“I didn’t fall into bed with anyone. My body made decisions for me, and I went along with them.”
She swallows as she watches me. “Is this the first time? Have you two been dating and hiding it from me?”
Fuck.“No. I swear we weren’t. The first time?—”
“The first time?” She cuts me off. “So this isn’t the first time?”
I can’t have her be mad at me right now. I can barely make sense of my emotions. I feel allfrizzy.“Please let me explain. The first time was a fluke. I was in heat when he came to check on me after the Rift flare. It kind of sort of just happened. And then we agreed to never talk about it again.”
It was more like he regretted it, but I don’t want to come between her and her cousin. She would be pissed if she knew.
“So? Then this is the second time you guys hooked up?”
I nod.
“And Griffin?”
“Griffin is… Griffin. We have history.”
“Right.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “And the Council guy? Silas?”
“We met at the apothecary. There was something there, and then the heat happened, and?—”
“And you decided to add him to the roster?”
“It wasn’t a decision. It was a… a culmination.”
“A culmination.” She says the word like she’s tasting it. “Caroline. Do you hear yourself right now?”
“Yeah, I do. And I know how it sounds. I know how it looks. But I’m telling you, it didn’t feel wrong. It felt like the only thing that could have happened.”
Amara stares at me for a long moment. Then she walks to the armchair, pushes Thistle off—he meows in indignation—and sits down, pulling her knees up to her chest.
“Start from the beginning,” she says. “And don’t leave anything out.”
So I tell her. Everything. The night Thistle ran away, finding Damon and Silas on the road, the heat hitting me like a freight train. Griffin showing up, the four of us in my living room, the way Silas stayed behind while the others searched for my cat. The song he sang. The things he told me about the Council, about his mother, about the way he’s starting to question everything he’s been taught.
I tell her about the kiss. About the heat. I tell her about the truce in the kitchen, about the four days that blurred together into something that felt less like sex and more like survival.
When I finish, the room is quiet. Amara hasn’t moved from the armchair, but I know her well enough to see the wheels turning behind her eyes.
“So you like them,” she says. Not a question.
“I like them.”
“All three of them.”
“Yeah.”
“Not just the sex.”
“No. Not just the sex.”
She’s quiet for a beat. “Explain it to me. Because from where I’m sitting, this looks like a heat-induced orgy that you’re now trying to romanticize, not a pack.”
The bluntness of it stings, but I don’t flinch. She’s not wrong to ask.
“It’s not the same with each of them,” I say. “Griffin is… he’s my past. He’s the boy I loved before I knew what love really meant. When I’m with him, I feel like I’m seventeen again, like the world is simple and everything is possible. He looks at me like I hung the moon, and part of me wants to believe him.”
