"My turn to drive," he said, and rolled us so I was beneath him, his hips snapping forward before I could respond.
I laughed, breathless, surprised by the shift. Let him move how he wanted, let him take what he needed. Through the bond, his desperation spiked, racing toward the edge.
I didn't stop him this time. Let him shatter, felt his release cascade through the Tether, pleasure ricocheting between us until I gasped with the echo of it.
He collapsed against me, panting, and pressed a kiss to my shoulder. "Worth the wait."
Lyrin was last, and I approached him differently than the others. Slowly. Carefully. Giving him time to adjust, to breathe, to make his own choice. His breath came fast and shallow, and beneath his desire, I could feel something fragile through the Tether. Something that had been broken and never quite mended.
I didn't grab him. Didn't pull him close. I just settled beside him, close enough to feel his warmth, and waited.
"We can stop," I said softly, cupping his face, my thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone. "Anytime. Just say the word."
His hand came up to cover mine, pressing my palm harder against his cheek like he was trying to memorize the feeling.
"Don't stop." His voice cracked. "Please don't stop."
I kissed him. Not demanding, not teasing, just present. Letting him feel my warmth, my want, my care. And this time he kissed back without hesitation, his mouth opening under mine like surrender, like relief, like coming home.
He surprised me then. Instead of waiting for me to guide him, he pulled me beneath him, settling his weight over me with a determination that made my breath catch.
"I want to do this," he said. "Let me."
I nodded, and when he finally pressed inside me, he made a sound like something breaking. Not pain. Release. Like a man who'd been holding his breath for years finally remembering how to breathe.
Through the Tether, I felt his walls come down completely. Raw emotion flooded through: longing and fear and desperate hope and something deeper. Something that might have been love if he'd known how to name it. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, and I kissed them away.
"I'm here," I whispered against his mouth. "I'm here. I'm not leaving."
He moved inside me, slow and deep, and I wrapped myself around him, holding him close, letting him feel how wanted he was. How safe. How home.
Then I stopped thinking in sequences, in turns.
It became a tangle of bodies and sensations, pleasure layered over pleasure until I couldn't tell where I ended and they began. Torvyn's mouth on my breast, his tongue swirling, his teeth grazing, while Lyrin was still inside me, still moving with that desperate tenderness. Kaedren's four hands finding every sensitive place at once, stroking, pinching, pressing. Vaelix whispering against my ear, making me clench around whoever was closest.
I lost track of whose hands were where, whose pleasure was whose through the Tether. They moved around me and through me, inside me and against me, and we were all the center, all connected, all one.
Then Torvyn spoke.
"The tether," he said, his voice cutting through the haze of pleasure, "is not sworn in pain. It is sworn in clarity."
Everything stilled.
Bodies frozen. Breath held. The Tether humming with sudden gravity.
He held my gaze, and through the bond, I felt the weight of what he was offering. Not sex. Not bonding. A Zorathi oath. Unbreakable. Binding. Real.
"I swear myself," Torvyn said, his voice steady despite the way his body still trembled. "Not to own. Not to command. To stand beside."
"To stay even when it costs," I finished, and his eyes widened slightly. I'd understood what he was offering before he'd finished saying it.
He nodded once. Through the Tether, I felt his recognition.
Kaedren's voice followed, rough with emotion. "I swear my blade and my blood. Where you walk, I fight. What threatens you, threatens me."
"And what threatens you threatens me," I answered. "That oath cuts both ways."
Something shifted in his expression. He hadn't expected me to claim the same responsibility. But he nodded, accepting it.
