I stare at it. My brain takes a second—too long, too slow–processing what the fuck I’m looking at. Then I'm off the bed.
I pick it up. Unfold it. Hold it to the window where the moon is coming through.
Max’s handwriting. Shaking. The letters uneven, pressed too hard in places, light and trailing in others. Tear stains—actual tear stains, dark circles warping the paper, and I can smell him on it. Not his scent. His grief. The salt and skin of a person who cried while they wrote this.
Zero—
You told me I was yours. You were right. I have been since the beginning.
My chest tightens so violently I press the hell of my hand to my sternum.
I love you.
Three words. His handwriting. The ink slightly smeared where his hand dragged across it. I love you. On paper. In a letter slid under my door in the dark. Not said to my face, not whispered in my bed, not moaned into my mouth—written downand left behind. The way a person leaves things behind when they're not planning to come back to say them.
Don't follow me.
I read two more lines. Something about the nine omegas. Something about his voice being the only weapon left.
I stop reading.
My feet hit the hallway floor before the letter is finished. Max's room—the one he never sleeps in anymore. I shove the door open. The light is off. The desk lamp is warm, recently killed. The notebook is open. Three sheets of the cream paper are missing from the drawer he keeps them in. The pen is on the desk, cap off.
Bane's shirt is folded on the bed. Folded. Not tossed, not dropped—folded, the way you fold something you're giving back.
His jacket is gone. His shoes are gone. His keys are gone.
No.
No, no, no—
I cross the hall. Bane's room—empty. The sheets are cold. He hasn't been in that bed for over an hour.
I take the stairs three at a time. The foyer. Margot's bags by the door—I nearly trip over the blue carry-on and catch myself on the console table. The front door is unlocked. He didn't even lock it behind him. Like he wanted someone to follow. Like he wanted me to follow even as he wrotedon't follow mebecause he knows me, he knows exactly who I am, and the little shit left the door unlocked.
He's at the car.
The gravel hits my feet like broken glass. I don't care. I run. Full sprint, bare soles on stone, because I can’t let him leave. I can't—I can't let it—
Max is standing beside the car, turned toward me, and the moonlight is on his face and he's wearing a jacket and real shoes and he looks like he's already gone. As if he decided hours ago.Maybe days ago. Maybe the night Atlas came home and we shut him down in the office and he saidokayin the voice that meansI'll do it when you're not looking.
He knew he was going to do this…
I stop ten feet from the car.
My chest is heaving. The gravel has cut my left foot—I can feel the blood, warm between my toes—and I don't care. I don't care about anything except the twenty-year-old omega standing in front of an open car door at three in the morning looking at me like he's already sorry for what he's about to do.
"Get away from the car." My voice comes out raw. Shredded. Not the voice I planned to use—I had the words lined up, furious and precise, the kind of words that make people obey. "Step away from the car and come back inside.Now, Max."
"Zero—"
"Now."
"No."
"Thatwasn'ta request."
"Good. Because my answer isn't up for negotiation," he says.
