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Nothing says remember your place like throat needles and Meadows Pack reacting to my sister’s perfume.
My throat itches at the injection site, but I force the needle home.
The shot knocks me on my ass.
Lucky the bathroom floor has a drain.
I vomit yellow-green liquid juiced from my liver. But emptying my already-empty stomach doesn’t stop the dizzy pulse of nausea.
It’s a while before I can stand.
Corpse-pale, with dark purple shadows under my blood-shot eyes. A fake grin strains my lips across my teeth.
Shove it down and smile.
Anything to make the honeymoon last.
I shamble back to the beach, cold-sweating and screwed the second Jin’s dark gaze finds me through a haze of stomach-twisting grill smoke.
Like a culinary thunder god behind the barbecue, he flips steak kebabs, side-eyeing the cold sweat beading through the emergency bronzer that doesn’t do shit to hide my dizzy paleness.
“Marisol,” Jin’s dark drawl may as well be a command.
Come here.
If I move toward the scent of roasting meat, my organs will spit out a whole new spectrum of rainbow juices.
Not just green and lemon yellow.
Purple, grey, and maybe even blood-flecked crimson.
Dutch and Reese splash in the surf. Bish is off somewhere, probably still cleaning himself up, and Dany’s busy scribbling notes under the shade of a cabana.
Before Jin’s magnetic field claims me, I spot my out.
Lisa appears, dragging a cooler from the villa.
I spinny-head jog to meet her on the sand, then grab the handle. “Let me help.”
“Please.” She adjusts her grip, and together, we skid the cooler to the picnic patio that’s blissfully downwind from the grill. She drops the weight, then brushes off sweat. “You’re such a good girl.”
The praise stings the back of my throat.
Has to be from the chemicals.
It can’t possibly be tears.
Lisa drops on the picnic bench, hitting me with the more mature—and much freaking scarier—version of Dany’s glitter-eyed curiosity. “Did you get some quiet time this morning?”
“Some.” I sit across from her, keeping my back to Jin.
“Goodness knows how anyone handles that many alphas.” Her gaze goes distant. “I always had my hands full with the one.”
“They’re…good to me.”
“They never stopped missing you.” Lisa’s bathwater-gentle smile leaves me squirming.
I have a million ways to deal with insults.
