Or, I’d thought I was.
Lying awake in the dark room, blackout curtains blocking the midday sun, I stared up at the ceiling and fretted.
Shan and Caspian were curled on either side of me, and Emmett cuddled Cas from behind. The four of us barely fit on the tiny bed. Nolan and Oswald were cuddled together on the floor across the room. Ozzy had taken his turn with me and then gone to suck Nolan’s cock, something I’d been shocked they were comfortable doing in the presence of all of us. Nolan had even murmured orders under his breath, making him choke on his cock and giving me a glimpse into what they did when they were alone. We were becoming a pack, slowly but surely.
An extremely polyamorous pack with a complicated web of who was fucking whom, but whatever.
I’d said it a million times and I would say it again — I couldn’t deal with all these men on my own. They needed to get some of that emotional shit from each other.
Emmett had stayed out in the main room chatting with Altair and Sky until the sex fest had ended, and then he’d come to cuddle. His casual touches were getting more and more frequent, and increasingly good at soothing any negative emotion I felt.
“You’re worried.” His gentle rumble made me jolt in surprise, meeting his eyes over Caspian’s sleeping form.
“Yeah,” I said in a whisper, not wanting to wake the others.
Especially Shan. If he smelled hesitation, he would try to convince me not to go again. I couldn’t blame him, but I wouldn’t let them kill a man who wanted me, who I’d been hunting for ages. I was ready to admit I never would’ve gotten here without help, but I would never allow them to shelter me like a fragile porcelain vase on the verge of shattering. That wasn’t me.
“It’s understandable. You’ve only recently gotten stronger again.”
“You’d think that would give me more confidence. I gave myself over to him to save Mabel, and I was weak as fuck. Yet, I was more cocky about my ability to win then than I am now.”
He chuckled softly, his breath brushing a strand of Caspian’s hair. The incubus groaned softly in his sleep, and I felt his cock chub up against my leg. He was insatiable, and it was adorable.
“This might be an assumption, but you have a lot more to lose now.”
My heart stalled its beating in my chest, eyes widening.
He was right.
My hesitation over this mission made more sense, now. It was less worry about myself, and more worry about what losing me would do to them. Fuck, Iknewwhat it would do to them. The dream I’d had when I’d been in heat had shown me, and I loved them all too much to want to subject them to that.
And what if I lost one of them to Kylan? What would I do in that situation? Shan’s protectiveness was making a hell of a lot more sense. With his dreams of past lives, he’d known we were meant to be together from the second he scented me. I’d taken far longer to get on board with the ‘meant to be’ sentiment, but now that I was, I’d rather him stay here.
He would never do that.
We were equally stubborn when it came to running head first into battles despite less than stellar odds.
“I think it’s a good thing you’re worried,” Emmett continued after he’d given me a moment to let his previous words sink in. “You won’t be rash. Shan is worried about you being rash.”
Rash was a good way to describe most of my decisions, honestly.
Avoiding the sexy investigators who had ended up being my saviours? Rash.
Handing myself over to ‘Kylan’ to save Mabel, without telling Shan and Cas? Rash.
Letting myself land on death’s door when I already had mates I was ready to spend the rest of my life with? Rash.
“This is probably the first time in my life I won’t be,” I muttered under my breath.
It was loud enough Em heard it and let out a soft chuckle.
He didn’t try to give me any more advice, and what he had given was enough. There were people I loved more than myself, now. Before, my affection for Shan and Cas hadn’t quite reached that level. They’d needed a bit more time to break through the shell I’d built around myself since childhood.
I would be careful, and I would kill Kylan.
It had to work.
* * *
