“You’re not allowed up here.”
Basil settled onto the exact spot where Sam had been trying to prep his toastie ingredients.
Sam sighed, scratched behind Basil’s ears, and gave up on dinner prep. He grabbed his laptop instead, settling onto the sofa with Basil immediately relocating to his lap.
His document open and the cursor blinking, Sam stared at the last scene he’d written - Kieran, Dante, and Alaric debating how to approach their oblivious mate without revealing they were vampires.
Sam’s fingers moved across the keys.
The human – Michael - smiled at the customer ahead of them, patient and kind despite the woman’s indecision about her order. Kieran’s fangs ached. Dante’s hands fisted at his sides. Alaric breathed in Michael’s scent - coffee and something warm, something uniquely him - and fought the urge to vault the counter and pull Michael close.
“We cannot simply tell him,” Kieran murmured.
“Why not?” Dante’s voice came rough. Desperate. “He’s ours. He’ll understand.”
“He’ll think we’re insane.” Alaric kept his gaze on Michael’s face, cataloging every freckle, every shift of expression. “Humans don’t believe infated mates. In bonds written in blood and starlight.”
“Then we make him believe.” Dante stepped forward…
“No.” Kieran caught his arm. “We court him. Properly. As humans do.”
“I don’t know how humans court.” Dante sounded anguished.
“Neither do I.” Kieran’s jaw clenched. “But we learn. We make him smile. We show him he matters. We give him reasons to want us before we tell him why we need him.”
Sam paused, reading back over what he’d written.
Three supernatural beings, desperate and devoted, trying to navigate human social norms to reach someone who didn’t know he was already theirs. It was ridiculous, dramatic, and completely fantastical.
But something about it felt...
Sam stared at the blinking cursor. Three men. All gorgeous. All clearly successful. All showing him the kindof focused attention usually reserved for... for what?
People who mattered, that’s who. Not for the guy who’d been told - kindly, always so kindly - that he was “better as a friend.” That he was “really sweet, but...” That he just didn’t have that spark, that edge, thatsomethingthat made people look twice.
Emma meant well when she’d said he was too soft. Maya meant well with all her matchmaking attempts, but they went nowhere. They saw what Sam had accepted years ago. He was nice enough, likable, and also forgettable.
So when three men who looked like they’d stepped out of some editorial spread all started appearing in his life bearing gifts and showing attention with those intense, focused stares - it couldn’t be real. Could it?
The hope was the dangerous part. Hope meant believing he might actually be worth choosing, and that belief would hurt so much more when the inevitable disappointment came.
Sam shook his head. No. Real life didn’t work that way. Rux, Mabon, and Urien were just friendly guys trying to settle into a new town. There was nothing more complicated in it than that.
He saved the document, closed his laptop, and tried not to think about how Urien had looked at the flowers or how Mabon watched Sam make coffee like it was the most important thing happening in the world. Even Rux, with his clumsy conversation skills, who had fled the café as if staying another moment might break him.
I spend far too much time with my characters, and I’m seeing things that aren’t there.They were just being friendly, obviously. Basil purred in Sam’s lap, and Sam told himself he believed it.
Chapter Eight
Mabon
Mabon had researched hostile takeovers, currency manipulation, and the collapse of the Dutch tulip market in 1637. He’d navigated hostile board meetings in three languages and negotiated contracts worth more than some countries’ GDP. Human courtship, apparently, operated on principles that made the 2008 financial crisis look straightforward.
“This is useless.” Mabon glared at his laptop screen.
Rux looked up from where he sprawled across the library sofa, supposedly reading a cookbook but actually staring at his phone. Again. “What is?”
“All of it.” Mabon gestured at the seventeen browser tabs he’d accumulated in the past forty minutes. “Human dating advice. It contradicts itself every three sentences.”
