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“Trixie?” Mia’s voice, small and scared. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here.” My voice sounds foreign, belonging to someone steadier, someone not sitting with bandaged hands and a bruised body, realizing the man who tried to take her was just the beginning.

Carter’s still beside me, silence radiating from him, not calm, but the stillness of recalculating the threat.

“We’re coming down,” I say. “Don’t move.”

I hang up. The phone drops to the mattress, and I turn to find Carter already standing, pulling on a shirt, every movement too controlled. His jaw is set in that angle I know means he’s holding back.

“Savage Oath,” he says. It’s not a question. It’s heavy, like he knows exactly what that name carries. “Mia brought one of their hit men to us.”

“He’s not. She said he didn’t take the job.” I swing my legs off the bed. Pain shoots through my knees, blinding and fierce. I grit my teeth and push past it. “They don’t hurt women. It’s their rule.”

Carter’s face hardens, gold flecks in his eyes nearly swallowed by darkness. “A killer with a moral code. How noble.”

“Carter.” My bandaged fingers find his wrist. “He’s here. That’s gotta mean something.”

A muscle feathers in his cheek, the inner battle visible in his eyes. Protect us or see if this Ashton can spill what Caldwell’s plotting.

“Stay behind me,” he finally says, words rough and clipped. “If he twitches wrong or blinks funny, hit the floor. Got it?”

“Got it.”

He helps me up, his arm taking most of my weight as my knees protest. I’m still in his shirt from last night, soft cotton smelling like him. My bandages stand out against my skin. I must look a wreck. I feel it.

The stairs are torture, each step sending a new shock of pain through me. By the bottom, I’m clutching the banister, knuckles white. Carter positions himself between me and the door, tension rolling off him in waves.

He peeks through the hole, shoulders tightening.

“Two,” he says, just for me. “Mia and a guy. Tall. Dark hair. Tattoo on his neck, Savage Oath ink.”

I lean closer, trying to see, but he blocks my view. “Let me look.”

“No.” The word is firm. “Stay back.”

“Carter…”

“Trixie.” He turns just enough for me to see his clenched jaw and hard mouth. “Please.”

That “please” gets me. Not his command, but the vulnerability beneath it. The man who calls me his ole lady and nearly lost me twice, standing between me and a door that could open to danger.

I step back. One step, two. Enough to give him space, but close enough to feel his warmth, the tension in his spine.

Carter unlocks the door and swings it wide.

Morning light hits first, cold and glaring, making my eyes water. Then Mia comes into view.

Her hair is in a messy bun, eyes red and swollen, hoodie too large for her frame, probably his. Her hands twist like she’s wringing a secret out of them. Behind her, slightly back, stands Ashton.

Carter was right about the tattoo peeking over his collar. Black, intricate. He’s taller than Carter, with close cropped dark hair and sharp, angular features that are an open warning. His eyes aren’t flat or predatory, but keen, taking in Carter’s stance and tension like he’s reading a playbook.

He’s not armed. At least, not visibly. His hands are at his sides, relaxed, palms slightly open in the clear posture of someone telegraphing they’re not a threat. But I can see the tension in his forearms, the way his jaw is set, the careful distance he’s keeping between himself and the doorway.

He knows exactly what he’s walking into.

“Trixie.” Mia’s voice is thin, stretched to breaking. Her eyes move over me, to the bandaged hands, the bruise on my arm, the raw spot on my scalp visible where my hair has fallen away from my face, and something fractures in her expression. “God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. If I’d known sooner⁠—”

“Come in.” Carter’s voice cuts through her spiraling. It’s not warm. It’s not inviting. It’s the voice of a man who’s decided, for the moment, that the risk of letting them inside is marginally lower than the risk of having this conversation on his front porch. “Both of you. Now.”