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My phone buzzes on Orien’s kitchen counter, the sudden vibration cutting through the quiet morning, and every muscle in my body tenses.

The last two days have been radio silence from the burner phone I use to contact my family, but it appears they’ve decided to deal with me.

For one stupid second, I consider leaving it there.

Pretending I didn’t hear it.

Pretending the outside world can’t reach me inside Orien’s apartment.

But the illusion shattered that day in Rowan’s office.

The screen lights up with a single message.

Alexei: Come home. Now.

The words wrap around my throat, choking off what little scraps of peace I managed to glean from this entire mess.

Of course, my brother can still text me while keeping me blocked.

Across the kitchen, Orien stands barefoot at the stove with a spatula in one hand, flipping pancakes as if we’re just another newly mated couple settling into a domestic routine instead of two people standing in the center of an approaching war.

Morning light spills across his bare skin, catching on the fading scratches I left across his back during my Heats.

My mate.

The thought still hits me with enough force that my heart aches.

The last few days have been so quiet with Orien brewing coffee before I was awake, his hand caressing my nape while I read, and falling asleep with the heat of him beside me. He’s been so attentive, ensuring I eat enough, and applying the ointment to my Marks until the scabs came off this morning.

I hadn’t known what it meant to be taken care of. I’m not sure I ever believed such contentment was meant for people like me.

Maybe that’s why I can’t quite trust it to last.

Because while Orien hums to himself in the kitchen, my missed check-in and skipped drug pickup yesterday are already detonating consequences somewhere across the city.

Mikhail won’t ignore that kind of insubordination.

Neither will the rest of the family.

And Alexei blocking my number means one of two things. Either my brother has lost control of the situation…or he’s now written me off, as the rest of the family did the day I presented as an Omega.

While Orien hums over the stove, preparing breakfast, I let myself imagine setting the phone down and never picking it up again. Orien would try to protect me. I understand that now in a way I didn’t a week ago. He would put every resource the Blue Note had between the Vartanians and me. He would burn the city down before he let my family touch me, and it would not be enough.

But my family has been burning cities down for generations. They would dismantle everything he has built, every person he has protected. Everything he has built with Rowan, everything I have sacrificed so much to protect, would be ash inside of a month.

And they would do it without blinking, just to prove the point.

The only leverage I have left is walking back through the compound gate and using my new bond to negotiate on the Blue Note’s behalf before this becomes a war Orien can’t win. That was the whole reason we took such a risk when Orien bonded me in the first place.

I can’t lose my courage now.

My hand shakes as I set the phone face down on the counter, my palms growing damp. “I have to go.”

Orien’s shoulders tense, the spatula halting mid-motion before he sets it down.

“You have to go,” he repeats in a tone I’m learning to recognize as dangerous.