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The chords are soft, melodic. I don’t realise I’m humming along until Xar lifts his eyes to mine.

“I like that progression,” I murmur, my voice low, thick with the weight of sleep and warmth. “It’s soft.”

He tilts his head. “It’s yours. I built it around the tune you were humming earlier.”

My cheeks flush. I hadn’t even noticed he was listening.

“Think you can add to it?” he asks, voice low and even, like the question is sacred.

I nod and shift upright, drawing a blanket tighter around my shoulders. The movement sends a ripple of heat through my core – my thighs tense instinctively, breath hitching – but it passes quickly. Manageable. For now.

Xar plays the chords again, slower. And I let the hum rise up again, soft and steady. Then a lyric comes, unbidden, slipping out like breath:

“If home had a name, it’d sound like yours,

If breaking was safe, I’d crash on your floor.

I never knew I could fit in a place…”

Blaise lets out a long, low whistle. “There she is. Our gold-throated girl.”

I shake my head. “Don’t start.”

But I’m smiling.

Dane leans forward, his breath warm near my ear. “Keep going. That line – ‘I never knew I could fit in a place’ – what comes next?”

I hesitate, fingers fidgeting with the hem of a blanket. Then I sing again, voice a little stronger:

“Till you held me like nothing could take me away.

If home had a name…

It’d be yours.”

Xar strums a soft resolution, nodding. “That’s the chorus.”

Blaise nudges my leg with his foot. “Bridge should be something sharper. Something that pushes back.”

I grin. “Of course it should.”

We fall into a rhythm – lyrics, melody, harmonies passed between us like shared breath. I hum new lines, Dane occasionally offers a quiet lyric, and Blaise throws in suggestions that are either brilliant or utterly ridiculous. Xar steers the chord structure like he’s tuning emotion itself.

It’s the most natural thing in the world.

And somewhere in the middle of it, I forget to be afraid.

Blaise sings a wrong note on purpose and makes a dramatic face. I snort-laugh and smack his arm with a pillow. He retaliates by leaning back and drawing me halfway onto his bare chest and I have to resist the urge to swoon.

“You’re trouble,” he says, voice low, but his hand strokes gently down my side.

“And you’re annoying,” I mumble, even as I settle there.

Dane adjusts behind me so I can recline fully, letting my head drop into his lap. His fingers immediately find my hair, slow and careful, and the hand on my lower back stays steady, warm.

I feel...held. But not in a way that terrifies me.

And that wild, secret part of me – the part I’ve ignored, suppressed,feared– starts to stir. My omega. She stretches quietly inside me, not in need or pain, but in curiosity. In peace. She doesn’t want to run or lash out or hide.