Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
PHOENIX
The bedroom door clicks shut behind me and I collapse against it.
The adrenaline rush that carried me through that confrontation with Dom and Judah drains out of me like someone pulled out my battery.
Mason is mated.
Mason is mated to Judah.
Mason has been mated this entire time and I never knew.
A sound escapes me—half laugh, half sob—and I press the heels of my hands against my eyes until stars burst across my vision.
“Phoenix?”
Mason’s voice, thin and ragged, cuts through my spiral. I look up.
He’s watching me from the center of the nest, gray eyes fever-bright above flushed cheekbones. Atticus sits on the edge of the bed beside him, one hand resting lightly on Mason’s back and rubbing in circles.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically, pushing myself back to my feet. My knees wobble but hold. “Just needed a second.”
Mason doesn’t look convinced. His throat works as he swallows, and I watch a fresh sheen of sweat break out across his forehead.
I can already sense him building up to some grand apology that I really don’t want from him right now.
Honestly, I have no idea what I want from him right now.
“I’ll give you guys a minute,” Atticus says, rising from the bed.
He crosses to me, movements unhurried despite the tension thrumming through the room. When he reaches the door, he pauses, cups my face in both hands, and presses a kiss to my forehead that’s so tender it makes my chest ache.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” he murmurs against my skin. “Just yell if you need anything.”
Then he’s gone, the door clicking softly behind him, and I’m alone with Mason.
Mason just watches me, like any second he expects me to start screaming at him.
Pull yourself together, Phoenix.
Whatever I’m feeling right now—the hurt, the confusion, the bone-deep sense of betrayal—none of it matters. Mason is in heat. Mason is vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen him before. Mason needs me to be the steady one for once, instead of the other way around.
My wounded pride will still be there in a few days.
I cross to the bed and settle onto the edge of the mattress, close enough to touch but not quite touching. Mason tracks my movements with those fever-bright eyes, his body curling instinctively toward me even as his expression remains guarded.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Phoenix, I’m so sorry, I should have told you—“
“Shush.” I press my fingers against his lips, silencing whatever apology he’s about to offer. “Just shut your face and scoot back.”
I help him maneuver into the center of the bed.
He sinks back into the nest without further argument, his body going loose and pliant against the pile of scented blankets.
I watch him burrow into the fabric, pressing his face against a pillow that still carries traces of my vanilla-citrus from earlier, and something in my chest clenches painfully.
The irony isn’t lost on me. Three days ago, Mason was the one arranging my nest. Scenting my pillows.
Managing my crisis with quiet competence while I thrashed and whined and demanded things I didn’t deserve.
Now our roles have reversed, and the asymmetry feels like cosmic retribution for every time I took his caretaking for granted.
So I do for him exactly what he did for me.
I adjust the blankets, smoothing them into a cocoon around his trembling body. I bring the water bottles closer to the bed, arranging them within easy reach. I find a washcloth in the attached bathroom and dampen it with cool water.
When I press the cloth against his burning forehead, Mason makes a sound that sounds too damn close to an orgasm.
Nope. Stop it, brain. We are so not going there right now.
His hand finds mine and grips hard, urging me to lie down beside him.
I stretch out beside him on the bed, close enough that I feel his body heat radiating even through our clothes, but not quite close enough to touch.
His eyes flutter closed. The tension in his shoulders eases by degrees.
I run my fingers through his damp hair—it’s curling at the temples, the humidity and sweat undoing whatever product he usually uses to keep it under control.
The sight catches me off guard. In three years, I’ve never seen Mason’s natural curls.
Another thing he hid. Another piece of himself he kept carefully controlled, carefully managed, carefully out of sight.
How much of him have I never seen?
The question hurts more than it probably should.
He works for me, I remind myself. I’m not entitled to anything more than what I pay him for.
But then Mason makes a low sound and presses closer. His forehead finds the curve of my neck, and his breath comes in hot, ragged bursts against my collarbone. His hand tightens around mine, fingers interlacing, palm pressed flush against my palm.
Then he murmurs something against my skin.
The words are indistinct, muffled by the press of his mouth against my collarbone.
Reluctantly, I pull back. Just far enough to hear him properly. Just far enough to see his face, flushed and damp and more open than I’ve ever seen it.
