Page 91 of Freestyle
The vibration is short, soft, but now it feels like thunder in the quiet of this room. I reach the nightstand and glance back once. They’re both still wrapped in sleep, chests rising in rhythm, shadows painting them in moonlight.
I grab the phone and tilt the screen away from them, thumb hovering over the alert.
Three New Messages. Shakily, I click on the sender to show the message.
Unknown:
Do you think they can keep you safe forever? :)
And below it, two more—delivered within seconds of each other.
Unknown:
They look at you like they know you. They don’t.
I know what you really are.
My blood runs cold. For a second, Iforget how to breathe.
The kind of stillness creeps in that only comes when fight hasn’t started yet, but flight is no longer an option.
My eyes flick toward the bed.
Gray’s on his side, his brow furrowed even in sleep, like his body knows something’s wrong.
Phoenix is still as stone, back against the headboard, one hand resting near where I’d just been. Like he was keeping me there.
They’re right there, two heartbeats away.
But I don’t move.
Because if I wake them, something changes. The safety shatters, the silence ends, and once they know… there’s no putting this back in the dark.
The cold isn’t on my skin, it’s in my bones. Sinking, slow. Like the words on that screen poisoned the air around me.
I don’t even think.
I turn.
I reach for the bed, for them.
“Gray,” I whisper first, touching his arm.
His eyes open instantly, sharp, alert, like sleep never really had him. “Row?”
I don’t answer.
Phoenix stirs beside him,already upright, the tension snapping into place like a coiled spring finding resistance. “What is it?” he asks, voice lower, raw from sleep.
I can’t speak. I just hold out the phone.
Gray grabs it with one hand, brushing my back with the other like he knows I need that anchor. His eyes scan the screen.
One second. Two.
Then he goes very still.
Phoenix leans over to look too, and I see it, the shift. Like something behind his eyes just turned to iron.
