Page 20 of Unmarked
I’ve had this under control for seven years. I’ve built my entire existence around being boring and scentless and aggressively neutral.
I know the schedule. I know the chemistry. I’ve lived behind The Mask since I was eighteen without so much as a crack.
And now?
Now, it feels like the floor just yeeted itself into another dimension.
This isn’t a crack. This is arupture.
This is my body staging a rebellion in real time.
It’s loud. Violent.
Wrong.
Heat pulses in my chest - not the soft warmth I usually ignore, but something molten and alive, crawling outward like it paid rent and is determined to redecorate.
My limbs buzz. My fingers tingle. The camera in my hands suddenly weighs ten thousand pounds and might as well be a toaster.
My muscles won’t listen. My skin’s electric.
And my spine arches with opinions I didn’t approve.
I stagger half a step sideways, trying to look casual -
And immediately shoulder-check a passing beta.
She pauses, blinking at me.“Oh- are you okay?”
“Yeah!” I blurt, voice a full octave too high. “Just hot. So many people. Long day. Fluorescent lighting. Mercury in retrograde.”
My smile is the emotional equivalent of duct tape on a crumbling dam.
She gives me a polite nod, but her eyes narrow just slightly.
Her nose twitches.
Shit.
She moves on.
I don’t. Ican’t.
Because that’s when everything shifts.
Theo is the closest, still rooted where I left him, watching me like I’ve just started glitching.
Steady hands. Square stance. Soulful eyes.
Basically a six-foot comfort blanket.
Alpha mode:activated.
Lucian is sitting at a table, now, all sharp angles and surgical precision, his eyes back on me like he already knows exactly how this ends.
Kai is across the room, leaning against the wall with that cocksure smirk long gone. Now he looks like someone just pulled the pin out of his spine and he’s about to detonate.
And Ash?
