number two, she doesn't want hers to be me."

"Woah, woah, hold up," Raj interrupted. "You hadn't told me that last bit."

"That's why I asked if you could dig up some books on the topic," Emmett said. "She wants to do as much reading on the subject of mate bonds as possible, to work out if she can find a way to break ours."

Another shocked silence filled the room.

"You're joking, right?" Leo said. "But I thought all females dreamed of having their mate appear to sweep them off their feet. And you're a catch, man! Any girl would be happy to have you profess undying devotion to them."

"That's kind of the problem," Emmett said, shooting Leo a half-grin to acknowledge the compliment. "She doesn't like the—well, the reputation I've got. I could look like Frankenstein's monster and that'd probably be more welcome to her than being bonded to me."

"And you're going to let her try to break the bond?" Raj asked, disbelieving. "You're not going to try to talk her down, convince her to keep it? I mean, if anyone could convince her, I'll bet you could."

"And what, spend the rest of my life with someone I had to talk into wanting to spend time with me?" Emmett asked. "I don't want that." He heaved in a sigh and took a swig of his beer. "Look, she doesn't want it. That's the only thing that matters here. So, we're going to do as much reading as we can, please and thanks, Raj, and see if we can find a way to break the bond. Hell, if the universe can make it out of thin air, there's got to be a way to break it, right? Some kind of magic?"

"I can talk to Della about it if you'd like," Leo offered. "See if she knows of any magical intervention. I'm warning you, she'll probably take Petra's side, though. They've worked together for ages, and they're good friends."

"I kind of just want the whole thing to be over," Em admitted. "You don't know what it's like, being viscerally tied to someone who seems to want nothing to do with you. We had coffee yesterday, and the whole time I was just fighting to keep my hands to myself. To not keep edging closer and closer so I could smell her scent better—"

"Which, knowing you, would have ended with her on your lap and your hands doing things that would get you kicked out of the coffee shop, if not arrested," Raj interjected.

"Exactly," Emmett said. "In my head, that's how it goes because that's what I really, really want. To hold her, and please her, and provide for her, and keep her safe. Was it like this with Della?" He directed the somewhat frantic question to Leo.

"To a point," his friend admitted, "but she was interested in me, so I think I had it a bit easier there. But the constant drive to satisfy every need she has? Yeah, that's part of the bond."

"Can we go back to the part where you had coffee with the woman who apparently doesn't want anything to do with you?" Raj asked. "Can you explain that?"

"We needed to understand each other's perspectives on what was going on, I guess, so we organized to have coffee and chat about it," Em said. "And come up with a plan. For breaking the bond." He took a long drag from his beer and was surprised to find it almost empty. "Gods, I wish I knew what this was like for her. The females can't have it anything like the way it is for us, can they? Or else she'd want me as much as I want her. And I want her so badly, it's killing me just to keep my hands off her whenever I see her."

"Maybe she does," Raj said, "but she's tamping it down."

Emmett snorted.

"He's got a point," Leo said. "You're able to tamp down on the urges it's bringing up in you. If she has some problem with you being her mate, maybe she's doing the same thing."

The sudden image in Emmett's head of Petra fighting her desire to touch him, to please him, had blood shooting through his body to places he did not want it to be while his two best friends were in the room. He gestured with his empty beer bottle and hustled to the kitchen on the pretense of getting another, taking the time to try to clear his head of the fantasy of Petra looking at him and seeing someone she wanted to touch, to satisfy as much as he wanted to please her. Deep breaths didn't help to control his unruly body, and just as he was about to resort to punching himself in the dick to take care of his insistent hard-on, he found what might have been the one thing that could deflate it almost instantly.

The memory of her telling him she didn't want him. Him, specifically, beyond all other males with whom she could have been mated.

Yep, that did it.

Emmett went back out to Raj and Leo with his body under control and his friends entirely otherwise. There was no way to control the schemes the two of them cooked up while they were supposed to be watching the game—Raj suggested hiding a collection of love stories in the pile of texts he set aside for Em and Petra to go through regarding mating bonds, so that Petra would read them thinking they had some relevance to the bond, have love on her mind and, of course, immediately stop being able to hold back her attraction to Emmett. Leo had cooked up a scheme that, as Blue Crescent Alpha, he could call the two of them forward on official pack business, then leave then in a waiting room for long enough that they couldn't keep their hands off each other, and when he eventually came for them, they'd have decided there was nothing more important than their bond.

The two males had more schemes than there were stars in the sky, and at the end of each one, Emmett had to underscore the fact that Petra didn't want to be with him, and he didn't want to be with someone who had to be forced into liking him. So as many creative ideas as they had for drawing her into letting down her guard and fulfilling the mating bond, none of them were realistic, because the Petra Dalman Emmett knew would spend the entire time on her guard. As much as he might want to drag her into any available corner and show her exactly what the strength of a mating bond could do, the plans Emmett's friends came up with were ridiculous, and he told them so.

No, he was going to be reasonable about this. He was going to go the library with Petra when Raj got the books together, and together—no, not even together; separately, but in the same location, like two good, unwilling mates—they would examine as many texts as the librarians were able to find about a mating bond, how it formed, and how they would go about breaking it.

Surely, if they read enough about it, if they weighted it with enough reason, they would find a way to break the bond.

Emmett just had to try not to acknowledge the part of himself that didn't want it to. That part, they would all ignore. He just had to throw himself behind the part that supported Petra and her wish for the bond to be broken and, as much as possible, ignore the part of himself that longed for her in a way that he wasn't sure would disappear even with the shattering of the bond.

He would find a way to alter the bond. If she really didn't want it, he would find a way to free her from it. They just had to work out how.