WHERE TO NOW? (M/M) 18+

Chapter 48

Where It's All Decided.

Bleu was missing.

That thought had been circling in the back of my mind, quiet but persistent, ever since we'd come back inside. Normally, he was the first to sense something—out ahead, nose to the ground, catching a scent long before danger got close. But I hadn't seen him.

Not until Kieran and I made it upstairs.

That's when I heard him.

Soft, steady sniffing—desperate in its repetition.

Bleu's muzzle was jammed beneath the narrow crack of a closed door, the tip of his nose pressed so firmly into it I thought he might slip straight through. His breath flared with every inhale, heavy and anxious, as though trying to smell straight into the room.

The sniffing grew sharper, more urgent, the closer we got, the faint scrape of claws raking against the carpet.

I didn't need to ask who he was searching for.

I didn't say anything. Neither did Kieran. We just stood there for a beat, watching the way Bleu stayed perfectly still, save for the twitch of his nose and the occasional flick of his tongue. He didn't bark or whine. He didn't need to.

He'd been waiting.

And now that we were close—really close—he was sure of it. We were just on the other side, and he couldn't wait to see us.

Then Bleu barked—sharp and sudden, like something in him snapped at the last thread of patience.

It wasn't loud enough to be aggressive, but it carried. Down the hallway. Down the stairs. Through the floorboards.

Downstairs, the shift was immediate. Footsteps stilled. Voices cut off mid-sentence.

Then Marcus—calm, casual on the surface, but the kind of casual that set off every alarm in my chest—spoke. "You have a dog here?"

My heart missed a beat. I didn't move, didn't breathe.

The silence that followed hit harder than any sound could have. I could picture Damien's face clearly in my mind—his jaw locked, eyes dark, measured.

Then Marcus spoke again, tone just a fraction lower, weight behind the words now.

"They gunna be an issue?"

My stomach dropped.

It wasn't curiosity. It was a veiled warning, cloaked in ease.

Kieran stiffened beside me. I felt the tension ripple through him, subtle but immediate. I looked up at him, our eyes locking—and there it was. That same flicker of dread, of disbelief. Of fear.

My throat tightened.

He was just on the other side of the door—still there, still waiting, unaware that his existence had just been brought into question by a man who didn't know him, didn't care to.

What if they saw him as a liability? What if they tried something?

The silence dragged long enough to make me sweat. But before I could spiral any further, Damien's voice broke through, flat and resolute.

"No."

No hesitation. No emotion. No explanation. Just final.

But it didn't stop the unease curling in my gut like smoke. Because I knew what Marcus really meant. And I knew what Damien didn't say.