He crossed to me and took my face in both his hands and looked at me for one long moment, and then said, “You are the only person I have ever met who makes the storm in me go quiet.” His thumbs traced my cheekbones. “Not because you suppress it. Because you’re the reason it stops needing to be loud.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “I want you because you’re brave in a way that has nothing to do with the absence of fear. Because you stand up when you should fall. Because you read a book about yourself and the first thing you did was try to understand it rather than run from it.” He exhaled. “Because you feel like mine. Like you were always supposed to be mine, and finding you this late only makes me want more time, not less.”
He kissed me.
Soft, certain, his hands steady at my face, and the heat responded to it like a fire given oxygen, rising immediately. I kissed him back with everything I had been holding since the first spike in the nest, when I’d been on the floor alone and terrified and wishing I wasn’t.
When he pulled back, Malric was there.
He didn’t speak immediately. He looked at me with the expression I’d been catching the edges of for three days, the one he kept almost showing and then hiding, and this time he let it show.
“You are the most honest person I have ever encountered. You’ve been lied to your entire life, and you still trusted your own perception when it conflicted with what you’d been told. You were isolated, and you still grew into someone with more clarity of character than most people develop in a lifetime of freedom.” He reached up and touched my face, one hand, deliberate. “I have spent my entire adult life building walls because I watched love destroy my father. I have been very careful about what I let myself want.” His thumb pressed gently against my jaw. “I want you. Not because it’s strategic. Not because it’s powerful. I want you the way I have not let myself want anything in ten years, which is completely.” Something moved across his face. “You feel like the part of myself I determined to live without because the alternative was too dangerous to consider. I am done considering it dangerous.”
He kissed me.
Different from Thane—slower, more deliberate, his hand moving from my jaw to the back of my head with the careful intention he brought to everything. And I understood what both of them had been trying to tell me. We were three people, but united, we were going to be something much more.
Then the heat hit me like a wall.
Slick warmth flooded through me, soaking through my undergarments and my inner thighs, the unmistakable physical reality of my body making its priorities entirely clear. I broke from Malric’s mouth on a sharp inhale and doubled forward with my hand pressed against my abdomen.
“Aveline.” Thane’s hand at my back.
“I’m all right,” I managed. “It’s the heat. I need my nest.”
Strong arms slid under me, one at my back and one beneath my knees, and Malric lifted me against his chest, not waiting for permission. Which was good because I didn’t think I could make it up the stairs on my own anyway.
I clutched the front of his shirt and concentrated on breathing.
He was already moving to the stairs.
“Your nest,” he said, his voice low and close at my temple. Not a question. Not a suggestion.
I turned my face into his chest and the heat moved through me in slow, insistent waves. Thane’s hand pressed against my back as he climbed the stairs behind us. The tower was warm around us as we rose through it, candles straightening from their bent angles. The stone vibrated with a low contented frequency that was its version of welcome.
Malric’s arms tightened.
“It’s time to make your nest, Omega,” he said, as he sat me down just inside the door of my nest, while he and Thane remained outside.
I was confused for a moment. I had a nest. I always had one. But, as I looked at the pile of fresh furs and blankets and pillows, it looked wrong. The pile, the stacking, the shape was all wrong for my heat. I had to fix it. Immediately.
The nest had to be right.
As soon as I saw my nest and felt the furs, an undeniable urge arose within me, though I didn’t know its cause. Something in my body said no, not yet. An utter sense of wrongness overrode everything else, and I was almost frantic as I started to pull things apart.
I started with the furs. I dragged the top layer off entirely and shook it and repositioned it at a different angle. Better. Not right, but better. The cushions were wrong, stacked in an order that had been fine yesterday and was now intolerable. I restacked them by some instinct I couldn’t have explained, largest at the outer edge, softest at the center, the worn one that smelled most like the tower at the back, where it would be against the wall.
I was aware of them watching me and it didn’t matter. The heat was a living thing inside me, pooling low and spreading outward in slow, insistent pulses. My body had apparently decided that before it would allow anything else to happen, this nest was going to be correct. The bottom layer of furs was smoothed from the center outward, with every fold pressed out, bringing a deep satisfaction of a finally flat surface.
The blanket next. I’d had this blanket for years and it went over the furs in a specific way, and I found that way by feel, and then I pulled the second fur—the heavy one, the warmest—and layered it loose over the top so there was weight without constriction.
I sat back on my heels and looked at it. Not yet. Something was still off. It didn’t smell right.
I snapped my fingers. “Your tunics. Now.”
“Our what?” Thane said, surprise in his voice.
“Take it off. She needs our scent in her nest,” Malric said, his voice somewhat muffled by the sound of his tunic being pulled over his head.
I snatched it out of his fingers and buried my face in it. Yes, that was what I needed. My body wanted to roll in it, get that scent all over me. Slick dripped down my thighs as the scent of iron and leather surrounded me. Thane handed me his, and I did the same. His scent blended with Malric’s, making my knees sag. Something in my chest settled, and I sighed, dropping to the edge of the pile of furs.
