The bedroom assignments confirm it.
Richard and Margot in the master. Atlas in the room next to them. Bane and Zero sharing the room at the end of the hall. Me in the smallest room, between Atlas and the bathroom. Every door within ten feet of mine. At the estate, there are wings. Floors. Distance.
Here there's a hallway and drywall.
That first night I lie in bed and listen to the house. Atlas's mattress creaking when he rolls over. Zero coughing through the wall at two. Bane's footsteps when he gets up for water at three. And underneath all of it—three alpha scents seeping under my door, mixing in the hallway, filling my tiny room until I'm breathing them in my sleep. Cedar. Amber. Gunpowder. Layered over the salt air and the sound of the ocean and the distant murmur of my mother's breathing through the walls.
By morning I'm already on edge. By afternoon I'm vibrating. By evening I'm white-knuckling the deck railing while Margot asks me why I won't take off the hoodie—it's eighty degrees, sweetheart, you're sweating—and Atlas sips his coffee and I can feel his amusement through the bond like a flicker of warmth in my chest that is entirely unhelpful.
"I run cold," I say.
Margot frowns but doesn’t press.
The days fall into a rhythm that looks like family and feels like a slow-motion car crash. Pancakes on the deck. The beach. Dinner around the small round table. Margot and Richard walking arm in arm in the sand every evening. Normal. Domestic. The vacation she's been wanting.
And underneath it, invisible, escalating—the brothers start testing the limits.
Zero first. Because Zero is the one who likes to watch me squirm.
I'm reaching for a mug in the kitchen cabinet—stretching, my hoodie riding up, a sliver of skin exposed at my waist—when I feel him behind me. Close. Too close. His body radiating heat without touching, his scent flooding my lungs before I can hold my breath.
"Careful." His voice in my ear. Low. Amused. "Your collar's slipping."
I yank the hoodie up. His hand finds my hip—just his fingertips, tracing the strip of bare skin above my waistband. My stomach clenches.
"Zero—Margot's on the deck—"
"I know." His thumb hooks into my waistband. Tugs once. Lets go. "That's what makes it fun."
He reaches past me for a coffee mug, his chest brushing my back, his mouth close enough that I feel his breath on his bite mark—and takes his time selecting a mug like it's the most important decision of his morning. Then he's gone. Walking toward the deck with his coffee. Leaving me gripping the counter with white knuckles and a racing pulse.
He does it again an hour later. And again after lunch—cornering me in the pantry, shelves on both sides, nowhere to retreat. His hand on the wall beside my head. His body so closeI can feel the heat without contact. He doesn't touch me. Just stands there. Breathing.
"You smell like you're getting close," he says. Conversational. Like he's commenting on the weather. Then walks away.
Zero isn't reckless. He's surgical. Every near-miss is calculated to keep me on the edge. He's enjoying this. The sadistic bastard is having the time of his life watching me unravel in his parents' vacation house.
Atlas is subtler. His hand on my thigh under the breakfast table, fingers sliding higher while he discusses real estate with Richard, his face perfectly composed. I grab his wrist under the table and push it away. His mouth twitches. Later, passing me in the hallway—his palm flat against my lower back, his mouth dipping to my ear.
"You look good in my kitchen." Barely audible. "You'd look better out of that hoodie."
His fingers drag across my back as he passes. Then he's at the coffee pot, pouring, casual, gray eyes innocent over the rim of his mug while my hands shake.
"Your parents are right there," I hiss.
"Mmhm."
But Bane. Bane is the one who scares me.
Because Bane is goingferal.
I can see it—the tension building in him hour by hour, the jaw locked tighter each morning, the way his eyes track me across every room with a hunger he's barely containing.
He hasn't bitten me. The gap in the bond is a live wire for him—two brothers claimed, one left out—and his biology is screaming at him to complete it. To put his teeth in my neck and make it permanent. The drive is written across every line of his body, and the only thing holding him back is that Margot is twenty feet away at any given moment.
It doesn't stop him from taking chances.
He finds me behind the house at the outdoor shower. I'm rinsing sand off my feet after Margot and Richard went to town and I could finally take off the hoodie and swim. He rounds the corner and stops and looks at me—wet, flushed from the sun—and the expression on his face isn't the polished Bane.
