"Rex."
"We're leaving."
"We're not."
He turns. That single blue eye is flat. Dead. The same blank void I saw at the cemetery, at the penthouse, at the studio with Carmine, all day and night yesterday. The lights are on but nobody's fucking home.
"Five minutes," I say. "Give me five minutes and then we can go. I promise."
"I don't want five minutes. I want to leave."
"I know." I hold up our connected wrists. "But you're still attached to me, and I'm not moving until you give me five minutes in that back room."
His jaw works beneath the mask. I watch the battle play out in real time. The urge to rip the chain off his wrist versus the knowledge that he'd hurt me if he did.
"Fine."
I lead him through the beaded curtain. The beads click and rattle behind us, a soft wooden percussion that fades as we move down a narrow stone hallway lit by more of Jamie's LED torches. Second door on the left opens into a small windowless room with bookshelves crammed along the stone walls.
I close the door.
And then I actually look at him.
Oh, shit.
Rex is pale. Not just tired-pale, not just hasn't-eaten-enough pale. Gray. The color of old concrete. His hands—those elegant musician's hands—are shaking. Not a lot. Just enough that I can see the fine tremor running through his fingers where they hang at his sides.
The masks did this to him.
Having to take off his own in front of Orion, even though Orion is scarred too and understands… it didn't matter. The act of unmasking broke something in him that was already cracked.
"Rex."
Nothing.
I cross the distance between us and wrap my arms around him.
His whole body goes rigid. Every muscle locks down, his spine straightening like I just electrocuted him. He doesn't push me away, but he doesn't respond either. His arms dangle at his sides like he's forgotten they're attached to his body. The handcuff chain presses cold against my wrist where it's caught between us.
I don't let go.
My hands find his back. It's already hard with lean muscle, but the tension is coiled so tight beneath his shirt that it feels like pressing against stone. I spread my fingers wide and squeeze, digging into the knotted muscle along his spine, and a shudder ripples through him.
He still doesn't move his arms.
I hold him anyway.
His chest expands against mine with a breath that shakes on the way in. Then another. His heartbeat hammers against my cheek where it's pressed to his sternum. Too fast, too hard, the kind of pulse that means his body is screamingdanger danger dangereven though the only threat in this room is an omega in a rabbit hoodie.
Seconds pass. Maybe a full minute. I keep my grip steady, my hands sliding up and down and across his back, pressing warmth into this broken and breaking alpha.
Then his arms come up.
Slowly. So slowly it's almost imperceptible, like his body is moving against his will. His hands settle on my shoulder blades—tentative, barely there, the pressure so light I might be imagining it.
His head drops.
His face buries itself in the curve of my neck with an exhale so exhausted it sounds like his soul is leaving his body. The mask presses cool and smooth against my skin, his forehead finding the hollow above my collarbone, and the rest of him just... folds.