Page 40 of How to Rescue Your Surprise Baby

Duke folded his arms across his chest. “And you couldn’t have waited untilafterthe debrief to deal with it?”

Mav hesitated. He was the responsible one. He knew Duke had been relying on him; heknewthe mission was more important than any personal matter.

He could easily say,Telos was going to send away the evidence. I caught him before he could.But it wouldn’t justify the decision to press his dried cum against Telos’ mouth, the decision to open Telos up and slide inside him.

“It was time sensitive,” he finally said.

Duke was unmoved. “Your fight, yes. But not what happened after.”

Mav flushed. They’d all heard, hadn’t they? Was it worse for Telos because he’d been on the receiving end?

A glance at Telos showed his face to be carefully blank, his heartbeat steady.

Mav was discovering that it was one of his least favorite expressions on that alpha. Telos hid a lot. He hid so fucking much from Mav, and it itched like a barb under his skin. “It was my fault,” he said. “I pushed Telos into it.”

Duke raised an eyebrow.

Telos snapped his head up to stare at Mav, his jaw working like he was on the verge of saying something.

Ace was thumbing through his phone. “But did you kiss?”

Mav stared. “What?”

Raptor nodded. “Asking the important questions. Did you two kiss, or not?”

“No,” Telos said, sounding scandalized. “Who would kisshim?”

Ace, Raptor, Crush, Duke, andeven the butlers, all smirked or coughed.

It was as though they’d heard Telos’ pulse tripping, back when Mav had said,You like me.But they couldn’t have heard. There were too many ambient sounds for them to notice such a small thing.

Which meant... they’d known? That Telos liked Mav?

That Telos wanted tokissMav?

“How did you know?” Mav asked, staring at them in bewilderment. Because the other thing was too much to wrap his head around. “That’s not possible.”

Hadley shook his head disappointedly. “Telos has been obvious fordecades—”

Decades?

“Hadley,” Telos hissed, scowling dangerously.

The butler ignored him. “You’re so bad at this, Dragon Master, that I think you need to read the Holy Grail. The book of pickup lines.”

“Cover to cover,” Hilly-Billy added sagely.

“Shut up,” Telos growled.

“But you threw it away,” Hadley continued like Telos hadn’t spoken, pulling a familiar pink book out of his pocket. “Lucky for you, I brought another copy. Hopefully you’ll make the most of it this time.”

Telos hadn’t refuted any of it. He refused to meet Mav’s eyes, as though everything they’d said wastrue.

He’d liked Mav fordecades.

Holy hell, why was Mav only learning about this now?

“The debrief,” Telos said loudly. His panic came through clearly at the back of Mav’s mind.

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