I shattered.
It wasn't a graceful release. It was a structural failure. I screamed, my body convulsing around him, trying to crush him, trying to absorb him. The orgasm rolled through me in violent waves, tearing down every wall I’d ever built.
Kit rode the aftershocks, groaning my name, his thrusts becoming erratic, desperate. I felt him stiffen, his large body going rigid against my back.
"Zia," he choked out. "Zia, hold on. Anchoring."
He slammed into me one last time and held it there, knotting me as he buried his face in the crook of my neck. I felt the pulse of his release, hot and heavy, filling me, verifying that I was real, that I was here, that I was theirs.
He collapsed forward, his weight crushing me into the mattress, but I didn't want him to move. I wanted to be crushed. I wanted the pressure.
Alfie was kissing my face, small, frantic pecks on my eyelids, my cheeks, my forehead. "You're okay. You're okay. You're brilliant."
Euan was wiping the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of his shirt, his touch gentle. "Heart rate stabilizing," he murmured, sounding relieved. "Output nominal."
I lay there, sandwiched between the mattress and the drummer, surrounded by the singer and the technician, and for the first time in my life, the silence inside my head wasn't lonely. It was full.
"Don't move," I whispered into the duvet.
"Not going anywhere," Kit mumbled into my neck, his arm heavy over my waist. "I'm the furniture, remember?"
"Best furniture I've ever had," I slurred, drifting on the endorphin haze.
I heard Alfie laugh, a wet, happy sound. "We'll get that put on a plaque for the bunk. 'Rated 5 Stars by FoxTail Audio.'"
"Shut up," I murmured, but I turned my face into Alfie’s hand as he cupped my cheek.
"Rest now," Euan commanded softly. "Another wave will probably hit soon. You need to recharge."
I nodded, letting my eyes drift shut. The colors of their voices, indigo, slate, earth, swirled together into a single, perfect white noise. I let the pack pull me under.
TWENTY-THREE
Alfie
The silence in the back lounge wasn’t the empty, terrifying kind I was used to, the kind that screams before a drop or echoes after a door slams shut. It was heavy. It was humid. It tasted like ozone and citrus syrup, thick enough to coat the back of my throat.
I lay perfectly still, which, for the record, is a state of being I usually only achieve when I’m unconscious or dead. But right now, moving felt like blasphemy. Moving meant disturbing the ecosystem we’d built out of discarded heavy-knit sweaters, Euan’s spare duvet, and four exhausted bodies.
My face was pressed against the soft cotton of a t-shirt, Kit’s, judging by the faint smell of espresso and Old Holborn tobacco clinging to the fibers, but the skin underneath it was Zia’s. My nose was buried right in the curve of her hip bone, my arm draped heavily over her legs to weigh her down. To keep her here.
I breathed in.God.
The scent wasn't just on her; it was woven into the molecules of the air. The scrubbers were off, Euan had kept his word, and the result was a biological fog of neon grapefruit and lightningmixed with the dark, heavy aftermath of three Alphas who’d finally been allowed to break the glass. It smelled like ruin. It smelled like home.
"Heavy," a voice grumbled from above me.
I cracked one eye open. The indigo floor lights were still pulsing, casting long, strange shadows across the nest. Zia was shifting, or trying to.
"Alfie," she rasped, her voice wrecked, sounding like she’d smoked a pack a day for a decade. "You’re heavier than you look. Move your head."
"Negative," I mumbled into her hip, tightening my grip. "I’m structural support now. Load-bearing Alpha."
"You’re an overweight golden retriever," she corrected, but her hand drifted down, fingers threading through my messy hair. She scratched my scalp, right at the base of the skull, and a purr rumbled in my chest before I could stop it.
"Status check," Euan whispered from the other side of the pile.
Leave it to Euan to wake up sounding like a motherboard booting up. He was curled around Zia’s back, his long frame folded impossibly small to fit the space, his nose pressed against her shoulder blades. He looked disheveled, hair sticking up, eyes sleepy and soft, but his hand was already on her waist, undoubtedly checking her respiration rate.
