"Me too." My throat ached with the words, tight and raw. I stroked my thumb across his cheekbone, wiping away a tear that had escaped. "She would have seen right through you, you know. All that charm and flash—she would have looked past it in about five seconds and found the real you underneath. She would have loved him even more than the performance."
He kissed me, soft and desperate and full of promises. When we finally pulled apart, I turned my head to find Silas watching us, his pale eyes guarded but yearning. He looked away when he caught me looking, his jaw tightening.
"And you," I said, reaching for him, threading my fingers through his. His hand was rough with scars, the skin uneven, beautiful in its imperfection. "She would have understood you better than anyone. She knew what it meant to carry wounds that didn't show. She would have sat with you in silence when you needed it and known exactly when to speak and when to just... be."
Silas's breath shuddered out of him, ragged and raw, his chest heaving against Remy's back. His fingers tightened around mine, squeezing almost to the point of pain, like he was afraid I'd disappear if he let go.
"She sounds like you," he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper, rough as gravel. His pale eyes glistened in the dim light, and he blinked rapidly, fighting against the tears he never let himself shed.
"I learned from the best." I pulled his hand to my lips and kissed his scarred knuckles, one by one, slow and reverent. "She taught me that wild things recognize each other. That home isn't a place—it's the people who see you exactly as you are and love you anyway." I looked at all three of them, my heart so full it felt like it might burst. "You're my home now. All of you."
The silence that followed was thick with emotion, heavy with words none of us knew how to say. Outside, the bayou hummed its endless song—frogs and insects and the distant splash of Gumbo patrolling his territory. Inside, we breathed together, tangled in our nest of borrowed blankets and offered shirts and promises not yet spoken.
"So," Remy said eventually, his voice rough but steadying, like he was pulling himself back together piece by piece. He propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at me with those amber eyes that sparkled even in the darkness. His free hand traced lazy patterns on my hip. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," I confirmed, my heart kicking against my ribs at the word, sudden and sharp. I pressed my palm flat against my chest, trying to steady myself. "Harper first. Then you. Then Silas."
"You sure about the order?" Harper's voice rumbled against my back, vibrating through my bones, and I felt his hand splay wide across my stomach—protective, grounding. "We can change it if you want. It's your choice, Artemis. It's always your choice."
"I'm sure." I twisted to look at him again, reaching up to touch his face, tracing the worry line between his brows. "You're my Head Alpha. You were the first one to see me, the first one to make me feel safe. It's right that you're first."
His eyes closed, and he turned his head to press a kiss into my palm. The gesture was so tender, so unlike the fierce Alpha the world saw, that my heart clenched.
"And I'm second because I'm the prettiest?" Remy asked, breaking the moment with that irrepressible grin. His dimples flashed even in the low light, and he struck a mock-pose, one hand behind his head like a pinup model, making me snort despite the gravity of the moment.
"You're second because you make me laugh," I told him, poking his chest with my finger hard enough to make him grunt. "Because when everything is hard and scary, you remind me that joy is worth fighting for. Because you see me—really see me—and you're not afraid of what you find." I poked him again for good measure. "Also because if I made you go last, you'd pout for a week, and nobody wants to deal with that."
"I don't pout," Remy protested, his lower lip jutting out in what was definitely, absolutely a pout.
"You're literally pouting right now." I reached up and poked his protruding lower lip with my fingertip, making him sputter.
"This is a dignified expression of mild displeasure." He drew himself up with as much hauteur as a man lying in a nest of blankets could manage, which wasn't much.
"It's a pout." I kept my face perfectly straight, even as laughter bubbled in my chest.
Harper's chest shook with silent laughter behind me, his breath warm against my hair. "It's definitely a pout."
"Betrayal," Remy declared, pressing a hand to his heart, his eyes going wide with theatrical wounded outrage. "From my own Head Alpha. I am wounded." His grin softened into something more genuine, more vulnerable, the performance falling away like a shed skin. He caught my hand and pressed it flat against his chest, over his heart. I could feel it pounding beneath my palm, fast and strong, betraying the emotions he hid behind jokes.
"And Silas is last," I continued, turning to meet those pale, watchful eyes, "because he's my unexpected gift. The one Ididn't know I needed until he was already there. Because he understands the darkness, and he doesn't try to fix it—he just sits with me in it until we find our way to the light together."
Silas made a sound low in his throat, something between a growl and a whimper, the noise vibrating against my lips. He pulled me toward him, past Remy, and kissed me—deep and desperate and full of everything he couldn't put into words. His scarred hands cradled my face like I was something precious, something fragile, even though we both knew I was anything but. When he finally let me go, we were both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones.
"I don't deserve you," he rasped, his voice wrecked, shattered into pieces. His breath came in short pants against my lips, warm and unsteady. "Any of you."
"Bullshit," Harper said flatly from behind me, his voice cutting through the heavy air like a blade. I felt his chest shake with a silent huff, and his hand squeezed my hip. The blunt profanity startled a laugh out of all of us—Remy's bright and surprised, mine watery, Silas's more of a choked exhale.
"He's right," I said, pulling back to look at Silas properly, cupping his scarred face in my hands so he couldn't look away. His pale eyes were bright with unshed tears, his jaw clenched tight against the emotion threatening to spill over. "That's survivor's guilt talking, not truth. You deserve everything good, Silas. You deserve love and home and pack. You deserve to be happy." I kissed his scarred cheek, feeling the uneven skin beneath my lips, then his closed eyelids, his lashes fluttering against my mouth, then the corner of his lips where they trembled. "And starting tomorrow, I'm going to spend the rest of my life proving it to you."
We lay there for a long time, wrapped around each other in our nest of mingled scents and borrowed warmth. The moonrose outside the window, painting silver stripes across the floor. Gumbo rumbled somewhere in the darkness beyond the cabin, a prehistoric lullaby that had soothed me to sleep since childhood.
"I'm scared," I admitted into the quiet, the words small and honest, barely louder than a breath. My fingers twisted in the fabric of Remy's shirt, needing something to hold onto. "Not about the bonding—I want that more than I've ever wanted anything. But after. When we're tied together forever. What if?—"
"What if what?" Harper's voice was steady, unshakeable, an anchor in the dark. His hand rubbed slow circles on my stomach, grounding me, pulling me back from the spiral of doubt. I could feel the calluses on his palm through the thin fabric of my shirt.
"What if it changes things? What if being bonded makes you see me differently? What if I'm not—" I swallowed hard, forcing myself to finish, my voice dropping to a whisper. "What if I'm not enough?" The silence stretched, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It was the silence of three men choosing their words carefully, understanding the weight of what I'd just confessed.
"Artemis." Remy spoke first, his voice stripped of all performance, nothing but raw honesty. He shifted closer, his nose brushing mine, his breath warm against my lips. "You are the most enough person I have ever met. You are too much in the best possible way. You are exactly right, exactly as you are."
