Page 92 of Knot Your Business

“She’ll be fine. Just going to be a long several days,” Rylan says, leaning his forehead against the closed door. Acid leaches into his voice, and his hand tightens around the doorknob until his knuckles are white. “She had a heat in March. There’s no fucking way this wasn’t forced by someone.”

Dominic raises an eyebrow. “How do you know she had a heat in March?”

Rylan tenses, a growl ripping through him.

“Mi dispiace,” Dominic says, grabbing his friend’s forearm. Rylan relaxes and lets go of the doorknob. The smallest bit of hope blooms in the pit of my stomach at the small gesture. Maybe something good might come from this whole fucking mess. Maybe Rylan and Dominic’s friendship surviving will be enough to dull the ache of the rest of it.

I clear my throat, but Rylan talks over me. “She told me the first day I took her out.”

Surprise flashes through me. They’d talked about it so soon after reconnecting?

Dominic grunts.

“Something about it went wrong, though,” Rylan says after a minute. “It’s what pushed her to consent to matching. She’s never said what it was, just that it was bad enough to risk a bad match made by the Council.”

My stomach clenches. Not many things would push Violet into risking her mother’s attention. And matching? It was the single biggest way to do just that.

Dominic mutters a curse before opening his eyes. His voice is nothing more than gravel as he says, “Please tell me you figured out who the fuck drugged her.”

Nerves close my throat, and I force a swallow. When it doesn’t help, I nod once. Dominic squeezes my hand.

“Yeah, I figured it out,” I manage to say. My voice cracks, my mind still struggling to accept the damning truth.

Rylan palms my neck, pulling me nearer to him, kissing my temple. Dominic leans in, too, like I’m an Omega that needs comforting. They both must be absolutely exhausted. They need to sleep before Violet’s needing them again. Instead of pushing them away, though, I lean harder into them both, letting their strength hold me up as my knees collapse under me.

Dominic wraps an arm around my waist before I can actually fall.

“Shit, Jas,” Rylan says, twisting his hand into my hair. “We’ve got you. It’s going to be all right.”

I let my head fall onto his shoulder, and Dominic kisses the nape of my neck. My breath shudders out of me before hitching on a sob. Both men step closer, crowding me until their bodies are solid and warm and holding me up when everything in me wants to collapse. Dominic murmurs in Italian, soft things that I can’t manage to hear enough to pick out exact phrases.

“You did good, Jasper,” Rylan murmurs, his thumb tracing my ear.

“I didn’t even know she was in trouble,” I bite out. “I wouldn’t have known what her scent meant without you there. I… I still can’t tell the difference, and she’s sitting in the room next to me in the depths of a heat.”

Dominic tightens his arm around my waist but doesn’t stop his soft murmurings.

“You kept Dom level when he would have killed the asshole,” Rylan says, his touch never faltering. Goosebumps race down my spine. “And then we would have been in an entirely different mess. Don’t hold this on you. This isn’t your fault.”

His words are soft but firm, the thread of power through them strong enough that even my shoulders relax under it. Eventually, the soft fall of tears slows, and I blow out a breath. Rylan’s eyebrows are furrowed and concern brackets his mouth as I lift my head and take him in.

“You can’t do anything until she’s out of her heat,” I whisper. “It’s… it’s not something that the police are going to investigate. And Violet deserves to know before either of you run off and do something impulsive.”

Rylan’s inhale is sharp, his eyes searching mine as the realization settles on him.

“É sua madre?” Dominic’s voice is a growl that has the hair rising on my neck. “O uno dei suoi padri?”

I force another swallow and close my eyes. Dominic runs his lips across my neck and shoulder before biting the soft junction where they meet just hard enough that I groan.

“Tesoro?” he asks.

My stomach drops out at the nickname, the warm feel of it sliding over my skin and skating down my bones. Longing mixes with bitterness until I’m choking on it. I’d begged with him to make this work, to find a way to tolerate her. He’d promised me that he would.

I push the thoughts away and focus on this moment.

“Sienna,” I whisper her name, refusing to call her Violet’s mother. Not right now. “I… I don’t know if she did it alone. I think she did. Vi… her dads love her. You saw how upset he was over everything that happened.”

Dominic’s growl rumbles through his chest, vibrating against me. Even exhausted, I tense under the sound, the feral lethality of it. Rylan runs his lips down my throat, humming, and I settle into him. His cock lays hard and heavy against my hip. My pulse thrums, my blood heating, but I force my body to remain unresponsive.

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