Page 187 of My Unhinged Alphas
Vale is staring at Knox over the edge of his own oxygen mask, one eye nearly swollen shut, the other fixed and dark and alive in a way it wasn’t ten minutes ago. There’s soot all over him, blood dried at his temple, bandage on his wrist gone half-black from the fire, and still his whole attention is on Knox.
Knox sits up too fast and immediately regrets it. I can tell from the way his shoulders lock.
The medic pushes him back down. “Easy.”
Knox pulls the oxygen mask off long enough to rasp, “Vale.”
Vale lets out something that might have been a laugh if his lungs weren’t wrecked. “Still here.”
Knox’s eyes cut to me next.
I spread my hands as much as the firefighters and blanket and general catastrophe will allow. “Surprise.”
He closes his eyes for half a second, then opens them again. That’s his version of emotion on a good day. I can work with that.
When the mask is back on his face, I say, “You know, I always figured you’d eventually kill me.”
Knox’s eyes shift toward me.
I tap my own chest. “Did not have ‘runs into a burning room and drags me out’ on the list.”
Vale coughs behind his mask and I can’t tell if he’s laughing or dying a little more, which is not ideal.
Knox takes the mask off again because apparently he has learned nothing in the last two minutes. “Shut up.”
I grin, then wince because smiling hurts more than it should. “See? That’s the tone I trust.”
The medics keep trying to do their jobs around us and we keep making it difficult, which feels like a good sign. Dead men are famously easier to manage.
Lena is there too, a little back from the curb now because a firefighter made her move and she clearly only obeyed because she was choosing her battles. Her face is streaked with soot and tears. Blanket still around her shoulders. Eyes too bright. She’s looking at all three of us like she can’t decide whether to scream or hit us.
The firefighters start asking questions the second they decide none of us are about to fall over dead in front of them.
Where did the fire start. How many people were inside. Did anyone smell accelerant. Was the room heater on. Did we see anyone outside before it went up.
I answer most of them because I’m the least likely to sound concussed, which is a depressing thought.
“Door side first,” I say, lifting the mask long enough to talk. “Window too. It came up too fast to be wiring issue.”
“We don’t think it’s a wiring issue either.” The firefighter crouches in front of me, a woman with ash in the lines around her eyes. “You see anyone?”
“No.”
“Any enemies?”
I smile at that because the alternative is saying yes and then having to define the word. “Enough to be annoying.”
She doesn’t smile back. Professional. Heartless. I respect it.
Knox is answering his own set of questions a few feet away, voice still rough from smoke but steady now that oxygen has put some color back in him. Vale is giving shorter answers because every sentence clearly hurts. Lena is wrapped in one of the scratchy emergency blankets now, watching all of it with that too-bright, exhausted stare of someone who has run out of room for surprise but keeps getting handed more anyway.
One of the firefighters says, “Any reason someone would target your room specifically?”
All four of us go quiet for half a beat.
A siren cuts off near the curb and two paramedics head over with another kit. The whole lot is brighter now, noisier, more crowded. Firefighters still working the remains of the room. Neighbors gathering where they’ve been told not to. People pretending not to stare at the four smoke-blackened disasters on the curb.
Then the motel owner arrives.
