The Lion’s Light (Golden Pride #3)

Chapter 1

Robin

The apartment looks wrong empty.

Not bad-wrong. Just wrong the way a face looks without eyebrows — technically fine, deeply unsettling, impossible to stop staring at.

Toby's bookshelves left ghost rectangles on the walls where the paint didn't fade.

The couch is gone. The coffee table with the ring stains from four years of mugs neither of us ever used coasters for.

The hook by the door where Toby hung his library lanyard every night like a responsible adult while I kicked my shoes into a pile and called it a system.

I'm standing in the living room holding a roll of packing tape and trying to decide if I'm sad or just dramatic.

Both. Definitely both.

My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. I grab it hoping for Toby — he's running a senior reading program at the library and promised to call on his lunch break — but it's Gordon.

Menu change for Thursday. Client wants gluten-free options for ALL desserts. Not some. ALL. Handle it.

No hello. No "hey Robin, sorry to bother you on your day off." Just orders delivered like I'm a piece of kitchen equipment that happens to have a phone number.

I type back: Got it. I'll rework the tart bases and swap the puff pastry for an almond flour shell. Should be seamless.

Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.

Don't get creative. Just make them edible.

I stare at the screen for a long moment, then put my phone face-down on the counter. "Go fuck yourself, Gordon," I say to the empty apartment, because the walls can't report me to HR.

Not that Gordon's company has HR. Gordon's company has Gordon, his wife who does the books, and eleven kitchen staff who've learned that "feedback" means getting screamed at in front of clients. I've been there for years. I could do his job blindfolded. He knows it. That's probably why he hates me.

But today isn't about Gordon. Today is about boxes and moving trucks and starting over at my brother's house.

I tape the last box — KITCHEN: DO NOT DROP OR I WILL END YOU written in Sharpie across all four sides — and add it to the stack by the door.

The truck's been sitting outside for two hours while I wandered through rooms that used to be ours, touching walls and door frames like a weirdo.

Toby's at work. Ash isn't answering his phone, probably at the range shooting things to deal with feelings like a normal person.

I try Ash one more time. Voicemail.

"Ashley Martinez," I say sweetly. "Your baby brother is moving into your house today, which you know because you invited me, and you are currently unreachable, which means you're either dead or ignoring me.

If you're dead I'm selling your bikes. If you're ignoring me I'm rearranging your garage. Either way you should be afraid."

I hang up and call the bar.

"Yeah?" Vaughn's voice, gruff as always. Like the phone personally offended him by ringing.

"Hi handsome, it's Robin. I need a huge favor."

Silence. I can practically hear him deciding whether to hang up. Then: "What kind of favor?"

"The kind where I have a bunch of boxes and no way to get them into Ash's house because my brother is being emotionally unavailable and ignoring his phone."

"You need help moving."

"I need some strong lions to lift heavy things while I watch and make encouraging noises."

He sighs. It's a good sigh — put-upon, resigned, not actually annoyed. I've learned to read Vaughn's sighs the way sommeliers read wine. This one means yes but I want you to know I'm suffering.

"We'll be there in ten."

"You're an angel, Vaughn. A grumpy, gorgeous angel."

He hangs up on me, which is honestly fair.

I use the ten minutes to check my hair twice, change into a tighter shirt, and then change back because I'm not trying to impress anyone. I'm moving. People wear old clothes to move. The fact that this particular old shirt makes my arms look incredible is coincidental.

Twelve minutes later — I counted — three motorcycles pull up outside.

The engines cut one by one, and through the window I watch them swing off their bikes like they choreographed it.

Vaughn first, all broad shoulders and a jaw that could open letters.

Silas next, quiet and huge, already scanning the truck like he's calculating load distribution.

Ezra last, stretching his arms overhead and yawning like he was napping five minutes ago, which he probably was.

"Robin." Vaughn's already assessing the truck with that thing he does — eyes moving in a grid pattern, cataloging, organizing. Same way he looks at an engine before he takes it apart. "How much of this is actually necessary?"

"All of it is necessary. My stand mixer alone is worth your monthly salary."

"Doubtful," Ezra says, but he's already grabbing boxes. "Which ones are fragile?"

"The ones marked fragile."

"They're all marked fragile."

"Then be careful with all of them."

Silas just starts lifting, two boxes at a time, muscles doing absolutely obscene things under his t-shirt. I take a moment to appreciate the view because I'm alive and I have eyes and also I'm a slut for competent men doing physical labor. Sue me.

"You going to help or just stare?" Vaughn asks.

"I'm supervising. Very important job." I hold up the pitcher I'd stashed in the fridge. "Also, I made lemonade."

"Of course you did."

Ash's house is only ten minutes away. There's a vegetable garden in the back that Jason started, tomato cages leaning optimistically toward the sun.

A welcome mat that says LEAVE that Ash thinks is hilarious.

The porch has two chairs now — there used to be one, and then Jason showed up and suddenly everything in Ash's life came in pairs. I love it for them both.

It takes us three trips to move everything.

The lions work with brutal efficiency, communicating in half-sentences and head nods, a system built from years of working the garage together.

Vaughn coordinates without raising his voice.

Points, nods, shifts his chin toward a room, and the other two just know.

Silas takes the heavy stuff — my books, my cast iron, the truly irresponsible amount of ceramic bakeware I own — and moves through the house like he memorized the floor plan on the first trip.

Ezra handles the awkward shapes, the lamp with the wobbly base and the garment bag full of chef's jackets and the framed photo of me at culinary school graduation that he holds up with a grin and says, "Cute hat. "

"It's called a toque and it cost two hundred dollars and I looked amazing in it."

