I cried out, arching back into Kit, overwhelmed by the sharpness of the sensation. "I need weight. Ground me!"
"Adding bass," Kit said. He wrapped one massive arm around my chest, pinning me, while his other hand slid down to join Alfie, adding the heavy, rhythmic friction I craved.
"All of you, I need all of you," I begged, my head swimming in the sensory overload. "Unmute all channels."
It was a wall of sound. Synesthetic colors exploded, Alfie's frantic gold, Kit's grounding umber, Euan's cool slate, swirling into a blinding white light. I was the mix, and they were playing me perfectly, a symphony of flesh and breath. Each of them took turns fucking me senseless until I couldn't take it anymore.
"Mine," I sobbed, grabbing Euan’s hair with one hand, digging nails into Kit’s forearm with the other. "Mine. Mine."
I shattered. The climax was a full-system failure, a beautiful, terrifying collapse into the safety of the pack.
One by one, they followed me over the edge, touching each other, touching me, a tangle of limbs and scents and sounds, boundaries dissolving into unity.
Later, much later, the air in the lounge was heavy and sleepy. Kit held a water bottle to my lips, hydration first. Alfie was cleaning me up with a warm towel he’d seemingly conjured from nowhere, humming a melody that didn't exist yet. Euan was re-pinning the blanket fort where it had collapsed during the finale, ensuring the structural integrity was restored.
I reached for the tablet I kept by the bed.
"What are you analyzing now?" Alfie mumbled, half-asleep on my stomach, his face pressed into the soft skin there.
"Updating the patch notes," I whispered, my fingers tracing the cool glass of the screen.
I opened the note taking app. Technical documentation was my love language, after all.
SUNDAY SUMMARY:Orchestration successful. Resonance achieved. No clipping detected despite high gain input.
ADDENDUM:We’re going to need a bigger bus. And more towels.
A notification popped up as I was typing. Then another. And another.
Dread pooled in my stomach, chasing away the post-sex high I'd been riding and bringing reality crashing back in.
I didn’t want to look. But instinct propelled my hand, reaching with trepidation. The notifications scrolled across the screen like a digital mutation. Each line skewered my residual euphoria like a rusted needle's tip.
"Doxxed"? The word, freshly minted as a flare, burned itself everywhere—social feeds, inbox pings, the sickly yellow of urgency. I swiped desperately, heart buzzing with the anxiety like I’d swallowed a summer wasp.
My username was there, stark in the headlines. Real names, previous jobs connected, a sprawling diorama of half-truths painted by vicious minds with too much time and too little empathy.
I bolted upright, stark terror slicing through the veil of fatigue. How had it unraveled? Who knew enough to...?
The comments section was lit with digital flames, a volatile gamut consuming my life made drip-feed content for the insatiable void.
I needed to call Rowan. Initiate the emergency contingencies.
But there was no air in my lungs. I choked on static.
THIRTY
Zia
The screen blurred. The pixels of my real name,Zia Vale, swam in front of my eyes, dissolving into a wash of nauseating, jagged red static.
Breath in. Four.
Breath out. Six.
The rhythm failed. My lungs were a locked room, and someone had swallowed the key.
The tablet slipped from my numb fingers. It hit the mattress with a muffledthump, a sound that shouldn't have been loud enough to wake the dead, but in the hushed, breathing quiet of the nest, it sounded like a gunshot.
