Chapter Eleven
AVELINE
Ididn’t want to move.
That was the first coherent thought I had—a flat refusal from my body to do anything other than lie exactly where I was, warm and wrung out, with Thane’s arm heavy across my waist and Malric’s hand still loosely holding mine.
My brain had stopped producing any thoughts whatsoever.
There was only the nest, the quiet, and the unfamiliar sensation of having been completely undone and not minding.
Then my stomach made a sound that was deeply undignified.
Thane’s chest moved against my back. Not quite a laugh.
“Hungry,” I said, my face burning.
“You’ve been burning through everything your body has,” Malric said. His voice was closer than I expected, still rough at the edges. “You need to eat.”
He sat up. As he moved, I heard his boots on the stone. His departure from the room left an emptiness. Thane didn’t move, but his arm around me loosened enough to tell me I could if I wanted to.
I didn’t want to yet.
I lay there and breathed and took stock of myself. My limbs were heavy in a way that was pleasant rather than worrying—the hollow exhaustion after my father’s visits was nothing like this. That had been a taking without permission. This was pleasure.
My body felt settled and was mine once more. That was the strangest part. It felt like it belonged to another person for hours—uncomfortably warm, overly conscious, processing everything with a haste that ignored my own inclinations.
“How do you feel?” Thane asked.
“Strange. Better.”
“Strange how?”
I considered. “Quieter. Inside.”
He made a sound of understanding and pressed his mouth briefly to my shoulder. “The spike broke. That’s what that is.”
“It’ll come back.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t try to soften that, and I appreciated it more than I would have appreciated a reassurance. I’d had enough comfortable lies to last me a lifetime.
Malric returned before I’d worked up to sitting. I heard the familiar sound of dishes on the low table, the ceramic knock of a water jug being set down, and then he was back in the doorway of the nest.
“Bath first,” he said. “Then food.”
The bathing chamber was warm, which didn’t surprise me.
The tower had always managed that regardless of season, always had the water at the right temperature before I’d finished crossing the room.
What surprised me was that all three of us fit.
The tub was large—I’d never had reason to notice how large; it had always just been mine—but standing at the edge of it now with two grown men behind me, it was clear the tower was preparing for a different future, one where I wasn’t alone.
I averted my gaze as Thane stripped and went in first, though I slid a sideways glance to see sleek muscle and an impressive member bobbing between his legs.
He dropped into the water with the ease of someone entirely comfortable in his own skin, then leaned against the curved stone side with his arms along the rim.
Malric waited a long moment, smirking as he watched me sneak looks at Thane.
He stripped more slowly, ensuring I had a full view of his broader frame.
He cupped himself and gave himself a hard stroke, as if daring me to look.
He then took the opposite end, his expression wicked.
Face burning, I stepped in between them and sank beneath the surface and let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for days.
The heat of the water moved into my muscles and loosened things that hadn’t been loose since before any of this started. I sat for a moment with my eyes closed and just existed inside the warmth of it.
Thane’s hands found my shoulders.
He wasn’t asking anything. His thumbs pressed into the muscles on either side of my spine and worked at them with steady, unhurried pressure, and the knots that lived there began to yield. My head fell forward and I moaned with pure pleasure.
“Here.” Malric’s voice, closer than I expected.
I opened my eyes. He was holding a piece of bread slathered with honey butter, torn from the loaf he’d brought from the dining table, and he was looking at me with a softness I didn’t expect to see. Not on Malric.
I reached for it and he moved it slightly, not handing it over but holding it out in a way that was clearly an offer to put it directly in my hand or—
“I’m capable of feeding myself,” I said, a little crossly.
“I know you are.”
He waited.
I didn’t entirely understand what was happening, but something about his patience made me stay still instead of taking it from him.
He pressed the bread to my lips and I chewed.
I felt absurdly taken care of, pampered even, in a way I had not felt in many years.
He tore another piece and held out a slice of the soft cheese he’d brought alongside it.
I ate from his hand and Thane’s hands worked down my spine.
The warm water held all of us, and something in my chest did something complicated.
My mother had done this.
