The Prime Alpha stands.
The twins remain seated.
The division is telling—he’s the leader, the voice, the one authorized to engage on behalf of the group. The twins are observers, advisors perhaps, their role in this dynamic defined by position rather than passivity. He rises to a full height that confirms my estimate—tall, significantly tall, the kind of tall that requires you to adjust your chin angle to maintain eye contact and that he is clearly accustomed to using as a physical assertion of hierarchy.
He turns.
Faces us fully.
And speaks with the measured precision of a man who considers every word a contract.
“The agreement only requires an Omega.” His voice is deep—not the rumbling bass of Hawk’s Alpha register but something more controlled, more refined, the vocal equivalent of the aged leather in his scent. His eyes flick to Hawk, then to our proximity, then back to me. “Not extra baggage.”
Hawk shrugs.
The gesture is magnificent in its casualness—a rolling, unhurried lift and drop of scarred shoulders that communicates complete indifference to the social weight of the room, the institutional power of the woman behind the desk, and the intimidation value of the three Alphas currently assessing us like a committee reviewing an application they didn’t expect to include a supplementary attachment.
Our hands are still joined.
“A shame.” His voice is light, conversational, carrying the particular brand of unconcerned amusement that I’ve come to recognize as Hawk’s combat register—the tone he adopts when the stakes are highest and the margin for error is thinnest. “My Precious comes with a no-bullshit policy. AKA me.”
He pauses. Tilts his head. The motion is predatory in its casualness, a predator deciding how much of itself to reveal.
“I don’t like to brag about it, but I actually love this woman enough that it keeps my feral side sane.”
Love.
He said love.
In front of five people.
In a soundproofed room.
Like it’s a fact rather than a confession.
Like it’s something he’s known for so long that saying it out loud costs him nothing.
File that away.
File it deep.
Don’t look at it.
Not yet.
“And I’m sure you don’t want a feral Alpha tearing up the perfection of this place now.” He glances around the room with an appreciative nod at the coffered ceilings and the walnut paneling, as though conducting a real estate appraisal. “Easy cleanup, I’m sure, but a waste of the dollars none of y’all work hard to earn, yes?”
Silence.
None of them reply. The Prime Alpha stares. The twins stare. Violet, behind her desk, watches with the expression of a woman observing a chemical reaction she initiated and is now documenting.
Violet’s eyes shift to me.
The question in them is direct.Is he serious? Is this your position? Are you willing to jeopardize this opportunity for a man who just threatened to destroy this room?
“He’s mine,” I say.
Two words. Delivered with the flat, absolute certainty of someone stating a law of physics rather than a preference.No elaboration. No justification. No defensive explanation of the complicated, unnameable, strategically indefensible arrangement that exists between Hawk and me that I’ve spent three years refusing to define and am now defining in the most public, most consequential way possible.
