Page 57 of Wild Thorns

He stepped closer. Close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look at him. Close enough that I could see the pulse beating in his throat.

“Serena,” he said again, and there it was—that roughness in his voice, that crack in the charm. “I’m not always good at waiting. I’ve been patient for weeks now, and I’m running out.”

“Running out of what?”

“Reasons not to do this.”

He leaned down. I rose up. And for one crystalline moment, I felt his breath against my lips, felt the heat of him close enough to touch, felt every nerve ending in my body lean toward him like flowers toward sun—

The back door of the house opened. Eli’s voice carried across the yard: “Jasper. Callum needs you.”

Jasper closed his eyes. Let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “My brothers,” he said, “have the worst timing in the history of timing.”

“Seems like it.”

He stepped back. Took my hand. Pressed a kiss to my knuckles that was somehow more intimate than a real kiss would have been.

“To be continued,” he said. “That’s a promise.”

And then he was gone, jogging toward the house, leaving me standing alone in the dark with a racing heart and too many questions.

I climbed the stairs to my apartment and didn’t turn on the lights.

Instead, I sat on my bed in the darkness and tried to sort through everything I was feeling. The lingering heat of Jasper’s hands on my back. The weight of Callum’s gaze across the fireworks. The shape in the woods that wasn’t a deer.

Something was off about this family. Something I couldn’t name, couldn’t explain, could only feel like a splinter working its way under my skin.

The running at odd hours. The way animals avoided the property. The way people in town looked at me, like they knew something I didn’t, like they were waiting for me to figure it out.

The way all three brothers watched me with an intensity that went beyond attraction. Like I was something… How had Dex said it? Someone like you. What did that mean?

I thought about Callum’s words on the stairs. This is where you’re supposed to be.

I thought about the way Jasper had tilted his head toward the woods, like he was listening for something.

I thought about Eli’s archive, full of family history he’d offered to show me. The real version, he’d said. Not the public one.

There were things I didn’t know about the Voss family. Things that explained the strange looks, the careful silences, the way the three of them moved like they were connected by invisible threads. I mean, it could be a triplet thing. I had heard that multiples seemed to share uncommon bonds.

Part of me wanted to know. Part of me was terrified to ask.

And part of me, the part that was still tingling from almost-kisses… and heated looks… and hands on the small of my back—didn’t care. That part just wanted more. Wanted them, all of them, in ways I didn’t want to admit. Tara was right. I really needed to get laid.

Below, through my floor, I heard voices. Low, urgent, discussing something I couldn’t make out. Then the back door again. Footsteps moving toward the preserve.

I went to the window and looked out.

Three figures crossed the yard in the moonlight: Callum, Jasper, Eli, moving fast, disappearing into the trees like shadows swallowing shadows.

A moment later, from deep in the preserve, I heard it.

Howling.

Not random. Not scattered. Coordinated. Like voices answering each other across the dark.

I should have been afraid. I should have been unsettled, at least.

Instead, I thought: Yes. There’s something here. Something I don’t understand yet.