I nod.
A single, economical motion that communicates acknowledgment without apology. Then I reach back and take Hawk’s hand.
Boldly.
Not with the tentative, private contact of our walk across the courtyard. This is public. Deliberate. The act of lacing my fingers through an unbonded feral Alpha’s in a room occupied by a mastermind and three unknown men in old-money suits is a declaration, and I make it with the full awareness of what it communicates:this person is mine. His presence is not negotiable. Proceed accordingly.
I walk in, pulling him with me. His stride matches mine instantly—two bodies that have learned to move in concert through years of shared corridors and shared danger and the particular synchronization that develops between people who have saved each other’s lives enough times that their nervous systems have merged their threat-response protocols.
The three men don’t turn around.
Not a single head shifts. Not a single posture adjusts. Their collective non-reaction is so complete, so coordinated in its indifference, that it registers as a statement rather than an oversight. They are not interested. Or rather, they are performing disinterest with the fluency of men who have been trained to weaponize attention—giving it sparingly, withholding it strategically, understanding that the act of not looking can be more powerful than the act of looking.
Doesn’t bother me.
Not in the slightest.
I’ve spent five years being invisible. Three suited Alphas who can’t be bothered to acknowledge my entrance barely register on the scale of indignities I’ve endured.
I focus on Violet.
She grins further as she observes my complete non-response to the men’s dismissal—her violet eyes tracking the information with the quiet satisfaction of a chess player watching an opponent make the exact move she predicted. She liked that. My refusal to be diminished by their refusal to acknowledge me. The proof that the woman she watched dance yesterday isn’t just graceful under spotlight but composed under provocation.
“Thank you for being on time,” she says, rising slightly from her chair—not standing, not yet, but adjusting her position to project forward, her forearms resting on the ebony desk’s polished surface. “I hate wasting it. Which is why I’ll get to the point so we can all work on getting acquainted, since the masquerade is approaching and you’ll need all the time to prepare.”
She claps her hands together.
Once. Sharp. The sound is precise enough to function as a command, and it does—because a feminine voice activates from somewhere in the ceiling or the walls or the desk itself, disembodied and clinical.
“Soundproof recognition initiated.”
The room changes. I feel it rather than hear it—a subtle shift in the acoustic profile, a deadening of the ambient noise from the corridor and the world outside these walls. The air pressure adjusts by a fraction, my ears registering the change the way they register altitude shifts. Whatever was said in this room before we arrived and whatever will be said now exists in a sealed container. No leaks. No recordings. No witnesses beyond the bodies present.
Interesting.
And alarming.
In approximately equal measure.
Violet rises fully now, the red silk gown cascading around her frame as she straightens to her full height behind the desk. She’s shorter than the room makes her appear—the raised platform doing its work—but her presence compensates for what her stature doesn’t provide.
“The masquerade is officially in one week,” she announces, her voice gaining the cadence of someone delivering terms that have been crafted over months rather than composed in the moment. “This is an opportunity I wouldn’t want you lot to miss. So what better way to play matchmaker than to bring you all together for this opportunity?”
Her violet eyes shift to Hawk.
“Name, Alpha?”
His hand squeezes mine.
I look at him. The motion is automatic—the instinctive turning toward the one constant in my field of variables when a new variable is introduced. His amber eyes meet mine, and the question in them is clear. Notshould I answer?butdo you want me to be known here?A distinction that matters. Names are currency in Savage Knot. Giving yours to the wrong person is the same as handing them a weapon with the safety off.
I nod.
Slowly. Deliberately.Yes. You’re allowed. You’re mine, and being mine means being visible when I need you visible.
“Hawthorne Kennedy,” he says, his voice carrying the easy authority of a man who has spent thirty-five years learning to occupy rooms without apology. “Hawk, for short.”
He doesn’t pause for acknowledgment. Doesn’t wait for the reaction. He gets to the point with the directness that characterizes everything about him that isn’t carefully hidden behind romance novels and feigned nonchalance.
