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Merek starts laughing. So do I, which hurts my ribs.

“You chose gray,” Lenart says.

“You assigned me gray.”

“What color am I?” I ask.

Lenart looks at me across the table. “You don’t have a color, since everything else is arranged around you.”

That shuts Merek up for about two seconds. Then he says, “Delete it,” and Lenart says, “Absolutely not,” and Tav says he wants to see it, and I’m laughing, and I’m also thinking.

Every one of them has asked me what I want. Lenart asked in his office, before he ever touched me. Merek asked in this kitchen. William asked in his room, with a coil of rope in his hands. Tav asked this afternoon, every ten minutes. They’ve all been careful, one at a time.

And I’ve never said it to all four of them at once.

“Okay,” I say. “Before anybody gets a color. Can I say something?”

They all stop talking. That’s worse. Now they’re all looking at me.

“I’m bad at this,” I say. “The only speech I ever made was to a guy named Doug at Lucky’s, and it was about where his hands could go.”

Merek’s mouth twitches. Nobody says anything.

I put both hands flat on the table.

“I want all four of you. I don’t mean one of you, with the rest as backup. And it’s not because of the bond, or because somebody keeps trying to kill me and four bodyguards is convenient. If the building were fine and nobody was cutting cables, I’d still want this. Each of you, and all of us together. I’m choosing it. That’s what I wanted to say.”

Under the table, Billy Bob snores.

Lenart sets his wine glass down.

“I stopped expecting a mate a hundred years ago,” he says. “I made my peace with that. I’ve had four hundred years to plan for things, and I’ve never planned for anything I wanted this much.” He looks at me steadily. “I’d like a very long time with you, Tara. I intend to plan all of it, if you’ll let me.”

“Not on the calendar,” Merek says.

“Especially on the calendar.”

Merek pulls his own chair over next to mine. He’s warm all down my side.

“You know what I like about that, Trouble?” he says. “You could’ve walked away. You didn’t. You picked us.” His hand comes up and finds the end of my braid. He kisses my temple. “I like being picked.”

Tav doesn’t make a speech. He reaches across the corner of the table and puts his hand over mine, and it covers my whole hand and half my wrist.

“I’m here, Boss,” he says. “However long you want me.”

That’s it. That’s all he says, and it’s enough.

William is the last. He’s been watching me since I started talking, and I’m braced for him to say nothing at all, because sometimes that’s what he does.

“Tara Iverson,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want you in between emergencies.” He holds my eyes. “I want the boring years. I want you on the roof when you’re fifty, complaining about the stairs.”

I have to look down at the table for a second.

When I look up, his hand is on top of Tav’s, and it’s gone to stone. He doesn’t take it back.