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“You’re different since…”

We lay under a tree on a blanket, that same dappled light playing over us as Kade ran around squealing with the other kids. It’d been a few days. He hadn’t gone back to school yet, but he was more and more willing to detach himself from me as long as I was within sight.

“Noah…” Peter rumbled.

“No, it’s OK,” I said, sitting up and resting back against him as that massive arm of his locked around me. “He’s right, I am different.”

“Not bad different, just…” I watched the blond man struggle to find the words. “Contained. That’s how I’d describe it.”

I smiled, but it wasn’t an especially happy thing, my eyes straying to Sen.

“And there’s a thing, with you two.” He studied us for a moment, a small frown forming. “Sorry, I shouldn’t really say anything. I’m not pack.”

“Yes, you are,” I replied, the words just falling out as I watched Kade scream, escaping the clutches of the girl that chased him.

I looked down again as the silence drew on.

“How can we have gone through what we’ve gone through without becoming a pack?

I felt you on my skin when I came back, your power flowing into me, strengthening me.

Are we not connected?” I felt the venom flush my mouth, and my teeth ached with the need to pull them close and bite deep into their flesh.

“But I’m not rushing into biting you. I need time to catch up, find you and feel you, both of you.

Putting that mark on Peter and Aidan, it’s so fucking personal and I can’t just do it to finalise things neatly.

I don’t know when it’ll happen, but know I will when it does.

But I’m guessing you’d like some certainty, and I can give you that.

Consider yourselves part of us. Ophelia sanctioned you being in the house while we recover, but I’ll fight any of them if they try to take you away. ”

I watched the play of emotions on both Sen’s and Noah’s faces. There was something still a little dead about me. I was slow to react, to respond, part of me just observing before reacting. But then it would come, somehow more intensely for the lag.

There was something naked about Sen’s face as he heard the words.

His usual facade was ripped down rather ruthlessly, leaving something much more fragile in its wake—a softness that made his eyes widen as I crawled over and kissed him, that had his hands going to my hair, wanting to hold me still, even as I pulled away.

I grabbed his hand, feeling the pulse down the bond that shouldn’t be there but was, before turning to Noah.

He was always much more plain about how he felt, his skin as white as milk when I moved before him.

He couldn’t move, his eyes standing out plainly on his face, his head tilting as he seemed to search me blindly for answers to the questions that swirled inside.

He shook, even flinched away when I went to touch him, as if it would hurt.

Or was it the distance between us that hurt?

Then he surged forward, collecting me up and pushing me to the ground, his body following with it to the sounds of my other mate’s complaints.

Food, drinks, phones were all crushed beneath us as he kissed me with his whole soul.

And that fed me somehow, that straightforward expression of affection and lust, the feel of his feathery hair just as nice as the thrust of his tongue, so for a moment, I lost myself in that sensation until he finally pulled away.

“I want to be worthy of your bite,” he whispered finally.

“I know. You will be.”

“C’mere,” Aidan tugged at my arm, extricating me and pulling me close. My head came to rest in the hollow of his neck, his arms caging me in. “When you… I was going, and I did it because I knew it was for you. I’d made my choice.”

“And I made mine. I’d do it again, fair warning, just as you would for me.” That quieted them, but there were nods all around. “That’s the way it works to make a pack. We’re in this together. We have each other’s backs.”

The weird emptiness that had filled me since I came back actually made it easier. My mind had never been quieter, my constant stream of worries silenced. There was only this—certainty.

I kissed Aidan slowly, letting his taste overpower the persistent one of coppery blood, and then crawled over to Peter.

“Back where I started,” I said, smiling.

He turned up at that, like a flower to the sun, and I stroked that square jawed face, liking the fur like feel of his stubble, the warmth of his skin under my hands.

He tugged me close, folding me up small and tight, and holding me as close to inside him as he could.

We just listened to the musical sound of kids playing and trees swaying and breeze rattling leaves.

“Flick, if we’re to be a pack, they need to know,” Sen said.

I sighed as their focus sharpened, then nodded.