Chapter 13 Mira
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Mira
Rain drummed against familiar windows.
It was my previous apartment above the bookshop, the one that didn’t exist anymore. Candles burned on every surface because the power had gone out hours ago, and I thought there were three other people in my place.
Solomon sat beside me on the couch. His arm stretched along the back of it, not touching me, but close enough that I felt the warmth radiating off his skin through the thin gap between us.
I turned to him. “You’re a giant teddy bear. You know that, right?”
His chest rumbled close to a laugh.
“Big, scary, terrifying giant teddy bear.” I shifted closer and wrapped my arms around his torso, pressing my cheek against his chest. His heartbeat thudded against my ear, slower than any human’s should.
He was so warm. Impossibly warm, heat bleeding through his shirt into my skin.
Solomon’s hand landed on my back. One palm, tentative. Then his fingers spread across my spine and pulled me closer.
I tilted my head up to see his face. Candlelight caught the scar. It started from his temple down to his jaw, turning his pale silver eyes into liquid mercury. He looked at me in a way that cracked my ribs open and poured warmth into places I’d forgotten existed.
I poked his cheek. Just to see what he’d do.
His hand caught mine. Fingers wrapped around my wrist with a gentleness that shouldn’t have been possible from hands that big. He lifted my knuckles to his mouth and pressed his lips against them.
Soft, deliberate. A gesture from another century, from a man who was, apparently, a different creature.
My breath caught and my eyes tracked his mouth as it brushed across my skin, the barely-there pressure sending sparks racing up my arm and pooling low in my stomach.
His gaze held mine and my hand stayed in his. We slowly leaned toward each other.
His eyes dropped to my mouth, and the space between us shrank to inches, to nothing, to...
My eyes flew open.
The ceiling of my bedroom at the cabin stared back at me, and for one disorienting second, both realities existed at once. Solomon’s warmth against my chest. The cold pillow beneath my head. Candlelight. Morning gray.
Then the present won, and I was alone in a bed that felt too big.
Rain drummed against my window.
Real rain. The same rhythm as the dream. Yesterday was a sunny day so I was surprised it was raining.
I turned my head and watched the droplets race down the glass, pulse still running too fast, skin still tingling where his lips had pressed against my knuckles.
That wasn’t just a dream. That was a memory. Another fragment from my forgotten week, surfacing in my sleep.
We almost…
I pressed my face into the pillow and screamed into the cotton. Because apparently my past self had zero chill and my present self was going to have to deal with the consequences.
After a shower and several minutes of aggressive self-talk about emotional composure, I pulled on leggings and an oversized cardigan and headed downstairs.
The living room stopped me on the last step.
Solomon stood over Percy with a log raised above his head, gripping it with both hands, winding up for a full swing.
Percy sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, chin tilted upward, eyes closed, bracing for impact with the calm acceptance of a man who’d made peace with his choices.
What the hell are they doing this time?
“Is this some kind of lycan tradition too?”
Both heads snapped toward me.
My gaze dropped to the coffee table. A chess set sat between them, mid-game, half the pieces scattered off the board and onto the rug. One rook appeared to have been thrown into the fireplace.
Solomon spoke first. “He asked for it.”
I pulled the cardigan tighter. The rain had turned the cabin cold, and the fireplace crackled behind them, filling the room with the smell of burning pine. I raised an eyebrow.
Solomon sighed and sat down. He set the log on the floor beside the couch and leaned back, crossing his arms.
“I told him to stop challenging me over chess because he never wins, but he insists he’s figured out how to beat me now. I called him hard-headed. He bet he could take a hit on the head since he’s hard-headed anyway.” Solomon’s delivery stayed perfectly flat. “So I’m going to hit him.”
I stared at them. Mouth open. No words available.
Percy grinned from the floor. “I can actually take it. Lycan skull.”
Oh these doofuses couldn’t be left alone even for a minute.
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” I crossed to the couch and dropped onto the cushion beside Solomon, tucking my legs beneath me. “And I dated a man who once tried to open a beer bottle with his teeth and broke three of them.”
Percy’s grin stretched wider. “Did it work?”
“Not the point.” I gestured at the log. “Put that in the fireplace where it belongs.”
