Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
MASON
The kettle whistles.
I stare at it for three full seconds before my brain catches up to my hands, which are already reaching for the handle, already pulling it off the burner, already going through motions I’ve performed a thousand times before. The Daniels’ kitchen is exactly as I remember it.
Everything in the same place. Everything frozen in amber while the rest of the world moved on.
I find the tea bags in the second cabinet to the left of the stove, exactly where Mrs. Daniels used to keep them. The sugar bowl sits on the counter by the window, ceramic with hand-painted forget-me-nots, a chip on the rim from when Judah knocked it over during one of our wrestling matches.
We were fourteen.
I was so in love with him I couldn’t breathe.
My hands shake as I measure out the sugar and pour out almost exactly a tablespoon of full-fat milk, just like always.
The familiar ritual does nothing to calm the storm churning in my chest. Upstairs, sounds drift through the old house’s thin walls—sounds I’m desperately trying not to focus on identifying.
Phoenix is with Atticus.
Phoenix is with Atticus, and I am down here making fucking tea like an idiot.
This is what you wanted, a vicious voice whispers. You sent him up there. You told him to go. You handed her over because you weren’t enough of a man to—
The spoon clatters against the countertop. I grip the edge of the counter, knuckles going white, and force myself to breathe through my nose.
I have to sit down at the battered kitchen table, knees suddenly weak.
The tightness in my chest has nothing to do with jealousy. Because you can’t be overly protective of something that doesn’t belong to you.
No. This is just concern.
Professional concern for my employer’s well-being during a vulnerable time. The fact that I can still taste her on my lips, can still feel the ghost of her fingers in my hair, can still hear the way she said I want you—
None of that matters.
I made my choice. I made the right choice. Phoenix needs an alpha to help her through this heat, and I am categorically, biologically incapable of being that for her. Everything I did was in her best interest.
So why does it feel like I’ve carved out my own heart with a rusty spoon?
The back door swings open without warning, hitting the wall with a bang as loud as a gunshot.
I spin, tea sloshing over the rim of my cup and burning my hand.
Dom stands in the open doorway, carrying a six-pack of beer in one hand and a takeout bag in the other. Rain drops bead on his leather jacket and drip on the floor as he kicks the door shut behind him.
He drops what he’s carrying on the table with a thud that echoes through the empty room, then shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it over the chair.
His dark eyes rake over me like he’s searching for an injury.
“You look like shit,” he announces.
The words startle a laugh out of me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He pulls out a carton from the takeout bag and flips it open, revealing a pile of fries that have clearly been sitting under a heat lamp for too long. He pushes them toward the center of the table. “Want some?”
I take a fry. Not because I’m hungry because my stomach is too bound up in knots for that, but just because he offered before eating any of it himself.
Typical alpha, even if he doesn’t like to acknowledge it.
The fry is lukewarm and slightly soggy, but my stomach reminds me that I haven’t eaten since the terrible breakfast at the Seafoam Inn approximately a million years ago. I chew mechanically, tasting nothing.
“I thought you didn’t live here anymore,” I say, mostly to fill the silence.
“I don’t, but figured hanging around was a good idea.
” Dom cracks open a beer and takes a long pull.
He leans back in his chair, balancing on two legs the way he used to do when we were teenagers and Judah’s mother would scold him for scuffing her floors.
“But I’ve always been the type of guy who slows down to look at car crashes. Just can’t help myself.”
I clear my throat and take a sip of tea. He’s deliberately trying to needle me and anything other than a placid reaction will just encourage him.
“Plus,” he continues, dark eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my skin prickle, “whenever you finally decide to reveal the bullshit reason you left, I’d like to be around to hear it.”
My composure cracks.
Not visibly, thankfully. I’ve spent too much time masking for that. But I can feel the chasm widening inside me.
I set my tea cup down hard enough to clatter in its saucer. “Judah still had his family, this town, everything that mattered to him. I had to give everything up when I left.”
