Part of me wants to launch myself across the table. Make him prove it. Force him to subdue me like some wild thing that needs to be tamed for its own good.
The air between us pulls tight as piano wire. My pulse thuds in my throat, in my wrists, behind my knees. Mason’s gaze doesn’t waver—those storm-gray eyes holding mine with a gravity that pins me to my chair more effectively than any physical restraint.
His lips part.
“Mason?”
The voice comes from behind me. Male. Unfamiliar. Rough around the edges like gravel dragged across asphalt.
Mason’s entire body changes in the span of a single heartbeat. The heat drains from his expression like someone pulled a plug. His spine goes rigid, shoulders locking into a line so sharp it could draw blood. The softness—that impossible, electric softness that had been pooling in the space between us—vanishes. What replaces it is something I’ve never seen on his face before.
Fear.
I twist in my chair.
The man standing in the doorway of the dining room is the kind of alpha that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up. Lean and wiry, coiled with the compact muscle of someone who uses his body as a tool rather than an ornament. Tattoo sleeves crawl up both forearms, disappearing under rolled cuffs. Black hair shot through with silver at the temples, dark eyes that scan the room with the quick, predatory efficiency of someone accustomed to cataloging exits and threats in the same breath. A small silver hoop glints in one ear. Scars crisscross his knuckles—not decorative, not accidental. Earned.
He looks like the kind of man mothers warn their daughters about. The kind of man who has a mugshot somewhere that’s more flattering than most people’s headshots.
Every omega instinct I’ve spent years suppressing screams at me to make myself smaller.
Mason hasn’t moved. Hasn’t breathed, as far as I can tell. His hand rests flat on the table, fingers splayed, and I can see the tendons standing out beneath his skin like cables under tension.
“Mase?” I keep my voice low. “Who is that?”
He doesn’t answer me.
The man’s face splits into a grin that transforms his entire appearance—still dangerous, but shot through with something raw and genuine that catches me off guard.
“Holy shit, itisyou!” He strides into the dining room like he owns it, boots heavy on the hardwood, voice loud enough to make the elderly couple finally look up from their oatmeal. “Mason Aldrich. I thought Earl was full of it, but here you are. In the flesh.” He spreads his arms wide, rings catching the light. “How the hell have you been, man?”
Mason rises from his chair. The motion is stiff, mechanical—a marionette pulled upright by invisible strings. His face has rearranged itself into something I’ve never seen before: a mask so carefully constructed it makes his professional composure look sloppy by comparison.
“Dom.” The single syllable carries the weight of a decade.
The tattooed man closes the distance between them in three long strides and pulls Mason into a hug that lifts him half off the ground. Mason’s arms stay pinned at his sides for a beat too long before they come up—slowly, reluctantly—to return the embrace with the enthusiasm of someone defusing a bomb.
“God, you look good.” Dom holds Mason at arm’s length, hands gripping his shoulders, dark eyes roaming his face like he’s memorizing it. “LA agrees with you. All polished up like a fancy shoe.”
“Dominic, this is—” Mason extracts himself and gestures toward me with a hand that isn’t quite steady. “Phoenix Riviera. Phoenix, this is Dominic Romano.”
Dominic turns those dark eyes on me, and the full force of his attention lands like a spotlight. Up close, the scars on his knuckles tell stories I’m not sure I want to hear, and the silver threading his temples catches the wan morning light. He smells like motor oil and woodsmoke and something sharper underneath—alpha, unmistakably, but restrained. Leashed.
He extends his hand.
“Nice to meet you, Phoenix.”
Just that. No gushing. No wide eyes. Nooh my God, I loved you in that thing.Just a calloused palm offered across a checkered tablecloth like I’m any other person eating bad oatmeal on a Tuesday morning.
I take it.
His grip is firm, warm, and something sparks where our skin connects—a tiny jolt of awareness that zips up my wristand settles somewhere behind my sternum. Not unpleasant. Not expected. I pull my hand back a beat too fast, tucking it into my lap.
“Likewise.”
He nods once, easy, then turns back to Mason like I’m not even particularly interesting. Which is either the most refreshing or most insulting thing that’s happened to me in years. I genuinely cannot tell if he has any idea who I am or if he simply doesn’t care. Both options feel equally alien. In my world, people either fawn or photograph. This man does neither.
I look between them—Mason, rigid as rebar, and Dominic, all loose-limbed energy and scarred hands.
