Dorian grins and dives in. Corvus follows more carefully, but he comes.
We spend hours in the lake. Playing. Laughing. Splashing each other like kids. Dorian attempts an elaborate dive that ends in a spectacular belly flop, and Corvus actually laughs—a real laugh, surprised out of him. Oakley holds me up while I float on my back, staring at the clouds.
It's the most normal I've felt in months, and I hold onto it desperately.
As the sun starts to set, we make our way back to the house, wrapped in towels, still laughing.
"I'm hungry," I announce. "And if you three try to cook again, I'm calling for pizza."
"Pizza sounds perfect," Oakley agrees.
Weenduponthe huge couch in the living room, pizza boxes spread across the coffee table, a movie playing that none of us are really watching.
I'm tucked between Dorian and Oakley, my feet in Corvus's lap. His hands are absently massaging them, and it feels impossibly domestic.
"This is what I want," I say quietly. "This. Not the drama. Not the warfare. Just... this."
"Then this is what we'll give you," Dorian promises.
"Every day," Oakley adds.
Corvus's hands still on my feet. "We can be this. If you let us."
"I'm letting you," I say. "I'm choosing this. But you have to keep choosing it too. Every day. Even when it's hard."
"We will," they promise, almost in unison.
And lying there, surrounded by them, full of pizza and lake water and something that might actually be happiness, I let myself believe them.
For tonight, at least, we can have peace.
Tomorrow, we'll figure out the rest.
twenty-three
Corvus
Threedaysofdomesticbliss and I'm losing my fucking mind.
Not the clinical, analytical assessment I usually pride myself on. Just raw, honest acknowledgment that watching Vespera exist in our space—making coffee in the morning with sleep-mussed hair, curled up reading in the library with her feet tucked under her, swimming in the lake with water droplets catching sunlight on her skin—is systematically destroying every defense mechanism I've carefully constructed.
She takes her coffee black with one sugar. Hums while she cooks. Laughs at Oakley's terrible jokes with her whole body, head thrown back, completely uninhibited. Challenges Dorian's dramatic statements with raised eyebrows and sharp wit. Reads thriller novels and gets so absorbed she doesn't notice us watching her.
I've been cataloging it all because that's what I do. Observe. Analyze. Calculate.
What I can't calculate is how to handle the wanting.
It's not heat. Not biology. Not the fated mate bonds pulling us together with chemical inevitability. It's worse than that. It's the realization that I want her—clear-headed, sharp-tongued, brilliantly defiant her—in ways that have nothing to do with Alpha instincts and everything to do with the fact that she's extraordinary.
She's been careful with physical affection since her heat ended. Allows it, even initiates it sometimes. Kisses that linger. Touches that promise. But there's a line she hasn't crossed. No claiming. No sex. Just enough to drive all three of us slowly insane while she tests whether we can be more than biology and desperation.
The sexual tension is a living thing in the house. I can smell it on her—not heat, but genuine arousal. Can see it in the way she looks at us when she thinks we're not paying attention, her pupils dilating, her breathing changing. Can feel it in the way she presses closer at night, her body seeking contact even in sleep.
She's waiting for something. I just haven't determined what.
I'm in my study, actually making progress on the Robbie situation—more complicated than initially assessed but far from impossible—when she finds me.
The door opens without a knock. She steps inside and closes it behind her with deliberate care, the soft click of the lock loud in the quiet room.
