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My encounter with the Rager brought me to this understanding. How quickly everything comes and goes, and the world keeps spinning, in spite of it. There’s no time to dream of selfish things.

Even if my goal is to return to that life someday, I need to ensure my survival up until that point.

I need Titus, now more than ever. I need him to see me as more than a traveling companion. As something valuable to protect.

It’s a plan that goes against every fiber of my being and everything I’ve come to know about Alphas, but if there’s one thing this world has taught me, it’s this: in a land of monsters, survival comes before everything else. Even pride.

If I was a bolder woman, I’d step out from my hiding spot and go to him. Instead, I slip back into the shadows, scarcely daring a breath, as I pad quietly back to my room.

* * *

I opt for a thin cotton tank top, not only for the insane heat of the day, but because it clings to every curve of my breasts. It’s not that I’d consider it natural for me to flirt with a man, by any means, but hearing my name on his lips the night before has somehow emboldened me. It’s removed all traces of doubt, regardless of what he tells me. The shirt is subtle enough, with the temps rising in the nineties, that he might not notice, at all, but if he does, it might serve as an invitation without me having to say the words aloud.

I exit the cabin to the back, where Titus stands swinging an axe around as if to loosen his muscles. It’s day two of our training, and I’m all too eager. At breakfast, I tried not to stare at him, but after seeing him sprawled naked, I’ve begun to notice things I didn’t before. The tiny mole on his cheek, just above his jawline. The scar that crosses over his cheekbone. The creases at the corners of his eyes that crinkle with even his slightest smile.

The band at his throat that I’m determined to remove today.

I remember a gypsy from Szolen once told me that unexpected kindness is the surest path to someone’s heart, and if I want this Alpha watching my back for the long haul, it seems I need to balance the scales a bit. Make him see me as something valuable, instead of a risk.

When he turns to face me, his broad, bare chest is already shimmering with the sweat of his workout this morning, and I can scarcely breathe.

There’s something utterly magnificent about Titus in dawn’s light. He’s an ice cold drink on a sweltering desert afternoon. The kind with frost on the glass and perfectly square ice cubes just begging to be plucked by the tongue.

Jesus, I need to stop staring.

Across the yard, Yuma sits gnawing on a log he must’ve stolen from the stack of piled wood.

I hold up the tool I scavenged from the utility drawer in the cabin--a long skinny metal pick with a wooden handle that I think might’ve served as an ice pick, and a small steel clip my mother once told me was commonly used to hold papers together.

Brows furrowed in confusion, Titus flits his gaze to the tool, while I approach.

“We’re taking that band off your throat today.”

“What brought this on?”

I gesture for him to take a seat on the wooden picnic table beneath the overhanging canopy of a tree, out of the sun’s blazing heat. “Because you’re not a slave. You’re a free man. And I can’t stand the way it digs into your throat.”

“You’ve picked a lock before?”

“No, but I understand the mechanics of a lock. I just need to see how yours is set up. I’m surprised you never tried to take it off yourself.”

He glances down at the pick and back. “Not a lot of skinny tools out in the middle of the desert.” Taking a seat at the table puts his face at the level of my practically exposed breasts, and those amber eyes cut to them, swirling with unseen fascination. “’Sides that, I forget it’s there sometimes. Unless it’s in my way.” Stare lingering a bit too long, he licks his lips, just before I prod his head back.

As I examine the teeth on the small circular lock, I catch the bob of his throat. “You don’t like to be held in a vulnerable position, do you?”

“No doubt, you could stab me in the neck with that thing. But it’d only take the seconds I bleed out to crush every bone in your body. So, what’s the point?”

“Wow. That’s the most romantic thing someone’s ever said to me. And what’s with crushing every bone? Is that the greatest demonstration of strength among Alphas?”

“Not easy to do. Some bones are harder to crush than others.”

“You know this from experience?”

“Yes. A person stays alive. Conscious the whole time. They feel everything.”

Something about his observations is unsettling, raising the hair on my skin. “You’re not speaking from the perspective of the one crushing.”

“No.”