Valek
Getting the fuck out of here would be the rational move, and I'm nothing if not rational.
The encounter is concluded. Data has been gathered—or whatever absurd justification Plague is still clinging to—and the appropriate next step is to extract myself from this bed, return to my room, and resume the carefully maintained distance that has kept me alive and functional until now.
Instead, I'm pinned.
Whiskey's arm is draped across Plague's back, and Plague is sprawled across Whiskey's chest, and somehow in the post-orgasmic rearrangement of limbs, my body decided to curl around Plague like a fucking house cat.
My chin is resting on his shoulder.
I don't remember putting it there.
Plague's breathing has gone slow and even, his lean frame rising and falling against Whiskey's broader one.
He's not asleep—I can tell from the micro-tension in his jaw—but he's not moving either.
His hand rests perfectly still on Whiskey's sternum, fingers splayed over the thudding heartbeat beneath.
Whiskey shifts. The arm that isn't pinned under Plague stretches out and flops over my waist.
I go rigid.
"Relax," he grumbles. "I'm not groping you. My arm's asleep."
"Move it."
He moves it. But his chest vibrates with a low chuckle. The movement jostles Plague, who makes a discontented sound and burrows deeper into the hollow of Whiskey's neck.
I watch him do it. The way his fingers curl into Whiskey's flannel without conscious thought, seeking something his mouth would never admit to wanting.
A tell.
In chess, that kind of involuntary movement loses you the game.
He'd kill me if he knew I was thinking about it. The thought makes me laugh quietly to myself. As if sensing it, Plague's light iris flicks angrily to me from beneath his dark lashes.
"You passed the test, by the way," Whiskey says, because he's physically incapable of not speaking.
I lift my chin off Plague's shoulder. "What test?"
"Plague's test."
"His data collection?" I ask dryly. "It's a wonder I could come at all with the way he acts."
Plague rolls off Whiskey's chest and onto his back between us, staring at the ceiling. His expression could turn concrete into curdled milk.
"I hate you both," he says.
"He's just embarrassed," Whiskey stage-whispers to me. "He doesn't hate us."
Plague tries to elbow Whiskey in the gut but can't from this angle. His elbow jabs uselessly into the air like a wasp trying and failing to sting. Whiskey wraps around him and squeezes him hard enough to choke the air out of him, rendering the elbow-jabs useless.
I snort.
He curses at me in muttered Arabic like he's forgotten I can understand everything he says.
"Regardless," I continue, watching Plague struggling half-heartedly in Whiskey's arms while trying not to melt against him, "the evaluation isn't yours to pass or fail. It's Ivy's."
Whiskey props himself up on one elbow, pulling Plague with him easily. "Yeah, well. She already decided. But that doesn't mean we won't kick your ass if you fuck up."
I don't change my expression. Don't shift my posture or do anything, really, except let the mask I wear for the rest of the world slip half an inch. Enough to show him the thing that lives underneath.
"You will?" I ask. "Like you did in Canada?"
Whiskey's grin falters.
"Yeah. Like in Canada," he croaks. "You know, you don't have to be that fuckin' menacing.
I'm trying to have a moment here. Six months ago I was single, pissed off, and eating nachos at two AM.
Now I've got a scent-matched omega upstairs, a pack full of feral idiots, and I just sucked off the prettiest alpha in the league while a Russian—"
"Canadian."
"—while a suspiciously evasive alpha watched and took a selfie. My life is a goddamn fever dream. Are you ever gonna tell us the truth? About who you are?"
"Before I tell Ivy?" I ask. "No."
I've kept secrets from people who held knives to my throat. Kept them through blood and silence and years of practice. But the idea of telling her the truth about me makes me ill.
She accepts the truth of what Wraith is.
But Wraith is kind and good beneath the feral rage and… everything else.
Beneath my exterior lies only rot.
Whiskey's already arguing. "Not even after we—"
"Don't," I warn him.
Plague's mouth twitches, clearly fighting back a smile. Or a smirk.
Perhaps it's the same for him.
"You're a mystery yourself," I remind him, tilting my head to look at him. "There's hardly anything about you online. A ghost among the Ghosts."
"Yeah, well, he's my mystery," Whiskey says, squeezing Plague hard enough to elicit a choking sound from the smaller alpha. "He can be as mysterious as he wants."
"Cute," I say flatly.
Plague glowers at him. "I don't need you to look out for me."
I feel my own lips tugging into a grin that's far less malicious than Whiskey deserves. "Then it's settled. When I tell Ivy everything, if she still wants to accept me into the pack, I'll tell you the truth, too. But Plague is going first."
Whiskey shrugs. "Fair."
Now Plague is glowering at both of us. "I didn't agree to that."
The silence stretches for exactly four seconds before Whiskey fills it.
"Too bad. You're outvoted."
"This isn't a democracy."
"It's literally a pack. That's the definition of a democracy."
"No, it isn't," Plague and I say at the same time.
We look at each other.
Look away.
Whiskey's grin threatens to split his face in half. "See? You're already finishing each other's sentences. That's a pack bond, baby."
"Call me baby again and I will—"
"PACK BONDING!" Whiskey announces, flinging both arms around Plague and me simultaneously and crushing us together.
My face is pressed into Whiskey's collarbone.
Plague's elbow is digging into my ribs.
"This is assault," I snarl into his neck.
"This is cuddling."
"I don't fucking cuddle."
"You do now, bro!"
I shove him off, but not as much as I should.
Whiskey flops back against the pillows with a satisfied grunt, one arm still hooked loosely around Plague, who has given up the pretense of resistance entirely and is lying there with his eyes closed.
My phone vibrates somewhere in the blankets.
I fish it out.
IVY
That picture is now my lockscreen
Goodnight boys
Like the three of us all belong to her. Like I've been hers this entire time, part of the package despite everything, and I'm the last one to figure it out.
I stare at the message for longer than I have any right to.
Whiskey cranes his neck to read it. "She put us as her lockscreen? Bro. Bro."
"I'll change it when she isn't looking," Plague grumbles, half-asleep. Clearly doesn't care enough to drag himself out of the… cuddle pile.
I don't, either.
It's warm. The rumbling purrs starting up in Whiskey's chest vibrate through all three of us. The only other sounds are the quiet tick of Plague's alarm clock and the soft musical sound of Ivy giggling somewhere up in the loft above us.
Whiskey's arm tightens around Plague, and his arm ends up flopped across my waist again. He's already snoring, and Plague's breathing has evened out, too. If he's not already asleep, he will be soon.
I could, and should, move. But this time, I let it happen.
Because I don't actually hate this.
And that's the worst part.