Chapter 33: Wren
Iwake to warmth.
Not sunlight, not the heat of my apartment’s weak old radiators—warmth shaped like bodies that aren’t here anymore.Like hands that stayed too long.Like breath that hovered near my skin the whole night.
Kael’s room is dim, lit only by the gray wash of early morning pushing through the cracked door.The blanket is tucked up under my chin.The pillow smells like him—clean, crisp, a hint of cedar that clings to the cotton like it decided to live there permanently.
And I’m wearing his shirt.
I realize that second.
It’s soft against my legs, warm from sleep, the neck stretched from where I tucked my chin into it sometime in the night.My hair is tangled over my shoulder.My heartbeat hums low and slow, not in panic—something else.
Memory rushes back in pieces.
The boys.
Their hands.
Their voices.
Their bodies close around me, heat on all sides.
Kael’s thumb brushing my arm.
Finn’s forehead lightly touching mine.
Atlas’s hand firm on my calf through the blanket.
And then sleep.
Real sleep.The kind I thought I’d forgotten how to have.
I blink up at the ceiling and breathe in slow through my nose, letting it settle that I made it through the night without that old familiar panic clawing me awake.No cold sweat.No spiraling pulse.No jerk of my body reaching for the phone before I even opened my eyes.
I turn onto my side, pulling the blanket with me, and something shifts in my peripheral vision.
Someone is in the doorway.
Atlas.
Or at least Atlas’s silhouette, massive and unmistakable, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and one foot braced behind him.Watching, but in that way he does where it somehow doesn’t feel invasive—it feels like he’s guarding the oxygen in the room.
