Chapter Eighteen
Sam
Sam’s gaze swept across the table again, taking in the sheer excess of food. His stomach flipped, not from hunger but from sudden, dawning realization that he hadn’t been invited on just a date with Rux. It was all three of them watching him…he was on a dinner date with all three of them.
“Please, sit.” Mabon pulled out a chair at the head of the table.
Sam sat, feeling bizarrely like royalty at a banquet he hadn’t requested. The three men took seats around him - not across from each other like normal dinner companions, but arranged so they all faced him. An audience of three. His pulse kicked up.
Rux began serving, piling Sam’s plate with portions that would’ve fed him for three days. Bruschetta. Risotto. Chicken. Vegetables. Bread.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d prefer,” Rux said, still adding food. “So I made options.”
Options? Sam stared at his plate, then at the table groaning under enough dishes to stock a restaurant buffet.
“This is wonderful,” he managed, because it was true and because the three of them were watching him like he held the answer to a question he didn’t understand. “Really. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Rux’s face brightened.
Sam picked up his fork and tried the risotto first. The flavor hit his tongue like a wave – very rich, earthy, and intense. He swallowed, reached for his water glass, and took a sip.
“Good?” Rux leaned forward, practically vibrating with anticipation.
“It’s incredible.” Sam meant it. The food was definitely amazing. “You’re really talented.”
He tried the chicken next - lemon and herbs, beautifully roasted, and the skin crispy and golden. But the portion on his plate was massive - a full breast and thigh, enough protein for two meals.
Sam forced himself to take another bite, then another, aware of three pairs of eyes tracking every movement of his fork.
The bruschetta was drenched in olive oil.
The vegetables were cooked in butter. Even the salad glistened with dressing thick enough to coat his teeth.
His stomach started to protest after the fourth bite.
He set down his fork, took a breath, and picked it up again.
“Try the ravioli,” Urien suggested quietly.
Sam tried the ravioli - homemade pasta, delicate, stuffed with ricotta and spinach. He managed two before the richness made his mouth feel coated.
“And the salmon…” Rux started.
“Maybe some pizza?” Mabon offered at the same time.
They both stopped and looked at each other, then back at Sam. Sam felt a laugh bubble up in his chest. They looked like they were trying to feed a particularly picky dragon. The thought made him pause mid-reach for his water glass.
Three men. All gorgeous. All wealthy. All focused entirely on him with an intensity that bordered on...
No. That was obsessive.
Sam looked at his plate. He’d barely made a dent. The chicken sat half-eaten, the risotto mostly untouched. Around him, platters full of food waited like an accusation. He couldn’t possibly eat it all. He couldn’t even eat a fraction of it.
“This is...” Sam picked up his water glass again, buying time. “This is so much. It’s all delicious, really, but I couldn’t possibly...”
The words died in his throat as all three faces fell. Disappointment rippled across the table like a wave. Rux’s shoulders dropped, Mabon’s expression went carefully blank, and Urien’s hands stilled on the table.
Sam’s chest tightened. He’d done something wrong. He didn’t know what, but he’d clearly failed some unspoken test, or missed some crucial point they’d been trying to make.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean - it’s not that the food isn’t good. It’s amazing. You clearly put so much work into this.”
No one spoke. Sam looked at his plate, at the barely touched feast, then at the three men surrounding him. Nothing made sense.
Maya’s voice echoed in his head: Three men are courting you, Sam.
But that couldn’t be right. People didn’t court someone like him.
Sam set down his fork with a soft click against the porcelain. The sound seemed to echo in the silent dining room.
“Okay.” His voice came out steadier than he felt. “I need to ask. Why are you doing all this?”
Three heads lifted.
“The gifts at my door, the attention, the flowers. Trying to buy the Daily Bean.” Sam gestured at the table. “This dinner. I don’t understand.”
His throat tightened. The question had been building for weeks. The three men were so far out of his league they might as well be from another planet. Because they were, weren’t they?
And Sam was just...Sam. He was the friend, the nice guy. The one people liked but didn’t want. And maybe that was okay - Sam had made peace with it, mostly – but the lavish dinner, and all three men focused on him like he was something precious?
It felt like a setup. Like any minute, they’d start laughing, reveal the cameras, and explain this was all some elaborate social experiment about how far gratitude would take a lonely barista.
Had anything the men done suggested that was the case? No. But Sam still didn’t understand and while asking the question would hurt and confirm every insecurity he’d spent years trying to bury, not asking and continuing to hope like an idiot would hurt worse when the truth came out.
“Is this some kind of bet? A dare of some sort?”
Rux made like a wounded animal.
“Because I need to know,” Sam continued, the words tumbling out now that he’d started.
“I need to understand why three people who look like you would pay this kind of attention to someone like me. Someone ordinary. Someone who works at a coffee shop and lives in a tiny cottage and can’t even finish a fancy dinner without disappointing you. ”
His voice cracked on the last word.
“Because if it’s an elaborate joke, or some kind of dare, please just tell me now.”
/~/~/~/~/
Mabon stood first, his chair scraping against hardwood. His hands shook - actually shook - as he pressed them flat against the table.
