Page 170 of My Unhinged Alphas

---

Then they mean too much.

I stare at him. “I thought you said he died.”

“I thought he did too.”

Knox’s hands stop completely for the first time since they walked in.

Havoc straightens off the dresser.

Vale looks away from all of us. “After the fire.”

The room goes still around that one word.

Fire.

I feel it before I understand it fully, because I remember his voice low and flat beside me in the dark, telling me pieces but not all of it. I remember knowing there was more.

This is the more.

“When I told Lena about the fire, I left something out.”

I don’t sayI know. It feels too small.

He keeps looking at the floor. “I wasn’t alone out there.”

That goes through me cold.

“There was another boy,” he says. “My best friend. Tomas.” His voice changes slightly on the name, not softer, just older somehow. “He used to come over when he shouldn’t have. Said the place creeped him out. Kept coming anyway.”

Havoc says nothing. Knox goes back to wrapping Vale’s wrist, but more slowly now, giving him space to keep talking.

Vale swallows once. “The night of the fire, he was with me. My father knew.”

I stop breathing for a second.

“He locked us in.”

I inhale sharply.

“We were trying to get the side door open first. Tomas was coughing so hard he could barely stand. The smoke came down too fast. I got turned around.” His jaw tightens. “There was a beam or a shelf or something that came down between us. I remember hearing him. Then not hearing him.”

My stomach twists.

Knox’s hands are very steady.

Vale says, “I made it out. He didn’t.”

The words don’t come with drama. That somehow makes them worse.

“And your father?” Knox asks.

Vale’s one open eye lifts. “I thought he died too.”

“Thought,” Havoc says quietly.

Vale nods once. “That’s what I was told. That they found remains. That the whole structure came down too badly to make much sense of anything.”

“But now?” I ask.

---