Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
Alfie
I woke up with a mouth that tasted like I’d been licking the carpet of a tour bus and a body that felt like it had been dropped from a third-story window.
My left arm was dead numbness, pinned under a weight that smelled of dark earth and espresso, Kit.
My right leg was tangled in a knot of limbs that radiated the crisp, cool heat of a logic processor overheating, Euan.
And right in the center of my chest, heavy and hot and perfect, was a head of messy, purple-black hair.
Zia.
I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I just lay there in the amber dimness of the collab house bedroom, staring at a crack in the ceiling plaster, trying to reboot my brain.
The silence was loud. For three days, or maybe four, I’d lost track of the sun, this room had been a war zone. It had been filled with the sounds of Zia unmaking us: the whimpers, the screams, the wet, slick sounds of friction, the guttural commands from Kit, the frantic prayers from me.
Now, the only sound was the syncopated rhythm of four people breathing in a pile.
I carefully, painfully, tilted my chin down.
She was fast asleep. Her face was pressed into my sternum, her mouth slightly open, leaving a damp patch on my skin.
She looked wrecked. There were dark circles under her eyes, her lips were swollen and bruised a deep rose, and her skin was tacky with sweat and the drying remnants of the oils and balms Euan had been obsessing over.
She smelled like the aftermath of a thunderstorm in a grapefruit grove. The electric, ozone crackle was gone, replaced by a soft, mellow sweetness that hit the back of my throat like honey.
We survived.
The thought hit me with enough force to make my eyes sting. We had walked into the fire, fed ourselves to the flames, and come out the other side without burning the house down.
Or maybe we had burned it down. Maybe we were just sitting in the ashes, realizing we liked the view better this way.
"System check," a voice rasped from somewhere near my knee.
Euan. He sounded like a malfunctioning droid.
"System is fucked, mate," I whispered back, my voice a croak. "I think my hip is dislocated."
"Movement detected," Euan mumbled, shifting. He groaned, a low, pained sound. "Hydration levels critical. Muscle fatigue... extreme."
Zia stirred on my chest. She made a small, unhappy noise, scrunching her nose up. Her hand, which had been fisted in the sheets, drifted up to swat blindly at my face.
"Quiet," she slurred. "Too loud. Turn down the gain."
I caught her hand. I brought it to my lips, kissing the bruised knuckles, then the ink of the fox tail on her wrist.
"Morning, fox," I whispered against her skin. "Or afternoon. Or Tuesday. Not sure which."
She peeled one eye open. It was glossy, unfocused. She looked at me, then at the ceiling, then tried to push herself up.
She failed. Her arms shook, and she collapsed back onto me with a huff.
"My bones have been stolen," she announced. "I am a jellyfish."
"You're a producer who just ran a three-day ultra-marathon," Kit’s voice rumbled from behind me. He didn't move, but his arm tightened around my waist, pulling the entire pile closer together. "Stop wriggling. You'll wake the drummer."
"You are awake," I pointed out.
"Physically, yes. Spiritually, I am still in the void." Kit buried his face in the back of my neck, his stubble scratching my skin. "God, the smell in here. It’s like a pheromone factory exploded."
"It smells like victory," I said, grinning at the ceiling.
"It smells like we need to open a window and burn some sage," Zia muttered. She rolled off my chest, wincing as she moved. She landed in the space between me and Euan, instantly cocooned by Euan’s long limbs.
She looked at us. Really looked at us.
I felt exposed. The last few days had been a blur of instinct. Bite here. Hold this. Harder. Softer. Good girl. I had poured every ounce of devotion I possessed into this room. Now, in the cold light of post-heat clarity, I was terrified she’d look at me and see a mistake.
She reached out. Her hand brushed my cheek, her thumb tracing the split in my lip where she’d bitten me in a frenzy somewhere around hour thirty.
"Alfie," she whispered.
"Yeah, love?"
"You look terrible."
I laughed, a wet, hacking sound. "Cheers. You look like a car crash."
"A sexy car crash?"
"The sexiest," I promised. "A pile-up on the M1 of pure beauty."
Euan finally managed to sit up. He scrubbed his hands over his face, his hair sticking up in wild tufts. He looked at Zia with a clinical, intense focus that made my stomach flip. He reached out, checking her pulse, putting a hand to her forehead.
"Fever broke," he noted, his voice thick. "Skin temperature normal. How is the pain level?"
"Manageable," Zia said, stretching a leg out and grimacing. "Sore. Everywhere. But... quiet. The noise in my head stopped."
"Good," Kit said. He sat up, the duvet falling to his waist. His chest was a map of scratches and bite marks. We were all marked. I had a bruise on my hip shaped exactly like Zia’s heel. "That means it’s over. The cycle is done."
The reality of that sentence hung in the room.
It's over.
The siege was done. The biological imperative that had driven us had receded. Now we had to figure out what was left.
"Food," Alfie said suddenly. The void in my stomach woke up and roared. "I need food. I need grease. I need carbohydrates in massive, irresponsible quantities."
"Cal," Kit said. "Cal will have food."
"I can't move," Zia said. "Leave me here. Save yourselves."
