Page 112 of Dual

Ah. So this is Moira’s latest obsession. The one she’s been sneaking around with, the reason she’s been even more reckless than usual. I feel my face harden, years of practiced control keeping my expression neutral even as my blood heats.

“Where’s Moira?” he demands, his voice echoing in the suddenly silent room.

I rise slowly, deliberately. “What’s it matter to you, anyway?” I ask, letting contempt drip from every word. I’m being an asshole and I don’t care. I lean in, in fact. “You lose my sister in the middle of role-play again?”

Quinn groans. “He’s a real priest, you idiot.”

I don’t care. Priest, dom, CEO, homeless vagrant—they’re all the same to me. Just men who think they can fix my sister. Men who think they understand her brokenness. Men who will ultimately fail her, just like everyone else has.

Just likeIhave.

Bane glares at me with something that looks like barely restrained violence. “It matters because Moira’s my wife.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

Wife.

Moira gotmarried?

The world tilts for a moment. My sister, chaos incarnate,who’s never stayed in one place or with one person longer than a heartbeat, got… married?

And she didn’t tell me.

But why would she?

I’ve been too busy with my own problems to notice hers. Too wrapped up in the drama of Anna and Mads to see what was happening right in front of me.

“Your what?” Quinn asks, blinking slowly.

“My wife,” Bane repeats, his voice tight and raw.

“Shit,” Isaak mutters, and I feel the sentiment in my bones.

I’m rigid, fingers curling around my drink, fury rising in me like a tide. Who the fuck does this guy think he is? After the parade of damaged, dangerous men Moira’s dragged home over the years, this one thinks he’s special? This one thinks he can claim her?

It’s Kira who steps forward.

“Moira?” she says carefully. “I had lunch with her earlier.”

Bane’s attention snaps to her. “When did you see her?”

“I don’t know. A little after noon?”

“She seemed...” Kira hesitates. “A little off.”

“Off how?” Bane demands.

Kira shrugs. “Jittery, I guess? She was checking her phone a lot. But she wasn’t worried. And she said she’d be here tonight.”

Everyone looks around the room, as if Moira might materialize from thin air.

“She’s usually late to things,” Quinn says, “But we’ve already been here for an hour and a half. If she’s this late, it probably means she’s ditching.”

I watch Bane’s face, the way understanding dawns on him, the way his shoulders tense. There’s something almost satisfying about seeing him realize what he’s gotten himself into. About watching him learn the hard lesson we’ve all had to learn about Moira.

“But you said she didn’t look worried?” he asks Kira.

She shakes her head. “No. She was just... being Moira. If anything, she looked... excited. I think maybe after she got a text from someone?”