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Ciaran blows out a breath as he leans his forehead down on Noor’s thigh and I stiffen. Arran’s face is a mask of concern and anger. Ci is way too fucking close to him, and I don’t know what he’s capable of.

“Who says you’re talking too much?” Noor whispers. “Them?”

I can hear the accusation in her voice and I force myself to keep my face neutral. I’m not telling Ci to censor himself, but the shit he went through was really heavy. It would be easy for someone to believe he wasn’t mentally stable enough to be around.

“Alastair and Dray?” Ci mumbles, getting closer when Noor doesn’t shove him away. He breathes in deeply, and I watch as his eyelashes flutter closed. He’s hallucinated her scent for years, and now he’s finally getting the real thing. “No. They’re the best. You’ll see, Noor.”

“If you get any closer, you’re going to be in my lap,” Arran mutters. “You’re holding her hands on my thighs.”

Ci lifts his hands as if they’re on fire, but loses his balance and falls right into her lap. Essentially, from the way she gasps, his face is in her pussy.

“For fuck’s sake,” Arran growls as Ci’s body pins Noor against him. He puts his hands on Ci’s shoulders and pushes him back to help him regain his balance. It doesn’t escape my notice how wide Noor’s eyes are, and I wonder if she’s still attracted to us. “Stay, don’t move.”

Noor twists slightly in Arran’s lap to keep this from happening again and pushes her fingers into her eyes as she groans.

“The three of you are a lot. You cut me, made me bleed, and broke me,” she says, dropping her hands. “‘I’m sorry’ and telling me you’ve changed doesn’t give me much. Also, are you trying to tell me the three of you claim Zayn?”

“That’s a really good name,” I say softly, deciding to look up what it means later. There has to be a reason why Noor gave our son that name. “And yes. We do everything together.”

“They told me the night we found out you were pregnant that I wasn’t allowed to take sole responsibility for making a baby,” Alastair snorts. “We were looking for you and fighting.”

“Of course you were,” Noor sighs. “This… I don’t understand what you’re asking of me. Ciaran, did you sniff me?”

“Yes. Please ignore me,” he says, sitting at her feet.

“I would say that’s a hard thing to ignore, but⁠—”

“You sniff me too,” Noor grunts, interrupting her boyfriend. “Where do you all live right now?”

“I’m surprised Emil or Theo haven’t told you,” Alastair says. “We live in Denver. We’re all playing for the Snow Canyons now. We did our time, and they all drafted us at different times.”

“That’s why I recognized you. I heard something in an interview about how you wanted to stay together,” Arran says.

“We’re not just friends,” Alastair says, shrugging. “We’ve been together since high school, and it was important for us to set a plan in motion that would lead to us playing professional hockey on the same team. Ci graduated from college and recently joined us.”

“I didn’t like college,” Ciaran confesses. “We sacrificed too much for this.”

“Like what?” Arran asks, his arms wrapping around Noor as if they belong there.

“Me,” she says. “They hated me though. That’s why none of this makes sense. Why should I open myself to misery when I barely made it out alive last time?”

“This is a good point. I can only imagine Emil sent me to keep you safe, and to be a protective and cooler head,” he says. “I am catching pieces of your history together that I’m really not liking. Kink involves consent, and it doesn’t sound as if you had any. Why didn’t your parents shut this down?”

“There’s a lot it doesn’t sound like you know,” I say, my eyes on Noor.

“I’m adopted, Arran,” she sighs.

“That explains a lot,” he says to himself. “They fucking adore you.”

“If it helps, they almost killed us,” Ciaran says from the ground. “Liliana was going to skin us. There was talk of whether or not she could make a skin suit out of us.”

Noor giggles, and I shake my head. It’s not funny, but here she is.

“Damn. I think Liliana really is scarier than Magnus, baby,” Arran says.

“I told you,” she laughs. It has a stressed out feeling, and I wince as I recognize it. “I called Rachelle from someone’s phone and told her I was alive. I told her I needed to leave Santa Barbara, and Theo had someone find me when I got here with money to get me started. I was ready to go to a hostel or a homeless shelter.”

“Jesus, Noor. You were already half drowned and frozen. Living in a homeless shelter is adding insult to injury,” Alastair sighs. “I remember Rachelle leaving the cellar and coming back to make some bullshit reason why they couldn’t kill us. Your family has been keeping tabs on us ever since.