“Can I take this off now?” she demands. “Or am I being kidnapped?”
“Escorted,” Solomon corrects.
I head toward my bike parked at the curb while Solomon guides her over. She fumbles for the helmet, finally yanking it off, and those mismatched eyes find mine immediately.
“Percy.”
Just my name. But the way she says it, half exasperated and half fond, makes my chest ache. I grin easily.
“Yeah, love?”
She opens her mouth, probably to yell at me, but whatever she sees in my face makes her pause. Her brow furrows slightly, head tilting.
“Nothing,” she says finally. “Just... nothing.”
I take the helmet from her hands and settle it back on her head, properly this time, adjusting the strap under her chin. My knuckles brush her jaw and she shivers.
“Hold on tight,” I tell her, swinging my leg over the bike. “And no letting go.”
She climbs on behind me, her thighs pressing against mine, her arms wrapping around my waist. I felt her hesitate before she locked her hands together against my stomach. Her chest presses warm against my back.
Solomon and Lucian head toward the truck parked a few spaces down. Lucian catches my eye before he climbs in, a silent warning to drive careful, drive slow, don’t do anything stupid.
I rev the engine just to watch him scowl.
Mira’s arms tighten around me as the bike roars to life. Her helmet knocks gently against my shoulder blade when she leans in.
She had no idea.
No idea that the man who joked and teased and made her laugh was the same one who’d tear apart anyone who tried to take her from us. That beneath the easy smiles lived my starvation.
Lucian and Solomon understood. They felt it too. A bone-deep certainty that she wasours.
Not owned, never owned butchosen. Kept. Protected.
The three of us could share her. Would share her, gladly, because that’s how the bond worked. No jealousy or competition. Just completion.
But anyone else?
I pulled out of the lot, her body pressed tight against mine, her warmth bleeding through my shirt.
Anyone else who looked at her the way those men had today would learn exactly what kind of monster hid behind my smile.
7
— • —
Mira
I pressed the brown contact back. Both eyes matched again, back to being ordinary.
My reflection stared back at me with freshly darkened hair. I’d insisted on the dye when they took me shopping. The disguise was pointless now. Hudson had found me anyway.
“Mira?” Solomon’s voice came through the door. “You’ve been in there for twenty minutes.”
“Almost done.”
A pause and then, “You know you don’t have to do that anymore, right?”
