Page 38 of Beyond Redemption

“They’re here,” Naomi said, pleased.

Zeke turned, his eyes initially lighting up, but then confusion clouded his expression. “Is this… Thomas?”

“He favors his mom… or so I’m told,” Naomi said, winking once to Liis.

Zeke had round, baby-blue eyes that somehow survived everything he’d seen. Dark brown hair, neatly kept. A well-trimmed beard that framed his mouth and softened his jaw. Full eyelashes that made no sense on someone who’d spent years running toward wildfires. Handsome, as men go. He and Naomi definitely made sense.

He came over, hugged Liis gently, then clasped my shoulder. “Good to see you both. Looking forward to seeing Travis, Taylor, and Tyler, too, and meeting Trenton.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m sure you are, however, they’re going to show up ready to put their fists in my face.”

Naomi looked Liis over. “Yeah, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. What you did was messed up.”

“It was necessary,” Liis said, without hesitation. “We couldn’t contain it otherwise.”

Naomi didn’t blink. “They won’t care.”

“No,” I conceded. “They won’t. But I’ll handle it. Preferably without structural damage to the Longhouse.”

Naomi lifted a brow. “Do I need to chaperone?”

“I’d like to say no.” I exhaled. “But we’ve burned a lot of ground with each other over the years. Letting them believe Olive was dead… I don’t expect forgiveness.”

“I wouldn’t,” Zeke said.

It tracked. He ran with the same hotshot crew as my twin brothers. He would’ve been there for the aftermath—getting the calls from Taylor and trying to help him to hold it together, hearing Falyn move through all five stages of grief in real time. Hearing of their impending divorce and listening to Taylor spiral into depression as he tried to figure out how to be strong for his kids while he and Falyn shared 50/50 custody and co-parented.

I nodded once. It was the only thing I could manage.

Naomi gestured for us to sit at the kitchen table, solid wood and scarred with use. Naomi grabbed a bowl of grapes from the counter and dropped into a chair, popping one into her mouth.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” she said, chewing, “how are you settling in? I guess that question’s a little premature since you haven’t made it to your residence yet.”

Liis glanced at me. “We’re comfortable and grateful.”

Zeke leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, studying us. “Seriously, though. How bad do you think this gets with you guys? Full dogpile, or…?”

“No,” Liis said, immediate.

Naomi shot him a look. “I thought we were past that.”

“To be honest, we don’t know what to expect,” I said. “Tonight could go a few different ways. They’ve grown up, learned some restraint. It helps that they’ve had twenty-four hours to process.” I paused, nervously scratching my chin. “But this goes beyond anything we’ve ever done to each other before. This is betrayal. Five men, already volatile, trained to varying degrees, most days looking for an excuse to burn off pressure with our fists—there’s no playbook for how that ends up.”

Naomi smiled wider. “Chaperone it is.”

“Maybe you should invite Kansas and Spenser, too,” Zeke said, clearly unhappy with the picture I’d painted—and with the idea of his wife anywhere near the fallout.

“The women at the door when we arrived,” Liis said, more of a statement than a question.

“Yeah?” she said. “They’re unit commanders here on the compound.” She pulled out her phone. “I’ll text Spense. I’ll leave Kansas out of it. Her idea of de-escalation involves broken fingers.”

“I’m sure we can handle it,” Liis said quickly. “Militia or not, two women in the middle of a Maddox all-out war are just in the way.” She turned to me. “How are you planning to explain to the General that his daughter or nieces ended up with a black eye courtesy of one of your brothers?”

Naomi laughed, reaching for another grape. She chewed, clearly amused. “I’m humoring Zeke. I don’t need Spenser there. One Marcel is enough.”

“You haven’t seen—” Liis started.

I flattened my hand on the table, subtle but final.