The memory arrived without warning—her hands in my bathwater, her voice telling me to hold still, the small domestic authority of a woman who had known exactly how to take care of someone.
I’d been very young. I hadn’t thought about it in years, or perhaps hadn’t been allowed to, the memory worn smooth by time and isolation and whatever my father had done to the edges of things I wasn’t supposed to keep.
I swallowed. Took the water Malric held out next and drank without commenting on the fact that he was holding that too.
“What is that?” I asked when I could trust my voice.
“What is what?”
“That.” I pressed a hand flat against my sternum. “The feeling. Is it the bond?”
Malric and Thane went still in their different ways—Thane’s hands pausing on my shoulders, Malric’s expression shifting into something more focused.
“Describe it,” Malric said.
“Like a thread,” I said. “Except that’s not right. More like a presence. One that wasn’t there before and doesn’t hurt, but I’m aware of it.” I paused. “Two of them. In different places.”
Thane’s hands resumed their slow work. “Yes. That’s what the beginning of a bond feels like.”
“Beginning,” I said.
“It’s not formed,” Malric said. “Not fully. What you’re feeling is the potential of it.”
“Can it be stopped?”
Silence. Thane’s hands stilled again.
“It can be left incomplete,” Malric said carefully. “What happens next determines whether it sets or doesn’t.”
I thought about that. The water lapped softly against the stone. Outside the narrow window, the light had changed, afternoon tipping toward evening, the sky the pale gray of something deciding whether to turn dark.
“What happens next—what does that mean?”
Malric set down the food. He leaned back against his end of the basin, arms along the rim, and looked at me with the quality of attention he gave things he was trying to explain with precision.
“The spikes you’ve had. They’ve been your body moving toward heat in stages. Each one closer together than the last.” His jaw tightened slightly. “The next one won’t be a spike.”
I understood what he wasn’t saying. “A full heat.”
“Yes.”
I thought about what the book had said. I’d read the relevant sections three times, which was how I read things I wasn’t sure I understood. “I know what they involve.”
“Tell me what you know,” he said. Not a test. He was checking the source.
“They’re longer. More intense. Your body—” I stopped, recalibrated. “Your body needs more than proximity and touch to settle. Full relief requires penetration.” The clinical word helped. “Without it, the heat can last days. It’s physically exhausting. Potentially dangerous if prolonged.”
Thane made a quiet sound behind me.
“The book also said,” I continued, keeping my voice level, “that bonding often occurs during full heats. That the biological state makes the bond more likely to set.” I paused. “It said that’s not automatic. That consent and intent matter.”
“They do,” Malric said. “The bond doesn’t form against your will. But the heat makes it easier for it to happen, if that’s what you want.”
“So if we—” I stopped. Started over. “If a full heat happens, there’s a real possibility of a bond forming.”
“There is more to it than just participating in a heat,” Thane said quietly from behind me.
“We can help you through your heat without bonding you. The thread tells you that the potential is there. That we are potential soul-bonded mates. A bond requires bites to complete it. But it will only happen with your consent.”
I sat with that. It sounded painful and scary.
I had just dealt with being under my father’s control and now I would go under someone else’s without really knowing them.
Was I ready for that? The water was still warm, the tower still attending to its business of comfort, Thane’s hands resting now at my shoulders without pressure.
“I need to think about it.”
“Of course,” Malric said immediately.
“We want you to,” Thane said.
Neither of them moved to leave, which was fine, since we were in a bath. But they were not pushing, giving me space even though they were physically present. I appreciated that they understood the difference.
I also noticed that they were both very still in a way that had nothing restful about it.
I’d spent a long time in a tower learning to read small things.
The set of a jaw. The quality of a silence.
The way my father’s hands would settle at his sides when he’d already decided what would happen and was waiting for the performance of the discussion to conclude.
I had developed, out of necessity, a very accurate sense of what people wanted when they were not saying what they wanted.
“What do you want?” I asked.
The stillness changed quality.
“That’s not the relevant—” Malric started.
“I didn’t ask what was relevant. I asked what you want.” I looked at him steadily.
Thane’s answer came without hesitation.