I don't answer too quickly. Blake doesn't often say the true thing in a way that leaves it bare.
"Rest?" I ask.
His throat works. "Help that's big enough to matter."
The words settle into me with a weight I feel behind my ribs. This is why the deal tempts me. Not the prestige. Not the global distribution. Not Victor Hale's careful Alpha-to-Alpha framing or Dorian Vale's polished promises. It tempts me because it looks like someone finally offering to put hands beneath the burden Blake's been carrying for years. It promises a version of our life where he's not the last line of defense between everyone we love and financial collapse. It promises that he could sleep without a launch schedule open beside him, eat withoutcalculating runway, breathe without turning every heartbeat into a budget line.
I want that for him so badly I can taste the danger in it.
Blake watches my face change. "Luther, Alpha..."
I move closer and slide my hand to the back of his neck, feeling the fast, tired beat of his pulse beneath my thumb. "We're not letting them diminish you to save you."
His eyes shine behind his glasses. "I know."
"And we're not rejecting help just because needing it makes us angry."
That lands too. His shoulders drop a fraction, the smallest surrender.
"I hate that both things are true," he whispers.
"So do I."
From Rosalie's room, her sleep-heavy voice drifts through the cracked door. "No magnets."
Blake's mouth trembles, almost a smile, and the sound that leaves him is more breath than laugh. I keep my hand on his neck and let the quiet hold. I don't make a promise I can't keep. I don't tell him the deal's safe or ruined, salvation or trap.
I only know this: Victor Hale looked at me and saw the place to press. Dorian Vale looked at Blake and saw a story he could package in softer language. And I looked at Blake in this hallway, pale and exhausted and still standing, and understood exactly why the offer frightened me.
It tempts me because it promises to save him from carrying so much.
That's how I know we have to be careful.
7
Blake
The cursor blinks on the screen, steady and relentless, while the merger deck sits open on page forty-two. I've read the same paragraph four times and still can't make my body stop reacting to it.
Principal authority. Executive oversight. Creative continuity. Impact-integrated sanctuary partnership.
Victor and Dorian have a very specific way of framing my life, and none of it has anything to do with the twelve-hourcoding sprints, the first office above the deli, or the years I spent building Keller Industries from a laptop that overheated every time I rendered a scene too large for it. In their version, I'm useful, brilliant, delicate. Something expensive that makes beautiful things as long as the right people handle the walls around me.
I lean back in my chair as the leather groans beneath the shift. My head throbs behind my eyes, dull and persistent, made worse by the white glow of the monitor. Dinner happened somewhere else in the house almost an hour ago. I heard the kids for a while, Rosalie declaring something with the authority of a tiny monarch, Samuel arguing about snacks, James asking a question that made Grayson laugh. I should've gone down. I should've closed the laptop, eaten whatever they saved for me, and let Luca press his face into my neck until I stopped smelling like office air and old resentment.
Instead, I stayed here with the deck.
The language isn't openly hostile. That's what makes it worse. If they'd been clumsy, I could've dismissed them. If they'd been cruel, Luther could've ended the conversation in three sentences. But the phrasing is smooth enough to pass as respect if no one looks at it too closely. Luther gets authority, governance, final alignment. I get innovation, vision, emotional authenticity. The Alpha at the table. The Delta in the lab.
It's an old wound, one I thought had scarred over. Being treated like the accessory to my own life. The clever piece that completes the set but doesn't decide where the set's kept.
I rub the bridge of my nose, pushing my glasses up against my forehead. I hate the deck. I hate the condescension pressed between its polished lines. I hate that part of me still wants what it offers. Wanting resources for the game and the sanctuary doesn't make me naive. It makes me tired. Ember House needs long-term funding. Starlight Falls III needs infrastructure myteam's been building by hand while pretending exhaustion is a project-management style. The kids deserve a future where every threat isn't measured first by whether we can afford to survive it.
I want the money. I want the reach. I want the stability.
I just don't want to disappear inside the price.
A quiet knock touches the doorframe, and I know it's Grayson before he speaks. His scent reaches me first, cedarwood and evening air, warm enough that some part of me wants to turn toward it even while the rest of me stays locked on the screen.
