I wasn’t so sure.
I liked Ella.
She was soft-spoken, and no matter how hard I pushed her buttons, she never mouthed off to me. Then again, she’d seen what I was capable of. She knew better.
And in our bedroom?
She was perfect.
Not just for me—for all of us.
A baby.
I glanced at my brothers.
Alec looked eager. I could feel the excitement radiating from him.
I smiled despite myself and shook my head. Rowan, as always, was calm. Controlled. To him, babies, torture, or profit margins all lived on the same spectrum.
Variables and outcomes.
Trial and error.
“And if things don’t work out with Ella?” I asked, my voice steady—far steadier than what churned beneath it.“What then?”
Rowan’s eyes flared, brief but unmistakable.
“These would be our children,” he said.“No one would take them from us. Not even her.”
I grunted softly.
No.
We wouldn’t need courts to make our decisions.
“You two have already decided, haven’t you?” I sighed.
They exchanged a look—quick, silent, absolute.
And just like that, I knew.
This was what they wanted.
What unsettled me most wasn’t that realisation.
It was the fact that I wasn’t as opposed as I’d thought I would be.
Strange.
???
The shower was still running when we reached the bedroom. Alec had given her a placebo instead of birth control. No condoms. No pills. Nothing standing between us and her womb.
We undressed without a word. Each of us inside our own head while the water continued to pound against tile. The silence wasn’t calm—it was loaded. Anticipation pressed into the room, thick and restless.
The shower cut off.
A moment later, the door opened.
