Ours.The word didn’t make sense. People didn’t belong to other people like that. People didn’t look at someone and just...claim them. That wasn’t how the world worked. Except…
Except Maya had been saying it for weeks, that it was all three men who were courting him. Three men who showed up together, lived together, and seemed to operate as a single unit with three parts.
Except he’d been writing the exact scenario in his novel - three supernatural beings recognizing their fated mate and pursuing him with single-minded devotion.
Except the way they looked at himwasn’tnormal, and when Sam thought about it, it never had been. They had always been too intense and focused, as if he was the only thing in the room that mattered.
Sam’s hands were shaking now, and he gripped the edge of the table. “Yours,” he echoed, testing the word. It felt strange on his tongue. “I still don’t understand.” His voice came out barely above a whisper. “How can I be yours when you don’t even know me, and when I don’t know you?”
“We know enough,” Urien said softly. “We know you’re kind to elderly customers who can’t decide betweenlattes and cappuccinos. We know you bite your lip when you’re thinking. We know you love your cat even though he’s a menace. We know you make people feel seen.”
“We know you deserve someone who brings you vegetables at dawn,” Rux added, a ghost of a smile touching his lips despite the tension. “Even if it means getting attacked by a demon in cat form.”
“We know you’re perfect,” Mabon said simply. “And we’ve known it from the first moment we saw you.”
They were serious. Completely and utterly serious. Looking at him like he mattered.
“I’m not perfect,” Sam managed. “I’m really, really not.”
“You are to us,” Rux said.
The certainty in his voice made Sam’s throat tight.
Sam’s gaze swept over the table again. The excessive food that Rux had clearly spent days preparing. The careful arrangement of dishes was designed around preferences Samhad mentioned in passing. The way all three of them had sat facing him, not eating themselves, just watching to see if he enjoyed what they’d made.
They’d been trying so hard to make him understand something they apparently couldn’t find words for.
You’re ours.
Sam looked at Mabon’s shaking hands still pressed to his chest. At Urien’s white-knuckled fists on the table. At Rux’s vulnerable expression, open, hopeful, and scared all at the same time.
Whatever it was - however impossible - they meant every word.
“I still don’t understand,” Sam said again. But this time it came out less of an accusation and more of a plea. “But I want to. Help me understand this, please.”
Chapter Nineteen
Sam
The three men exchanged another look, and then Mabon moved first. He walked around the table slowly, carefully, like Sam might bolt if he moved too fast. When he reached Sam’s chair, he kneeled on the hardwood floor, bringing himself down to Sam’s eye level.
Sam’s heart was hammering so hard against his ribs, he was sure Mabon could hear it.
“May I show you something?” Mabon’s voice was gentle. “It won’t hurt, I promise. But it might... it might be hard to believe.”
Sam nodded, not trusting his voice.
Mabon’s hands went to the buttons of his shirt. He undid the top three, enough to expose his chest, and…
Sam gasped. There was something embedded in Mabon’s chest, right over his heart. A stone that glowed with soft, pulsing light, like it had its own heartbeat. It was beautiful and yet impossible all at the same time.
“What...” Sam’s voice came out as a whisper. “What is that?”
“May we?” Urien asked quietly.
Sam looked up. Both Urien and Rux were already unbuttoning their own shirts, revealing their own stones. All three were pulsing in unison.
Gripping the arms of his chair, Sam tried to anchor himself to something that made sense.
