Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Sebastian
Iwake up because the light is wrong.
Not gray but gold because the storm is finally over.
A smile spreads across my face as I remember last night.
The best night of my entire life. My cock isn’t aching anymore because of the need to fill my female, it’s now at half-mast and in fact a bit sore from last night’s antics.
And now, my new mate is between us on this bed that was always too big and now fits just right.
I inhale, realizing we’ll need to change the sheets soon.
My life is suddenly a thousand times better than before.
Wren sleeps on her stomach between us with her hair everywhere.
One hand is on my chest and the other on Maxim’s.
There are two marks on her throat. One of them is mine.
I have never been so pleased about anything in my life, and I haven’t even had coffee.
I can hardly wait to show this off to the council, a valid claiming from not one, but two males at once.
This type of arrangement is very rare in our histories, but it has happened before and it cannot be denied.
There will be no more talk of lists or arranged marriages.
Maxim and I have bypassed all that bullshit and claimed the female we knew was right and created the life we knew was right for us.
Maxim is asleep with his mouth slightly open, softly snoring.
Wren stirs. She opens her eyes and catches me looking at her, and the first thing she does is reach up and touch her own throat. Both sides. She doesn’t look, just checks.
“Still there,” I tell her. “Both.”
“Good,” she says, and goes back to sleep for ten more minutes.
Finally, we’re all awake. Wren gets up first, in my T-shirt and naked underneath. She goes to the bedroom window and stops. “Sebastian.” Then louder. “Sebastian. Come look.”
I come. Maxim comes too. Both of us are wearing pajama pants.
The whole valley is white and blazing. The mountains. And at the base of them, small and gold in the early light, the lights on the Krovenian side.
From closer. Exactly what Maxim offered her at that corner table three weeks ago.
She doesn’t say anything. Puts her hand flat on the glass.
“I said you should come and see them,” Maxim says from behind her.
She smiles up at him. “It’s beautiful. I love it.”
“We’ll see them from the other side by dinner,” I tell her.
“We’re going to Krovenia?”
“Yep. Time to meet my family.”
Her eyes widen.
The plan is already running.
I’m at the stove. Maxim makes Wren’s coffee. Black, one sugar. He learned it from me without asking. Wren sets three places at a table that’s had only two for the last year. I keep catching her stop in the middle of a reach to touch one of the marks.
Then we sit down to eat, and Maxim abruptly says it the way he says everything. “You are pregnant.”
Wren puts her fork down. “You can’t know that. It was last night.”
“I scented it before dawn. Sebastian confirmed it.”
She looks at me. I nod. “It’s faint. But it’s there.”
“It was one night,” she repeats.
Maxim shrugs. “The Calling does not need two.”
She sits very still. Then her hand goes to her stomach, flat, the way Maxim’s did in the dark. I watch her face go from no to oh. Last night she told us that unprotected sex with the two of us, on purpose, to start a family, was the hottest thing she’d ever done. Now it’s real.
A wide, genuine smile spreads across her face. “Okay,” she says. Then, steadier. “Okay.”
“You said you wanted this,” I remind her, gently.
“I did. I do. I just thought I’d have a minute.”
“You have had a minute,” Maxim says, his lips twitching.
She laughs. “Well, I guess we’d better start planning for a baby, right?”
“That guest room can be the nursery,” I say.
“Oh that’s a great idea. It will be perfect because of that connecting door.”
“Yes,” Maxim says.
My phone rings and I see that it’s my brother, Viktor, checking up on me again.
I put it on speaker, because there’s nothing in this house the three of us don’t share now.
“Is the Blood Calling done?” my brother questions.
“Yes,” I say.
“Both of you?”
“Both,” Maxim says.
Silence on the line. Then the Crown Prince of Krovenia laughs. I’ve heard that maybe six times in my life.
Wren stares at the phone, then at me. He knew? she mouths.
“We told him the morning after the storm,” I tell her. “That we’d found our mate. That we had to…propose, first. And see how it went.”
“Propose?”
Maxim grins. “It went well.”
“Evidently,” Viktor says, dry, through the speaker. “Nikolai says bring her home. Today. The Council can see the marks for themselves, and then they can be quiet about it forever.” A pause. “And Wren. Hazel says welcome to the group chat.”
“There’s a group chat?”
“You will regret asking.”
Click.
Wren sets her coffee down. “Okay. Wait. How can you just go back? I thought you were banished.”
“I was never fully banished,” I tell her.
“It was only a temporary banishment. The Council gave me a year to reconsider an arranged marriage. If I refused past the year then it would be permanent. I’d lose my place in the succession, my commission, and my seat at court.
That’s all. Nikolai never took my castle or my accounts.
He wouldn’t. And now that I am already mated they will want to make the banishment permanent but by brothers won’t let them.
They want to still see me and Maxim too.
And of course they want to meet you. You are family now. ”
“Family?” she smiles. “That sounds nice. Wait, did you say you still have the castle?”
“I still have a castle in Krovenia. It’s about an hour and a half drive away.”
“The year is moot now,” Maxim agrees. “A completed Blood Calling is canon law. The Council cannot refuse it, and they cannot refuse two. There is nothing left for them to hold over him.”
Wren looks between us. “So the Council was never going to win?”
“The Council was never going to win,” I agree. “They just didn’t know it until last night.”
“Are we going to see it? Your castle?”
“Today, if you want. We’ll stay there tonight.”
