Zane hesitated, his chest rising and falling against Asa’s. He could feel the slow thud of Asa’s heart beneath him, steady, deliberate, the kind of rhythm you built a life around.
Tears threatened again as Zane nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
Asa sighed, stroking his cheek with his thumb. “Don’t apologize, Lois. I’ll say it every day if that’s what you need from me. But you have to know by now I didn’t just ‘get stuck’ with you. I don’t secretly wish for a different life. I don’t secretly wish for a different person…or people, I guess. I wake up every fucking day smug because I have a life most people would kill for. And a big part of that—no, the biggest part of that—is you. Not Felix, not the boys…Hell, not even Avi. But you.”
He dipped his head, connecting their lips. Zane opened for him immediately, letting Asa consume him for a moment, soaking in the attention, the low simmer of heat pooling in his belly. It wasn’t going anywhere. They didn’t have the time or even the inclination. Zane was tired in his bones.
Maybe later—when the house was quiet, when Felix’s warmth pressed against his front, when exhaustion blurred the edges of everything—then Asa would use him. Carefully.Patiently. Like someone needing to prove something with more than words Zane refused to believe.
He was always so careful then, like he didn’t want to disturb him but couldn’t wait for a better time. Like he just had to be inside him right then. He wasn’t apologetic about it. While their public vows had been simple, Zane had promised Asa years ago that he could always take what he wanted, that even if he said no, Asa didn’t have to stop.
They had a safeword for a reason, but it was Asa who used it more often than Zane ever had. There was nothing he wouldn’t let Asa do to him. No lengths he wouldn’t go to please him. He’d push his body past its limits a thousand times over if it made him happy. He’d probably let Asa run him over with a car if he just asked in that tone, the one that left no room for argument, the one that made Zane feel safe and loved and protected.
Asa brushed a hand down Zane’s spine, grounding him again. The attic was quiet except for the sound of their breathing, the world outside a distant hum. For a moment, he wanted to stay like this forever.
Then his comm crackled in his ear, the sharp sound splintering the silence, loud enough to startle them both.
“Thomas is calling it,” Calliope’s voice came, low and wry but edged with something grim. “She doesn’t have much fight left in her. We’re ready for you in the shed.”
Asa exhaled through his nose, the sound more sigh than growl. “Copy that,” he said, voice steady even as his hand lingered at the back of Zane’s neck.
Zane blinked, slow and heavy, like the words had to swim through fog to reach him. “This doesn’t feel real.”
“I know, baby.” Asa kissed his forehead.
He helped Zane sit up, smoothing the wrinkles in his costume, the motions practiced and tender. For one heartbeat more, they stayed there—two silhouettes in a secret mouse hole—before Asa reached for the latch. The light from the hallway spilled in, thin and cold, chasing away the warmth they’d made.
Before they left, Asa gave him another soul-searing kiss. “It’s almost over now.”
Zane wanted to believe him but he wasn’t sure he could until he saw her dead with his own eyes.
“You know, I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long, but now that I see you, you’re almost not worth it.” Felix flexed his fingers, and the workshop lights winked off the platinum cat claws strapped to his knuckles.
Whenever they touched, they made a sound that reminded Felix of windchimes, delicate and haunting. They were so pretty, he almost wished he could show them off more.
“Fuck you. You’re all sick, deviant perverts,” Bev spat, venom seeping from her pores.
She might have even tried to give Felix the finger—had August not already claimed them as trophies.
Avi’s laugh was flat and soft. “You have no idea.”
Bev was an absolute fright. Her hair hung in sweaty, limp tangles, parts of it sticking out like frayed wire from where she’d been dumped into the wheelbarrow by Atticus and Freckles. Her foundation had streaked, then caked, then streaked again, making her look like a melted candle. Her eye makeup had bled outward, pooling into bruised shadows, giving her the hollowed-out look of a cartoon skeleton. Her smeared lipstick made her look like some kind of demented clown.
Felix prowled closer, the pads of his boots silent on the concrete. He loved how she flinched when he moved; she still expected the world to obey her the way it had when she’d engineered the terror. The air smelled faintly of oil, rust, and the stench of Bev’s sweat and desperation.
“You’re just mad because, despite your best efforts, Zane has people who love him. And you can’t stand it,” Felix said.
Bev began to squirm like she might somehow shimmy free of her bindings. They’d tied her to the pillar in the center of the workshop, arms bound tight at her sides. Her chest rose and fell too fast, shallow breaths rattling through her with effort. She looked like one of those damsels in distress from old black-and-white movies, or maybe like they were about to burn her at the stake. But that death would be far too quick for her.
“Just kill me and get it over with,” she said through a mouth full of cracked lipstick.
“Killing you would be a kindness,” Avi purred. “And we’re not feeling generous.”
Felix dragged a metallic fingernail along the pale line of her cheek. A shallow silver arc appeared, quick and precise; blood beaded, dark and theatrical. He watched it catch the light. Bev’s lips parted and she tasted it first, instinctively. That reflex, that tiny flicker of tongue, was obscene. She accused Thomas of being some kind of alien-lizard hybrid but there was something almost reptilian in this woman, like there was just something missing within her. The sight of her tasting her own blood made something warm and smug tighten in Felix’s chest.
“You had the chance to take that fat check Thomas gave you and go live on an island somewhere,” Felix said, his voice slow and soft. “It was way more than you deserved. I would’ve just let Avi chop you into bits and use you for chum off one of our yachts. Yet, despite getting everything you demanded to go away, you couldn’t resist coming back for a second handout.”
Bev laughed, a ragged sound. “I’m the one who raised him?—”
