And here was Leveret, the lone hare alpha, bringing me a flower to cheer me up.
Nobody else had ever done that. Not evenhim.
I veered away from that thought before it took me down a dark path. That was ages ago. I wasn’t with that person anymore. I was here, now, with Leveret.
Leveret, who was special somehow.
“By the way,” Leveret said, fiddling with his fingers. “I’m sorry Terranus said no.”
“Oh, it’s fine. I knew he would.”
He frowned. “I didn’t listen to you.”
“It’s okay, Leveret. I’m kind of glad you didn’t.”
He didn’t look up to meet my eyes. He stared at the red and yellow leaves scattered across the ground. He murmured, “I disobeyed you earlier, too. When you told me to stay quiet.”
“No harm, no foul,” I reassured him.
A guilty note entered his voice. “You don’t like alphas who disobey you, right?”
My mouth gaped in shock. Where did that come from? Until now, Leveret made no mention of alpha and omega dynamics except to tell Terranus he had no fated mate.
No fated mate...
That confession finally struck me. No mate meant Leveret was available.
And thatdefinitelyshouldn’t have pleased me as much as it did.
In a pathetic attempt to stop that train of thought, I shoved a mental wall down. It didn’t work. The train crashed right through it and plowed ahead into the danger zone—the area of my mind where I allowed myself to fantasize about a life with Leveret.
My fingers curled.
It was at that point I recalled my hand resting on his knee, and had done so the entire time.
I shivered with a mix of pleasure and guilt before withdrawing it. A wave of hot shame made my skin crawl.
Gods, this hare shifter made me lose my mind.
“I—who told you that?” I stammered.
He blinked in confusion. “Every one of my alpha cousins said you were rude to them.”
Well, I couldn’t deny that.
“Some of them deserved it,” I muttered.
“And they all said you were nice to the omegas,” Leveret went on.
That was also true. Even the ones who perhapsdidn’tdeserve it. I still remembered the pain from when Meeko stabbed me in the back because I threatened his annoying alpha boy toy.
Okay, maybe Leveret’s statement didn’t come completely out of the blue.
“But I’m an alpha,” Leveret said slowly, “and you haven’t been rude or mean to me.”
My heart twisted into knots. “No.”
“Why?” he asked.