Page 46 of The Florist and Her Alphas

I don’t knock.

My boot connects with the door, and it slams open so hard it bounces off the wall with a crack loud enough to rattle the window glass, and I am standing in the doorway of her bedroom.

Three alphas. Tall, broad-shouldered, arranged around her bed. And in the middle of the bed, tangled in sheets gone dark with sweat, Liana is curled into herself, knees to her chest, both arms wrapped around her own body like she’s trying to disappear inside it.

She’s crying. Silent, shaking sobs that barely move her shoulders. Her face is flushed dark red, her hair plastered to her temples, her whole body trembling with a heat that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with terror.

Something in my chest tears loose.

“GET AWAY FROM HER.” The words leave me as a roar, so loud it rattles the windowpane behind her.

The tallest one turns first.

“Who are you?” He says it mildly, like I’ve interrupted a dinner reservation and not a room where a woman is sobbing before him. “This is my omega.” His gaze flicks over my suit, my face, dismissing me in under a second.

Behind me, three sets of footsteps pound up the stairs. My brothers must have sensed my anger.

Cole reaches the doorway first, and I see him go rigid beside me. August crowds in on my other side, his breath already ragged, his blue eyes wide with a fury I have never once seen on his face. Julian is a half-step behind them, and I hear the low, dangerous sound building in his chest before he’s even said a word.

The blond alpha’s eyes move from me to my brothers, doing the math, recalculating the room. Four against three. His jaw tightens by a fraction—the only tell he gives.

“Silus Thornton,” Cole says. Flat. Certain. A statement, not a question.

The color drains out of the man’s face like someone pulled a plug.

He recovers fast, smoothing his expression back into that same cold, patient smile, but I saw it. The flinch. The half-second where the name landed and something underneath the polish cracked.

“You don’t know what she is to me,” Silus says, low.

“I know exactly what she is to you,” Cole replies, not raising his voice as he keeps his tone low and deadly. “That’s the problem. And we know exactly what your pack did to her.”

I can feel Silus doing calculations behind those pale eyes. His two packmates haven’t moved from their positions flanking the bed, but I can see the tension coiling in their shoulders, that itch in the hands of men who solve problems with their fists.

“I want her back,” Silus says. Slow. Certain.

“You can want what you want.” Cole’s voice doesn’t change register at all. “You’re not going to have it. Walk away, and we won’t start anything. Stay another minute and we will.”

I want to hit him.

God, I want to hit him so badly my knuckles ache with the wanting, my whole body coiled tight as wire, weight shifted onto the balls of my feet, waiting for any excuse at all.

One more word out of that mouth. One more step toward that bed. I have never in my life wanted to put my fist through another alpha’s face the way I want to put mine through his.

Silus looks at me. His gaze travels down and back up like he’s weighing me, then flicks toward his two men. They’re watching him for the signal, jaws tight, weight forward.

But Silus doesn’t give the word.

His eyes go instead to the bed. To Liana, curled into the ruined sheets, shaking.

“We will be in touch,” he says.

She flinches. A full-body flinch, her shoulders jerking up around her ears, and the sound that comes out of her is so small and so broken that it’s the thing that finally moves me. I step forward, putting my body directly between Silus Thornton and the bed, close enough now that I can smell the gun oil and frozen earth coming off him.

He looks at me for one more second. Then he turns, unhurried, like leaving was always the plan, and walks past me toward the door. His two men fall in behind him, and none of them look at my brothers on the way out.

Julian follows them down the stairs. I hear his footsteps hard on the old wood, hear the front bell ring out sharp and clean as someone removes the cardboard.

Then a shriek from downstairs. High. Furious. Female.