Maybe. Or maybe it was just this. The four of us in a den, holding on to each other because tomorrow everything would change and tonight was all we had left.
My eyes closed. Just for a second, just to rest them.
The den went quiet in a comfortable silence.
71
— • —
Mira
I woke up tangled in three men and immediately knew we’d overslept.
The den was dark. The kind of darkness that meant hours had passed since anyone said“we’ll wake you”and nobody had.
Percy’s arm was draped across my waist. Solomon’s hand was still laced with mine over my stomach. Lucian’s chest was pressed against my back, solid and unmovable. Those things were the problem precisely because they made the alternative unbearable.
The alternative being: get up, get dressed, and crawl back into the place that wanted me dead. Before Wyatt’s cover story expired and Thiago started asking questions I couldn’t answer.
I eased out of the pile one limb at a time. Percy shifted, mumbled, buried his face deeper into the bedroll. Solomon’s fingers twitched against mine but didn’t tighten. Lucian’s breathing stayed even.
My clothes were folded on the supply crate where I’d left them. Jacket, the new boots Lucian had given me earlier, the keycard tucked into the inner pocket. I pulled the shirt over my head with my back to them, laced the boots, slipped the keycard into my jacket.
Farmon would be at the supply station by now. If I could reach him first, get the supplements, and make it to the tunnel entrance before any of the three woke up, I could avoid the conversation entirely.
I turned toward the tent flap.
Three alphas stood between me and the exit.
Arms crossed. Jaws set. A wall of muscle and barely contained fury that I had absolutely no memory of hearing get up.
“Hi,” I said. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to watch you try to sneak out,” Lucian said. “Which, for the record, you’re terrible at.”
“I was being very quiet.”
“You knocked over a canteen.”
“That could’ve been the wind.”
“We’re inside a tent.”
Percy didn’t have his usual warmth. The dimples were nowhere. His arms were crossed and his eyes tracked me intensely, a man who’d already decided how this conversation was going to end.
“You’re not going back,” he said.
“Percy.”
“You were just poisoned. Our children’s heartbeats were fading. One day of recovery doesn’t erase that, and you’re lacing up your boots in the dark and trying to slip past us.”
“I wasn’t slipping. I was strategically departing.”
“You were running.”
“I was avoiding this exact conversation because I knew you’d all do this.” I gestured at the wall of crossed arms. “The united front. The alpha blockade.”
Solomon hadn’t spoken yet. He stood at the center, silver eyes flat, watching me with the clinical focus he used on battlefield assessments. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.
