“Another memory showed up while you were taken from me,” Shan admitted. “It wasn’t just Freya. It was all of us.”
Nolan’s fingers paused. “Does that include me?”
“Of course it does,” Shan said with a glare. “It wouldn’t be ‘all of us’ if it didn’t include you.”
Nolan flushed.
“Long story short, since I don’t think you or Oswald have heard about this, I’ve had memories of my past lives before. There was one of Freya and I in the Viking era, living as Nulls with two kids. I thought that was the only one, but then this new memory showed up. We were fae, a pack, and Caspian was our Omega.”
The image was cute in my head. Caspian would be a better Omega than I was. He would let the Alphas take care of everything instead of throwing himself headfirst into danger.
“Does that mean I was an Alpha? Or was I a Beta?” I asked.
“An Alpha.”
“Well, fuck. I got the short end of the stick this time around.”
Oswald laughed, grabbing Nolan’s arm and dragging him onto the couch. In whatever home we eventually ended up in, we needed a sectional big enough for all of us. Having two couches facing each other wasn’t working for me.
“That means Cassy is my mate too, right?” Ozzy said, watching Shan’s reaction intently.
The angel growled, dragging Cas closer to him possessively. “We might all be fucking soulbound, but he’s my mate in this incarnation. It’s my mark on him. Hands off.”
Nolan smirked. He was texting but apparently unable to resist the urge to antagonize Shan. “But I remember you saying during sex that you couldn’t keep him all to yourself. That sounds like blanket permission for Ozzy and I to seduce him.”
“That wasnotpermission.”
Caspian laughed.
We all did a very poor job of pretending not to be shocked.
He saw our faces and laughed again, his laughter growing more hysterical until he was laying in Shan’s lap clutching his stomach with tears dripping down his cheeks. His smile was the only thing stopping Shan and I from panicking over his state, because the laughter kind of looked like a breakdown.
By the time he could speak again, his words puffing out in between deep, laughing breaths, all of us were smiling too.
“I love you guys,” Cas said. “All of you, so much. Thank you for worrying about me. I… I’ll be fine. But I’ll take you up on the offer of a different house.”
He smiled shyly at Nolan and the vampire nodded his head at least four times, bringing his phone up to his ear. Caspian wiped his tears away with the back of his hand and sat up, still visibly anxious but far better than he’d been before. “Emmett, can you shower with me?” he asked softly. “The Zemterran bath didn’t clean me very well, but I think the shower here might be too small for me to be in it alone.”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
Emmett stood and offered Caspian his hand, pulling the incubus to his feet and into his arms. I moved from the floor to sit on the couch instead and Shan grabbed me. His grip tightened as Cas moved away from him. He’d been through some trauma too, though his wasn’t as intense as Caspian’s. But he’d had to watch Caspian fall apart, without being able to do anything.
Turning, I pressed a kiss to his neck. I was horrible at comforting, and I knew Shan wouldn’t take it well either. If I told him not to beat himself up, he may do it more. So I sat in silence with him. Nolan barked a few more instructions at whoever was on the other end of the line, including the words ‘giant waterfall shower’, then grabbed Oswald’s hand and dragged him from the living room to the bedroom Cas had been nervous to enter.
Shan had me on his lap the moment they disappeared, the sound of soft moans coming from the bathroom along with the thrumming beat of water.
“I need you to mark me,” he said, his eyes pleading.
He was never eager to admit to needing anything.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, winding my fingers through his hair. It wasn’t often kept loose, but I liked it this way. It gave him a wild look.
“I should have done it before. I wish I had,” I admitted.
His hands were gentle on my hips, even as he worked my pants down my legs. “I’m glad you didn’t. You didn’t need to feel us even more intensely, not while we were going through that.”
“But you would have been able to feel me. That would have helped.”
