Page 93 of My Unhinged Alphas
Which he? The man from the date? The dead one?
Or any of the others?
Andhurtis too simple a word for whatever last night was.
I look away first. “No.”
Another lie. Or maybe not. I don’t know anymore.
Mara and Jess exchange a look.
Then Jess says, very carefully, “Lena, we can still go to the police.”
There it is again. The normal answer. The sane answer.
Except nothing about this is normal, and I know with cold certainty that if I walk into a police station and start talking, I won’t be ending this. I’ll be starting something worse.
And beneath all that, there’s the part I hate most.
I don’t want to betray them.
I hate that I feel that way. Hate it so much it makes me feel sick.
“They rescued me,” I say before I can stop myself.
Both Mara and Jess go still.
Mara blinks. “Who rescued you?”
I feel the mistake right away. “I just mean… I got out,” I say quickly. “I left. I’m here. That’s all.”
Jess’s face tightens. She knows I’m hiding something. Mara does too.
“Lena,” Mara says quietly, “you’re scaring me.”
A laugh slips out of me, thin and tired. “Imagine how I feel.”
Jess reaches across the counter and closes her hand around my wrist. “Then tell us.”
I look at her hand, then at both of them.
I could. I could tell Mara and Jess about the house, the hallway, the locked feeling of every room. I could tell them about the men with their cold eyes and dangerous voices and secrets I don’t understand. I could tell them that one of them watched me like I was already a problem and another looked at me like he’d already decided I belonged in his hands.
Instead I say, “I can’t.”
Not won’t. Can’t.
And that, finally, seems honest enough to stop them.
For a moment, none of us speaks. The espresso machine screams behind me. Somebody near the register asks for oat milk. A chair scrapes across the floor. Real life keeps moving, rude and ordinary, while mine feels split in two.
Jess lets go of my wrist slowly.
“Okay,” Mara says at last. “Then promise us something.”
“What?”
“No more disappearing,” Jess says.
