Despite the wits. Despite the backbone. Despite the void that passes for composure and the dance that passes for a soul.
The male will resist. He’ll object to placing his precious Omega in the kind of danger that the masquerade’s hidden requirements will inevitably demand. He’ll become the obstaclethat his love makes him, because love—in my experience—is the most reliable producer of stupidity that human neurochemistry has ever devised.
They’ll be seeing themselves out before the terms are fully laid.
And probably watching their bodies be tossed in the burner by the end of the meeting.
If they’re so madly in love, they can die together.
At least someone gets a happy ending.
Violet’s voice cuts through the assessment with the precision of a blade through silk.
“Excellent.”
The word carries her particular variety of satisfaction—warm on the surface, strategic underneath, the approval of a woman who has been orchestrating this encounter for longer than anyone in this room realizes and is now observing the pieces arrange themselves on the board with the quiet pleasure of a grandmaster whose opening gambit has survived first contact.
She gestures to the two remaining open seats—positioned on the near side of the desk, extending the arc that the twins and I already occupy. The arrangement, when complete, will form a semicircle facing Violet’s elevated desk—five seats, five people, all oriented toward the woman who controls the terms and the timeline and the difference between freedom and the bounty list we’ve been running from for three years.
“Please.” Violet’s hand indicates the chairs with an elegance that makes a command sound like hospitality. “Sit.”
The dynamic of our current seating is established: I’m in the center, Lucien to my right, Cassian to my left. The remaining two chairs are positioned at the ends of the arc—one beside Lucien, one beside Cassian. I expected the feral Alpha—Hawk, he called himself, a name that carries an avian irony I’ll examine later—to take the seat nearest Lucien, keeping himself between hisOmega and the more volatile of the twins. Standard protective positioning. Predictable. The move a man in love makes when he’s calculating proximity to threat.
He doesn’t take the seat.
He gestures.
A fluid motion of his hand—deceptively casual, deliberately respectful—that offers the woman beside him the choice. Pick your seat. My jaw tightens by a fraction that I suppress immediately, because the gesture communicates something I didn’t predict: he isn’t managing her. Isn’t shielding her. Isn’t making decisions on her behalf and positioning her body according to his threat assessment.
He’s deferring to her.
A feral-prone Alpha deferring to an Omega.
In a room full of unknown Alphas.
Interesting.
She takes the seat I don’t expect her to.
The one beside Lucien.
Not beside Cassian—the quieter twin, the safer twin, the one whose curiosity carries a lower voltage than his brother’s sharp appraisal. She chooses the seat next to the twin who looks at people the way a blade looks at a whetstone and sits in it with the unhurried composure of someone selecting a chair at a café rather than positioning herself within striking distance of a man whose smile carries an edge.
It surprises the twins.
I see the exchanged look—the fractional, microsecond communication that passes between identical siblings who share a private language built from thirty-four years of coexistence. Cassian’s gray-blue eyes widen by a millimeter. Lucien’s narrow by the same margin. The exchange is so brief that anyone without extensive experience reading twin dynamics would miss it entirely.
I don’t miss it.
Cassian is surprised. Lucien is pleased.
Both are recalculating.
Lucien recovers first. He’s always been the faster of the two in social situations—Cassian processes deeper, Lucien processes wider, and the difference means that Lucien’s responses arrive sooner even if Cassian’s are ultimately more accurate.
He smirks.
It’s a specific expression—the Lucien smirk, the one that walks the precise line between charming and dangerous with the surefootedness of someone who has spent his entire life practicing the balance. He turns toward her in his chair, one arm draped over the backrest with the calculated ease of a man who wants you to think he’s relaxed while every muscle in his body is primed for assessment.
