One second I'm a man with a door shut in his chest. The next the door is gone andshe's there, on the other side of it, pouring through. Her relief. Her wonder. The giddy stunned joy of her, the specific bone-deep click offinally.
And under it, threaded through all of it, aimed straight at me, so bright it stops my heart. How much she loves me. Not the arrangement. Not the heat. Me. Finn Morrow, who hid in a closet and got handed a can of buttons and never recovered.
She feels it too. I watch it land on her face, feel it echo back down the bond, her breath catching as she gets the whole truth of me at once, two months of it, everything I never said pouring into her all in one go.
“Oh,” she breathes, shining-eyed, wrecked, wonderstruck. “Oh.You've been carrying all this? This whole time?”
“Every day since the buttons.” My voice isn't steady. I don't care. “Told you. It was never the reunion.”
She laughs, and it turns into a sob, and she pulls me down and holds on, still locked around my knot, my bite fresh on her throat, the bond humming bright and new between us.
I hold her there while the knot keeps us tied, and I don't rush a second of it. I've got nowhere else I've ever wanted to be.Somewhere behind me I'm dimly aware of Hudson and Logan watching with the particular stillness of two men who just felt the bond land on someone else and understood, all at once, exactly how gone they each already are. But that's later. Right now there's just her.
The wave that's been riding her finally crests and breaks and lets go, and I feel the exhaustion roll in behind it through the new bond, heavy and warm. She goes soft against me, boneless, wrung out, her breathing evening out.
“Sleep,” I tell her, because she needs it and because I can give it to her. “I've got you. Nobody's going anywhere.”
She's already half under. Hudson eases a blanket over her hip. Logan gets water to her lips and she takes a slow sip without opening her eyes. And I stay wrapped around her, still tied, purring low and steady in a way I'd have sworn a day ago I didn't have in me, and I hold her while she drifts all the way down into sleep, safe in the middle of her nest with the first of three marks on her throat.
I don't let go. I'm not going to. Not now. Not ever.
Chapter 33
Hudson
Here's the thing about being the funny one.
You get very, very good at talking. You can talk your way into a room, out of a fight, around a feeling. You can keep a whole town laughing so hard nobody notices you never actually said anything true. I've been doing it since I was fifteen. It's the best trick I know.
And right now I've got nothing. Not one word. I'm sitting at the edge of a nest built out of my own shirt, watching Josie Porter sleep with Finn's bite fresh and red on her throat and Finn wrapped around her back still purring, and every clever thing I have ever known just walks out of my head.
She's wrung out. She went under not long after the bond landed on her and Finn, the wave that had her finally letting go, and the three of us have just let her rest, tended her quiet, nobody saying much. Finn's knot has long since eased. Logan got water into her. I've done nothing but watch her breathe and try to believe I get to be here.
I don't know how long it is before she stirs. A while. Then her scent shifts — brown sugar and oat going thick and sweet again, that honeyed edge coming back up — and she makes a smallsound, and I feel the next wave roll into her before her eyes even open.
They open. Heavy, dark, hazed with heat, and they find me.
“Hi,” I manage.
Smooth. All this time knowing her and that's my opener.Hi.
Her face goes soft, even as the heat climbs. “Hi,” she gets out. Just the one word back. She's working for it.
“I did say something about a turn.” I move into the nest, and Finn shifts to make room, one big hand splayed over her hip, staying close the way a newly bonded alpha can't help. I fit myself along her other side, and her scent hits me full — brown sugar and oat with Finn's woodsmoke laid over the top of it now, his claim all over her skin, and the knot that's been sitting in my chest longer than I ever let myself admit finally lets go.
I have to ask. Even now. Maybe especially now.
“Tell me it's me you want,” I say, low, and the joke I'd normally hide behind isn't there. “Not just the next one in line. Me.”
Her hand comes up, unsteady, and finds my jaw. “You,” she breathes. Fierce, even wrecked, even shaking. “The one who made me forget to guard the door. Always meantyou.”
Everything I never had the nerve to name, answered in the space before the wave takes her under.
And then it does.
I feel it hit. Watch it roll up her body, her spine bowing, her hand fisting against my chest, a broken sound tearing out of her as the heat slams down and the ache with it. Empty. She's gone empty again, her body screaming for it, and this time it's mine to answer.
“Hudson—” It cracks in half. “Cramping—hurts—need?—”
