Chapter 13 #2
Something tightens in my chest. Not jealousy. Something more dangerous than that. The urge to stand between her and every camera, every critic, every industry vulture who’s ever tried to grind this version of her into something marketable and small.
I force my attention back to Mason.
He hasn’t moved from his stool. The beer sits in front of him, barely touched, condensation pooling around the base.
Every time the front door swings open—and it opens often, locals streaming in as the evening picks up—his head snaps toward it.
His fingers tighten on the glass. Then whoever walks through turns out to be no one in particular, and he exhales. Sips. Resets.
I slide onto the stool beside him.
“Relax.”
“I’m relaxed.”
“You’re vibrating.”
His jaw flexes. A local man in paint-splattered jeans pauses near us, squinting at Mason’s face with the half-recognition of someone trying to place a distant memory. I shift my body just enough to block his sightline, catching the man’s eye instead.
The door opens again. Mason’s head turns like it’s on a swivel.
An older woman in a fleece vest walks in. Mason’s breath releases.
Then the door opens again.
Mason’s glass nearly slips from his hand.
Every drop of color bleeds from his face, fast enough that I reach for his elbow thinking he might actually pass out. His lips part but no sound comes through. His eyes go wide and fixed, locked on the figure filling the doorframe.
The man is tall. Broad-shouldered in a way that speaks to years of physical labor rather than gym sessions.
Dark hair cropped close, ocean-blue eyes that sweep the room and land on Mason like a guided missile finding its target.
He wears a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled, work boots still dusted with what might be salt or sand, and there’s a braided leather bracelet on his left wrist that looks hand-made—the kind of thing someone gives you when you’re young enough to believe love is simple.
He doesn’t look angry. Doesn’t look aggressive. But the intensity radiating off him makes every alpha instinct in my body sit up and take notice.
Behind the bar, Dominic freezes mid-pour.
Amber liquid overflows the glass, running across his fingers and pooling on the bar top.
His eyes dart between the man in the doorway and Mason, and something passes across his face—not surprise, but resignation.
Like he knew this was coming and couldn’t stop it.
I look at Mason. I look at the man. I look at the bracelet on his wrist.
The math isn’t complicated.
Phoenix materializes at my shoulder. She must have sensed the shift—the way every conversation in the bar stumbled for half a beat, the way the air pressure changed when the door opened.
“Mase?” Her hand finds his arm. “Who is that?”
Mason’s mouth works. Nothing comes out. His throat bobs, his fingers white around the beer glass, and he looks exactly like what he is—a man staring at the physical embodiment of every wound he’s spent a decade running from.
Dominic sets down the bottle and starts moving. Fast. Coming around the end of the bar with his hands already raised in a gesture that’s half welcome, half warning. Heading for the man in the doorway.
He’s too slow.
The man is already walking toward us. Not rushing.
Not threatening. Each step measured, deliberate, heavy with purpose.
His gaze hasn’t left Mason’s face. Not once.
Not to check the room, not to register the bikers in the corner or the celebrity at the bar or the alpha sitting three inches from his omega.
His omega.
“Mase.” His voice is rough. Hoarse. Like the word has been sitting in his throat for ten years and finally clawed its way out. “We need to talk.”
Mason backs up. One step. His hip hits the bar, rattling glasses. Trapped.
Conversations die. Not gradually but all at once, like someone pulled a plug. The fishermen turn on their stools. The college kids lower their phones. Even the bikers in the back go quiet, sensing drama the way predators sense blood.
Phoenix’s eyes are moving. I can see it happening in real time—the rapid flicker between Mason’s white face and the stranger’s intensity, the way her brows draw together as data points connect. Confusion. Recognition. Understanding, building like a wave that hasn’t crested yet.
She opens her mouth.
I have maybe three seconds before she demands answers that will blow through the walls of Mason’s barely contained secrets. Three seconds before she throws herself into the wreckage the way she always does—fierce and reckless and utterly unconcerned with the cost to herself.
I did promise Mason I’d keep her distracted. God help us all.
My eyes sweep the bar. Land on the corner near the jukebox. An acoustic guitar leans against the wall, neck dusty, one string visibly slack. Decoration, probably. Or maybe a relic from open mic nights long past.
I cross the room in four strides, grab it by the neck, and run my thumb across the strings.
The sound is atrocious. Three strings are flat, one is sharp, and the action is high enough to qualify as a war crime. I twist the tuning pegs fast, muscle memory taking over while my ears make rapid corrections. It takes maybe fifteen seconds to get it within shouting distance of playable.
“Hey, Dominic.” I pitch my voice to carry. “Mind if I play a few?”
Dominic stops halfway to the man in the doorway, reads my face, reads the room. A flicker of understanding crosses his features.
“Knock yourself out.”
I settle onto a barstool near the window and position the guitar across my knee. The body is cheap laminate, the neck slightly warped, and the sound hole has a sticker residue ring that suggests it once wore a price tag from a pawn shop.
It’s the worst instrument I’ve ever held.
I play the opening chord of “Paper Bones”—my first single, the one that went platinum before I was old enough to rent a car—and the attention of the entire bar pivots.
“Holy shit.” A woman at a nearby table grabs her friend’s arm. “Is that Atticus Sloan?”
Phones come up. Screens glow blue. The hush that had settled over the room cracks and reshuffles, attention redirecting from the drama at the bar to the celebrity with the guitar. People press forward. Bodies fill the space between Judah and Mason like a human dam.
The man—Judah, it has to be Judah—stops. Blocked. His jaw tightens, blue eyes still searching over the gathering crowd for Mason’s face.
I start singing.