Page 173 of The Rust in Her Hair

Bliss grips me, and my mouth curves into a stupid smile.

Adrian groans against my throat at the sight of it too, his mouth still pressed to my fresh mark. His hips lift beneath me in small, helpless little rolls, working his locked knot in the barest shallow thrusts.

Then Mack's knot begins to swell.

Owen lifts up onto his knees and takes Mack's mouth in a slow kiss, his hand curved around the back of Mack's neck, holding him there. The beta murmurs against his lips. "You’re doing so good, alpha," he murmurs. "Make her ours."

I ready myself as Owen pulls back, but then I see it.

A flash of raw fear fills Mack's green eyes, there and gone. All that big, easy swagger drops off him at once, and underneath it he looks so young.

He looks like a frightened boy.

I reach up and cup his face in both my hands. "I love you," I whisper as he keeps thrusting. "I love you, Mack."

His throat works and his hips stutter. "Are you," he licks his lips, "will you love me no matter what?" His voice comes out cracked down the middle, nothing like the man who loves to tease me. "No matter what's in me. Do you promise you’ll always love me?"

"I promise." I stroke my thumbs over his cheekbones and hold his eyes so he can't look away from how much I mean it. "No matter what. Always. You're mine."

Something breaks loose in his face. He turns his head into my palm and presses a kiss there, and then his knot shoves right against my rim, forcing in alongside Adrian's cock.

Mack moves to the other side of my throat, the last bare stretch of me, and sets his teeth against it.

Then he bites down.

His teeth sink into me, and the last bond blows open, and all three of them flood into me at once, Nico and Adrian and Mack, three bonds lit up and singing.

I come one last time, and it goes on and on, and I sob and shatter and stay there, held safe in the middle of my pack while they fill me and fill me and fill me.

They are mine now, every last one of them.

And I am theirs.

The Last Word

Lyra

The sun pours through every window, warming the inside of the truck. It smells like sawdust and coffee and the four men I belong to.

Nico is driving with one wrist draped over the wheel, and Adrian's got the passenger seat kicked back and his boots up on the dash. Nico keeps knocking them down, and Adrian keeps putting them back up.

I'm wedged into the middle of the back bench with Mack on one side of me and Owen on the other, close enough that they warm me down both arms.

The sky's gone that deep scrubbed blue you only get after rain, and we're driving with the windows cracked toward the worst house I know, and I feel steadier than I have in my entire life.

Since my heat broke, I’ve been filled with the constant presence of my three alphas.

Nico runs steady and warm and always there. Adrian sits bright and close to the surface, every feeling right out where I can touch it. And then there's Mack. Under all that laughing and all those big country jokes lives a deep well of old sadness. And now that I can feel him, my heart breaks a bit for the alpha. He still spends every day trying to make the rest of us laugh, but the poor man is filled with so much old sadness.

Then I catch Mack staring at me out of the corner of my eye.

"What?" I laugh as I twist to face him. "You keep staring at me like I'm about to sprout a second head. What is it?"

"You really can't feel anything off me but good?" he asks carefully, like he's braced for my answer to suddenly change. "There’s nothing else in there? And you swear you'd tell me if there was."

"Mack." I take his big, rough hand in both of mine and press his palm flat over my heart, so he won’t argue with me. "For the hundredth time. I feel you. All your love and sass, and a whole lot of worrying." I squeeze his fingers. "You worry more than Adrian ever thought about worrying, you know that?"

Up front, Adrian twists around, delighted. "You hear that?" He jabs a finger at Mack. "All these years you've been calling me the nervous one."