Damon exhales. “I’ve got duties. The storm, the aftermath, the Rift flare. I should be out there right now, coordinating with the deputies, assessing the damage.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I can’t bring myself to fucking care.”
I almost laugh. The irony is too perfect. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”
“What feeling is that?”
“All I can think about is going back to that bed and fucking her again. Not because she’s in heat and I’m an Alpha responding to pheromones. Because she’s Caroline. Because I’ve wanted her back for years, and right now, she’s letting me have her.”
The admission hangs in the air. Damon doesn’t flinch. Silas doesn’t pause in his ingredient-gathering.
“She has food,” Silas says, pulling a container of soup from the fridge. “We need to keep her fed and hydrated. The heat can last up to four days, and she’ll burn through calories fast.”
Four days. My cock twitches at the thought, and I have to shift in my seat to adjust myself.
“Damon, you should call your operator,” Silas continues. “Tell your deputies to handle the storm damage. You’re off the grid for the next few days.”
“I can’t just?—”
“You can. You’re the sheriff. You have deputies for a reason.” Silas sets the soup on the counter and starts rummaging through the cabinets. “If the Rift flares again or there’s an emergency, they can reach you by phone. But the day-to-day stuff? The downed power lines, the flooded streets? That’s not you. That’s them.”
Damon’s jaw tightens. I can see him wrestling with the duty he feels to this town versus the pull he feels toward the woman in the next room.
“He’s right,” I say. “I’m off the clock anyway. Rosehill can survive without me for a few days. And right now, she needs all three of us. Not one of us popping in between shifts.”
Damon is quiet for a long moment. Then he pushes off the counter, finds his phone in the living room, and steps onto the back porch. Through the kitchen window, I can see him pacing, the phone pressed to his ear.
Silas pulls a small pot from the cabinet and sets it on the stove. “I can prepare aftercare tea for her. Chamomile, valerian, a few other things. She’ll need a lot of it during the heat period. It helps with the cramping, the exhaustion.”
“You really did study this.”
“Part of envoy training. We’re deployed to areas with high Omega populations. Understanding their biology isn’t optional—it’s tactical.” He pauses, his hand resting on the pot handle. “But I’ve never… I’ve never applied any of it. Not like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the manuals tell you what to expect. The physical signs, the behavioral patterns, the recommended protocols. They don’t tell you what it feels like. They don’t tell you about the way she looks at you when she’s coming. They don’t tell you about the sound she makes when you knot her, or the way she clings to you afterward like you’re the only thing keeping her anchored.”
He turns to face me. His expression is open in a way I haven’t seen before—not the calculated mask of the Council envoy, not the guarded look of a man hiding something. Just Silas. Raw.
“I’ve had a lot of sex, Griffin. Casual and forgettable. This isn’t that. This is something else entirely, and I don’t have a framework for it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me neither.”
Damon comes back inside. He sets his phone on the counter and nods once. “Done. Gallagher is taking over. If anything major comes up, they’ll call.”
“Good.” Silas turns back to the stove. “Then we have a truce.”
“A truce?”
“The three of us. We’re going to be in close quarters for the next several days, sharing a woman who’s in heat. If we fight over her, if we let our Alpha instincts turn this into a competition, we’ll exhaust her—and worse, we’ll hurt her.” He pours water into the pot. “So we agree to a truce. We share. We cooperate. We put her needs above our egos. Agreed?”
Damon looks at me. I look at him. There’s still tension there—there will always be tension between two Alphas who want the same woman—but underneath it, there’s something else. Respect, maybe. Or just the shared understanding that neither of us is willing to walk away.
“Agreed,” I say.
“Agreed,” Damon echoes.
Silas nods. “Good. Now help me find the honey. I know she’s got some somewhere.”
The next three days blur together.
