“I called you first.” She wrings her hands. “You didn’t answer until my third try. I was alone with two cops asking questions about Danny.”
Rowan stands between us now, not quite taking sides but creating a triangle of tension. “I told her to call me if she ever felt unsafe. Today qualified.”
The thought of them conspiring behind my back, exchanging phone numbers and contingency plans as if I’ve failed her, eats at my insides like acid. A dull roar fills my ears, the sound of everything I’ve built threatening to collapse.
“Go to your room, Lena.”
Red creeps up her neck and into her cheeks. “I’m not a child, Ash. I’m sixteen. I was trying to protect us.”
“Now,” I order in a tone I rarely have to use with her.
She takes a step back, hurt flashing. “This is why I called Rowan. You try to shoulder everything on your own when you should be asking for help.”
“Lena—”
“No.” She cuts me off, tears welling. “You weren’there. The police were. I was scared. Rowan came when I called. That’s all there is to it.”
She turns on her heel to stalk out of the living room, and the slam of her door reverberates through the apartment, rattling the cheap frames on the walls.
Rowan studies me with caution. “She was scared, Ash. She needed someone.”
“She has someone.” My fist thumps my chest. “She has me.”
“You weren’t here.”
The three simple words cut deeper than any knife. My hands shake as I drag them through my hair, pulling until my scalp stings. “That doesn’t give you the right to step in. To give her your number. To come into my home when I’m not here.”
“Would it have been better if Lena had been here alone when the police showed up?” Rowan asks with maddening reason. “If she’d had no one to call? If she’d had to answer their questions without anyone to protect her?”
The truth guts me, a wound that bleeds where no one can see. I know the answer. I work nights. I miss things. I provide by absence. The gaps in our safety net yawn wider every year as Lena grows up, and I stretch myself thinner to cover the costs.
“That’s not the point.” But the argument rings hollow even to my own ears.
Rowan advances forward, the heat of him invading my space. “Itisthe point. You can’t be everywhere at once, precious. You can’t work two jobs and still be home every time she needs you.”
My back hits the wall, though I don’t remember stepping backward.
“There are better neighborhoods.” An Alpha rumble rises from his chest that attempts to soothe and sway me. “Safer buildings. Places where the police don’t show up unannounced, asking about missing Alphas.”
“We can’t afford better.” The admission scrapes me raw from the inside.
“You could.” He closes the distance between us, his pheromones filling my nostrils and turning my brain to mush. “With help.”
“Yourhelp.”
“Yes.” His fingers reach for my cheek, but I jerk away before he can touch me, my skull banging into the wall. “My help. My resources. My protection. For both of you.”
And there it is. The line. The boundary. The offer of salvation, wrapped in chains I can’t accept.
“Get out of my home.” The words come out flat with finality. “Now.”
Surprise flickers, there and gone in an instant. “Ash?—”
“No.” I push off the wall, forcing myself upright despite the tremor in my muscles. “You don’t walk in here and rearrange our lives. You don’t hand my sister your number behind my back. You don’t play hero to her while fucking me on the side like some kind of package deal.”
His jaw tightens with the first sign my words have penetrated his calm exterior. “That’s not what this is.”
“Isn’t it?” My laugh holds no humor. “What do you want from us, Rowan? Because I’m having trouble seeing how this ends without you owning both of us in some way.”
