Hands raised.
Nothing visible. Nothing wrong.
But somethingiswrong.
I know it the way I know my own heartbeat. The way I know which key a song is in before the first note plays. Instincthoned by years of watching shadows, years of checking over my shoulder, years of sleeping with my treasured knife under my pillow.
The prickle is coming from the scar on my neck.
My inner omega knows my stalker is here.
She senses that motherfucker somewhere in the crowd.
Fuckingfantastic.
We roll intoAshesand I use the choreography to get close to Rafael. The staging has us circling each other like we're both predators, our movements synced. When I lean into his space for the bridge, close enough that the crowd thinks we might kiss, I press my mouth to his ear.
"Something's wrong. I can feel it."
His fingers don't falter on the strings. His body language stays loose and performative for the audience. But his dark eyes sharpen.
"Stay close to me," he murmurs against my jaw, his breath ghosting my throat, and it looks like heat, looks like two rockstars playing up the tension.
It's armor.
I stay close.
We tear through three more songs. Each one I pour everything into, trying to drown the dread rising in my chest with volume and fury and the relentless drive of Phoenix's drums.
My voice holds.
My body moves.
I work the crowd like I was born for this because Iwasborn for this, because music is the one thing that's always been fucking mine even when everything else was stolen.
But the feeling doesn't fade.
It getsworse.
By the time we hit the second-to-last song, my hands are shaking from adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream at a rate that makes my vision sharpen and my pulse kick into combat mode.
I could stop the show. Could walk offstage right now and tell security to sweep the venue. Could trust my gut the way I've been trained to trust it since I was a teenager hiding from a man who wanted to own me.
But Carmine's words echo in my skull.
If the unmasking doesn't happen tonight, I walk. And the tour dies with me.
No unmasking, no comeback.
No comeback, no Vespyr.
No Vespyr, no band, no pack, no Rex finding his way back from the edge of the abyss I pulled him from at Nash's grave.
I can't destroy everything over afeeling.
Can I?
The crowd screams for the finale and the decision makes itself.