Page 154 of My Unhinged Alphas
“Lena.”
She doesn’t answer. She’s too far inside her own head.
I step in front of her, close enough to catch her attention without crowding her. When her eyes finally lift to mine, there’s nothing steady in them. Just strain. Confusion. The beginning of fear she can’t joke away fast enough.
“You need to sit down,” I say.
Her mouth twitches like she wants to argue on principle, but it dies before it reaches her face. “I’m so tired of people saying that.”
“I know.”
That gets the faintest reaction. Not quite a smile. Just recognition.
I glance at the chair by the desk, then back at her. “Sit.”
This time she does it. Slowly, like her body is only half listening.
I crouch in front of her because standing over her feels wrong, because she already looks overwhelmed enough without me adding height and shadow to it. My knees crack slightly when I lower myself. I ignore that too.
She lets out a breath and looks anywhere but at me. “I really hate that this is happening in front of witnesses,” she mutters.
“Havoc barely counts as a witness.”
From somewhere behind me, Havoc says, “Rude.”
“I want to go home,” she says. The words come out tired, but firm enough that all three of us hear the decision inside them.
Knox looks at her first. Havoc goes still against the desk.
I’m the one who answers. “That’s not a good idea.”
Lena looks at me like she expected that and hates that she did. “It’s my apartment.”
“It’s also compromised.”
Her mouth tightens. “You mean watched.”
“Yes.”
She lets out a breath through her nose and looks down at herself. At her wrinkled clothes. At the way the day has already settled into her skin. “I’m beginning to stink,” she says.
The words are dry, almost funny, but there’s real discomfort under them.
And immediately, stupidly, my body betrays me with a thought I do not need.
She smells like me.
Like Havoc too.
I know it because I can still catch it under the house, the paper, the chemical smell of this room. Skin, sweat, sex, all of itlingering on her. Enough that I know Havoc can smell it too. I don’t have to look at him to know that. He’ll have clocked it the second she said the word.
I keep my face flat. “It’s too dangerous to go back,” I say. “We can get you new clothes.”
She looks up at me. “I don’t want new clothes.”
“It’s the smarter option.”
“No,” she says. “The smarter option is not leaving my ID and passport in an apartment that apparently doubles as somebody’s personal surveillance lab.” She folds her arms. “And before one of you says you can replace everything, I would rather have my own clothes. My own documents. My own things.”
