A pause stretched between them.
Alex’s smile didn’t fade, but it turned colder. Sharper.
“No,” he said. “She’s not.”
And that was the problem.
A flicker of awareness. The calculation behind his eyes.
Alex wasn’t just intrigued. He saw Arden now.
Saw her as useful. Dangerous. Valuable.
Gideon stepped in closer, voice dropping lower, cutting sharper.
“She’s not yours to watch. Not yours to provoke. Not yours. Period.”
Alex held his gaze, a glint of calculation behind the smirk.
A warning, returned in kind.
“Relax, Gideon,” he drawled, lifting his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not making a move. I’m… observing.”
Gideon didn’t answer.
Didn’t have to.
Because the silence that followed said it all.
Don’t. Not her.
Alex finally pushed off from the bar, adjusting the cuff of his sleeve like he had all the time in the world.
“Good chat,” he said over his shoulder. “Let’s do this again sometime.”
Then he was gone—casual, composed, calculated.
The loungeslowly eased back to life around them—a spell breaking. Laughter resumed. Glasses clinked.
The world moved on.
But Gideon didn’t.
Not yet.
He stood rooted to the floor, jaw tight, hands fisted at his sides.
Because Alex wasn’t just sniffing around.
Gideon had seen Arden’s car. The smashed windows. The petals scattered across the dashboard like a message someone meant him to find.
Not a threat.
A declaration.
And Arden hadn’t told him everything. But there’d been a look in her eye that night. A flash of knowledge she didn’t share.
Whether it was family or someone else…
