I'm Andrew Johnson, and I have this thing-skin hunger, they call it.

The awful, longing desire to be touched.

To feel somebody near. But my mate, Sophia Lewis, is a she-wolf with a germ phobia so acute that it is as if I were anathema to her.

I touch her arm and she scrubs her hands raw with half a bottle of sanitary wash.

I steal a kiss, and she scrupulously brushes her teeth for ten minutes, as if I were a kind of a wrecking germ.

I once attempted to act the drunken role, and staggered to her bed, hoping to find a crack in the ice wall encompassing her, but she rolled me out-me and the whole bed-clothing set, too. She rolled it out with us as if we were the trash of yesterday.

She stood over me, her eyes glistening as with the ice cold light of the winter's moon, and said to me, sneeringly:

"What, are you that desperate?"

The words were like a slap on the face, tingling, and made me shiver.

We have been bound together three years, and I had tried everything imaginableto get in touch with her.

She is a mountain, immovable.

The lowest point? I had resorted to the artifice of stealing her worn clothes from the laundry, and clutching them in my hands as a sort of a creep, in the hope of finding some reflection of herself.

Pathetic, isn't it?

But I had gotten to that point.

I was completely through with it.

I was through to the point of being beaten.

I went into my study and printed some bond-breaking papers which I had had prepared for several weeks, and poising myself, made up my mind to go and find her in the guest room and get her to sign them.

But when I entered the hall I saw her leave her room and make straight to her workshop at the end of the hall.

Sophia had been almost exclusively a painter before she took up her family's business, and this workshop of hers was her heaven, where she spent most of her time. Even on the occasion of our bond, or so-called sacred bond, she had spent the whole of the time inher own private room.

I used to ask about it occasionally, just out of curiosity, and she would look at me with a sudden frost in her face more rapidly.

I learned rapidly to avoid it, as I did not want to embitter her mind. But now, with the bond-breaking papers in my hands, what of it?

I had to know what this strange thing meant, which held her in such close leagues. I followed her after the manner of one of the shadows.

A glance through the apt crack of the door opened my mouth and I bit into my hand to stifle a gasp.

The workshop had its walls furnished with innumerable sculptures, each swathed in purple silk, thereby hiding their shapes.

But Sophia was on her feet before one of them, a life-size one, and there was a shy, hungry look in her countenance as she stood staring at it, and a look of blush on her face.

She moved forward, kissing the air where the lips of the statue would, alone, have been on it, and swayed in turn to it, and to a voice, soft, sweet and dripping with desire, instead of voice, and coldly commanding, as usual.

"Daniel," forsooth, she exclaimed, over and over again, "I want you; I need you."

The silk was gently slipped aside, disclosing the face of the statue. I recognized it instantly. Daniel Chase, to wit, who was the mate of her sister, I had no doubt about.

My heart shattered. All this time, I thought she was just wired different, too clean, too closed-off.

But no. Her passion was all for him, the wolf she could never have.

I couldn't watch anymore. Clutching the papers, I stumbled away, her low moans echoing in my ears. She stayed in there all night. I sat on the couch downstairs, staring into nothing, the papers crumpled in my fist.

Morning came.

Sophia rushed downstairs, barely glancing at me. "I'm heading to the old house," she said, her voice flat.

My eyes burned with the clarity of unspilled snarls.

I tore my mouth into a bitter grin, tasting the iron on my tongue.

"Sophia" I reached for the papers, holding them out, edges curling like crushed bone. "Sign."

She rocked back, brow knit, but her phone trilled.

Daniel's ring tone-one I recognized anywhere-and her concentration shattered.

She grabbed a pen, scrawled her name swiftly as her nose wrinkled at the tear stains that blurred my signature like raindrops on a scent trail.

Grabbing a cleansing wipe, she passed it over her hands as if my touch was a disease, and fled, her boots thumping on the floor.

I watched her go with the feeling in my chest of the rip of a pack bond, tears froze over, and I clenched the papers tighter.

I drove to the pack's court. The clerk handed me the receipt, her voice flat like rock. "Thick days' wait. After that she is free."

Six years.

That's how long Sophia and I had been caught up in this thing.

Once upon a time, I was a college pup in Belmor Town, still a little shaky in my own skin. My roommate and I had gone out into the woods and gotten lost.

No signal, nothing but woods.

The only sound was my pulse beating wildly in my ears.

Running down a hill, slipping on all the rocks, and for just an instant I thought I was going to land, head first on the rocks, when something pulled me around. Sophia. ​

Her eyes were as cold as the mountain lake, bright enough to part the fear in my heart out, the voice sharp like the frost.

"You all right?" ​

I couldn't speak. My heart was beating so great, from the fall and from the scent that swirled all around me, warm. Wild.

The thing was, I think that my bones recognized it for all that. I was gone.

My ankle turned, so that she led me down the hill.

Took me in to the pack's healer.

I wanted to know her name. I wanted the number anyhow so I could thank her.

No, she sent me away.

I went right on. I was after her like a wolf trail bound from the hunting grounds. Showing myself at her tennis matches, now giving so large an appreciation to my own jokes at the cause they were dully good jokes, tried to melt the ice about her. Nothing. I found that the harder I ran after her, the more she pulled away from m.

