Page 53 of What We Become

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I love it. But Odin has a⁠—”

“Yep.”

A beat. His throat works. His ears are turning red.

“Don’t tell Milo,” he says. “We’ll never get him out of here.”

“Don’t tell Milo what?” Milo’s voice sails up from the staircase. Footsteps, rapid, getting closer. “What did you find? Is it a pool? Please tell me it’s a pool. I saw what looked like a⁠—”

He appears in the hallway, running toward us like a kid on vacation in a hotel for the first time. He wiggles between us and stops.

Silence.

We bear witness to a full three seconds of Milo-silence.

“Oh,” he says, practically vibrating. “Oh, this changes everything.”

“It changes nothing,” Eli says, ears now fully crimson. “We’re here for safety. This is a safe house.”

“It certainly is.” He reaches over and pulls a condom from a jar near the door. “Very, very, very safe.” He grins. “And very sexy.”

Micah’s voice floats up from the base of the stairs. “What’s going on up there?”

“Eli found Odin’s sex dungeon!” Milo calls back.

“It wasn’t hidden!” Eli protests. “I opened a door.”

From downstairs, Micah’s voice again, warm with amusement: “Eli, should I be worried about how quickly you found that room?”

“I hate all of you,” Eli mutters, only half serious.

Milo moves through the room. “Is that Italian leather on the walls? Who upholsters a sex room in Italian leather?” He runs a reverent hand down the padded wall. “Do you think the leather is structural or decorative? It’s both. It’s both, isn’t it? Odin, you beautiful Nordic deviant.”

Eli pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to compress his own skull.

I leave them to it. Milo will inventory every drawer in that cabinet before dinner whether anyone wants him to or not, and Eli’s embarrassment is survivable.

The third floor is one room.

Master suite. King bed angled toward a wall of glass. A second fireplace—gas, remote ignition—set into a stone surround. Another deck wrapping the corner of the house. En suite with a soaking tub big enough for four, skylight above it, and a shower with more heads than a hydra.

I clear it. Closet. Bathroom. Under the bed, out of habit more than expectation. Window locks solid. The deck door has a secondary bolt. The drop below is thirty feet onto scree—nobody’s coming up that way without climbing gear and a death wish.

Excessive, but defensible. Odin’s whole brand.

A chime sounds behind me.

Soft. Musical. Completely out of place in a room I just cleared.

I turn, hand going to the small of my back, and watch a section of the walnut-paneled wall beside the fireplace slide open with a hydraulic whisper. Light spills out. Inside, in a wood-paneled elevator car, stand Micah and Fury. My hand lowers.

Fury’s eyes go wide when she sees me. “Knox! There’s an elevator!”

“I see that.”

“It goes all the way down to the garage,” Micah says, guiding her out with one arm around her waist. She’s upright but moving carefully, one hand pressed absently to her ribs.