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“Let me out,” Dominic growled, curling his fist into the collar of Raiden’s shirt.

“Not going to happen, Dominic,” Raiden said, not even flinching under Dominic’s gruff tone.

“Let. Me. Out.” Did he think repeating himself made his argument any stronger?

Of course, Raiden didn’t move an inch. He just looked at Dominic casually and said, “No, I was told to put you here. So you are staying here.”

Dominic scoffed. “The fuck I am. Not if Rose isn’t.”

My snort was silent. This was just a drill, he could drop theI love my wife nowact. Not that I really wanted it to be an act—that would hurt Rose—but I wasn’t sure I believed him.

I’d been fooled once by that glint of devotion.

“You are going to sit in this room,” Raiden said, forcibly pushing Dominic back through the door. “And either Marcus or Max will bring Rose here. Or they were told to put her in another room. But you are stayinghere.”

Capitalizing on Dominic’s surprise from the shove, Raiden shut the door, sealing him in. Dominic’s fist hit the wood a second later, rattling the hinges but leaving the magic untouched. Nothing was getting through that door unless they knew a way around it.

Dominic hovered there for a moment, before Sebastian said, “Sit down, Dominic. Rose is probably just in another room.” Dominic spared him what I’m sure was his signatureI am the god of the Underworldlook before walking over to a spare couch and dropping into it dramatically.

Lukas was standing, watching the whole thing with a wide-set stance. He walked over to Dominic, bending down slightly to say something just between them, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Dominic nodded, keeping his stare trained on the floor, but clearly listening to whatever Lukas was telling him. After another moment, Dominic’s frame seemed to relax. Barely, like an inch of slack on a rope, but enough that I caught it.

After an incredibly male clap on the back, Lukas walked back over to me, sitting down so close our bodies pressed together.

I knew I should squirm away, to put space between us so that I could think straight and remind myself that we weren’t on good terms. But Lukas made no move to scoot over, so I took the chance to have him as close as I wanted.

The static heat of his skin reached out and caressed my arm, my hip, my thigh like the legs of a jellyfish, wrapping around me and stinging with the force of him. A startling feeling of peace ripped through my chest.

“Why are we doing this?” Corrina’s question rang through the room, forcing me out of my Lukas-induced haze.

“Routine,” Lukas responded with practiced nonchalance. “These have been set up for generations. Adrian probably just wanted to try now that we are fully onto the next.”

A perfectly crafted excuse. Gus Mercury had just taken over from his mother a few weeks ago, marking the end of the old generation. Even if it had already felt that way, ever since Adrian had taken over from his parents.

“Rose, too,” I added, setting the excuse in stone. Everyone heard of her attack, but they’d been shielded from the full extent of it. Dominic and Rose had made sure everyone thought it was a one-off, not a full-blown risk of conspiracy. So it would make sense that it sparked a renewed interest in making sure the entire Council had a disaster plan.

The excuse settled in, wiping out the curiosity like a blown-out flame. The only person who didn’t seem to calm was Dominic, whose body had gone still again at the mention of her name.

“Thank you,” Lukas said, speaking through the curtain of my hair right into my ear. There was no way he missed the shiver that passed through me at the sound of his voice.

“You’re welcome,” I breathed. His gratitude felt good. Not nearly as good as his skin felt, but it warmed my chest regardless. “How long do you think they’ll make us stay here?”

“Are you nervous?” The question was rushed, scraping out. I turned my head to look at Lukas and when I saw his face, I realized that he had mistaken the low whisper of my voice as fear.

I shook my head, the bottom of my hair slipping over his shoulder. Some muscle in his leg flexed. “No. I assume a while. I just wanted to see if you knew.”

“I don’t. It might be all night.”

The corner of my mouth, the one closest to him, twitched up. “You’ll survive. You never sleep anyway.” My voice broke a little on the last syllable when my brain caught up with my mouth and I realized the intimacy in that statement.

Because discussion of Lukas not sleeping uncovered that I knew what no one else did—he was often plagued by stress late at night and unable to find restful sleep, especially when his soldier’s training forced him up at dawn.

“I read this study that says you sleep better next to another person,” I said, stirring my spoon in my morning coffee and trying not to address the way the bags under Lukas’s eyes tightened my stomach. “You go into a deep sleep faster. So you can still get up at unwieldy hours but feel more rested.”

“And who would I be sleeping next to?” Lukas asked. When I didn’t look up to meet his eyes, he nudged my chin up with his forefinger.

“I don’t know, whoever you are sleeping with, I guess.” I was proud of how calm that sentence came out. Instead of exposing the jealous fury in my chest.