Solomon set the log down obediently with the silent protest of a man who’d been denied a perfectly reasonable request. Percy collected the scattered chess pieces off the rug, replacing them on the board in what I was fairly certain were not their original positions, and settled into the armchair across from us.
He draped one leg over the armrest and crossed his arms behind his head.
“You’re childish,” I told them both. Despite the fondness bleeding through my voice that I didn’t bother hiding.
These men, these supposedly magical slash allegedly supernatural men, fought over chess and threatened each other with firewood. My life had become absurd in ways I hadn’t prepared for.
“Well, in my defense, I am the youngest,” Percy said.
“Really?” I glanced between them. “How old are you?”
“Just over two hundred years old.” He shrugged. The way someone might say twenty-six.
I blinked. Paused, blink again. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Way to drop that on me.” I turned to Solomon. “If two hundred is the youngest, how old are you?”
“Almost five hundred. In less than a decade.”
My mouth dropped open. I closed it and opened it again. My brain attempted to process a number that large attached to a man who looked thirty and blushed when I kissed his cheek.
“Lucian is the oldest,” Percy added, studying the ceiling as if he’s just announcing the weather. “Just turned five hundred recently.”
I massaged my temples with both hands and squeezed my eyes shut. “I did say I preferred older guys, but not this old.”
“We’re actually middle-aged for lycans,” Solomon said. Matter-of-fact, no trace of humor. “Percy is the equivalent of someone in his late twenties.”
I dropped my hands and stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
Genuine confusion crossed his features. His brow furrowed at my sarcasm, completely unable to register it, and the earnestness on his face sent a burst of warmth through my chest that I was not equipped to handle at this hour.
“No. It’s true.”
I laughed.
Not because it was funny but because Solomon delivered supernatural revelations so seriously, and his complete inability to detect sarcasm was such an endearing thing.
Percy leaned forward in the armchair. “You should see when Lucian first tried to use a smartphone. He types with one finger.”
“He does not.”
“Ask him.” Percy’s dimples deepened. “He also Googled ‘how to make a human woman like you’ two weeks after we found your shop. Solomon caught him and he closed the laptop so fast he cracked the screen.”
My jaw dropped. I looked at Solomon for confirmation because this fool might be making it up.
Solomon’s expression didn’t change, but his mouth twitched. “I replaced the screen. He doesn’t know I saw.”
A laugh tore out of me so hard my ribs ached.
The image of Lucian Valdris, five-hundred-year-old lycan, hunched over a laptop Googling dating advice while trying to hide them, was the single greatest mental image my brain had ever produced.
Suddenly, a stomach growled. Loud, breaking through the laughter.
“Oops, that’s me.” Percy patted his abdomen and stood. “Just gonna eat. You guys want anything?”
We both said no. Percy disappeared into the kitchen, calling over his shoulder that he’d search the fridge, order, or cook. Whichever inspiration struck.
God help us if it was the third option.
Quiet settled over the living room.
The fire crackled. Rain streaked down the windows, blurring the forest into a watercolor.
I watched the flames dance and let the warmth sink into my bones while the dream pushed to the surface again.
Solomon’s chest beneath my cheek. His lips on my knuckles.
The rain outside, identical to the rain falling now.
“I remembered being in this situation,” I said. Softer than I planned.
Solomon turned his head. Those pale silver eyes found mine, and the guarded stillness that usually lived in his expression cracked open.
“The rain,” I continued. “A power outage. Me calling you a...”
“Giant teddy bear.” He finished the sentence. His voice dropped low.
My chest squeezed. He remembered. Of course he remembered. He’d been carrying those memories for weeks while I stumbled around catching fragments I couldn’t stitch together.
“Well, you are.” I smiled and reached out to poke his cheek.
His hand caught mine. Same motion as the memory. Fingers wrapping around my wrist, warm, solid, holding me in place. We stayed there, his hand around mine, my finger still pressed against his cheekbone, and everything else fell away.
The cold from the rain disappeared. His thumb found my pulse point and pressed against it, and the contact sent heat racing up my arm.
My thighs pressed together on instinct, a reaction so immediate and involuntary that I prayed he didn’t notice.
Based on the way his nostrils flared, he absolutely noticed.
My breathing shortened. His body radiated warmth even through the gap between us, and I became aware of how close we were on this couch, how his knee pressed against mine, how the firelight turned the scar on his jaw into a line of gold.