“Knot going down?”
I nod.
“Mine too, earlier. Took about thirty minutes.” He shifts slightly, adjusting his position. “The books say it varies depending on the intensity of the heat.”
“You read books about this?”
“Training manuals. Council required.” A pause. “They don’t cover this part.”
“What part?”
“The part where you don’t want to let go.”
I don’t answer. I don’t need to. He already knows.
Damon wakes next, rolling onto his back with a groan. He rubs his face with both hands, then blinks at the ceiling like he’s trying to remember where he is.
“What time is it?” he asks.
“No idea,” I say.
The knot finally releases. I ease out of her slowly, carefully, and she makes a small sound in her sleep but doesn’t wake. A trickle of come follows, sliding down her thigh, and something primal and satisfied purrs in my chest at the sight of it.
Mine. Inside her. Marking her from the inside out.
“We should move her,” Silas says. “The couch isn’t comfortable. She needs a real bed.”
Damon and I agree without argument. I lift her carefully—she weighs almost nothing, all delicate bones and soft skin—and carry her down the hall to her bedroom. The bed is small, a full-size with a faded quilt folded at the foot. Silas pulls back the sheets while Damon and I lay her down.
She curls onto her side, her knees drawing up toward her chest. Her breathing stays even, deep.
“She’ll need a nest,” Silas says. “Something that smells like us. It helps with the between periods.”
“Between periods?”
“The lulls. Heats come in waves. She’ll crash after each one, and when she wakes up, it’ll start again. The nest makes her feel safe. Protected.”
I look at him. “How do you know all this?”
“Like I said. Training manuals.”
Damon is already stripping off his shirt. He drapes it over the pillow near Caroline’s face, then adds his pants, creating a barrier of fabric around her head. I do the same with my clothes—my damp shirt, my ruined pants. Silas contributes his own, and within minutes, we’ve built a makeshift nest of worn cotton and denim, all of it saturated in our scents.
Caroline burrows into it, her face pressing against Damon’s shirt, and sighs.
“Boxers,” Damon says. “We can’t stand around naked in her kitchen.”
We dig through the pile of discarded clothes on the living room floor and find three pairs of boxers—mine, Damon’s, and Silas’s. We pull them on in silence and file into the kitchen.
Thistle is curled up on the counter, his bowl empty, his eyes closed. He opens one when we enter, assesses us, and goes back to sleep.
Damon leans against the counter, arms crossed. Silas opens the fridge and starts pulling out ingredients. I take a seat at the small kitchen table, my body aching in places I didn’t know could ache.
“We need to talk about what this is,” I say.
No one responds right away.
“It was intense,” I continue. “And that was only night one.”
