“Then we’ll go to the emergency room here. They can give you suppressants to?—“
“No.” Phoenix’s voice hardens. “No hospitals. No doctors. No suppressants.”
“Phoenix—”
“I’m not getting back on that plane, Mason.” Her amber eyes flash with a determination I’ve rarely seen, even from her. “I can’t. I won’t. And if this is what it takes to avoid it, then that’s what I’m doing.”
I run a hand through my hair, tugging at the strands in frustration. “You’re being ridiculous. It’s a three-hour flight. You’ve done it a hundred times.”
“I’m not doing it,” she says, voice dropping to something low and fierce. “I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care if the studio sues me. I don’t care if it tanks my career. I am not getting back on a plane.”
The absolute conviction in her voice stops me cold.
This isn’t just Phoenix being difficult. This isn’t her usual resistance to schedules and obligations. This is genuine fear. The kind that burrows deep and refuses to be reasoned with.
“Okay,” I say softly, changing tactics. “Okay. No planes. We’ll figure something else out.”
Relief washes over her face, so powerful it makes my chest ache. “Thank you.”
“But you can’t stay with Judah Daniels.”
Her expression hardens again. “Why not? Give me one good reason.”
Because he’s my alpha. Because I can’t leave you alone with him, but being under the same roof with both of you might finally be enough to destroy me.
“Because I don’t trust him,” I say instead.
“You don’t know him.”
“Neither do you!”
“I’m a good judge of character.”
I scoff before I can stop myself, but swallow the sound when Phoenix glares back at me.
“This is just a bad idea, Phoenix.”
“Look, this heat is happening whether you like it or not. The pills are already in my system. There’s no undo button.” She spreads her hands wide, palms up. “So if you have a better plan than showing up on this guy’s doorstep, I am genuinely, completely, one hundred percent open to hearing it.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.
Nothing comes out.
Because she’s right. The heat inducers are already working their way through her bloodstream, triggering a cascade of hormonal changes that can’t be reversed without medical intervention she’s refusing to accept. In a few hours, she’ll be in full heat—vulnerable, desperate, unable to think clearly. And I have no alternative to offer that doesn’t involve eitherrevealing the real reason I don’t want her anywhere near Judah or watching her suffer through it in this cramped room with an unmated alpha three feet away.
The bathroom door opens with a rush of steam.
Atticus emerges with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist, water droplets still clinging to the planes of his chest. His dark skin gleams in the lamplight, muscles shifting as he reaches up to run a hand through his damp hair.
Phoenix’s head swivels toward him like a compass finding north.
Her lips part. Her pupils blow wide, the amber of her irises shrinking to thin rings around pools of black. The flush that had been creeping down her neck spreads lower, disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. I watch her throat work as she swallows, her gaze tracking Atticus’s progress across the room with the fixed intensity of a predator—or prey.
The desire in her suddenly glazed eyes is impossible to miss.
Oh no.
The heat inducers are working faster than I thought. Much faster. Phoenix’s scent has shifted again in just the last few minutes, the vanilla and citrus notes now threaded through with something darker, muskier. Something that’s making Atticus’s nostrils flare as he pauses mid-step, his own eyes darkening as he catches whatever pheromones she’s already pumping into the air.
