Page 85 of Mason

I blink up at him, but he just shakes his head, his jaw clenching like he’s barely holding something back.

“You insist on going to work,” he says, dark eyes flickering with frustration, “and you refuse my bodyguards. So you promise me right now—you’ll use this if anything happens.”

I feel the weight of it now.

Not the bracelet.

The fear behind it.

The helplessness that Mason Ironside doesn’t know how to reconcile.

I see it in the way he watches me.

In the way he doesn’t trust this peace, the way he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He’s already imagining the worst-case scenario.

Already preparing for it.

And it breaks something in me.

I exhale shakily, curling my fingers around his hand. “I promise,” I whisper.

Mason nods once, but I see it—the tension in his shoulders doesn’t ease, the darkness in his gaze doesn’t fade.

Because a promise won’t stop his fear.

A bracelet won’t erase the monsters in his head.

But when he leans in, his lips brushing against my temple, his voice barely audible, I know that none of this is about control.

It’s about survival.

It’s about me.

“Good,” he breathes against my skin.

“Because I don’t plan on losing you.”

26

MASON

Peace has never been something I’m good at finding. Even when it’s right in front of me, it slips through my fingers like smoke—never quite mine to hold.

That’s what happens when the buzzer goes off.

Not just a press—a goddamn assault. Pounding, insistent, like someone decided the ringer was an extension of their damn hand.

I push off the couch, already halfway to the security panel, ready to tear into whatever asshole thinks it’s a good idea to harass me this late at night. But the second I check the camera feed, my irritation shifts into something else entirely.

Mia.

And she looks pissed.

I scrub a hand down my face, exhaling hard. Of course.

Mia’s got a fire in her that doesn’t burn out easily. Normally, she’s got it reined in—sharp, quick-witted, easy to be around. But when she’s like this? When her demons claw their way out?

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