LOGINBy sunrise, the Harborline Club no longer looks like a place built for pleasure.It looks like a crime scene pretending to be a business.The chandeliers still glow above the main lounge, spilling soft gold over overturned chairs, broken glass, abandoned drinks, and velvet ropes pushed aside during the night’s chaos. Staff members stand in nervous clusters near the walls, their faces pale beneath the polished masks they usually wear for men with money. Some lower their eyes when Everett enters. Others pretend not to see him at all.Everett smells their fear before he reaches the security office.It does not comfort him.Fear is not guilt, but in a place like this, guilt has learned to wear fear’s skin.Dean walks beside him with two guards behind them and a tablet in one hand. His expression is grim in the way Everett has learned to read as bad news waiting for privacy.“Say it,” Everett orders.Dean doe
Finn does not know how far he walks before the walls stop looking like walls and start looking like a throat closing around him.The service passage behind Everett’s suite is narrow, unpainted, and cold enough to make his bare skin prickle beneath the clothes he managed to straighten with shaking hands. Pipes run along the ceiling. Old dust clings to the corners. Somewhere inside the walls, water moves with a hollow sound, and every step Finn takes seems too loud.He keeps one hand on the wall because his legs are not steady.The forced heat has faded from its worst edge, but it has not left him clean. It sits beneath his skin in a dull fever, turning his body weak and too aware. Every breath hurts. Every movement reminds him of the night he is trying not to remember. His muscles ache, his wounded hand throbs, and Everett’s scent still clings faintly to him even after he left the jacket folded on the chair.That frightens him most.He s
Everett wakes before sunrise with his heart already fighting its way out of his chest.For one second, he does not understand why.The suite is dim and still. Gray light presses through the edges of the curtains, thin and cold, touching the floor without warming it. The air smells of melted ice, blood, fear, and the fading trace of heat. Dean’s men are quiet beyond the outer door. The Harborline Club no longer shakes with violence, but the silence feels wrong.Then Everett turns his head toward the bed.Empty.He is on his feet before thought fully forms.“Finn.”The name comes out low, rough, and too sharp for the quiet room. No answer comes from the bed. The sheets are twisted, still marked by the shape of a body that should be there, but the warmth is gone. Everett crosses the room in two strides and touches the mattress.Cold.Not completely, but close enough that instinct turns brutal inside him.His Alpha ri
Finn wakes before dawn with Everett’s scent still on his skin.For a moment, he does not know where he is. The room is dark except for the thin gray light pressing around the edges of the heavy curtains. The air smells of melted ice, clean towels, leather, blood from his wounded palm, and Everett. That last scent is everywhere, deep in the sheets, wrapped around his throat, caught beneath every breath.His body remembers before his mind does.Heat. Hands. Permission whispered so many times it became something Finn held on to instead of something forced from him. Everett’s mouth was careful against his. Everett stopped when Finn trembled, waiting for Finn could not speak, giving back control even when Finn barely knew how to use it.Finn closes his eyes.The shame comes first because shame is familiar. It crawls under his skin and tries to turn every memory ugly. He was drugged. Feverish. Terrified. He reached for an Alpha who should hav
Finn’s hand stays in Everett’s.At first, that is all he can manage. One hand gripping Everett’s, the other twisted in the blanket, his body trembling so hard the mattress seems to move beneath him. The heat has become something deeper than fever now. It no longer only burns under his skin. It pulls, searches, aches, as if something inside him has found Everett and refuses to forget the way back.Everett sits beside the bed, close enough for Finn to breathe him in, far enough that Finn can still feel the space between them.That space begins to hurt.Finn hates it. He hates the ache, the need, the shame of wanting the Alpha closer when his mind still remembers the gold door and the men outside it. He hates that Everett’s restraint, which should make him feel safer, also makes him feel exposed. Every careful pause reminds Finn of how ruined his control is.Everett’s thumb rests against Finn’s knuckles, still and w
Everett does not move after Finn grabs his wrist.For one suspended second, Finn feels everything through that single point of contact. Everett’s pulse is steady beneath his fingers, slower than Finn’s frantic heartbeat, but not calm. There is tension under his skin, power held too tightly, instincts forced into stillness by discipline alone. The heat in Finn’s body recognizes that strength and reaches for it with a hunger that makes shame burn up his throat.He should let go.He does not.Everett lowers his gaze to Finn’s hand around his wrist, then lifts it back to Finn’s face. His eyes are dark, focused, and strained in a way that tells Finn this costs him more than he wants to show.“I am here,” Everett says quietly.Finn’s grip tightens. “Do not say it like that.”“Like what?”“Like it is easy.”Something flickers across Everett&rsqu







