12 Hours Novels & Stories

I can survive forty-eight hours. Probably.

Roughly 15 minutes. The countdown began…

The message on the tablet was short. Today is not a numbered rotation. Today is Primary consolidation. Rylan. Evander. Cole. Extended private window. Your partner may remain. 14:00–20:00. Six hours. Liam read it twice. His jaw flexed, but he said nothing. He only looked at me—already naked on the bed, the morning’s thin oil still making the skin between my thighs gleam under the soft light, a slow, warm trickle of his earlier load leaking down the inner curve of my leg—and nodded once.

I huff, "But trust me here, It's mandatory!" He looks down at his watch and sighs, "3 hours 20 minutes and counting."

He glanced back at dad in the rearview. “Eight. So it should time out well.” Dad nodded. I sighed, glad we had a plan and that I would be able to hold Leo in eight hours.

My words were slow, and the sentence seemed to stop time because it took so long to say. Jamison didn't answer, and I wondered how long he could let blood flow to his head before he did permanent damage. Ethan stared at Carson as though he held all the answers. So, I too turned my attention toward Carson, raised my brows, and leaned forward to wait on his response. It took monumental effort as heavy as my body felt, but it was a good weight-solid. Grounded and stable. Carson shrugged and took a sip of water. "I don't know...six or seven hours, maybe eight if it's good."

120 hours, that was all it would take. Kate looked up at the sky, 119:53:42 shone in the blue of the afternoon. The time was enchanted across the sky, a magic that had been lent from another kingdom. The alpha's first bite ceased to be effective in 119 hours, 53 minutes, and 27, 26, 25 seconds. Kate counted down, grateful for each second that passed in their favor.

Give me forty-eight hours. I closed the laptop and looked at the window and the city beyond it and thought about everything that was moving simultaneously, the shares and the shareholders meeting and Marcus Webb still inside Killian’s security operation and David Chen beginning to look at Helix Bridge with the specific attention of a man who was starting to ask the right questions, and the answer I had promised Killian I would give him when all of this was finished. Forty-eight hours. I could hold everything together for forty-eight hours. I had been holding it together for two years. Forty-eight more hours was nothing.

He had four hours before eight. He was going to need all of them.

The ceremony had started. Twelve minutes. The wave had fifteen. The math was close enough to feel.