Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
Several days later
ROMULUS
“You’re really okay with this?” I ask, facing forward in full control of our body—everything except our mostly regrown tail, which Remus has claimed as his domain.
I hold up a hand mirror, angling it so I can see my brother’s face on the back of my head. He’s using our tail to position his own mirror, and the whole setup is absurd enough that a month ago, I would have refused on principle alone.
Now? I’m just grateful we can talk.
The shower runs in the background, Lo-Ren’s off-key humming drifting through the bathroom door. She’s singing something about umbrellas and rain, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
“If you want to keep arguing it,” Remus growls from his mirror, “I’m happy to switch back.”
“No, no.” I say it quickly. Too quickly, perhaps. “I’m just... surprised, that’s all.”
And that’s the understatement of the millennium.
I’ve been surprised about a great many things since I woke up several days ago. Since I realized my brother had not only defeated an undefeatable interdimensional threat but had also chosen—chosen—to heal me instead of finally being free of his greatest burden.
We don’t share memories anymore. A side effect of whatever he did up there in space. So I don’t know the exact details of his battle, or the precise moment he made his choice. But I know the result.
He absorbed the Devourers’ life force and gained power that would make our father weep with envy. Power that could reshape worlds and unmake reality itself.
Then… he decided to share it.
Not just the power—though that alone would be extraordinary. He’s sharing control of our body. We switch on a schedule now. An actual, negotiated schedule that Lo-Ren helped us work out on her phone’s calendar app, complete with color-coding and reminder alerts.
It’s the most civilized thing we’ve done in five thousand years.
“Did you get a personality transplant out there in space?” I ask, genuinely curious.
Our newly regrown tail—shorter than before, still developing its full length—whips around and slaps me across the face.
“Hey!” I glower, rubbing my cheek where it stings. “I’ll take that as a no.”
Remus’s laugh shakes our shared body, a strange sensation that I’m still adjusting to.
We’re not both conscious all the time—thank the gods, that would be utterly maddening.
But Lo-Ren suggested these designated communication sessions, time carved out specifically for us to talk to each other directly rather than through passive-aggressive action and reaction.
I glare at him in the mirror. He looks bored, examining our tail like it’s the most fascinating thing in existence.
This is bizarre. All of it. Being able to see his face and have an actual conversation rather than simply discovering what he’s done after the fact and scrambling to mitigate the damage.
“So,” I clear my throat. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes glint with mischief in the mirror. “How big an asshole you are? Cause from back here”—he makes a show of looking down at where I’m sitting—”I can see just how big, and phew.”
“I’m sitting down, you absolute knob. You can’t see anything.”
He just chuckles, pleased with himself.
I sigh and resist the urge to end this session early. Lo-Ren believes these conversations are important. That communication is the foundation of any healthy relationship.
And I would do anything—anything—to keep her looking at me the way she did this morning when she woke up beside us. Like we were her entire world. Like we were exactly enough.
“Mostly we just exchange insults,” I mutter, more to myself than to him. “Or argue about the schedule.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who wanted an extra hour on Tuesday,” Remus shoots back.
“That’s because you took two hours on Monday when you were only supposed to have one and a half—”
“She wanted to finish—”
“I know what she wanted to finish.” Heat creeps up my neck at the memory of what I woke up to. “That’s not the point. We agreed on equal time.”
“Equal time doesn’t account for—”
I hold up a hand. “We’re not doing this again. Lo-Ren already ruled on it.”
Remus grumbles but subsides. Because that’s the other surprising thing: he actually listens when she sets boundaries. When she tells us both to behave, he… does.
It’s civilized. Structured. Everything I always wanted and never thought we’d achieve.
Which brings me back to the question that’s been gnawing at me since I regained consciousness.
“Why am I still here?” The words come out quieter than I intended. More vulnerable.
I feel Remus tense through our shared nervous system. “Ughhhh.” He makes that long-suffering noise that used to drive me mad. “What the fuck is this, feelings hour?”
I stay quiet. Because yes, actually. It is.
Lo-Ren has been very clear that we need to address the “big stuff.” The trauma, the resentment, and the millennia of dysfunction. She’s even threatened to make us see a couples therapist if we don’t start making progress.
I’m not entirely sure what a couples therapist would do with two immortal beings sharing one body, but I’m also not eager to find out.
In the mirror, I watch Remus shake our head. Then, with obvious reluctance: “Fine. You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
He sighs like I’m asking him to move mountains. “You see how she looks at us.”
I do. Gods, I do.
“You think she’d look at me even half the same way if I’d shown back up after killing you?” His voice has gone rough. Raw. “Everyone else only saw a monster. But she looked at me and saw more. So I could finally be more, okay?”
The words hit hard.
Because I understand exactly what he means.
I’ve spent five thousand years being told—and believing—that I was the responsible one.
The one who cleaned up messes. The one who sacrificed and suffered and never got to have what I wanted because I was too busy keeping my brother from destroying everything.
I believed I was trapped. Doomed. Unworthy of individual love because I came as a package deal with chaos incarnate.
And then Lo-Ren looked at me—at me, not just at the situation or the body we share—and she saw someone worth fighting for.
