"I'm okay. I'm lucid." I turn in his arms so I can see his face. "Really lucid."
I reach across me and touches Knox's shoulder. Knox wakes up faster than a person should, eyes sharp and focused in under a second.
"What's wrong?" Knox says.
"Nothing's wrong," I say. "I need to talk to all of you."
Arthur stirs at the foot of the nest. He lifts his head, blinks twice, and his gaze finds mine with eyes so warm my pulse stutters.
"I'm here," he says.
They rearrange. Sitting up, facing me, three sets of eyes in the dim. Mason's hand finds my knee. Knox's fingers are still loosely circling my wrist. Arthur leans against the remaining blanket wall.
"I want to be claimed," I say.
The words land in the nest like a stone in a still pond. Nobody breathes.
"All three of you." My voice doesn't waver. I've been rehearsing this sentence in my head since before I knew I was rehearsing it. "Bonding bites. I want it."
Mason's hand tightens on my knee.
Knox goes very still.
Arthur's expression doesn't change, but something shifts behind his eyes.
"Beth," Knox says carefully. "You're in heat."
"I know I'm in heat. I'm also lucid. Test me."
Knox's brow furrows. "Test you how?"
"Ask me something. Anything. Quiz me. I'll prove I'm thinking clearly."
"That's not—" Knox starts.
"What's the interest rate on my business loan?" I say. "Seven point two five percent variable. The square footage of Wildflower and Vine? Twelve hundred and forty, including the back office. Arthur's middle name? James. Mason's birthday? March ninth. Your coffee order? Black, no sugar, because you're an undiagnosed psychopath."
Knox's mouth does the thing where it almost smiles but he won't let it.
"She's lucid," Arthur says quietly.
"I'm more than lucid." I sit up straighter. The blanket falls to my waist and I don't fix it because I am having this conversation as an adult woman who just had sex with three men in a blanket fort and I have moved beyond modesty as a concept. "This isn't the heat deciding. The heat decided a lot of things tonight and I'm not sorry about any of them, but this—this has been building since before any of that."
I look at each of them.
"I know what a bonding bite means. I know it's permanent, irreversible and it ties our nervous systems together. I know it means if one of us hurts, we all feel it. I know it means I'll feel your emotions and you'll feel mine, which, honestly, seems like a bad deal for all of you because my emotional range on any given Tuesday goes from 'mildly feral' to 'crying at a cat food commercial,' but that's what I'm offering."
Mason makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be something trying very hard not to be a sob.
"I also know we have things to talk about," I say, and I feel Knox tense beside me. "Hard things. Things that might be harder after a bond than before one. And I'm choosing this anyway. Because I don't want a bond that only exists when everything's easy. I want the kind that holds when it's not."
Silence.
Then Mason says, "Can I go first?"
Knox and Arthur both look at him.
"You don't have to negotiate an order," I say with a chuckle. "This isn't a deli counter."
