her. The last thing either of them needed was for her to be walking around with some tragically romantic fantasy in her head.
She was an omega. That didn't just put her in danger—it made her dangerous in ways she couldn't even comprehend.
He had done his damnedest to protect her from the truth. But she'd dragged it out of him anyway, relentlessly keeping at him until she got what she wanted.
Just like Stephanie had.
Zeke felt the dark place beckoning him, trying to drag him down again.
It wasn't the first time. Hell, it wasn't even the first time this month. There was only one solution when the black moods came, trailing broken promises and bitter memories behind them—sleep it off, and start again tomorrow. It was all he could do.
He turned around and headed for the cabin, but only got a few steps before Darcy called after him.
"Um…Zeke?"
He stilled, his body rigid, but didn't turn around. "What now?"
"It's pretty cold tonight."
"So?"
"You ripped the door off the shed."
Fuck.
Zeke groaned inwardly, cursing his loss of control earlier. It was cold out—and it was only going to get colder as the night wore on.
But Zeke wasn't in any shape to make repairs tonight. And he sure as hell didn't have the self-restraint to let this woman stay in the house with him.
"Fine," he growled. "You can sleep inside the cabin tonight and I'll stay in the shed. But just remember that I can sense every damn thing you do."
"Thank you," Darcy said in a small voice. She followed a few steps behind him as he started moving again. "And I promise I won't make a sound. You won't even know I'm here."
Zeke ground his teeth.
It was way too late for that.
Chapter Nine
On almost every morning of her life before coming to the Boundarylands, no matter what she'd been doing or how hard she'd partied before falling asleep, Darcy woke up secure in the knowledge that she'd seen much weirder shit on the job than whatever had happened the night before. Working the front desk in a busy city police department tended to do that to a person.
This morning, however, that wasn't the case.
Last night was the new gold standard of weird nights, the one by which all others would be judged.
Miraculously, Darcy had managed to get some sleep, curled up in the massive leather chair in front of the fireplace. She hadn't wanted to risk sleeping upstairs in Zeke's bed. Somehow that felt too intimate. Besides, down here, the embers of the fire hadn't just kept her warm. They'd also given her the illusion of safety.
But in the harsh light of a new day, reality slammed back with a vengeance, and Darcy didn't think she'd ever really feel safe again.
Things had been bad enough when the Baron brothers were the only imminent danger she faced. But now there was an even bigger and more immediate threat. Unlike the two dirty cops who wanted to kill her, this new enemy wasn't threatening to end her life, but to change it.
To change her.
She wasn't scared of running, or hiding, or starting her life over. Changing her hair and clothes and even her name didn't matter because Darcy knew who she was at her core.
At least, she thought she knew.
It had taken Zeke all of four words to shatter that illusion.
You're an omega, Darcy.
Darcy had no idea how to fight off an enemy that silently lurked inside her.
By comparison, staving off Robert and David—hell, even dispatching Scott—had been easy. Darcy knew how to run, how to hide, how to fight for her life and win.
But she had no idea how to battle herself. She didn't have the first clue how to guard against her own nature, against the bomb that had been buried so deep that she hadn't even known it was there.
If only she had never come here, the fuse might never have been lit, and Darcy might never have known what she was. But last night, the same stranger who had saved her life had told her truths only he could see.
It was pointless to try to convince herself he was lying. Anyone could see in Zeke's troubling storm-cloud eyes that he never lied.
Looking back, Darcy felt like a fool for not figuring it out sooner.
It had been there from the start, from the first time she laid eyes on him—the strange tingling sensation that started low in her body and spread like lightning along every nerve, burning molten pathways all the way to her fingers