Right now, I want to put my brother through a wall.
Because Max is—
Mine.
The thought blazes through me. Possessive. Absolute. Primal in a way that bypasses logic entirely, that comes from somewhere so deep it has no name, only teeth.
And immediately after, a second thought. Quieter. More dangerous.
Ours.
Because that's the truth I've been circling for days. It's not just me. Whatever Max is, whatever his scent triggers—it's pulling all three of us. Not one. All. A gravity well with Max at the center and the three of us caught in his orbit.
Pack bond. The concept surfaces from somewhere in my memory. Multiple alphas. One omega. A unit instead of a war. Brothers instead of rivals.
It's rare. Almost unheard of. Most alphas can't tolerate sharing.
But most alphas aren't already a pack.
I file the thought away. It's not useful right now. Right now, there's only the image of Max barely able to sit down and Zero's empty car in the garage.
"I'll handle it," I say. "Trust me."
Bane holds my gaze. Searching. Reading me the way he always does—looking for the cracks, the tells, the signs that I'm about to do something reckless.
He must find enough control in my expression to satisfy him, because he nods.
"Okay." He stands. Moves toward the door. Stops with his hand on the knob. "Atlas?"
"Yeah?"
"For what it's worth—" He pauses. Stares at the door. Won't look at me. His jaw works like he's chewing on something that doesn't want to come out. "I was wrong about him. About Max. What I said at that first dinner. What I said after." His voice drops. "He's not nothing."
Coming from Bane, that's a confession. A surrender. The admission of a sin he's been carrying since the night Max locked himself in his room and didn't come out.
"No," I agree quietly. "He's not."
Bane opens the door.
And almost walks directly into Zero.
My brother stands in the hallway—leather jacket on, keys still in his hand, looking like he just came through the front door. His dark hair is windswept. His jaw is tight. There are shadows under his eyes—deep, bruised—the kind that come from not sleeping. From running all day without rest or destination.
And there's a mark on his jaw.
Faded. Yellow-green. The kind of bruise that's already a day old. Small. Concentrated. The exact size and shape of a fist that belongs to someone much smaller than him.
Max's fist.
His ice-blue eyes flick from Bane to me. The reading is instantaneous—some survival instinct that takes in the tension in the room, the bourbon on the desk, the locked door, our expressions, and processes all of it in the space between heartbeats.
Zero has always been the sharpest of us when it comes to sensing threat. It's what makes him dangerous—that animal ability to walk into any room and immediately understand who wants to hurt him and how close they are to trying.
Right now, every alarm in his body is going off. I can see it in the way his weight shifts. Centering. Bracing. The way his fingers tighten around his keys. The way his chin drops—just fractionally—protecting his throat.
Instinct. Pure and unconscious.
He's reading us as threats.
