Page 52

Kollaborator reached and picked it up. His eyes tracked the depth of the layers, slower now. “This one’s different. No role, no mirrored pairing. Everything here points somewhere.” He turned it toward Kaos suddenly. “It’s a map.”

Kaos stepped in closer but didn’t get a fucking thing but chaotic lines.

Kollaborator wagged her card between all of them. “Wherever this leads… that’s where we’ll find out what the hell this timer’s counting down to.”

“Is this a dream?” Jaxi barely asked, her gaze sweeping across all of them like the possibility kept returning.

Kaos moved to her and placed his hand on her back, grounding her. “You’re here,” he said. “And it’s real.”

She leaned slightly into his touch, voice barely there. “Am I in trouble?”

Her words hit, like she thought she’d broken something sacred by simply being herself.

“Did I getyouin trouble?” she worried even more.

He shook his head once. “No. And we’re going to find out exactly what’s going on. And fix it.”

“Maybe The Queen would have some insight,” Kollaborator thought.

Kaos felt Jaxi still even through the distance. “The Queen?”

He watched her gaze move from him to his brothers, then locking back on him. “The Queen?”

Her jealousy boldly filled the air like a tempest and Kaos was sure it was smile worthy.

“Kaos told you about her?” Krave asked, his own obsession entering the fray.

Her gaze snapped to the Kissing King. “Oh yes,” she fired out, arms folding tightly. “She’sallhe talks about.”

“She’s possessive,” Kaos murmured, unable to keep his smile from growing.

Kross chuckled low. “She might be more dangerous than the Queen.”

Jaxi’s head snapped toward him now. “Excuse you—I am a deeply nurturing presence.”

A snort threatened his throat.

“I bake. I rescue stray cats. I cry during commercials. I am not dangerous—I am a gentle threat at most.”

Krave smiled wryly. “Gentle’s not what reached Nominous.”

Jaxi blinked.

Kade leaned forward, voice softer now. “That flare didn’t just come from him. You carry something strong—something that answered his chaos with your own.”

Kollaborator nodded, gaze steady. “That wasn’t just danger—it was magnitude.”

Something shifted in her beside him—sharp and rising, like color hitting oil. Kaos didn’t move. He felt the weight coil through the air as her silence stretched thin. She stared at Kade, but her focus had pulled inward, fracturing and reassembling too fast for her to speak.

“You said it was Kohl,” she realized, facing him. “That night at dinner. The Queen. The bond. You made it sound like it belonged to him.” Her voice hit clean, hard, gaze slicing. “But it was you. It wasalwaysyou.”

The room bent with her revelation.

“You sat across from me, moaning and groaning about this sacred bond—this spiritual orgasm you two shared through holy intimacy and celestial therapy or whatever the hell you called it.”

Her voice cracked against the air like a whip.

“I thought I was jealous of Kohl. Thought he had some tragic love story tucked into his past like a broken heirloom.” She pointed now—fingers trembling from the storm she called up. “But it wasn’t inhispast, it was inyours. And it wasn’t someheirloom, it was your whole damnidentity.”