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He hummed around me, Brandon—an amorphous cloud of his feelings.

It rumbled with doubt and anxiety, frustration and loathing, but they were on the fringe.

As I delved deeper, it was all there—his love.

I bathed in that love for a moment, such a complete feeling of radical acceptance, filling cracks inside me I’d come to ignore.

And of course, in the face of such a gift, an answering emotion swelled within me.

His and my love for each other grew, edging out everything else, until that’s all there was.

I blinked to find myself hovering again, held in Brandon’s arms as we looked down at the mining camp. “You chose me,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course, I did.”

“I promise it’ll all be on the up and up from now on. I’ll share everything.”

“Shh….” I said. The grasping, needing part of me had been lulled into submission for a moment.

A sharp prickle at the edges of my perception let me know I’d have a whole bunch to deal with once we came back to ourselves, but it was nice to just feel complete.

Time felt like it stretched on and on, but it was no chore.

“We need to go back,” he said, lifting my chin and kissing me gently.

“No.” I shifted restively. “I don’t want to. There’s the planning and the Volken?—”

“Yes, love.” And with the next kiss, the sounds of alien birds and insects came roaring back, the chill of the night air caressing my skin.

“You chose me,” he said again, out of wonder or to remind me, I wasn’t sure. I nodded, doubt and worry flooding back in, but it did not overcome that feeling of love. The emotions may have lain uneasily side by side, but they coexisted, for now.

“I wondered where you’d gotten to.”

I looked up to see Aaron leaning against the wall of one of the mining dormitories.

We were supposed to be in tents to start adjusting to how things would be on the way to Leifgart, but Brandon and I had detoured to an empty room.

The silence felt like exactly what we needed right now.

He’d dropped down onto the bed, looking pale-faced and drawn, but at peace.

We’d lain together, both of our anxieties thrumming in the background, but the stronger throb of our bond enough to let us relax.

I’d just gotten up to get a glass of water when Aaron emerged out of the gloom.

“I was seeing to Brandon. He needed me.”

He nodded. “We felt it up the bond, me less than Slade or Finn, but we felt it. That’s a good thing.

” He looked away, up the darkened hallway for a moment before glancing back.

“I’d been meaning to talk to you about it.

Slade’s wary, and Finn…well, he’s angry at everything right now, but I think that prick Sylvan is right.

Strength in numbers. You made us a pack, we need to start working as one. ”

“That why you had the guys gang up on me earlier?”

His smile was kinda devastating when it came, those white teeth stark against the honey of his skin. “Liked that, did ya? Not quite the group cohesiveness activities we usually use, but I figured it’d be a way to get everyone on board.”

“Everyone was definitely on board.” He watched me shiver, remembering the sensations the three of them had wrought.

“So, what now?”

I sighed and looked over my shoulder at the doorway into the room I was sharing with Brandon.

“Now I think we’re just going to have a quiet moment. I know I promised more tonight.”

“To be honest, a quiet moment would be perfect,” he said, lines of worry forming on his face as he let a long breath out. “We’re driving out into…what tomorrow?”

“Come in,” I said, not letting his thought process go too far. The way we were right now, we could either push our anxiety spirals up higher, or stop them altogether. I put a hand in his and pulled him inside.

Brandon looked up when we walked in, scanning the other man for a moment before nodding.

He patted the space beside him. I laid down there, and Aaron pushed another bed over to augment ours, then joined us until I was wedged between the rigid warmth of both men.

Hands stroked my body as I stroked theirs, a curious kind of animal pleasure cycling between the three of us.

As always, today had been too much, and touching did a lot to reset us.

I rolled over on my back, feeling their hands skimming my sides, stomach.

“Feeling better?” I said to Brandon, running a hand over his cheek.

“So much.” His eyes closed, and he snuggled in tighter against me.

“I’m sorry you never really got your mating day party.”

“Don’t need that, just this,” he said. “Though fair warning, Janice and Brandy will probably be all over us for that when we get back.”

“If we get back.”

We both looked at Aaron, then pulled him in as close as he could go.

“That’s not your responsibility,” Brandon said. “It’s something we’ll all have to work on.”

“Any insights you want to share, Doc?”

“I haven’t seen what happens, got nothing but small flashes, and there hasn’t been any for ages.”

“I expect you to discuss every detail of those flashes with my men in the morning.”

“In the morning.”