“What did you say?”
Mason’s eyes flutter open. Gray, storm-tossed, rimmed with red. He looks wrecked in a way that has nothing to do with the heat and everything to do with whatever’s been eating him alive for the last decade.
“I need you to understand,” he whispers.
My heart clenches. Part of me wants to stop him, to press my fingers to his lips again and tell him we can talk about this later. My pride is still smarting from the revelation that I’ve spent three years pining for a man who was already claimed by someone else.
But it’s so hard to resist the pull of him.
I adjust our positions until we’re face to face, noses nearly touching, my hand still threaded through his damp curls. The intimacy of it is almost unbearable. His breath ghosts across my lips, his eyes so close I could get lost in them.
“Okay.”
Mason swallows hard. His throat bobs. When he speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.
“I presented as omega when I was fifteen.”
I nod slowly. “That’s pretty late.”
“And there wasn’t anyone else like me here,” Mason continues, his voice going distant.
“I looked up the statistics once. Male omegas are only like 1 percent of the population. So in a town this small, I was it. The only one. My parents are betas. They had no idea what they were supposed to do with me.”
“What about everyone else?” I ask softly, though I have a sinking suspicion that I already know where this is going.
Mason’s expression goes flat.
“Male omega is code for gay to a lot of people. Regardless of who you’re actually attracted to.
You know people make assumptions because of designation all the time.
” His jaw tightens. “It doesn’t help that female alphas are almost as rare, but people always think they know exactly what to expect from an omega.
Submission. Weakness. Sexual availability.
Guys who were fine with me before I presented just… turned overnight.”
“Oh, Mason…”
“There were the usual locker room incidents. Slurs painted on my locker. Football players used to like to corner me after school. See how far they could push before a teacher intervened.”
Horror crawls up my spine, cold and sharp. My hands have stopped moving in his hair. I force them to start again, petting him like a stupid soothing gesture will make a difference.
“What about your parents?”
“They weren’t cruel. They just didn’t know how to handle it. Heats were just this weird thing they learned about in health class.” He shrugs, the movement small and defeated. “Most of the people in this town see the world the same way as they did fifty years ago.”
“But not Dom and Judah?”
Mason stills. For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to acknowledge the question before he finally speaks, so softly I can barely hear it.
“No. Not them.”
I’m not going to let him get away without sharing more. “Tell me.”
Mason’s voice softens when he talks about Judah and Dominic.
“They were the only ones who never flinched,” he says, and something warm flickers behind the exhaustion in his eyes.
“Judah walked me home from school every day. Not because he thought I was weak—because we were friends and it was on the way. And Dom would fight anyone who looked at me sideways. Not out of alpha possessiveness. Just pure, unfiltered rage at anyone who tried to hurt someone who was part of his family.”
I think about Dom’s face when he told me the story in the kitchen. The crack in his voice when he talked about Mason leaving. The way his hands shook.
He was my family too. The first real family I ever had.
“Falling in love with Judah was…” Mason trails off, searching for words. “Slow, at first. Then all at once. I don’t even know when it happened exactly because there wasn’t a single moment. It was just the accumulation of a thousand things.”
My throat tightens. I know that feeling.
“And the camping trip?”
Mason’s eyes squeeze shut. “My heat came early. And Judah was there. I don’t know which one of us is to blame for making it happen.”
“You bonded.”
“We bonded.” The words come out hollow. Empty. “I woke up the next morning with his mark on my chest and suddenly I was drowning in him. Drowning in…”
“In what?” I prompt, when it’s clear he won’t finish.
Mason’s face crumples.
“Horror,” he whispers. “He felt this…wave of absolute, devastating disgust at what we’d done.”
It feels like the world shifts slightly on its axis.
Because the alpha who busted in here a few minutes ago was anything but disgusted.
The emotion I saw on Judah’s face wasn’t horror.
It was hunger.
I cup his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “Mason, honey. Did Judah ever actually say he regretted the bond? Did he use those words?”
Mason blinks, brow furrowing. “He didn’t have to.”
I could argue with him and if he wasn’t in heat, I probably would. But now isn’t the time to point out the glaring sinkhole in the middle of his field of logic.
