He cuts the distance between us. His hands come out of his pockets. I take one—the right one, the one with the knuckles that are calloused beyond healing—and I bring it to my mouth and press my lips against the split skin.
Three threads. All three.
The bond between the four of us goes wide and warm and full, and I hold it there—Atlas's hands over mine on his chest, Bane's palm on my throat, Zero's knuckles against my mouth—and I think:I know it's bad. I know something is wrong. I'm choosing this anyway. I'm choosing all of you.
Zero breaks first.
His hand slides from my mouth to the back of my neck and he pulls me in and kisses me—hard, open, his tongue pushing past my teeth with a desperation I can taste, salt and coffee and the faint chemical edge of something I can't place, something that was in the air wherever they just were. He kisses me like he's trying to crawl inside me. Like he's trying to get somewhere safe.
I let him.
Bane's hand tightens on my throat. Not choking—holding. His thumb presses the bond mark and the spark runs down my spine and I gasp into Zero's mouth.
Atlas's hand leaves mine. Slides to my hip. Pulls me backward into his chest so I'm pressed between them—Atlas behind me, Zero in front, Bane at my side with his hand still at my neck. Three bodies. Three scents. Cedar and amber and gunpowder filling my lungs in a single breath.
Zero pulls off my mouth. His forehead drops to mine. His breathing is ragged.
"Upstairs," Atlas says. Behind me. Against my hair. Not a question.
"Yeah," Bane says.
"Fuck yeah," Zero says.
Atlas takes my hand and leads me up the stairs. Past the lounge where my notebook is still open on the window seat. Past Bane's door. Past Zero's. To the end of the hall. His room. He opens the door and the scent of him—cedar, leather, the clean cotton of sheets he changed this morning—rolls over me like a wave.
His room. His bed. The one I woke up in the first time my body betrayed me. The one I've been in a dozen times since, always with his hands on me, always with his voice in my ear. Tonight the other two are coming in behind us and the door is closing and the lock is turning and for the first time it's all four of us in one room with one door and one bed and nothing driving this exceptwant.
No heat. No crisis. No biology screaming.
Justus.
Atlas turns me around. His hands frame my face. His thumbs trace my cheekbones and his eyes search mine and whatever he finds there makes his jaw loosen a fraction.
"You're sure," he says.
"I'm sure."
"All of us."
"All of you."
His mouth covers mine. Slow. The Atlas kiss—deliberate, patient, the kind that tells me he has a plan for the rest of the night and I'm going to feel every minute of it. His tongue slides against mine and I taste coffee and something sharp underneath, something angry, like he’s been clenching his jaw for hours.
Behind me, hands. Two sets.
Zero's at the hem of Bane's shirt I'm wearing, pulling it up, his knuckles dragging along my ribs as the fabric rises. Bane's at my waistband, his fingers hooking the elastic of my sweats, easing them down over my hips with the patience he always uses when he undresses me—slow, careful, like he's unwrapping something he's afraid will tear.
Atlas breaks the kiss long enough for Zero to pull the shirt over my head. Then his mouth is back. His hands slide down my bare chest, my stomach, lower. I'm hard already—I've been hard since Zero kissed me in the foyer—and when Atlas's palm grazes the length of me through the fabric Bane is pulling down, a sound comes out of me that all three of them catch.
"There he is," Zero murmurs. Against the back of my neck. Mouth open on my skin. "There's our boy."
I'm naked in the middle of three clothed men and the vulnerability should terrify me and it doesn't. It lights me up. I can feel their eyes on me—Atlas from the front, assessing, the pupils going dark. Bane beside me, his gaze dropping down my body with the quiet reverence he gives everything he loves. Zero behind me, his breath hot on my nape, his hands sliding possessive down my sides.
"On the bed, sweetheart." Atlas. The command voice, the alpha register. Low and final.
I would have obeyed him even if he didn’t use it.
I get on the bed. The sheets are cool against my back. I lie there, naked, looking up at the three of them standing at the foot of the bed in a row—my brothers, my alphas, my entire world in three bodies—and I watch them undress.
