"We built the house," I said softly.
"Is she..." Euan didn't finish the sentence. He reached out, touching her foot, verifying the data.
"She's sleeping," I said. "Real sleep. Not a crash."
My stomach growled, a loud, rude sound in the quiet room. We hadn't eaten a real meal in... two days? Three?
"Starving," Alfie mumbled. "I would eat the mattress."
"Eggs," I whispered. "Soon. I'll make eggs."
But I didn't move. I couldn't. The gravity of the pack was too strong.
I buried my face in Zia’s hair. It was matted, smelling of sweat and sex and the deep, undeniable scent ofus. The triple match wasn't a theory anymore. It was a forged reality. We had walked into the fire and carried her out the other side without burning anything down that we needed to keep.
No bites. No marks on her neck that she hadn't asked for.
We had held the line.
"Good girl," I breathed against her neck, placing a kiss on the exact spot where the claim mark should be, pressing my lips to the pulse. "You did it. You rode it out."
She twitched in her sleep, her hand coming up to cover mine on her waist. Her fingers laced with mine, gripping tight.
"Furniture," she mumbled into the pillow.
"And wall," I confirmed.
I closed my eyes. The siege was over. The occupation had begun. And looking at the bruised, beautiful reality of my pack pile, I knew I was never going to clock out of this shift.
THIRTY-FOUR
Alfie
I woke up with a mouth that tasted like I’d been licking the carpet of a tour bus and a body that felt like it had been dropped from a third-story window.
My left arm was dead numbness, pinned under a weight that smelled of dark earth and espresso, Kit. My right leg was tangled in a knot of limbs that radiated the crisp, cool heat of a logic processor overheating, Euan. And right in the center of my chest, heavy and hot and perfect, was a head of messy, purple-black hair.
Zia.
I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I just lay there in the amber dimness of the collab house bedroom, staring at a crack in the ceiling plaster, trying to reboot my brain.
The silence was loud. For three days, or maybe four, I’d lost track of the sun, this room had been a war zone. It had been filled with the sounds of Zia unmaking us: the whimpers, the screams, the wet, slick sounds of friction, the guttural commands from Kit, the frantic prayers from me.
Now, the only sound was the syncopated rhythm of four people breathing in a pile.
I carefully, painfully, tilted my chin down.
She was fast asleep. Her face was pressed into my sternum, her mouth slightly open, leaving a damp patch on my skin. She looked wrecked. There were dark circles under her eyes, her lips were swollen and bruised a deep rose, and her skin was tacky with sweat and the drying remnants of the oils and balms Euan had been obsessing over.
She smelled like the aftermath of a thunderstorm in a grapefruit grove. The electric, ozone crackle was gone, replaced by a soft, mellow sweetness that hit the back of my throat like honey.
We survived.
The thought hit me with enough force to make my eyes sting. We had walked into the fire, fed ourselves to the flames, and come out the other side without burning the house down.
Or maybe we had burned it down. Maybe we were just sitting in the ashes, realizing we liked the view better this way.
"System check," a voice rasped from somewhere near my knee.
