Chapter 20 #3
Breathe. Just breathe. It's just a spike, it'll pass, it's just—
The clench hits.
Deep in my abdomen. Not a cramp—a seizure.
My muscles locking, my body doubling forward over the sink, a sound ripping out of me that I muffle with my fist. The heat floods outward from my core in rolling waves—my hips, my thighs, the base of my spine—and I recognize it.
I know this feeling. I felt it once before, in a kitchen at the Graves estate, when my body betrayed me for the first time and Atlas found me on the tile.
A full heat.
Not a spike. Not a warning. A full, catastrophic, biology-overriding heat, crashing through me like my first all over again.
No.
No no no no no—
I grip the sides of the sink and stare at my reflection. Flushed. Pupils blown. Sweat running from my hairline down my temples. My lips are parted, my breathing ragged, and I can see the pulse in my throat hammering against Zero's bite mark.
How could I be this stupid? The suppressants are in my nightstand at the estate. Two hundred miles away. I didn't bring them because I chose not to take them, because I was done hiding, but what the fuck was I thinking? I should have just taken the damn things to get through this vacation.
Why did I?
Because I'm a fucking idiot who confused bravery with recklessness and now I'm locked in a bathroom with a full heat bearing down on me and no pharmaceutical safety net and my mother is on the beach outside.
A knock on the door. "Max?" Bane. "You okay?"
"Go away." My voice comes out thin. Wrong. The voice of someone who's losing a fight with their own body.
"Max, you don't sound—"
"I said go away, Bane."
Another knock. Atlas. "Max. Open the door."
"No." I'm sweating through my shirt. My legs are shaking.
The ringing in my ears is getting louder—a high, thin whine that makes it hard to think.
Another wave of heat rolls through me and I grip the sink harder and press my forehead against the mirror and the glass is cool for one second before my skin heats it.
I hear them in the hallway. Talking. Low, urgent voices I can't make out over the ringing. Bane pacing—I can hear his footsteps. Atlas's measured tone. Zero's silence, which is louder than both of them.
Then the lock snaps.
The door swings open and Zero is standing there with his shoulder dropped—he didn't kick it, he shouldered it, popped the cheap bathroom lock like it was made of paper.
And now all three of them are in the doorway.
Three alphas. Three scents crashing into the tiny bathroom like a wave breaking in a closet.
Cedar. Amber. Gunpowder.
My knees buckle.
Atlas catches me before I hit the tile. His arms around my waist, my back against his chest, and the contact—the skin—sends a jolt of heat through me so intense my vision whites out.
I can feel him through his shirt. Feel the warmth and the muscle and the scent pouring off him, and my body reads him as alpha, bonded, mate, MINE and every system I have goes into overdrive.
I'm soaked. Slick running down the inside of my thighs, soaking through my shorts.
My cock is so hard it hurts—a deep, throbbing ache that pulses with every heartbeat.
My skin is hypersensitive—Atlas's shirt against my back feels like sandpaper and silk at the same time.
And the need—the hollow, clenching, desperate need to be filled—is so enormous it's swallowing me from the inside.
"Don't—" I try to push away from Atlas but my arms won't cooperate. "Your scents—you're making it—I can't—"
Bane is in front of me. His face tight. His jaw locked so hard the muscle jumps. His pupils are blown—the alpha in him responding to my scent, his biology screaming at him the same way mine is screaming at me.
He looks like he's in pain. He looks like he wants to devour me.
Zero leans against the doorframe. Arms crossed. His eyes moving over me slowly—the sweat, the flush, the wet spot spreading on my shorts, the way I'm trembling in Atlas's arms. His nostrils flare. His cock is hard against his jeans. He doesn't try to hide it.
"There's nothing here," I hear myself say. Frantic. The rational part of my brain making its last stand. "No suppressants. No blockers. I didn't—I didn't bring them. There's nothing that can—"
I know what stops it. They know what stops it.
The only thing that makes a full heat bearable is being knotted by an alpha. By my alphas. By the three men standing in this bathroom looking at me like I'm the center of their universe and the ruin of their composure.
But Margot and Richard are on the beach. Fifty yards away. Coming back any minute. And this bathroom has a broken lock and thin walls and—
Another wave. The worst one yet. My spine arches against Atlas's chest. A moan escapes me—loud, broken, the kind of sound that carries through drywall—and Bane's hand shoots out and covers my mouth. His palm warm and firm against my lips. His eyes wild.
"Quiet," he whispers. Desperate. "Max, you have to be quiet."
I'm shaking against Atlas's chest. Bane's hand on my mouth. Zero in the doorway. The heat roars through me and there’s no way to stop it and no way to hide it and—
The front door opens.
The sound carries up the stairs, through the hallway, into the bathroom where four people freeze. Footsteps on the hardwood.
"Boys? Max? We're back!"
Margot's voice. Warm. Happy. Completely blind to the horror of what’s going on upstairs.
Bane's hand tightens on my mouth. Atlas's arms tighten around my waist. Zero's jaw clenches.
My body doesn't care about footsteps or mothers or the sound of Richard pouring a glass of water in the kitchen below us.
My body cares about the three alphas pressed against me and the heat eating me alive and the aching, desperate, clawing need to be filled, to be claimed, to be held down and knotted and bred until the burning stops.
I need it. I need them.
Fuck, please God I need them so badly.
I close my eyes, tears streaking my cheeks. Bane's palm against my lips. Atlas's heartbeat against my spine. Zero's scent in my lungs.
And burn.
The heat doesn't wait. The door doesn't lock. And Margot's voice is getting closer.
Max is burning. The brothers can't touch him. Can't stop touching him. Can't explain why four people are locked in a bathroom when the woman who saved Max's life walks up those stairs.
Book 3 is coming. And when it does — nothing will be the same.
Bane's bite. Margot's reckoning. Richard's truth. And a boy who stopped running just long enough to fall in love with three men who might destroy everything to keep him.