“I get it,” I say, and I mean it with everything in me. “And I’m sorry. For not giving you the benefit of the doubt sooner. And for believing Father’s poison about who you are instead of seeing you for myself.”
I pause, then push through the discomfort of vulnerability. “We didn’t have to live so long with all that acrimony between us.”
I meet his eyes in the mirror. “You’re a good man, Remus. Better than I gave you credit for. And I see that now. I see you now.”
For a moment, his expression goes soft. Almost tender.
Then he ruins it. “Don’t start that now and make me regret keeping you around.”
Our tail swings up to smack me again, but this time I’m ready. I catch it mid-strike and toss it away, standing up as I laugh—actually laugh—at his predictability.
“Don’t be so transparent,” I tell him. “Your enemy will see it coming a mile away.”
“Who said you’re my enemy?” he mutters, but there’s no heat in it.
“You’re getting quite proficient with the tail control, though,” I admit. “The dexterity is impressive.”
I can practically feel his ego inflating through our shared body.
“So.” I head toward the bathroom, where the shower is still running and Lo-Ren is still humming. “Why don’t we see if our woman wants some company?”
“Finally,” Remus says, “something worthwhile comes out of that mouth.”
Our tail whips excitedly behind us, and I don’t bother pointing out that he’s the one controlling it.
The bathroom is thick with steam, the mirror completely fogged over. I can see Lo-Ren’s silhouette through the frosted glass of the shower door—curves I’ve memorized, movements that make my chest tight with want.
I shed our clothes and pull the door open.
She turns, water cascading down her body, and smiles at me. That smile. The one that says she knows exactly what I’m thinking and she’s thinking it too.
“Hey, handsome,” she says, eyes trailing down. “Couldn’t wait your turn?”
“It’s technically my turn for another twenty minutes,” I point out as I step into the spray. “I’m simply optimizing my allocated time.”
She laughs, that bright, unguarded sound that still catches me off guard. “God, you’re such a strategist about it. Just admit you missed me.”
“I saw you forty-five minutes ago.”
“And?”
I pull her against me, skin slick and warm. “And I missed you.”
“There we go.” She goes up on her toes to kiss me, and I lose myself in her taste, her touch, and the way she melts against me like I’m the only solid thing in her world.
We’ve made love dozens of times now. I’ve mapped every inch of her body, and I’ve learned every sound she makes and exactly how to make her come apart in my arms.
And it never stops feeling like a miracle.
That she wants me. Not just Remus, though she wants him too. Not just the body we share or the power we command. She wants me—my careful planning, my measured responses, my tendency to overthink everything.
She sees my need for control and doesn’t shame me for it. She just sets boundaries and trusts me to respect them.
“Romulus,” she says against my mouth, hands sliding down my chest. “You’re thinking too much again.”
“Impossible,” I murmur, kissing along her jaw. “I’m thinking the perfect amount.”
She laughs and nips at my lower lip. “Let go for once. Stop strategizing and just feel.”
So I do.
I press her back against the tile wall—careful, always careful not to use too much strength—and worship her with my hands and my mouth, my whole attention focused on nothing but her pleasure.
The water beats down on us. Steam billows all around. She gasps my name—my name, “Romulus!”—and I’ve never heard anything more beautiful.
When I finally slide into her, she wraps her legs around my waist and holds on tight. The glow from her chest pulses in time with her heartbeat, brighter with each thrust, and I can feel the divine spark we gave her resonating in an infinity loop with our own power.
“I love you,” she breathes against my neck. “God, Romulus, I love you so much.”
For five thousand years, I’ve believed love was a zero-sum game. That if anyone loved him, they couldn’t love me.
That sharing would mean losing.
But here, now, with her looking at me like I hung the stars just for her?
I understand what Remus realized in space.
Love multiplies when you feed it.
I love you,” I tell her, and my voice cracks on the words. “My brilliant, stubborn, impossible woman. I love you more than I thought myself ever capable.”
She kisses me as she comes, and I follow her over the edge, losing myself in the perfect rightness of this moment.
That night, I’m awake while Remus sleeps, and I find myself thinking about Father.
He pitted us against each other from the beginning. He told me I was the responsible, smart one who had to contain Remus’s chaos. Then he told Remus he was the weapon, a force of nature that could never be controlled.
He crafted us to be War by creating a dynamic inside the territory of our own flesh where we could never both win.
And we believed him.
For five thousand years, we believed the lie that we were fundamentally incompatible and that one of us had to lose for the other to win.
Lo-Ren shifts in her sleep, murmuring something I can’t quite catch. I tuck the blanket more securely around her shoulders and press a kiss to her hair.
She smells like the soap we used in the shower. Like home.
I never had a home before her.
Just a series of prisons—the dungeon, this shared body, the eternal conflict with my brother. Everywhere I went, I was trapped.
But now?
Now I’m exactly where I choose to be.
With her. With him. With both of them.
It’s not perfect. We still argue about the schedule. Remus still does impulsive things that make me want to shake him. I still try to control situations that would be better left to chaos.
But we’re trying. We’re communicating. We’re choosing cooperation over competition.
And that’s enough.
More than enough.
It’s everything.