Page 150 of My Unhinged Alphas
“No,” I say immediately, gripping Knox harder. The answer comes out so fast and raw it surprises even me.
Knox glances toward Voss but doesn’t move me.
Good. Because if he tried right now, I might actually lose my mind.
I drag in another breath and it goes badly again, too shallow, too fast. “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do with this.”
Vale says quietly, “You don’t do anything with it yet.”
Knox says, “Look at me.”
I do.
Reluctantly, because if I look at the wall again I’m going to come apart.
He waits until my breathing evens just enough to count as breathing and not drowning. Then he says, “You being overlooked doesn’t mean you’re unimportant.”
I stare at him. “That sounds fake,” I say.
“It isn’t.”
“It does though.”
A small shift in his face. Not a smile. The idea of one.
Beside us, Voss says, clipped and unhappy, “This is not the time.”
Knox doesn’t look at him. “I know exactly what time it is.”
That shuts the room up for a second.
I’m still holding on to him. I know it. Everyone else knows it too. At this point I’ve accepted humiliation as part of the atmosphere.
I close my eyes for one beat and say, quieter now, “I don’t know how to be this person.”
“What person?” Vale asks.
I let out a shaky breath. “The one somebody thinks is worth watching. Worth killing. Worth remembering.”
That hangs there.
Because that’s the real horror, maybe. Not just that someone wants me dead. That someone thought I mattered enough to build all this around. For a woman who’s spent most of her life feeling like background noise, that kind of attention is its own nightmare.
Havoc’s voice is lower when he speaks next, stripped of most of its usual mockery. “Maybe you were never as invisible as you thought.”
I let out a shaky breath and look over Knox’s shoulder at him. “Wow. Horrible timing for a self-esteem speech.”
That gets the corner of Havoc’s mouth to twitch. Then he says, “Look at me, Lena.”
I don’t want to.
“Lena.”
Knox lets me go. Not abruptly. Just enough that I feel the loss of him at once, the absence of that steady hand at my back. I straighten on instinct, wipe my face quickly, and turn to Havoc because apparently the universe has decided dignity is off the table for today.
He’s watching me with that same intent look, but there’s less amusement in it than usual. More focus.
“What?” I ask.