"Negative," Euan said. He stood up. He was naked, unashamed, and moved with the stiff dignity of a man whose joints had fused. He offered a hand to Zia. "We move as a unit. To the shower. Then to the kitchen."
"Shower?" Zia eyed him. "Together?"
"Efficiency," Euan said, though his ears turned pink. "And safety. I don't trust you not to slip."
"He just wants to look at you," I teased, rolling out of bed and nearly face-planting as my legs remembered gravity. "We all do."
We stumbled to the ensuite. It was a massive walk-in thing, thankfully, because coordination was at an all-time low.
The shower was less erotic and more logistical.
We washed each other with silent, tender efficiency.
Washing the sweat and the slick and the scent of the heat off our skin felt like a ritual.
I soaped Zia’s back, careful of the bruises, murmuring nonsense praise when she flinched.
Kit washed her hair, his large hands impossibly gentle.
Euan managed the water temperature like he was mixing a track.
When we finally emerged, wrapped in towels and robes, we felt human again. Or at least, like highly evolved mammals.
We walked down the hallway to the main living area. The house was quiet.
Cal was in the kitchen.
Of course he was.
He was standing at the stove, wearing a soft jumper and pajama pants, flipping pancakes with a rhythm that was soothing to watch. The table was set. Juice. Coffee. Tea. A mountain of bacon.
He looked up as we shuffled in. His eyes scanned us, the bruises on our necks, the way we were huddled together like a single organism, the exhaustion etched into our faces.
He didn't smile. He just nodded.
"Welcome back," Cal said. "Sit. Eat."
We sat. We ate like starving wolves. For ten minutes, the only sound was cutlery scraping plates and the aggressive chewing of bacon.
I watched Zia. She was sitting between Kit and Euan, wearing one of my hoodies that reached her knees. She was attacking a stack of pancakes with a ferocity that made me want to write a sonnet about maple syrup.
She caught me staring. She paused, a forkful of eggs halfway to her mouth.
"What?" she asked, mouth full.
"Nothing," I said, propping my chin on my hand. "Just... checking the mix."
"Mix is good," she said, swallowing. "Mix is solid."
She put the fork down. The silence at the table shifted. It went from hungry to heavy.
"So," Zia said. She looked at her hands. "That happened."
"It did," Kit said, putting down his mug. "Option B."
"Option B," she repeated. She traced the grain of the wood table. "I didn't run."
"You didn't run," I confirmed gently. "You stayed. You opened the door. You let us in."
"I know." She looked up. Her eyes were clear, the neon citrus haze of the heat gone, replaced by the sharp, analytical intelligence of the producer. "And I remember everything. Every minute. I remember begging. I remember you stopping when I asked. I remember... I remember you didn't bite."
I flinched. My hand went to my own neck, rubbing the phantom ache. "We wanted to. God, Z, I wanted to bite you so bad my teeth hurt."
"But you didn't," she said. "Because I asked for lucidity."
"Promise holds," Euan said simply. "Even under duress."
She nodded slowly. She looked at the three of us.
"You kept the promise," she whispered. "You proved the thesis."
"Which thesis?" Kit asked.
"That credit is care," she said. "You credited me with agency. Even when I was out of my mind."
She stood up. The chair scraped against the floor.
She walked around the table. She stopped behind me first. She wrapped her arms around my neck from behind, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of my head.
"Alfie," she murmured. "You gave me the noise."
She moved to Euan. She touched his shoulder, her fingers digging into the muscle.
"Euan. You gave me the structure."
She moved to Kit. She sat on his lap, leaning back against his chest as he instinctively wrapped his arms around her.
"Kit. You gave me the ground."
She looked at us from the safety of Kit’s arms.
"I'm not leaving," she said. "I signed the papers. I put the Exit Card in the drawer. It stays in the drawer."
I felt a grin splitting my face, wide and aching.
"The Claim," she said.
The room stopped breathing.
"You want... to claim us?" Kit rumbled, his voice vibrating through her.
"No," she said. "I want you to claim me."
My heart hammered a frantic drum solo against my ribs. "Zia?"
"I want the marks," she said, her voice steady. "I want the bite. I want it done properly. Not in a heat haze. Not because biology forced your hand."
She stood up from Kit’s lap. She walked to the center of the kitchen. She pulled the collar of the hoodie down, exposing the smooth, pale skin of her neck, right over the scent gland.
"I want to choose it," she said. "Lucid. Awake. Coffee in my system."
She looked at me. Then Euan. Then Kit.
"I want all of you. I want the triple mark. I want to look in the mirror and see the map of this pack on my skin."
I stood up. The chair fell over behind me. I didn't care.
"Are you sure?" I asked, my voice trembling. "Fox, that’s... that’s permanent. That’s forever."
"I know," she said. She smiled, and it was terrifying and beautiful. "Review the tape, Alfie. I don't do demo tracks. I only print the final mix."
"Zia," Kit said, standing up and moving toward her. "If we do this... we're locking the door. There's no undo button."
"I don't want an undo button," she said. "I want a Save button."
She held out her hand. "Come here," she commanded. "And finish the job."
I didn't walk. I ran.
I crashed into her, burying my face in her neck, inhaling the scent that belonged to me, to us, to the music we made in the dark.
"Copy that," I whispered against her skin. "Loud and clear."