She looks around the kitchen. “But this is our home, right? I like it here…”
“This is home,” Maxim confirms. “This is where we will run our business and it’s good for you that you can be close to humans.
And maybe it’s a good place for Claire and Hazel to come and visit too, easier for them to be amongst humans when they want, too.
The castle is where we go on weekends and vacations. ”
“Sounds good,” Wren exclaims.
And I smile as I take another sip of coffee.
Then my female picks up her own phone and looks at it for a long time. She’s biting her lip. “I have to call Margit.”
“You could text.”
“I’m not going to text my resignation that sounds rude.”
She calls and puts it on speaker. Margit picks up on the second ring.
“Margit. Hi. It’s Wren.” She takes a breath.
“I’m here with my regulars, Sebastian and Maxim.
And I’m basically married to them now. They call it a Blood Calling and I’m with both of them.
They are both my husbands. I know it sounds strange but don’t worry, it’s actually perfect.
I fell in love with both of them.” Her voice wobbles and she steadies it.
“I’m letting you know that I won’t be able to work full time anymore.
I’ve got a lot going on here, getting used to this new life with them.
But I don’t want to fully leave the Crossing just yet.
I’d love it if you let me work maybe Fridays for the next couple of months and then I’ll quit fully. Is that okay with you?”
A pause on the line.
“Love,” Margit says, brisk, not remotely surprised, “I’ve poured for Krovenians for forty years. I knew what those two were doing at that table before you’d dropped your first tray.”
Wren puts a hand over her mouth.
“Two weeks,” Margit goes on. “And then Fridays. Your table’s reserved.”
“Fridays?”
“Somebody’s got to pour for them. They don’t tip anyone else.”
Click.
Wren is crying and laughing at the same time. “Everyone knew before I did? Were all those other Krovenian customers watching us interact that whole time, knowing we were falling in love and would probably end up together?”
“Everyone,” Maxim agrees.
“No one will be surprised to learn that we have both completed a Blood Calling for Wren Collins.”
“There’s one more thing,” I say, over the last of the coffee. “Claire set three conditions with my brother before she let him bite her. Hazel got two out of Viktor. It’s a Draven thing now. You’re late, but you’re still allowed more.”
Wren brightens and doesn’t hesitate. “One. I keep the Crossing on Fridays. Until…” She looks down at her stomach. “Until I’m about six months along. Then I’m done. Officially.”
“Granted,” Maxim says.
“Obviously,” I say.
“Two. This house is home. Not the castle. Here. And I’m decorating.”
“Decorating how?”
“Curtains. A rug that isn’t Maxim’s. Something on the walls.”
Maxim takes a moment with that. “Granted.”
“He’s going to hate the curtains,” I tell her.
Maxim looks offended. “I will not hate the curtains.”
I shrug, knowing how picky he is which means Wren will discover this soon, too.
“Three.” She grins at Maxim. “Two dogs. And I name them.”
Maxim frowns. It’s the first frown of the morning. “But I have names.”
“I know you do. That’s why I’m naming them.”
I laugh so hard I have to put the pan down.
“And four. I reserve the right to add more later.”
“That is not a condition,” Maxim says.
“Claire got it.”
Maxim looks at me. I shrug.
“…Granted.”
Later, Maxim calls the tow company in the market town while she’s in the shower. Her car will be at the compound by evening, with its door in the back seat.
“It needs a new door,” he says, hanging up.
“It needs a new everything.”
“It’s getting chains,” I say.
Wren finally comes down from the shower in my T-shirt with her hair wet and says the thing I should have thought of an hour ago. “I can’t meet the King and Queen of Krovenia in this. I have one sweater and a pink top I drove a car into a ditch in.”
“We’re going through the market town anyway. For the car.”
“Ooh there’s that boutique by the church…”
“We’re going there, immediately.”
She squeaks with delight and rushes off to get dressed.
We go through the market town and enter the boutique by the church, the one she’d have walked past every week on her way to the coffee place with the bad chairs. She tries things on. I pay before she can argue. She argues anyway.
She comes out of the dressing room, ready to go in something dark green that makes both of us stop talking. She’s put her hair up and both marks show. “How do I look?”
“Like royalty,” I tell her.
“Like ours,” Maxim says.
“I’m serious.”
“So are we.”
She’s nervous. I can see it and I can scent it, and it’s a different flavor than the storm. This is the kind of nervous that comes from wanting to be liked.
“They’re going to hate me. I’m a bartender. I’m American. I’m…”
“You’re the first human in Krovenian history to be claimed by two of us,” I tell her. “Claire was a maid. Hazel was a nanny. My brothers married them and the whole country fell in love. Twice.”
“They will love you too,” Maxim confirms. “As much as we love you.”
“And you’ll have Claire and Hazel,” I say. “Ready-made. You won’t be able to get rid of them. Hazel’s already got you in a group chat you didn’t agree to.”
“Friends?”
“Two of them. Before you’ve even crossed the border.”
She smiles that brilliant smile that warms my chest. All I want to do is take her back to bed and fuck her again, with Maxim as my wingman. But we’ve got to get going so that will have to wait until tonight.
We step Wren climbs into the back seat and slides to the middle, because that’s where she goes now.
“Which side is mine?”
“The middle,” I tell her.
“Always,” Maxim says.
A year ago I drove out of Krovenia and told myself I was fine. I was.
I’m better now because I’ve got the one thing I was missing…love.
I put the SUV in gear and drive our mate home.