#Chapter 178: Fated

ELENA I had never been this forward in my entire life. Not even close. Not the time I kissed a boy in a thunderstorm at seventeen. Not the time I slipped my number to the visiting Alpha’s Beta just to see if Mason would have a meltdown. Not even the time I told Logan, with full eye contact, that I didn’t love him. This? This was something else entirely. This was reckless. This was borderline feral. And it was all for Derek. Something about him stripped away the filters, the hesitation, the caution I usually wore like armor. Around him, I didn’t just want—I needed. With a kind of clarity that left no room for shame. No breath for denial. Just need, coiled hot and low in my belly, burning hotter every time he looked at me like I was both salvation and sin. One second we were cruising down the road in his ridiculously sleek car—the kind that purred like a wildcat and smelled like leather and heat and power—and the next, I was leaning over the console like a woman poss