Now?
Now it feels like terms have been negotiated in a room I wasn’t in.
Saint drifts in next, quiet as confession. He looks… composed. That’s not the same as calm, and definitely not the same as clean. There’s exhaustion around his eyes. A kind of wreckedness in the way his collar sits open at his throat. But the usual edge of self-sabotage is dulled. He moves to her side, bends down, and presses his hand to the back of her neck for a second.
Just rests it there.
A benediction. A claim. A grounding point. “Sleep?” he murmurs.
She tilts her head into his palm without thinking, eyes half-lidding. “Some.”
Saint nods. That’s all. My stomach tightens in jealousy. Because I know Saint. He doesn’t touch first. He doesn’t offer comfort. He lets people suffer and calls it penance. That’s his entire religion. And yet, he comfortsher.
Vale strolls in last, because of course he does. He’s got that loose, lazy walk like he’s just rolled out of someone else’s bed andstill tastes like sin. Hair damp. T-shirt thin. Tattoos on display. He leans in the doorway, looks at Ember — really looks — and lets out a low, appreciative whistle.
“Careful, Red,” he says. “If you get any more smug the sun’s not going to bother rising.”
She doesn’t bother looking at him. “It’s London. The sun never bothers rising.”
He grins, sharp and wolfish. “God, I like you.”
Then he winks at her like they’re sharing a secret, even though he’d happily be the secret.
It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely terrifying. And gods damn—it’s… working.
They’re orbiting her. Not tearing each other apart over her. Reorienting around her. Like she’s the center of gravity.
Like she’stheirs.
And here’s the part I hate… She’s not running from that anymore.
Three weeks ago, Ember in this kitchen would’ve spit in someone’s face just to prove a point about autonomy. This version of Ember? She leans back in her chair, pulls her knees up, wraps her hands around the mug Wraith poured for her like it belongs there. Like she belongshere.
Her gaze flicks across the room, cataloguing in real time, same as I do. She lands on me and holds. There it is. The knife that twists in my chest.
Because I’ve been telling myself I’m not in this the way they are. That I’mdifferent. That I’m looking at her objectively, clinically, even. That she’s a variable, and I’m just the one smart enough to track her.
Lie. It’s a bloody lie. And I realize it the second she looks at me like I’m not a variable at all.
“Ash,” she says softly. Just that. My name.
No one else calls me by it like that. Not clipped. Not mocking. Not weaponized. She says it like it matters to her that I’m in the room. And I feel it.
Everywhere.
“Morning,” I answer, and I hate how my voice sounds. Too neutral. Too controlled. They’ll hear it if I let anything slip.
Her attention stays on me. Not on the bruising at Saint’s throat. Not on Rook’s hand resting—casual, possessive—on her thigh under the table. Not on Wraith standing six feet away but wound around her orbit like gravity. Me.
“I didn’t see you last night,” she says.
All five heads shift the way wolves do when one of them slips and breaks pattern. Everyone hears that.
You didn’t come find me.
That’s what she means, and every man in this room knows it.
So do I.
