No knocks.
No phone buzzing in a drawer.
Not a perfect night.
But a quiet one.
And for now, that’s the kind of victory I know how to win.
Chapter 39: Wren
––––––––
Iwake to the sensationof warmth.
Not heat.Not someone pressed against me.It’s the kind that settles into the bones—quiet, slow, like the body realizing danger isn’t the thing keeping it awake anymore.
Light filters through the crack in Kael’s curtains.The room smells like cedar and clean laundry.At some point in the night, I kicked the comforter down to my waist.My hair’s a mess.My pulse isn’t climbing walls.
For a second, I don’t move.
I listen.
A low, rhythmic hum—air pump deflating the mattress in the hall.A pan shifts in the kitchen.A soft murmur of voices, one raised in frustration, one in amusement, one in command.
The boys.
Still here.
Still keeping watch.
Something warm settles under my ribs.Something I haven’t felt in far too long.
I push out of bed, feet hitting the soft rug, and open the door just enough to peek.
Atlas is crouched on the hallway floor, wrestling the air mattress like it offended him personally.Finn is in the kitchen, humming as he flips something in a pan, wearing one sock and no shirt for reasons known only to him.Kael sits at the counter, hair damp, coffee in hand, looking like he’s been awake since the invention of daylight.
