"Looming is very effective." Harper's gray eyes were dark, possessive, tracking over me like he was checking for damage, cataloging every inch. "He touched you."
"He grabbed my wrist. I was about to break his." I held up the wrist in question, showing them the faint red marks where his fingers had dug in, my voice sharper than I intended.
All three of them stared at those marks. All three of them growled.
"We know." Silas moved closer, and I caught the way his nostrils flared, scenting me, checking that the stranger's smell hadn't lingered on my skin. His scarred fingers twitched like he wanted to reach for me. "But we wanted to be sure."
I should have been annoyed. I should have given them a lecture about boundaries and trust and the fact that I was a grown woman who'd survived thirty-two years without their protection.
Instead, heat pooled low in my belly, hot and liquid and undeniable. The way they'd moved together, silent and deadly, a wall of Alpha protection between me and a threat. The way they hadn't needed words, hadn't needed to coordinate—just appeared, united, ready to destroy anything that touched what was theirs.
The way they were looking at me now, all three of them, gazes dark and hungry and still thrumming with protective aggression. Like they wanted to tear apart anyone who'd ever hurt me. Like they wanted to worship me for letting them.
Oh,I thought distantly, heat flooding through my veins.Oh, that's... affecting me.
"You three are ridiculous." The words came out breathier than I intended, my voice going soft and husky without my permission.
Harper's focus narrowed, catching the change in my scent before I even registered it myself—the way the air between us had thickened, sweetened. "Are you... Artemis, are you turned on right now?"
"No." The lie came out too fast, too defensive, my cheeks flushing hot. Yes. Absolutely, devastatingly yes.
Remy's nostrils flared, and a slow grin spread across his face—not his usual charming smile, darker, hungrier, predatory. "Liar, chère. I can smell it."
"I can explain." I held up my hands, backing up a step and bumping into a shelf of vintage glassware, making the pieces clink together dangerously.
"Please do." Silas's pale gaze was burning now, his voice dropping to that low rasp that made my knees weak, that made heat pool in places I shouldn't be thinking about in public. "Explain why threatening an Alpha who touched you has you smelling like honey and heat."
I swallowed hard, my cheeks flaming, my whole body flushing with a mix of embarrassment and want. "It's... a biological response. To perceived protection. It doesn't mean anything."
"Doesn't mean anything." Harper repeated, taking a step closer. Then another. Until he was right in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his gaze, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his body. "Your Alphas show up ready to tear apart anyone who threatens you, and it doesn't mean anything?"
"I didn't say I needed you to—" I started, but my voice wavered, cracking on the last word, betraying me completely.
"We know you didn't need us to." He cut me off, his voice a low rumble that I felt in my chest, in my bones, between my thighs. "But we wanted to. We will always want to. And if that makes us ridiculous, then we're ridiculous."
"The most ridiculous," Remy agreed, moving to my left side, his palm warm at the small of my back, his touch burning through the thin cotton of my shirt. "Absolutely absurd. Completely unreasonable."
"Utterly irrational." Silas completed the formation on my right, his fingers brushing my hip, feather-light but possessive. "And not even a little bit sorry."
I was surrounded. Bracketed by three walls of possessive Alpha, their combined scents wrapping around me until Icouldn't breathe anything else. Harper's chest was solid in front of me, radiating heat. Remy traced idle patterns at my lower back that made my thoughts scatter. Silas's presence on my other side was like standing next to a coiled spring—all potential energy waiting to explode.
My heart was hammering, and I knew they could hear it, could smell exactly what their proximity was doing to me. The sweetness of my scent had deepened, grown headier, and there was no hiding it in this close proximity.
"We should..." I licked my lips, watched all three of them track the movement with laser focus. "We should probably get out of here. People are staring."
Harper glanced around—at the other customers who were very studiously looking anywhere else, at the cashier whose mouth had fallen open, at the old-timers who had abandoned their coffee to watch the show—and made a sound that might have been agreement.
"Truck." He said it like a command, steering me toward the exit with a firm touch at my lower back, his body blocking me from view. "Now."
We crossed the parking lot in a heated blur. Harper yanked open the back door and practically lifted me inside, then pointed at Remy and Silas with a finger that brooked no argument. "Backseat. Both of you. I'm driving."
The growl in his voice left no room for argument. He was the Head Alpha, and right now, every inch of him radiated command—the set of his shoulders, the steel in his jaw, the dark promise in his eyes.
Remy slid in on my left, Silas on my right. The door slammed shut, sealing us in the dim interior of the cab. The leather seats were warm from the Louisiana sun, the air thick and close. Then Harper was climbing into the driver's seat, jamming the key intothe ignition with more force than necessary. The engine roared to life.
"Harper—" I started, wanting to say something, anything, but then Remy's mouth found my neck and whatever I'd been about to say dissolved into a gasp.
"Shh, chère." His lips traced the line of my throat, warm and soft with the occasional scrape of stubble that sent electricity skittering across my nerve endings. His breath was hot on my skin, his scent—honey and whiskey and want—flooding my senses. "Let us take care of you."
