“Valerian and passion flower in green tea. For the shock.”
Across the room, Cas began rearranging spice jars by color. Could the man leavenothingunorganized? Shaking my head, I let him get his jollies where he found them.
“Um, just so I’m clear because I got lost a few times in this convo. We’re good with sharing her, right? Like, even if she has political cooties, she’sours?” I stared into my tea, my smirk fading. “Because I— I don’t think I can breathe without her now.”
“She’sours.” Koa’s smile was bright as the sun. “All of ours.”
“Ours.” Cas didn’t look up from his rainbow. “Until we take our last breaths.”
And there it was, the unshakable core beneath the chaos. However this twisted fairy tale unfolded, we’d face it the same way we did everything: messily, recklessly, together.
“To forced matrimony, unexpected instalove, and probable treason.”
I raised my mug. They raised theirs. We clinked.
Cas and I immediately spat ours out while Ko chugged his.
11. Soup of Champions
Zane
Exactly one hour after we left her room, we were circling her bedroom door with the intensity of vultures debating roadkill etiquette.Moonlight pooled on the hallway’s parquet floor like liquid mercury, but all any of us could focus on washer.
“We need to feed her,” Ko insisted, already reaching for the knob.
“She’s healing.” Cas blocked him with an arm. “Let her sleep.”
“Starving’s worse than bleeding out,” I countered, becausesomebodyhad to play devil’s avocado, and I was ripe for the job.
“All right, butyoubehave.” Casimir elbowed me. Hard. “Don’t overwhelm her first thing.”
“Well, just seeing me will do that,” I smirked.
Fluttering his eyelids, and not in a flirty way, he eased her door open. Ko and I had a brief battle to see who would get to go in next, and he won only because he fought dirty, the jerk.
Holding my aching balls, I hobbled inside to see Cas hovering like a panther ready to pounce and Koa crouched bedside, all heart eyes and softened edges.
She seemed so tiny, curled up with that wolf pup like they were two pieces of a puzzle. The pup’s fur was a mess, and he pawed at the air in his sleep like he was chasing something or someone.
I smirked. With a bit of training and a whole lot of kibble, he was going to make a fine nanny for our girl.
She was sleeping like the dead, her chest rising and falling in slow, steady breaths. I could see the smudges of bruises under her eyes, and it made something in my chest twist. She’d been through a war, and now here she was, tucked into a nice, warm bed and secure in a room where we could keep her safe.
Even if she was asleep, I hoped she felt safe.
Shedeservedto feel safe.
The pup stirred before she did, his skinny self stretching out like a furry, four-legged starfish. I reached down to pet him, earning a soft, sleepy whine. My fingers brushed against her hand, and she jerked back, her eyelids flying open.
“Sleeping Beauty finally rises,” I drawled, but my teasing smile faded when I saw her lost expression and scared eyes. “You with us, sweetheart?”
“Tone it down, Z.” Casimir gave me a look, and I made an ugly face back.
She blinked at us like we’d materialized from a particularly bad dream. Cruor, she was breakable! Birdbone wrists, fractured glances skittering off our faces… Something sour climbed my throat.
“How are you feeling?” Ko murmured.
We all held our breath as she struggled to gather herself, her body nearly swallowed by the blankets. It broke something in me to see her like this, as adrift as a kitten left out in the storm, and every instinct in me screamed to wrap her in armor, to keep the world from ever laying a hand on her again.