Dom’s expression hardens. The casual amusement drains from his face, replaced by something cold and serious.
“You didn’t just give it up, Mace.” His voice is quiet, but it cuts like a blade.
“You threw it away. No warning. No explanation. No goodbye.” He leans forward, chair legs hitting the floor with a sharp crack.
“One day you were here, and the next you were gone. And Judah spent six months barely functioning while I tried to hold him together with duct tape and my own stubbornness.”
I flinch but don’t deny it.
What could I possibly say? He’s right. Nothing he said is factually incorrect.
So I take a deep breath, because a moment like this was coming from the moment our engine failed.
“You need to understand something. I didn’t leave because I stopped caring.” The words scrape out of my throat like broken glass. “I left because caring was destroying everything.”
“Explain that to me.” Dom’s voice has lost some of its edge, replaced by something that sounds almost like genuine curiosity. “Explain how running away without a word was supposed to help anyone.”
My response is automatic and defensive. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
Dom’s jaw tightens. I prepare myself for a vitriolic reaction, because he has never been the type of person to hold back.
But instead, his expression softens. The hard lines around his mouth ease, and I catch a glimpse of something I’ve never seen on his face before—pain. Real, unguarded pain that he’s been hiding behind bravado and sarcasm for God knows how long.
“Then offer me something just because I’m asking for it,” he says softly. “I need to know what I missed.”
The confession hits me like a punch to the gut.
Dom. Blaming himself. For something that had nothing to do with him.
“It wasn’t—“ I start, then stop. Try again. “You didn’t do anything wrong. None of this was because of you.”
“Then what?” He spreads his hands, frustration bleeding through. “What happened? What made you decide that vanishing into thin air was better than talking to us?”
I close my eyes.
The memory surfaces whether I want it to or not. The camping trip. Senior year. The three of us in a clearing by the lake, the stars so bright overhead they looked fake, and Judah’s arm around my shoulders as we watched the fire die down to embers.
I’d been fighting my heat for days. Stress-induced, probably—the scholarship to NYU was my only way out, but taking it meant leaving everything and everyone I loved behind.
The suppressants I’d been taking weren’t strong enough.
I could feel it building under my skin, that familiar ache that always preceded the worst of it.
And then Judah looked at me. Really looked at me, with those ocean-blue eyes that saw everything, understood everything, offered everything without asking for anything in return.
It’s okay, he’d said. Whatever you need. I’m here.
What happened next was inevitable, given the situation and our shared history, the tension that had been building between us for years. Biology and emotion colliding in a moment neither of us was prepared for. His teeth on my neck. The bond snapping into place like a lock clicking home.
And then—
“If you had seen the look on his face afterward…” My voice comes out barely above a whisper. “You’d understand.”
Dom goes very still. “What look?”
“Disgust.” The word tastes like poison on my tongue.
“Mace—”
“Horror. Like he’d just realized he’d made the worst mistake of his life.”
“I wasn’t there,” Dom admits slowly. “Judah told me about the bond after you were already gone. But that doesn’t sound like—“
“It doesn’t matter what it sounds like. I was there.
I saw it.” I wrap my hands around my tea cup, needing something to hold onto.
“And the whole town was already gossiping about us anyway. There were no other male omegas at our school. Do you remember how many times the jocks tried to beat me up for being a freak of nature?”
Dom’s expression darkens. “I remember.”
“Staying as Judah’s mate would have destroyed his reputation. His family’s reputation. Everything his parents built, everything they sacrificed—it would have been ruined because he accidentally bonded with the town’s only male omega.”
“Who gives a fuck what anyone thinks?” Dom spits out the words like they’re burning his mouth.
“Judah does.” I meet his eyes steadily. “This place has been his family’s hometown for generations. The Daniels name means something here. I wasn’t going to be the reason that changed.”
The silence that follows is heavy, charged with a decade of unspoken truths.