“A dare,” he repeated, and his voice came out broken. “You think we’ve been…that we would…” He stopped, swallowed hard, and his knuckles went white against the wood.
Urien’s face had gone pale, his blue eyes darker than Sam had ever seen them. He reached out - hand halfway across the table toward Sam - then jerked it back like he’d touched fire.
“Sam.” Just his name, but there was a world of hurt in that one word.
Rux looked utterly destroyed, that was the only word for it. His broad shoulders curved inward, like Sam had reached into his chest and squeezed. The color drained from his face except for two spots high on his cheekbones that might have been shame, anger, or something else entirely.
“A dare.” Rux’s voice scraped out rough and raw. “You think we’re mocking you?”
Sam’s eyes started to burn. He blinked hard, refusing to cry in front of them. “What else am I supposed to think?” Once he started, Sam couldn’t stop. “Three guys who look like you, interested in someone like me? It doesn’t make sense.”
His vision blurred anyway. He stared at his plate - at the beautiful, untouched food - and felt the weight of every inadequacy he’d ever pretended not to notice.
“You’re all tall, gorgeous, and clearly have money, and you show up in my life leaving gold bars on my doorstep and building gardens and trying to buy entire businesses, and I’m just…” His throat closed. “I’m just me. I work at a coffee shop. I’m not special. I’m not…”
“Stop.”
Mabon’s voice cracked like thunder, and Sam’s head snapped up.
Mabon was staring at him with something fierce and desperate burning in his dark eyes, both hands now pressed to his chest as if he were physically holding something back.
“Don’t.” The word came out strangled. “Don’t say that about yourself. Don’t ever…”
He stopped again, closing his eyes as he took a shuddering breath that made his shoulders rise and fall.
When he opened them again, he looked at Urien, then at Rux. Something unspoken passed between them as if some decision had been made in the space of a heartbeat.
“We’re terrible at this,” Urien said quietly. His hands were fisted on the table now, trembling slightly. “We’ve been terrible at this from the beginning.”
“We never meant…” Rux’s voice broke. He tried again. “We would never mock you. Never. The thought that you’ve been thinking - that you believed we would…”
He looked genuinely sick.
“Then what?” Sam demanded. His tears were threatening to fall. “What is this? Because I’ve been making myself crazy trying to figure it out - the gifts, the attention, the constant visits. You barely know me. Why would you care this much about someone you barely know?”
“Because we want to know you.” Mabon’s voice was raw. “We want to know everything.”
“But why…”
“Because you’re ours.”
Sam stared.
It was Rux who had spoken. He stood now, too, all six-foot-five of him, looking at Sam with naked vulnerability written across every feature.
“You’re ours,” Rux repeated. “And we’re yours. If you’ll have us.”
Sam’s brain stuttered to a complete halt.
Ours. The word didn’t make sense. People didn’t belong to other people like that. People didn’t look at someone and just...claim them. That wasn’t how the world worked. Except…
Except Maya had been saying it for weeks, that it was all three men who were courting him. Three men who showed up together, lived together, and seemed to operate as a single unit with three parts.
Except he’d been writing the exact scenario in his novel - three supernatural beings recognizing their fated mate and pursuing him with single-minded devotion.
Except the way they looked at him wasn’t normal, and when Sam thought about it, it never had been. They had always been too intense and focused, as if he was the only thing in the room that mattered.
Sam’s hands were shaking now, and he gripped the edge of the table. “Yours,” he echoed, testing the word. It felt strange on his tongue. “I still don’t understand.” His voice came out barely above a whisper. “How can I be yours when you don’t even know me, and when I don’t know you?”
“We know enough,” Urien said softly. “We know you’re kind to elderly customers who can’t decide between lattes and cappuccinos. We know you bite your lip when you’re thinking. We know you love your cat even though he’s a menace. We know you make people feel seen.”
“We know you deserve someone who brings you vegetables at dawn,” Rux added, a ghost of a smile touching his lips despite the tension. “Even if it means getting attacked by a demon in cat form.”
“We know you’re perfect,” Mabon said simply. “And we’ve known it from the first moment we saw you.”
They were serious. Completely and utterly serious. Looking at him like he mattered.
“I’m not perfect,” Sam managed. “I’m really, really not.”
“You are to us,” Rux said.
The certainty in his voice made Sam’s throat tight.
Sam’s gaze swept over the table again. The excessive food that Rux had clearly spent days preparing.
The careful arrangement of dishes was designed around preferences Sam had mentioned in passing.
The way all three of them had sat facing him, not eating themselves, just watching to see if he enjoyed what they’d made.
They’d been trying so hard to make him understand something they apparently couldn’t find words for.
You’re ours.
Sam looked at Mabon’s shaking hands still pressed to his chest. At Urien’s white-knuckled fists on the table. At Rux’s vulnerable expression, open, hopeful, and scared all at the same time.
Whatever it was - however impossible - they meant every word.
“I still don’t understand,” Sam said again. But this time it came out less of an accusation and more of a plea. “But I want to. Help me understand this, please.”