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“I’m sorry,” he tells the dog. “I didn’t know.”

Billy Bob lies down across Tav’s foot with a sigh and stays there.

Merek sets a plate in front of the chair William pulled out: eggs, toast, and three strips of bacon. He puts down a mug of coffee beside it, black, and then the sugar and the cream, because he doesn’t know how I take it.

“Eat first,” he says. “Then we’ll talk.”

So I sit down in my damp jeans and my borrowed shirt and eat breakfast at noon in a demon’s kitchen while four monsters wait for me to finish. Nobody tells me to hurry. Merek leans on the counter. Tav studies Billy Bob. William watches the window. Lenart turns his coffee cup a quarter turn on its saucer, and then another quarter turn.

When I’ve finished the eggs, I put my fork down.

“Okay,” I say. “Do the owners always hold meetings in each other’s kitchens, or is this special?”

“This is special,” Lenart says.

“I missed noon.”

“I know. It isn’t why I’m here.” He sets the cup down. “You asked a question in my office yesterday, Ms. Iverson. You asked what happened when each of us touched you. I told you you’d hear it. You’re going to hear it now.”

He doesn’t make a speech. I’ll give him that. He sits forward with his forearms on the table and tells me plainly, in the same voice he used for the treaty.

“Some of our kind have what we call a fated mate,” he says. “Not all of us. Most never find one. It’s a recognition. When you touch the person you’re meant for, you know. It’s immediate, and it’s certain, and it isn’t something any of us chooses or controls.”

I look at him. I remember a cold hand closing around my bare arm in the middle of a poisoning, and heat flooding through me from that one spot, and his face when I twisted around to look up at him, like I’d hit him.

“The Solstice,” I say.

“Yes.”

I look at Merek, and remember a palm so hot I yelped, and the lines on his arm lighting up, and the curse I didn’t understand. I look at Tav, and remember my feet leaving the floor, and his breath moving my hair against my neck. I look at William, by the door, and remember the quiet when his fingers closed around mine, and his hand turning to stone while he held it.

None of them look away.

“What you saw,” Lenart says, “was real. We couldn’t have stopped it if we’d tried.”

“Okay.” My voice comes out steadier than I expect. “What does it mean? For me.”

“That’s for you to decide.” He says it carefully, one word at a time. “The bond tells us you’re our mate. You can take your time getting to know us, Tara. You don’t owe us anything. What you do about it is your choice, and it stays your choice.”

“And if I don’t do anything?”

“Then you don’t.”

I believe him.

“And me? Do I feel it?”

“Humans don’t, usually,” he says. “But you aren’t entirely human. Oathkeeper blood is fae. It runs through your mother’s family. Desmond had it, and so do you.” He pauses. “I don’t know what that means for you.”

Fae. I add it to the list. Vampire, demon, minotaur, gargoyle, and apparently me.

Then I think about the last two days. The way I couldn’t stop looking at Lenart’s mouth across a crowded room. Wanting to turn around in his arms in the middle of a poisoning. The heat in my stomach when Merek took my hand, and how I leaned toward him in that freezing office, and how much I’d wanted him to close the last inch. Being lifted off the floor by Tav and liking it. Not wanting William to let go of my hand.

I’ve worked in bars since I was old enough to card people. I’ve kissed men and dated a couple and fooled around in the back seat of a car once or twice, and every time, at some point, I’ve gotten bored, or tired. I decided a long time ago I just wasn’t built that way. Sex was something other people cared about. I had rent.

Then I walked into the Monster Club, and I’ve been turned on for two straight days.

I put both hands flat on the table.