Page 153 of My Unhinged Alphas
Voss ignores him. He looks at me one last time, and whatever’s in his face then is harder to read. Still disapproving. Still distant. But not entirely cruel. Then he says, “If you involve police now, you’ll die before the paperwork settles.”
And that’s apparently the closest he comes to concern.
He steps back.
The air doesn’t ease, not really, but the shape of it changes. The immediate threat goes out of the room, leaving behind something worse: the knowledge that all of them meant exactly what they said.
Knox waits until Voss is half a step farther away before he relaxes at all.
Vale’s shoulders loosen by degrees.
Havoc doesn’t loosen. He just keeps staring until Voss finally looks away first.
I stand there behind them, breathing too hard, and realize I still haven’t moved. Not because I’m frozen anymore. Because some selfish, frightened part of me liked having them there. Liked being the thing they stepped in front of.
That should probably worry me more than it does.
Voss says, “Decide quickly.”
Then he leaves the room, and none of them turns their back on him until he’s gone.
Chapter 24
Vale
I knowwe crossed a line in that room.
Not a small one. Not the kind you can explain away later if the right person asks the right question. A real one.
The Brotherhood doesn’t believe in personal ties. Not when they interfere with the work. Not when they make you hesitate. Not when they make you choose badly.
They call it discipline. Purity of purpose.
We’re taught that early, in a hundred different ways. Never attach. Never protect something you want. Never confuse desire with duty, because one of them always contaminates the other.
And tonight, all three of us did exactly that.
I stand in the room after Voss is gone, looking at the contract on the desk and the wall full of Lena’s life, and I know we made a very big decision. One that might come back to bite us hard.
I’ve heard the stories. Brothers who got soft where they shouldn’t have. Men who picked a woman, a child, a family, and convinced themselves they could balance both worlds. Men who thought they could want something and still remain useful.
It never ends well.
Sometimes they disappear. Sometimes they’re punished publicly enough that nobody else gets ideas. Sometimes they survive long enough to wish they hadn’t.
I try not to think about any of that now.
I fail.
Because Lena is standing a few feet away from me, pale and shaken and doing that thing she does where she holds herself too straight when she’s close to falling apart, and all I can think is that if this is the mistake that ruins me, I walked into it willingly.
A part of me, the meanest part, almost thinks I might deserve whatever comes from that.
Wanting her already feels like a breach, and protecting her feels worse, but there’s something almost relieving in the idea of punishment finally catching up to me in a shape I chose.
I don’t let any of that show.
Knox is still watching the door Voss used like he expects him to come back through it with reinforcements. Havoc has gone quieter than usual, which is never a good sign. Lena is staring at the corkboard again, not really seeing it now. Her face has gone blank in that dangerous way people’s faces do when they’re close to shock.
