Page 21 of Psycho Alphas: Part Two

What?

I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, but when I opened them, the world was still spinning.

And that was…

I had to be dreaming because it was the strangest picture I’d ever seen.

I was staring into Rogue’s basement. He was topless, standing in the kitchen, draining spaghetti into a sieve in the sink. Ever so oddly, on his back, was Thistle. She was draped upon him like a rag doll, her arms hanging limply over his shoulders. She was sleeping, I realised, and there were two belts around them both, holding her against him—though he kept reaching up and readjusting her.

Ihadto be hallucinating.

At least I thought—until Rogue turned to search for something on the island and caught sight of me.

He froze, hand outstretched.

“Ah.”

That was all he said.

But my inhale was suddenly flooded with their scents. Moonflower and honied bourbon. They had been there the whole time, even if my mind had refused to process them.

I remained frozen, clawing back memories desperately to make sense of the picture before me as the world tried to leave me behind.

Rogue reached the couch. He hiked Thistle up on his back before sitting down and undoing the belts. The tender look on his face was alien to me as he tucked her between blankets and cushions.

Still, I stared, unable to process anything.

Not even as he stepped toward me, eyes narrowed.

I hadn’t moved. My fingers ached with the grip I had on the door as I stared at him.

He said something, but I didn’t hear it. Teal eyes held mine, and words were spilling from my mouth like venom. “What did you do?”

A terror I wasn’t expecting threatened to consume me.

The answer, though, was creeping in.

I was outside in the night air with Bella, fighting the drugs, but I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t fight.

And then…

The door opened.

“Kill me.”That’s what I’d begged of Rogue.

Fuck.

But here—this room had to be real. It couldn’t be hell with her in it and couldn’t be heaven with him. Which left me with one last frightening reality.

“What didIdo?” Rogue snorted, and the world slowed as he spoke the words I wasn’t ready to hear—that in a million years I wouldn’t be ready to hear. “I saved your ungrateful?—”

I lunged, a growl in my chest as sanity fled me completely.

Because there was no world in which I could owe Rogue Manzo a debt like this.

SEVEN