"Come here," I whispered.
He shifted instantly, sliding across the seat until he was practically in my lap. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said. "Just checking the work."
I reached for the collar of his mesh shirt. I pulled it aside.
There, on the junction of his neck and shoulder, was a bruise. My bruise. A matching set to the one I was hiding.
I leaned in. I didn't kiss it. I dragged my tongue over the mark, slow and deliberate, tasting the salt and the burnt sugar.
Alfie made a broken, strangled noise in his throat. His hands grabbed my waist, digging in.
"Fox," he gasped, his head falling back against the headrest. "You're gonna kill me. Right here in the car."
"Copy that," I murmured against his skin.
Euan, sitting on the jump seat facing us, watched with dark, hooded eyes. He typed something into his phone, flicking it to me so I could see what he wrote.
Update to Schedule: Post-show cooldown requires soundproof room. Immediate priority.
We pulled up to the venue. The crowd outside was screaming.
But this time, they weren't screaming for a scandal.
Through the glass, I saw a sign held up by a girl in the front row. It wasn't a shipping name. It wasn't a marriage proposal for Alfie.
It was a piece of cardboard with black marker that read:Boundaries are PUNK!
And next to it, another one:#FoxTailSupremacy
I smiled.
The scream of the crowd outside wasn’t just noise; it was a physical sphere of compression, white noise clipping the red on a mental meter. Before, that sound would have made me look for the nearest exit sign. Now, it just sounded like input.
Tammy Rook tapped the glass. "Doors. Three seconds. Keep the diamond formation."
"Copy," Kit said, his tone dropping into that security-fixer register that made my hindbrain go quiet and obedient.
The door slid open. The roar trebled in volume, cutting through the filtered air of the SUV. A wall of flashbulbs went off, freezing the rain in stuttering pulses of white light.
Usually, I walked in the shadow. I used to be the ghost in the machine, the smudge in the background of their candid photos. But as my boots hit the wet pavement, I didn't tuck my chin.
Alfie led, a chaos vector in mesh and leather, grabbing the attention like a lightning rod. Kit stayed on my right flank, a solid wall of heat and inked muscle, scanning the perimeter. Euan was the ghost now, trailing six feet back, his eyes moving faster than the cameras could track, calculating vectors, threats, and lines of sight.
I walked center.
"FoxTail! Zia!"
The names mixed in the air. Someone threw a bouquet of neon-orange flowers—my brand colors. Kit caught it mid-air without breaking stride, checked it for weight and hidden tech, and handed it to me in one fluid motion.
"Clear," he murmured, his breath misting in the London chill.
I held the flowers against my chest, right over the spot where my heart hammered against my ribs. The stems were cold; the scent was masked by the ozone of the city and the heavy, spiced gravity of the three Alphas surrounding me.
We hit the stage door. Tammy swiped a keycard, and the heavy steel slab clanged shut behind us, cutting the screaming chaos into sudden, ringing silence.
The venue smelled like every gig I’d ever worked—stale beer, floor cleaner, old dust burning on hot par cans. It smelled like work.
