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She snorts. “I’m honored.”

“Now I’m the one who is not sure if you’re joking.”

Paige’s eyes twinkle. “Sucks not knowing, doesn’t it, cowboy?”

“Game warden,” I correct.

Except, I haven’t told her the whole story.

Rhett and I met on that search and rescue. We saved the kid. But we fell in love afterward, when the wind unexpectedly changed direction, dangerously driving the fire between us and the rest of the team.

Rhett and I were trapped.

My secret, which I’d successfully hidden from my bosses, was revealed: my out-of-control uber-dominant pheromones when I was under sensory stress.

Ever since I presented with my dynamic, I spent my rare feral ruts locked up in my tiny apartment. I suffered through them alone, destroying my bed and my few possessions.

I wasn’t meant to have one for months, but the fear for the teenager, who looked similar to me, must have triggered one.

I growled, lost in a haze.

“What the hell is happening?” Rhett hauled me, as I fell into a feral rut, to a cave beside the creek.

I snarled and growled, fevered and wild.

Around us, the forest blistered and burned.

I choked on the thick smoke that turned day to night.

Ash tumbled around me, turning my icy-white hair and face gray.

Our boots ground on the gravel, and the water dripped on our heads, as we entered the cave.

I struggled against Rhett’s hold.

I was strong. I hadn’t met anyone who could hold me down since I was bullied and beaten as a kid.

I had made damn sure of it.

But Rhett held me with ease.

That did something to me that I didn’t understand.

Despite the red haze in my mind, which was sweeping through me, I could feel something in me relaxing in a way that it never had in a rut before.

I didn’t hurt like I usually did.

Instead, I craved to bare my neck.

What was happening to me?

Rhett slammed me to the floor, pinning me beneath him.

He grabbed my chin, not caring that I was snapping my teeth at him savagely, and took a deep breath.

“You’re in rut.” Rhett wound his hand in my hair, wrenching my head more firmly to the side. His eyes blazed. “You damn fool.”

When I clawed at him, he grabbed my wrists, pinning them to my sides. Then he straddled me, holding me down with his thighs.