Tomorrow would be complicated.
FOUR
Alfie
The notification sound on Rowan’s tablet was usually a politeding, the sort of noise you heard in airport lounges or expensive elevators. This time, it sounded like a guillotine blade dropping.
We were scattered around the bus lounge in Birmingham, the silence thick enough to choke on. Kit was aggressively polishing a snare drum, the metallicshhh-shhhsound the only rhythm in the room. Euan was staring at his laptop screen with the kind of intensity that usually preceded him rewiring a venue’s entire electrical grid. Cal was brewing tea, because Cal operated on the belief that the apocalypse could be postponed if the Earl Grey was hot enough.
And I was vibrating. Literally vibrating. My knee bounced a rapid-fire rhythm against the table leg, adrenaline souring my scent into something closer to scorched caramel than crème brûlée.
"She’s out," Rowan said.
She didn't look up from the screen. Her voice was flat, devoid of the usual crisp authority. It was the voice of a manager who had just watched a million-pound contract evaporate, butunderneath that, it was the voice of a Beta who’d lost a chess match she didn't know she was playing.
"Define 'out,'" I said, though my gut had already dropped through the floorboards and was currently dragging along the M6 motorway.
"Text message. Short.Can't do it. Cancel the contract." Rowan swiped a finger across the glass, a gesture of finality. "Then she blocked my number. And yours. And the band account."
Kit stopped polishing. The silence went from thick to vacuum-sealed.
"She’s ghosting," Euan said, typing furiously now. "Wait. She’s actively scrubbing. Her metadata on the emergency mix is gone. The server logs from the upload are wiped. She’s burying the trail."
"She’s posting, though," Cal noticed, holding up his phone. "Instagram story. Picture of a thermometer and pile of tissues. Caption just says‘Flu season wins. Bed for a week.’"
"It’s a decoy," I snapped, standing up because sitting felt like surrendering. "She’s not sick. She’s running. She’s throwing off travel tracing so we don't follow."
The realization hit me with the force of a feedback loop screaming through a stack of Marshall amps. She was running. From us. Fromme.
My inner Alpha roared like a chainsaw revving in an empty room. It demanded action. It screamed at me to grab my coat, kick open the bus door, and hunt. To track that neon citrus-ozone scent across the country, through the rain, until I found her and pinned her down and proved…proved what? That I was exactly the kind of terrifying, steamrolling Alpha she clearly thought I was?
I took a step toward the door. My boots hit the floor heavy, purpose locking my muscles into a predatory stride.Go. Find. Keep.
Then I saw my thumb.
The ink was black and sharp against my skin, rewritten just hours ago.
ASK > ASSUME.
I froze. My hand gripped the back of the lounge sofa hard enough to crack a nail, the chipped polish flaking off under safety-glass pressure. I remembered the last time I’d chased. Remembered a partner crying in a hotel room because the press, the label, the sheer weight ofAlfie Kinghad crushed their boundaries into dust. I’d sworn then. Vowed it on my voice, on my music, on every stage I stood on.
I would never again weaponize destiny against someone who hadn't signed the waiver.
I forced my breath out. Four seconds. Six. The rhythm she used.
"We don't chase," I said. The words tasted like ash and copper.
"Alfie," Kit started, standing up, his own espresso scent dark and turbulent. "She’s alone. She’s scared. If she thinks we’re rejecting her?—"
"If we chase her, we prove her right," I cut him off, turning to face them. My chest heaved. I felt feral, wild, ready to tear the upholstery apart with my teeth, but I held my ground. "She set a boundary. A massive, concrete, ten-foot-high boundary made of silence and distance. If I cross that uninvited, I’m not her mate. I’m her stalker."
"She’s deleting herself, Alf," Euan said quietly, his eyes still tracking data streams I couldn't understand. "She’s erasing the evidence that she was ever here. Like she thinks we want to scrub her out."
That hurt more than the running. The idea that she thought she was dirt to be swept away, a mistake to be redacted.
"Then we make sure she knows she’s indelible," I muttered.
I grabbed my laptop and my portable interface.