Two years of that, and I was ready to let go. I was graduating, heading back to my pack, done chasing a she-wolf who didn't want me. Then, out of nowhere, she showed up outside my dorm. "Wanna form a sacred bond with me?" she asked.

Fireworks exploded in my chest. I said yes before she could blink, thinking she'd just been shy, that she felt something after all.

I was wrong.

After we bound ourselves, she wouldn't touch me.

I figured it was her germ thing, that she'd warm up eventually.

I tried everything-gifts, surprises, patience-hoping she'd let me in. Instead, she dodged me like I was a rabid beast.

Seeing her with that statue of Daniel, her body pressed against it, her voice thick with want? That was the final blow. She didn't just not love me-she loved someone else.

When I got home, eyes red and raw, I found her back from the old house, rifling through our safe.

She glanced at me.

"Where's that belt my mom gave you?"

I swallowed the lump in my throat, dug out the million-dollar from the bottom of the safe, and handed it over. It was a gift from her mom, Catherine, when we set our binding date.

"What's it for?" I asked.

She inspected it. "Daniel's got a fancy dinner tonight. Needs something sharp. You don't wear it anyway, so it'll look good on him."

My stomach twisted. "But your mom gave it to me."

It wasn't about the watch. I didn't wear it because it was too precious, not because I didn't care. And it was part of a couple's set-her and Daniel wearing them together? That'd raise eyebrows.

Her eyes flashed with annoyance.

"It's a Lewis pack heirloom. Daniel's bound to our pack through my sister. It should've been his. Mom shouldn't have given it to you."

I went quiet. The Lewis pack and my Johnson pack are equals, and Catherine had approved of me, gifting us that with a smile. Daniel, though? He's a lowborn wolf who lucked into the Lewis pack through Sophia's sister.

Catherine never liked him.

Sophia grabbed the watch and strode out, tossing over her shoulder, "Don't make a thing of it. I'll get you another watch at the auction in a couple days to make up for it."

Before, I'd have been over the moon at the thought of her taking me to an auction, picking out a gift. Now? I just clenched my fists, bitterness flooding my chest.

Whatever. We were breaking the bond soon.

Sophia vanished for a week.

I only knew where she was because I saw her in Daniel's posts on X-hanging off his arm at a gala, hiking with him, sailing on some yacht. In one photo, she's got his jacket draped over her shoulders, standing close, her head tilted toward him, their vibe way too cozy.

Her long hair spilled over his arm, and her eyes sparkled with a joy I'd never seen.

Her germ phobia? Guess it doesn't apply to him.

Normally, I'd have raced to the old house, trying to win her back with some dumb gesture. Not this time. I blocked Daniel's posts and started counting down the days until our bond was severed.

On day eight, my phone rang. Sophia's voice was brisk. "Meet me. Auction's today."

I opened my mouth to say no, but she'd already hung up. Grudgingly, I headed out. When I got to her car, I reached for the passenger door, but the window rolled down, and there was Daniel, smirking.

"Hey, Andrew. Sophia figured I'd be bored, so she's bringing me along to the auction. Hope we're not crashing your vibe."

"Nah, you're good," I said, my voice flat. I slid into the backseat, ignoring the sting of not riding shotgun.

Sophia kept sneaking glances at me in the rearview mirror, probably thrown by how calm I was.

I popped on sunglasses, leaned back, and closed my eyes, tuning out the world.

She and Daniel chatted the whole way, her voice warm, laughing at his stories about their week together.

I just gritted my teeth, swallowing the hurt.

At the auction, Sophia fussed over Daniel, guiding him to his seat like he was pack royalty. I trailed behind, feeling like a stray. My seat was on the edge, Daniel in the middle, Sophia glued to his side.

I flipped through the auction catalog, spotting a few pieces I liked. But every time I thought about bidding, Daniel's voice cut in.

"Sophia, this one's slick."

"Sophia, doesn't this match my gray suit?"

"Sophia, I want that one."

She bid on everything he pointed out, her patience endless.

Me? I might as well have been invisible.

Near the end, she glanced my way, like she suddenly remembered why she'd brought me. Daniel, smirking, handed me a pair of cufflinks from his pile of winnings.

"Andrew, you didn't bid on anything. Don't like the selection? Take these. Don't go home empty-handed."

My grip tightened on the auction paddle, the edge slicing my finger. Blood dripped, but I forced a smile. "Thanks, but I'm good."

I stormed off to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face to keep from losing it. As I was about to leave, I overheard Daniel's voice from a stall, smug as hell.

"I went after Sophia's sister, Grace, 'cause she was the Lewis pack heir. Got her drunk, slept with her, locked that in. But Grace turned cold after we bound ourselves. No big deal-Sophia's the backup. She thinks I saved her life once, so she's all over me. I keep her dangling, and she eats it up. Andrew's a Johnson pack prince, but so what? She-wolves don't want what's easy. They chase what they can't have."

My blood boiled.

I pulled out my phone, hit record, and let his words burn into the file.