"You look twelve."

"I was twenty-one and gorgeous, thank you very much."

I have to actively resist the urge to disrupt their rhythm just to see them flustered.

"Kitchen boxes in the kitchen," Vaughn directs, because apparently he's assigned himself foreman. "Bedroom stuff upstairs. Anything unmarked goes in the living room until Robin sorts it."

"Bossy," I observe, leaning against the truck. "I like it."

He gives me a look that should be illegal. "Where does this go?" He's holding a box I definitely should have labeled.

"That's my bedroom box. Very delicate. Full of extremely personal items."

Ezra picks it up, shakes it. "Sounds like books."

"Very personal books."

"Porn?" Silas asks, so deadpan I genuinely can't tell if he's joking.

"Romance novels, actually. Same thing but with better plots."

Vaughn makes a choking sound. His ears go red. I file that away for later — Vaughn's ears are an absolute tell, and I am a card counter by nature.

In the kitchen, I pour lemonade with strawberries I sliced this morning and fresh mint from the plant Toby gave me as a moving present. The lions drink gratefully, lined up against Ash's kitchen counter like the world's most dangerous juice commercial.

"This is good," Silas says, sounding surprised.

"I'm a pastry chef. Beverages are well within my skill set." I lean against the opposite counter, aware that my shirt rides up when I do. Not performing. Just... aware. "It's the fresh mint that makes it."

"You put mint in lemonade?" Ezra sounds genuinely interested.

"Among other things. I could teach you. Private lessons."

"Robin," Vaughn warns.

"What? I'm being friendly. Neighborly. Grateful."

"You're being a menace."

"That too."

Silas finishes his glass and goes back for more boxes without being asked. He's careful with everything I marked fragile, quiet and thorough, and there's something sweet about how he doesn't rise to my flirting. Ezra gives as good as he gets — "So these romance novels. Any with lions?"

"Hundreds. Very educational about anatomy." — and somewhere behind us Vaughn drops a box.

"You okay there, big guy?" I ask innocently.

"Fine," he grits out, but his ears are crimson and his hands are gripping the box hard enough to dent the cardboard.

Here's the thing about flirting: I'm good at it the way Vaughn is good at engines.

It's instinct. Muscle memory. I flirt with baristas and old ladies at the grocery store and the mail carrier who always lingers a little too long at our old mailbox.

It's armor and it's currency and it's the only language I've ever been fluent in.

But when Vaughn's ears go red, when his grip tightens and his jaw flexes and he looks at me like I'm a problem he can't solve, something underneath the performance sits up and pays attention. I flirt with everyone. With Vaughn, I mean it.

Which is exactly why I flirt harder, louder, with everyone else in the room.

By the time we're done, my bedroom at Ash's is stacked with boxes and possibility. The lions are sweaty and slightly irritated and devastatingly attractive, and I'm standing in the middle of it all feeling grateful in a way I don't entirely know how to express.

"Thank you," I say, and I mean it. "I owe you all dinner. Or dessert. Or whatever meal you prefer."

"It's fine," Vaughn says. "We help pack."

"I'm pack-adjacent at best."

"You're Toby's family. Jason's family." Silas says it simply, like stating the weather. "That makes you pack."

The warmth that hits me is stupid and inconvenient and I absolutely refuse to examine it. "Well then, as pack, you're obligated to let me feed you. This weekend. I'll make something incredible."

"We'll see," Vaughn hedges.

"We would love that," Ezra corrects. "Vaughn's just worried you'll flirt more."

"He should be worried. I'm very good at it."

"We noticed," Silas says dryly, and when did the quiet one get funny?

They leave on their bikes, engines rattling the windows of Ash's quiet street.

I stand in the kitchen surrounded by boxes that need unpacking and a fridge that's empty except for the leftover lemonade, and I feel — something.

Not sad, exactly. Not happy either. Just aware that my life is rearranging itself around me, and I'm not entirely in control of the shape it's taking.

Everyone's pairing off. Knox has Toby. Ash has Jason.

Even Silas seems content in his corner with his books and his quiet.

And here I am, moving into my big brother's spare bedroom with my stand mixer and my romance novels and a truly mortifying attraction to a man who communicates exclusively in monosyllables and disapproving looks.

I unpack my knives first. Then my baking pans. Then the box of spices that Ash will absolutely reorganize by morning.

My phone buzzes. Toby: How's the move? Did Ash help?

Ash was MIA. Called the bar. Vaughn, Silas, and Ezra came instead. I was SURROUNDED by hot lions and it was a CRISIS.

Toby: A crisis how?

I start to type something flirty and deflecting. Delete it. Try again.

I miss you. The apartment looked weird empty.

Toby: Miss you too. But you're going to be great there. Ash needs you.

Ash has Jason. Ash is FINE.

Ash finally decides to text me back: Was at the range. Sorry. How was the move?

Three hot men carried my boxes. Your brother is thriving.

I put my phone down and start unpacking the kitchen, slotting my pans into Ash's cabinets like puzzle pieces, my baking sheets beside his cast iron, my stand mixer claiming the corner of the counter like it owns the place.

By the time I'm done, the kitchen looks less like Ash's and more like ours, and that feels like something worth holding onto.

Upstairs, my room is small but clean. White walls, a window overlooking the backyard, a closet that's twice the size of my old one.

I make the bed with sheets that still smell like my fabric softener — vanilla and cedar, because I have taste — and sit on the edge of it, alone in a room that doesn't feel like mine yet.