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Beau owns the award-winning Dark Monarch tattoo parlor, and he inked a butterfly on each of us to mark us as members of his pack.

I trail my thumb down my scarred bond bite.

It is sensitive. I shiver in pleasure.

Through the bond, I can sense my Alpha’s emotions.

His joy.

My shoulders slump in relief.

Did Beau win his tattoo contest?

When Beau’s happiness intensifies, sweeping through me, although he is thirty thousand feet above me in a plane, I feel just as connected as if he was standing right beside me.

We promised each other that we would spend my next heat together in a proper nest. After nearly four years working our asses off restoring this rundown historic inn in Oak Hollow, which has been our lifelong dream, Evan wanted to give me this.

We haven’t taken a single day off.

What’s more important than getting the inn ready for the grand opening?

The whole town said that we were damn fools for buying this old Victorian inn that’s needed so much love to bring it back to life.

The whole town has treated us like damn fools our entire lives.

Well, they can watch us open this inn at the end of the month, and I’ll be proud as hell of my pack.

Evan says that I am a workaholic, but he’s not one to talk. We’ve been passionate about this inn since we were kids.

It’s why I chose to stay behind, rather than attend the convention with Beau.

One of the reasons.

Suddenly, I catch movement out of the window.

A shadow.

I jump.

My heart rate spikes.

I fumble for my phone, dragging it out of my apron pocket.

I catch a glimpse of icy blue eyes underneath a felt Stetson.

“Devlin, you Alpha piece of shit.” I draw away from the window.

Then I clench my jaw.

I won’t let the Alpha who has been bullying and stalking me since Cedar Ridge drive me from Acorn Inn.

How could I have admitted the truth to Beau that part of the reason I didn’t attend the conference with him was because I was frightened that if I left this close to the opening, Devlin would trash the place…or set it on fire?

“You’re mine, Paige,” Devlin murmured in my ear, as he pinned me against a wall in Oak Hollow’s square last week. “And if I need to burn your dreams one by one, until you have nothing to cling to but me, then I will.”

I shudder.

Except, Devlin isn’t just an obsessed Alpha who I rejected at school now. He’s the wealthiest rancher in Texas.