Page 127 of The Mourning Throne
He tossed both parts over toward Lex’s bag.
Lex huffed a quiet sound. Not a laugh. Only a breath that wanted to be more.
“Thanks,” he mumbled. “I’m blind as shit.”
Pulling the last of his clothes from the closet, Morgan frowned. Lex hadn’t looked at Ollie since they’d got back in. Hadn’t wanted to open the cage. No jokes. No smart quips.
And Morgan didn’t know how else to help.
Physical comfort only went so far. There were only so many ways he could hold Lex. Only so hard he could squeeze him, hoping to reset his nervous system enough.
So instead, he focused on what he could do.
Pack and get Lex out of here as quickly as he could.
Then all of this would be over.
Chapter 23
The knock sounded harder than it needed to.
It reverberated through the suite, sharp and sudden, too loud for a room that had only begun to settle. The kind of knock that wasn’t a request—it was an announcement.
Morgan’s brow furrowed. They hadn’t ordered room service. They hadn’t rang down at all.
If this was some overeager new employee at the hotel mishandling simple instructions—Please bring a luggage rack to our room around 11:00p.m—he was going to have averypointed conversation with the front desk.
He didn’t check the peephole. Didn’t ask who it was.
He assumed.
That was the firstmistake.
Because the man standing there wasn’t a man at all. He was aperversion.
Lex’s face—but on the wrong body. Thicker. Broader. More muscle than Morgan had seen on anyone.
Lex’s tan, except artificial. More orange than gold.
Lex’s hair—same tousled blond, but swept back. Too much gel.
Lex’ssmile—all teeth, no soul behind it.
The only thing it didn’t have was Lex’s eyes.
It wasoff.Just enough to twist Morgan’s stomach. Like someone had held up a photograph and tried to sculpt it from memory. The angles were right. The colors matched. But the edges bled into somethingother.
“Hi,” the thing said, chipper. “I’ve got people to collect.”
Morgan didn’t answer.
Couldn’t.
Shock seized him in place. His mouth hung half-open, tongue too thick to move, mind too slow to register whether he was breathing.
That was the second mistake. One he realized too late.
The thing’s gaze slid right past Morgan’s frozen frame—lit up when it found what it was looking for behind him.
