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“Lucan.”
“What?” His grin widens. “If your emotional support roommate was going to charge across the city for you, the least I could do was make him feel welcome.”
“He’s back at the dorm?” Rowan asks.
“Safe and dramatic.” Lucan glances down at his multi-slate. “He also called me a steroid-filled aristocratic parasite, so I assume he’s fine.”
Despite himself, Rowan’s mouth twitches, the reaction small enough most people probably wouldn’t notice, but it eases something tight in my chest.
Lucan leans back against the couch and gives me a look that says he knows exactly what I’m doing.
Ignoring my nosy ass cousins, I pour two glasses of scotch and head for the stairs.
Rowan clears his throat behind me. “I should still—”
“Nah.” I glance back over my shoulder. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
“But Damaris—”
“You can message him in the morning.”
“That’s not your decision,” he snaps, but his lips still tremble.
“No.” I step closer, just enough to crowd him. “But are you really planning to argue with me about this in front of my entire family?”
From the couch, Rafe grins. “Please do.”
Rowan ignores him completely, but I catch the flick of his gaze toward the medical band still glowing amber against his wrist before he looks back at me.
“Come on, little mouse,” I murmur. “I’m not gonna bite.”
His eyes narrow like he knows perfectly well that’s a lie.
Still, he follows me upstairs without another word, exhausted and more shaken by tonight than he wants anyone to know.
Because he called me. That part crawls beneath my skin like heat.
He called me. Not his friend. Not campus security. Not Halvern. Not whatever pathetic emergency system Caervast pretends is enough to keep students safe.
Fucking me.
I push my bedroom door open and jerk my chin toward the inside. “In.”
Rowan hesitates, glancing back down the hall where Lucan is openly watching from the couch now, Rafe looking far too entertained beside him. Then he straightens, chin lifting with stubborn pride before brushing past me into the room with a deeply unimpressed, “Woof.”
“Baby,” I murmur with a laugh as I follow him inside, “you have no idea how much that turns me on.”
Rowan rolls his eyes, but the flush climbing his throat gives him away. He stops just inside the bedroom doorway, gaze drifting over the massive black bed buried beneath dark blankets, the amber lighting built into the stone walls, and the floor-to-ceiling windows exposing Tolian far below us, all gold and white scattered beneath the cliffs. His fingers flex at his side before he drifts toward the windows, forgetting that he isn’t supposed to be impressed.
“You can admit you like being here too,” I murmur from behind him.
Rowan glances back, defensive already. “Say what?”
I grin. “The view. The room. Me dragging you up here in the middle of the night.”
Rowan bites his lower lip before catching himself, color climbing higher into his face as he looks back out over the lights below us. “You really are unbelievably arrogant.”
I smirk. “Yeah? You’re catching on, mouse.”
