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Bodies scramble around me, Pace leaping clumsily out of the bed, a pistol clutched in his hand.

“What is it?” Lex asks, yanking the sheets off. “Where does it hurt?”

“My leg!” The piercing pain is unrelenting, and my fingers claw at the bedsheets. I try to straighten my limbs, and another sharp jolt shoots through me. I curl onto my side, gasping, “Oh my god!”

“Hold her,” Lex commands a startled Wicker, who grabs onto me, pulling my body against his chest. My leg feels like a pretzel, twisted unnaturally. Thrashing, I turn to release a ragged cry into Wicker’s warm skin.

“Holy fuck,” Wicker says. “Why does her leg look like that?”

Grunting, Lex orders, “Don’t let her move.”

I feel Lex’s big hands wrap around my calf, kneading the muscle in slow, steady motions. “It’s just a cramp,” he tells me in his soothingly clinical voice. “Hurts like fuck, but it’s normal. Breathe, Verity. Relax.”

Sweat coats my body, the pain worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. Inch by inch, the tension eases, and I’m able to ease my leg into something resembling straight. Relief washes over me, and I clutch Wicker’s arm like a lifeline, the sticky fever abating.

“Oh,” I say, panting. “Oh, fuck. That’s—that’s better.” The pain lingers, as if it could draw up again at any moment, but Lex continues to rub slow circles up and down my leg. “That was horrible.”

It’s only then that I take stock of the scene, Lex kneeling between my legs with an expression that still manages to be painfully serious, even though he’s clearly half asleep. His hair is wild and unfettered, hanging about his face in these crazy tendrils. Biceps shifting, he keeps up the massage, flicking his bleary gaze up to mine. “Stay calm. This is normal for the second trimester. Probably just need to get more potassium into you.”

“Sweet ass-fucking Christ,” Pace mutters, and I realize he’s at the foot of the bed, shirtless, just like Lex, and and Wicker behind me. Deflating, a tremor runs through his body when he finally lowers the gun, dark eyes falling closed. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“It’s not her fault,” Lex snaps at him. “It’s just a pregnancy side effect.” He looks at me. “Are you okay?”

I nod, melting back into Wicker. “Yeah, it just… took me by surprise. Sorry if I scared you.”

Wicker snorts, and it hits me that he’s stroking my hair. “Who among us hasn’t woken up to the shrill, panicked shrieks of the person sleeping beside us?”

Pace sets the gun on the dresser, still looking rattled as he steps into his jeans. “Maybe for you two, but it’s a first for me.”

“Where are you going?” I ask, some of the panic returning. Rationally, I know it’s just the dream—the memory of how hard I looked for him, to no avail. But irrationally, I can’t shake this feeling that I need Pace here.

I need all of them here.

It’s Lex who answers. “Adrenaline. He needs to check the monitors.” To Pace, he says, “Bring her back a bottle of water, would you?”

“Wait!” I call just as Pace reaches the door. “Just come back to bed, okay? Everything’s fine.”

Lex disagrees, “You clearly need to hydrate. That was one bitch of a charley horse. Your calf was visibly spasming.”

Wicker groggily agrees, “Yeah, it looked really gross.”

“Then, I’ll take the bottle of water. Just…” I’m crossing a line here, asking for him to stay. Giving myself to him for comfort, the same way I give it to Wicker. But it’s not just about providing them comfort. It’s more. “Please just come back to bed. There’s nothing dangerous out there. That was all just my body acting crazy.”

Pace has braced his hand against the door, his dark eyes watching me carefully, closely. They always are. Maybe that’s why I find the thought of having him inside me so weirdly comforting.

The difference between being watched over and hunted.

“I’ll stay.” His throat shifts with a swallow, and then he jerks his chin at Lex. “Go get her a glass of water.”

“Sure,” Lex says, fingertips dragging as they leave my leg.

When I came up for bed a few hours ago, I found all three of them already in here. None of them were actually in the bed yet, but they were sort of orbiting it like they wanted to be. We were all wrung out from the party, Ashby’s display and Wicker’s outburst still fresh. There weren’t many words spoken. I just went about getting ready for bed and never got around to picking one to sleep with me.

Maybe I couldn’t.

As soon as Lex leaves, Pace stalks over to the window under the guise of checking on Effie, but it’s obvious he’s doing one last sweep. “You want it? Tonight?” he says, glancing at me, and then Wicker, and then the other side of the bed, where Lex was sleeping.

There’s a wariness there that surprises me. He’d slid inside me the night the alarms went off, even though Wicker was in bed with us.