Kade’s hand slides to Emrys’s waist to steady him as he crawls over our legs. “The nest lacks discipline.”
“The nest has been through a lot,” Emrys says, offended on behalf of the pile of blankets he absolutely abused last night. “Don’t be rude to her.”
I sit up slowly, my back giving one hard complaint before it agrees to participate in the day. “I am not taking sides in a nest dispute before coffee.”
Emrys points toward the bathroom. “Bath first. Coffee after. I have spoken.”
Kade looks at me over Emrys’s shoulder, mouth almost curving. “He has spoken.”
Apparently that settles it.
The bathroom is too small for three men to move around easily, which does not stop any of us from trying. Emrys starts the water, tests it with his wrist, then adds something from a small bottle that smells like cedar softened by sugar and warm spice. Kade sits on the wide edge of the tub while it fills, one foot braced on the floor, tattoos dark over his chest and arms in the morning light. He looks too large for the room and too comfortable in Emrys’s space, which is one more thing I’m not ready to examine directly.
Emrys climbs in first, sighing when the water reaches his hips. He holds a hand out for me without looking embarrassed about it, and I take it because apparently this is where we are now. I settle behind him with my back against the cool porcelain, his body between my legs, his spine warm against my chest. The tub is large enough for two comfortably and three if everyone accepts certain realities about knees, shoulders, and personal space. Kade stays on the edge for a while, one hand resting on Emrys’s knee where it breaks the surface of the water.
Nothing happens, which is exactly why it matters.
No one reaches for more. No one turns the room into heat because heat would be easier than this. Emrys leans back against me, his head tipped under my chin, and Kade’s thumb moves slowly over his knee while steam softens the window glass. My hand rests low on Emrys’s stomach beneath the water. Kade’s fingers brush mine once when he shifts, and neither of us pulls away.
The conversation starts in pieces. Emrys tells Kade that Clarence’s dog has apparently been upgraded from menace to assistant menace after stealing napkins from two tables and hiding under the front counter like a fugitive. Kade listens withthe slight curve at the corner of his mouth that means he is deeply amused and unwilling to reward anyone with a full laugh. I tell them the station coffee machine has been making a sound like it wants to confess to something, and Emrys pats my wrist like I have suffered bravely.
“It’s a workplace hazard,” I say.
“It’s burned coffee, Noah,” he says, and then goes still against me.
The name hangs there, quiet and careful. Not a mistake, exactly. More like he found it in his hand and did not know if he was allowed to hold it yet.
Kade looks at me.
I feel the old reflex rise, not panic, not quite, but the familiar urge to turn the moment sideways before anyone can see what it means. The name is not a secret in the legal sense. It sits on documents if someone digs far enough. But almost no one uses it. Not Reyes. Not the station. Not anyone who knows me as Detective Grayson and lets that be enough. Packs used it. The ones who actually knew me. The ones I let close enough that leaving them hurt.
Emrys starts to pull away. “Sorry. I didn’t mean— I saw it on your ID when you…”
“It’s all right,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I expect. I lace my fingers through his under the water, holding him where he is. “Noah is fine. It’s just not a name most people know.”
His shoulders ease, but he doesn’t make a joke. He only turns his head enough to look at me. “Do you like it?”
I think about lying because that would be simpler, then let the truth stay small. “I do when it’s said by the right people.”
Emrys smiles, not big, not triumphant. Pleased in a way that makes my ribs feel too open. He leans back against me again,thumb brushing over my knuckles under the water, and Kade watches us with something unreadable moving through his face.
For a while, the only sound is water shifting and the city outside the window. Then Kade says, “My last pack used my first name at the end.”
Emrys goes very still against me.
Kade’s gaze stays on the water, his hand still resting on Emrys’s knee. “Not when things were good. At the end. When they were tired of trying to get anything soft out of me. It happened slowly, one person at a time. Nobody slammed a door. Nobody made a speech. They just stopped expecting me to show up with anything except answers, plans, and a body to put between them and trouble.”
He tells it evenly. No self-pity. No request for comfort. That somehow makes it worse. Kade has always made restraint look like strength, but this is the underside of it, the part that cost him and kept costing him because he decided the cost was cleaner than asking anyone to stay.
“I thought the soft version of me was the liability,” he says. “If they saw how much I needed, how much it took to hold everything together, they would leave faster. So I made sure they never saw it. By the time I understood what I had done, they were already gone.”
Emrys’s fingers tighten around mine. I keep my other hand against his stomach, feeling his breath hitch beneath my palm.
Kade finally looks at me. There is no challenge in it. No deflection. Just the truth set down between us, waiting to see if anyone will step around it.
“They left because they couldn’t see you,” I say. “Not because of what they would’ve seen if they had.”
Kade goes still in that complete way he has, every part of him locked onto the words. For a second, I think I have gone too far. Then Emrys moves.
