Page 80 of My Unhinged Alphas
My hand is still on the knob when Knox moves. He gets there before I can open the door fully, one arm bracing across it, body blocking the exit with quiet, immovable force. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t need to.
“No,” he says. The word lands flat and heavy.
I look up at him, pulse hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat. “Move.”
“That’s not happening.”
I tighten my grip on the knob. “You don’t get to keep me here.”
His jaw shifts. “Actually, right now, I do.”
The panic comes fast then, hot and ugly, because for one stupid second I really thought I could walk out. I thought if I moved quickly enough, if I kept talking, if I looked harmless enough, they might let me go.
Then Havoc speaks. “I’ll take her home.”
The room changes again.
Knox turns first. “What?”
Havoc pushes off the wall at last, all lazy confidence and bad ideas. “You heard me. I’ll take her.”
I stare at him.
“I’m a man who keeps his word,” he adds.
My heart pounds harder.
Because that sounds good. Reassuring, almost. Except he never actually gave me his word. He never promised he’d take me home.
Knox’s expression doesn’t change much, but enough. Enough that I know he doesn’t buy it either. “We already have enough of a mess,” he says. “Letting her walk out is stupid.”
Havoc shrugs, almost bored. “Relax, brother.” Then his eyes slide to me, dark and bright at the same time. “People rarely outrun us.”
The chill that runs through me is immediate and total.
Not because he says it like a threat. Because he says it like a fact.
And I understand him.
“Who are you?” I ask.
He cocks his head. “We’re Saints.”
More like Sinners,I want to say, but I keep my mouth shut. It might be some kind of code word.
Even if I run, even if I get out that door, even if I make it home and lock every window and drag my dresser in front of it and sleep with my phone in my hand, they’ll still find me.
They found me once already.
No. That’s not true.
They didn’t just find me. They marked me. I’m branded now.
I look at Havoc and see it clearly for the first time: the offer is real, but so is the leash attached to it.
He’ll take me home. He just never said he’d let me stay there alone.
My mouth goes dry.
