The realization crashes through me with the force of a rogue wave, and suddenly every strange, inexplicable thing about the last four days rearranges itself into devastating clarity.
Judah’s mysterious mate has been right under my nose this entire time and I was just too stupid and self-absorbed to see it.
Judah’s mate is Mason.
TWENTY-SEVEN
DOMINIC
Phoenix moveslike a five-foot-four battering ram.
One second she’s kneeling on the bed, face white with shock. The next she’s on her feet and crossing the room with the kind of focused velocity usually associated with natural disasters and angry mothers. Her hands connect with my chest first—small palms, surprisingly strong—and I stumble backward into the hallway before my brain registers what’s happening.
“Out,” she snaps.
“Hey—”
Her attention has already pivoted to Judah, who outweighs her by at least eighty pounds and is currently secreting enough alpha pheromones to peel the wallpaper. She plants both hands square on his sternum andpushes. Not a suggestion. Not a nudge. A full-body shove that uses leverage and the element of surprise to drive him backward through the doorway.
“Out. Now.”
Judah goes. Not because she has the physical strength to move him—she doesn’t, not even close—but because somewhere in the animal recesses of his alpha brain, the command registersas coming from an omega who will absolutely disembowel him if he doesn’t comply.
The three of us end up in the hallway. Phoenix stands in the open doorway, barefoot, copper hair wild as a brushfire, Mabie’s cartoon lobster socks bunched at the ankles. Her amber eyes blaze gold at the centers, bright enough to burn.
She shouts back into the room without taking her gaze off us.
“Atticus, stay with him. Don’t let him leave that bed. Don’t let him spiral.”
Atticus, to his credit, just makes a very calming and agreeable sound as the door slams shut.
Phoenix rounds on us.
Her stance would make the most hardened drill sergeant reconsider his life choices. Shoulders squared. Chin up. Arms folded across her chest like she’s resisting the urge to punch us in the face.
The effect should be absurd. She barely clears my collarbone. Her hair looks like she lost a fight with a wind tunnel. There’s a faint imprint of a pillowcase crease running diagonally across her left cheek because she hasn’t been out of bed long enough for it to fade.
And yet.
My brain, that traitorous backfiring engine that has never once in my life done anything useful at the right moment, chooses this exact instant to deliver the following observation with the clarity of a church bell at dawn:
She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Not Hollywood beautiful. Not red-carpet-calculated, camera-ready, manufactured-by-a-team-of-professionals beautiful. Something rawer than that. Something that starts in the fire behind those gold-flecked eyes and radiates outward through every inch of her small, furious, sock-clad frame. The way she holds herself—feet planted, spine straight, absolutely certainthat the two alphas in front of her will do exactly what she says because the alternative hasn’t occurred to her?—
Stop.
I slam the door on the thought so hard it rattles. Shove the whole thing into a shallow grave in the back of my skull, kick dirt over it, stamp it down.
This is categorically the worst possible moment to be this distracted.
Hopefully oblivious to the direction of my thoughts, Phoenix jerks her head toward the staircase. “Downstairs. Now.”
She doesn’t wait for agreement. Just turns and marches for the stairs, bare feet slapping hardwood with the authority of combat boots. Judah and I follow her like two soldiers called before a tribunal, which is essentially what this is.
The kitchen still smells like the omelets she made. Two plates sit on the table, half-eaten, forks abandoned mid-bite. Evidence of the before. The last normal moment this house will see for a while.
Phoenix positions herself in front of the kitchen island, planting her feet on the stone tile. Arms fold across her chest again. She looks up at us—has to, given the height differential—and the angle somehow makes her more intimidating rather than less.