What I don’t tell Dom—what I can’t bring myself to say out loud—is that the biggest issue wasn’t the town gossip or the social implications. It was the bond itself.
From the moment Judah’s teeth broke my skin, I could feel him. Not just physically present, but inside of me. Every emotion he experienced bled through to me—confusion, fear, guilt, something that might have been want but was too tangled up with everything else to identify clearly.
We were seventeen. Hormonal and terrified and completely unprepared for the weight of a permanent biological connection. The bond felt like drowning. Like being crushed under the pressure of someone else’s feelings while barely able to manage my own.
Taking the scholarship to NYU was supposed to be just a temporary fix. Distance would dull the bond’s intensity. I’d have time to think, to process, to figure out what the hell we were supposed to do next.
But then the more time passed, the more afraid I became to come back and face what happened. Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. Months into years.
And here we are.
“Judah has basically been frozen in place since you left, you know.” Dom’s voice breaks through my spiraling thoughts.
“He poured himself into the family, the house, the business. Puts no attention on himself. That isn’t what someone who regrets their bond does.
” He pauses, letting the words sink in. “The guy hasn’t so much as gone on a date in ten years, Mace. ”
“That’s—“ I stop, brain glitching as I try to figure out if I misheard. “That can’t be true.”
“Why would I lie?”
The question isn’t even challenging, just a simple statement of fact.
I really can’t do this right now.
“Speaking of past obsessions,” I drawl. “You’re acting remarkably nonchalant about being under the same roof as Phoenix Riviera.”
Dom blanches.
The color drains from his face so fast I’m almost worried he’s going to pass out. Then his expression shutters, closing down with the practiced speed of someone who’s spent a lifetime hiding his vulnerabilities.
“No idea what you mean,” he says, reaching for his beer with studied casualness.
“Really.” I raise an eyebrow. “The Dom I used to know wouldn’t be this nonchalant. Didn’t you used to have—“
“Fuck all the way off, Mason.”
“I could get you an autographed photo, if you want.” I’m enjoying this now—the rare pleasure of seeing Dominic Romano off-balance. “Maybe she’d sign your leather jacket. Or…maybe something else if you ask nicely enough.”
“I don’t give a shit about an autograph.” He takes a long swig of beer, but not before I catch the pink flush spreading across his cheekbones.
“You’re blushing.”
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“It’s warm in here.” He gestures vaguely at the kitchen. “Old houses, you know. Bad insulation.”
“Uh huh.” I lean back in my chair, feeling something that might almost be amusement for the first time in days. “I’m sure the fact that your childhood celebrity crush is thrashing in a nest a few rooms away has nothing to do with it.”
Dom glares at me with enough intensity to start a small fire. “You’re an asshole.”
Now this feels good. This is what I forgot I’ve been missing for years. “But am I wrong?”
He drums his fingers on the table. “Keep talking and I am going to kill you.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Nah, you’d miss me too much.”
The words slip out before I can stop them. For a moment, we both freeze—caught in the echo of a friendship that used to include casual death threats and insults as terms of endearment.
Dom’s expression does something complicated. “Yeah,” he admits quietly. “I would.”
The air shifts between us. Some of the tension bleeds away, replaced by something older and more familiar.
We’re not okay—there’s too much history, too much hurt, too many unanswered questions for that—but for the first time since I arrived in this town, I can almost imagine a world where we might be able to get there.
“Anyway,” I say, clearing my throat. “About that autograph…”
Dom stands abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. “I’m going to go see if Mabie wants one of these burgers.”
“Mabie went to stay with a friend for a few days. Which you should remember, since that was your idea.”
Dom freezes with his hand already reaching for the takeout bag.
The flush on his cheeks has spread to his ears now, visible even in the dim kitchen light. He looks genuinely flustered—a state I’ve rarely seen him in and am thoroughly enjoying.
“Right.” He straightens, abandoning the bag. “Then I’m going to the attic. To check on Judah.”
He disappears through the doorway as my laughter follows him.