So I stroke my thumbs across his cheekbones, wiping away the tears that have started to spill. “I find it absolutely impossible to believe that anyone could be bonded to you and feel anything other than grateful.”
The words are true. Completely, devastatingly true. Whatever complicated feelings are churning through me right now—the hurt, the jealousy, the sense of betrayal—none of them change this fundamental fact:
Mason is extraordinary. Mason is loyal and competent and endlessly kind. Mason has spent three years taking care of me, far above what has ever been reasonable or what anyone else in his position would ever consider doing.
Mason stares at me with wide, wet eyes.
Then he kisses me.
My brain short-circuits. For a fraction of a second, I freeze. Caught off guard by the press of his lips, by the salt of tears on his mouth, by the desperate way his fingers curl into my shirt like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
Then I’m kissing him back.
Mason makes a needy sound against my lips and presses closer. His body fits against mine like a puzzle piece snapping into place, all lean lines and feverish heat. His hands find my waist, my hips, the bare skin at the small of my back where my shirt has ridden up.
I gasp at the contact. He swallows the sound.
The kiss deepens. His tongue traces the seam of my lips and I open for him, letting him in, letting him take what he needs.
His hand slides lower. Past my hip. Over the curve of my ass. His fingers hook into the waistband of my yoga pants and pull.
I break the kiss with a gasp, catching his wrist before he can go any further.
“Mason. Wait.”
He makes a frustrated sound, yanking his hand out of my grip. “I don’t want to wait.”
“You’re not in your right mind.” The words come out breathless, ragged.
My body is screaming at me to shut up and let him do whatever he wants, but some tiny rational part of my brain is still functioning.
More than his, at least. “Your heat is affecting your judgment. I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret. ”
Mason laughs. Actually laughs, the sound rough and incredulous.
“Have you ever—in your life— desperately wanted someone during heat that you didn’t also want at literally every other time?”
I open my mouth to argue.
Close it again.
Because nope. I haven’t. Heat hormones might mess with your head, but don’t create desire from nothing, just amplify what’s already there.
“I’ve wanted you for a long time,” he says quietly. “The only thing that stopped me was that you didn’t know the truth.”
But even as my heart races, even as every nerve ending screams at me to give in, I can’t shake the nagging feeling that this isn’t just about me. That I’m a convenient outlet for whatever complicated emotions are churning through Mason right now.
I don’t want to be a distraction or a convenience. I don’t want to be the person he turns to because I’m the only available option he’ll allow himself.
But I also can’t leave him alone. Not like this. Not when he’s trembling and feverish and looking at me like I’m the only solid thing in his entire world.
Fuck it.
I kiss him again. Slower and more deliberate this time. My hands smooth down his stomach, fingers lingering where the muscles jump at my touch.
Without breaking the kiss, I guide Mason onto his back. It’s easy to take control, like he’s been waiting for me to do just that. He sinks back into the bedding like he never wants to leave.
My fingers trace the planes of his chest, learning the topography of his body through touch alone. The ridges of his ribs. The hollow of his throat. The raised silver scar of Judah’s claiming bite.
Mason shivers beneath me. His eyes have gone glassy, unfocused, lost in sensation.
When my hand finally slides lower, past the waistband of his pants, finding him hard and aching, he arches up with a broken moan that makes heat pool in my belly.
I work him slowly. Deliberately. None of the frantic urgency of heat-driven coupling, just steady pressure and careful attention to every sound he makes, every hitch of his breath, every flex of his fingers against the sheets.
He comes apart beautifully.
His whole body goes taut, head thrown back, a sound tearing from his throat that’s half my name and half something wordless. I kiss him through it, swallowing his moans, feeling him pulse against my palm as the orgasm crests and breaks.
Afterward, he lies boneless in the nest, breathing ragged, eyes closed. Some of the desperate edge has softened.
I press a kiss to the crown of his head.
He barely huffs a response, already almost asleep.
For a few minutes I just lie there in the quiet room, listening to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
But my mind won’t stop spinning because I can’t stop thinking about the mess Judah and Mason have made of their lives.
Idiots, I think with a rush of affection. They’re both complete idiots.
I am going to fix this.
Whether they like it or not.