Chapter Nineteen
Sam
The three men exchanged another look, and then Mabon moved first. He walked around the table slowly, carefully, like Sam might bolt if he moved too fast. When he reached Sam’s chair, he kneeled on the hardwood floor, bringing himself down to Sam’s eye level.
Sam’s heart was hammering so hard against his ribs, he was sure Mabon could hear it.
“May I show you something?” Mabon’s voice was gentle. “It won’t hurt, I promise. But it might... it might be hard to believe.”
Sam nodded, not trusting his voice.
Mabon’s hands went to the buttons of his shirt. He undid the top three, enough to expose his chest, and…
Sam gasped. There was something embedded in Mabon’s chest, right over his heart. A stone that glowed with soft, pulsing light, like it had its own heartbeat. It was beautiful and yet impossible all at the same time.
“What...” Sam’s voice came out as a whisper. “What is that?”
“May we?” Urien asked quietly.
Sam looked up. Both Urien and Rux were already unbuttoning their own shirts, revealing their own stones. All three were pulsing in unison.
Gripping the arms of his chair, Sam tried to anchor himself to something that made sense.
“These appeared the first time we saw you,” Mabon said. His voice was still gentle. “Each of us, separately. Rux, at the grocery store. Urien and I, when we followed him to find you.”
“That’s not possible,” Sam heard himself say. “People don’t just...grow glowing stones in their chests.”
“You’re right,” Rux said. “People don’t.”
Sam looked from one stone to another. They were definitely there, embedded in flesh, glowing with that steady, impossible light.
His pragmatic side - the part that worked at a coffee shop, paid bills, and lived in the real world - was screaming that this couldn’t be happening.
But the other part of him - the part that spent his evenings writing about fated mates, supernatural beings, and love that defied explanation - was whispering something else entirely.
What if...
Sam’s brain was trying to categorize it - trick, hallucination, or elaborate prank - but his body knew the truth before his mind caught up.
The stones were warm. He could feel the heat from where he was sitting, and could see the way they pulsed in perfect synchronization like three hearts beating as one.
They weren’t CGI, a projection, or some clever illusion.
They were real in a way that rewrote every rule Sam thought he understood about the world.
Three men had apparently decided that Sam was worth magical heart stones appearing in their chests.
The writer in him was screaming this is the plot, this is exactly what you’ve been writing, but the human in him - the one who worried about groceries, pet his cat, and knew how reality actually worked - was free-falling through a reality that had just proved itself negotiable.
And underneath both reactions, terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure - what if he stepped into the impossible and it was real?
“I need to sit down,” Sam said, then realized he was already sitting. “I need to...I don’t know what I need.”
“Time,” Urien suggested quietly. “You need time. This is…we know this is overwhelming.”
“Overwhelming,” Sam repeated. He started laughing, a slightly hysterical sound that he couldn’t quite control. “Three men have glowing stones in their chests that appeared when they saw me, and you think I need time?”
“We also have some explaining to do,” Mabon admitted. He was still kneeling, still at eye level, and the stone in his chest pulsed brighter when Sam’s gaze landed on it. “If you want to hear it.”
Sam dragged in a breath, then another. His entire worldview was cracking apart. Everything he thought he knew about reality was rearranging itself into impossible new patterns.
But the three men in front of him - with their glowing stones and their vulnerable expressions and their obvious, desperate sincerity - they were real.
“Okay,” Sam said finally. “I want to hear it. Explain.”