Atticus lies beside me, propped against the headboard with a laptop balanced on his thighs. The blue-white glow of the screen catches the angles of his face, highlighting the concentration furrowing his brow. He’s wearing reading glasses—actual reading glasses, tortoiseshell frames that sit slightly crooked on the bridge of his nose—and the sight is so aggressively domestic that my brain needs a full five seconds to process it.
He’s still here.
I blink at him, cataloging details through the pleasant fog of heat-induced exhaustion. The next wave will probably be coming soon, but right now I feel a bone deep tiredness that is difficult to fight.
So it’s easy to just lay here and look at him.
He threw on a t-shirt at some point, soft and worn thin enough to see the shadow of his collarbones through the fabric. His hair is a mess—properly wrecked, not the artful tousle he cultivates for cameras. There’s a scratch on his neck that I definitely put there, though I can’t pinpoint exactly when.
He hasn’t seemed to notice I’m awake yet. His fingers move across the trackpad, scrolling through what looks like a music production program, and he mouths words silently as he reads something on the screen. Every few seconds he pauses, tilts his head, then resumes scrolling.
“I can practically hear you thinking,” he drawls.
“You wear glasses,” I say. My voice comes out like gravel dragged through sandpaper.
Atticus glances down at me. The corner of his mouth lifts.
“You’re alive.”
“Apparently.” I shift against the pillows, testing the state of my body. Sore in places I forgot existed. Pleasantly wrung out, like a washcloth that’s been twisted and hung to dry. The hollow ache in my belly has dulled to something manageable. “How long was I out?”
“Few hours.” He closes the laptop and sets it on the nightstand. “You talked in your sleep.”
“I did not.”
“You did. Something about Gerald the lobster owing you money.”
I groan and press my face into the pillow. It smells like Mason and Atticus and me, all layered together in a way that makes my heart pound.
When I resurface, Atticus is watching me with an expression I can’t quite read. Patient. Almost careful, like he’s handling something more fragile than he expected.
“You’re still here,” I say, and it comes out smaller than I intended. More honest.
His brows draw together. “Where else would I be?”
“I don’t know.” I pick at a loose thread on the pillowcase, unable to meet his eyes. “Gone, I guess.”
The silence that follows has a texture. Heavy. Weighted with something neither of us has named.
“Let me make sure I’m understanding you.” Atticus shifts onto his side, facing me fully. The reading glasses slide down his nose and he pushes them back up with one finger. “You thought I was going to beat your ass, fuck you, and then just… leave?”
Heat floods my cheeks that has absolutely nothing to do with my cycle. “I didn’t really think about it. But… maybe.”
He stares at me for a long beat. Something moves behind those green eyes—not anger exactly, but something adjacent to it. Sharper. More personal.
“You must be hanging around some real shit alphas, firebird.”
Laurence Starling’s hotel suite. The click of the door locking. The way he smiled after, like he’d accomplished something, and then checked emails his phone while I gathered my clothes from the floor.
The parade of industry alphas since then—directors, producers, executives—who treated omegas like amenities. Like room service. Something you ordered, consumed and forgot about before checkout.
I swallow against the sudden tightness in my throat, too tired to argue the point.
“That’s probably true.”
Atticus turns his head to give me his full attention. His gaze lingers for a moment on the exposed curve of my shoulder where the sheet has slipped, on the constellation of marks he left across my collarbone, but it returns quickly to my face. Something almost protective flickers behind those green eyes.
“How are you doing?”
