Page 80 of Mane Brew

Outside, Mistvale continues its celebration. The mist swirls golden through the streets. The other mated couples are probably celebrating too—Leire and Aslan, Sakura and Torin, Anouk and Caius. Four pairs now. Four partnerships that broke a two-hundred-fifty-year curse and changed the magical world forever.

And here, in Rhodes’s bed, with his arms around me and his mark on my shoulder and my chaos finally finding its foundation⁠—

Everything else can wait.

The afternoon fades into evening. The celebration continues below. Lions pad past outside, their satisfied rumbles suggesting that the pride approves of their alpha’s choice.

Rhodes holds me, and I let myself be held. For someone who’s spent her whole life being too much, too loud, too chaotic—it’s strange to feel like exactly the right amount.

Strange, and perfect, and mine.

Ours.

The mark pulses on my shoulder. Real. Permanent. Home.

“I love you.” I say it again because I can. Because I want to. Because three words have never felt so perfectly, chaotically right.

17

RHODES

Iwake to chaos.

Not the destructive kind. Not the kind that requires documentation and incident reports. Just... Zeph. Her wild auburn curls tangled across my pillow. Her presence against my side. Her magic making the lamp on the nightstand flicker in contented patterns, like a heartbeat made of light.

I sense her—not her thoughts, nothing that invasive. Just awareness. A compass pointing toward home that tells me exactly where she is even when she’s right beside me. The claiming mark on her shoulder pulses faintly in the morning light, a visible declaration of everything we chose last night.

Mine.

Some things resist categorization. I’m beginning to accept that.

I tell the part of me that wants to categorize this to be quiet. It ignores me entirely.

“Stop thinking so loudly.” Zeph mumbles, eyes still closed. “I can hear you categorizing things.”

“I wasn’t⁠—”

“You were mentally filing last night under ‘unprecedented developments, subcategory: highly satisfactory outcomes.’” She opens one eye. Amber-green, catching the morning light. “I know you, Rhodes.”

“You do.” The admission comes out softer than I intended.

Both eyes open now. She props herself up on one elbow, her curls falling across her face in a way that makes my hands itch to touch. “Is that a problem?”

“No.” I reach up, brush a curl behind her ear. “It’s a relief.”

Her smile transforms her entire face. Not the sharp grin she uses to needle me. Something softer. More honest.

“Good morning,” she says.

“Good morning.” I pull her down for a kiss—gentle, unhurried. The kind of kiss that belongs to mornings and certainty and time stretching endlessly ahead. “How do you feel?”

“Like my magic finally knows what it’s doing.” She traces the mark on her shoulder. “It’s strange. The chaos is still there—it’s always going to be there. But it’s... organized chaos now.”

“That’s another most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Her laugh is bright, startled. “Only you would find organizational metaphors romantic.”

“Only you would compare magical stability to filing systems.”