"Okay."
Zero doesn't move yet. His eyes have stayed on mine through the whole exchange, and now, just for a second, the Zero who saidyou belong to mein a dark hotel room surfaces underneath the operator. The part that costs him. The part he banks and holds anyway.
"Hey," he says. To me. Specifically. "You don't have to think about her. Not tonight. That's my job."
I nod against Bane's palm.
He gives me one short, clipped nod back—the operator confirming receipt—and then he's gone. The doorway is empty. I hear his feet on the hallway carpet—quieter than they have any right to be, for a man his size—and then on the stairs, and then Margot downstairs, brightening the way her voice always does when one of us comes into a room:
"Oh—Zero. We thought maybe you'd all gone to bed. Did you see the sky tonight? It was—"
I strain to hear, my eyes fluttering shut as another wave of heat clenches my insides.
Richard's voice further off, easier. The clink of keys into the bowl by the front door. Something about the radio on the drive home.
Zero, low. Not warm—he doesn't do warm. Steady. Present enough to pass.
"Yeah. Saw it from the porch. Max went up with a headache half an hour ago. I was going to come find him in a bit."
"Oh no—is he okay?"
"He's fine. Said he was going to sleep it off. Probably dehydrated. Margot, come into the kitchen—I want to ask you about that wine Richard's been hoarding."
Redirect. Clean. He walks her past the foot of the stairs without stopping. I hear Margot's laugh—a small one, tired, theoh youlaugh—and then their voices moving, fading into the kitchen, and some last guarded part of my chest unclenches.
He's handling it.
Just like he said.
Thank fuck.
Bane's palm eases off my mouth by degrees. Slow, careful, waiting to see if I'll stay quiet. The cool air hits my lips and my jaw trembles and I press my face into his neck and breathe. Amber. Sandalwood.Him. My hands are fisted so tight in the front of his shirt that I don't remember doing it.
"Breathe," Atlas murmurs against my hair.
I breathe.
Another wave hits and my knees buckle and Atlas catches me the way he's caught me before—the kitchen, the facility, every time I've tried to fall. His arm under my arm. His chest a wall behind my back. His cedar is everywhere and his hand spreads flat on my belly and I can feel his pulse through his shirt against my spine and it grounds me, it does, but my body is still burning and the burn is climbing and I make a sound into Bane's throat that I don't recognize.
"Bed," Atlas says.
Bane doesn't answer. Just moves. One arm under my knees, the other at my back, lifting me off my feet like I weigh nothing and pulling me from his brother’s hold. I try to object—I can walk, I'm twenty years old, I don't need to be carried—but the protest dies somewhere between thought and mouth and I let my head fall into the crook of his neck instead.
My cock is so hard I think I’m going to die if I don’t touch it.
I don’t dare as we step out into the hallway.
Atlas goes ahead. Opens the door to the bedroom—my bedroom in this house, the one at the end of the hall with the wide windows and the cream sheets Margot said looked good against the dark wood. He flips the lock before Bane even gets me through the door, and the soft click of it—the illusion of privacy, the sealed room—lets my body release a fraction.
Just a fraction. Enough that my teeth stop chattering.
The sheets are cool when Bane lays me down. My skin feels like fever and copper. Atlas is already at the dresser, grabbing the water bottle Margot left there for me this morning, twisting the cap off as he turns. Bane kneels by the edge of the bed and finds my face again with both hands, thumbs stroking across my cheekbones, grounding me.
"I'm here," he says.
"I know."
"Downstairs is handled." His thumb presses the hinge of my jaw. "Zero is a terror at a lot of things. He's also very, very good at lying."
