30. Griffin
Spell of Calm Breath:
Count seven in, hold three, exhale nine. Peace follows the rhythm.
She’s asleep between us.
Her cheek is pressed against my chest, her breath warm and even against my skin. One arm is draped over my stomach, her fingers curled loosely against my side.
Silas is behind her, his arm wrapped around her waist, his face buried in her hair. Damon’s back is to us, his breathing deep and measured.
I should be exhausted. I am exhausted. But I can’t sleep.
I can’t do anything except watch her.
The firelight plays across her face, catching the dried tear tracks on her cheeks, the faint bruises on her jaw where Silas’s grip had been too tight.
Her lips are swollen, parted. A mark blooms on the curve of her neck—Damon’s doing, I think.
Or maybe Silas’s. Hard to tell now. We all left our share.
She looks different like this. Softer. The tension she carries in her shoulders during the day, the careful way she holds herself at the apothecary, the guarded smiles she gives customers—all of it is gone.
She’s just Caroline. The girl I fell in love with when we were teenagers and stupid enough to think love was simple.
I remember the first time. Of course I do. It’s burned into my brain like a brand.
We were in my truck, parked out past the old mill. I’d been driving her home from Amara’s birthday party, and she’d kissed me at a stop sign. Just grabbed my face and kissed me like she’d been waiting her whole life to do it.
I nearly drove off the road.
We didn’t make it to her house. I pulled off onto the gravel road by the mill, killed the engine, and we scrambled into the back seat.
We were both shaking. Neither of us knew what we were doing.
I fumbled with her bra for what felt like an eternity before she reached back and unclasped it herself, laughing at me with that crooked smile I’d been in love with since sophomore year.
“Have you done this before?” she’d asked.
“No. You?”
“No.”
We’d looked at each other for a long moment, and then she’d kissed me again, softer this time, and I’d felt her hand slide down my stomach.
It was awkward and fast and over in about two minutes. I came inside her before I even realized I was close, and I was so mortified I couldn’t look at her. But she’d just laughed again, gave me that same crooked smile, kissed my cheek, and said, “We’ll get better at it.”
And we did. God, we did. Over the next years, we got better at everything. I learned every curve of her body, every spot that made her gasp, every way to make her fall apart. She learned what I liked, how I liked to be touched, the exact pressure that would make me lose my mind.
We were insatiable. We fucked in my truck, in her bed, in the storage room at her parents’ shop, once in the back of the library between the shelves of magical history texts.
Then I left. And everything fell apart.
Now she’s here, with two other men, and I don’t know what any of it means. I just know I can’t let go of her. Not again.
My knot is starting to go down. I can feel the pressure easing, the swelling receding. In a few minutes, I’ll be able to pull out without hurting her. The thought of separating from her, even just physically, makes my chest ache.
Behind Caroline, Silas stirs. His eyes open, and he looks at me over her shoulder. We stare at each other for a long moment. There’s no hostility in his gaze, not anymore. Just a quiet acknowledgment of something neither of us has words for.
“She’s out,” he murmurs.
“Yeah.”
“Knot going down?”
I nod.
“Mine too, earlier. Took about thirty minutes.” He shifts slightly, adjusting his position. “The books say it varies depending on the intensity of the heat.”
“You read books about this?”
“Training manuals. Council required.” A pause. “They don’t cover this part.”
“What part?”
“The part where you don’t want to let go.”
I don’t answer. I don’t need to. He already knows.
Damon wakes next, rolling onto his back with a groan. He rubs his face with both hands, then blinks at the ceiling like he’s trying to remember where he is.
“What time is it?” he asks.
“No idea,” I say.
The knot finally releases. I ease out of her slowly, carefully, and she makes a small sound in her sleep but doesn’t wake. A trickle of come follows, sliding down her thigh, and something primal and satisfied purrs in my chest at the sight of it.
Mine. Inside her. Marking her from the inside out.
“We should move her,” Silas says. “The couch isn’t comfortable. She needs a real bed.”
Damon and I agree without argument. I lift her carefully—she weighs almost nothing, all delicate bones and soft skin—and carry her down the hall to her bedroom. The bed is small, a full-size with a faded quilt folded at the foot. Silas pulls back the sheets while Damon and I lay her down.
She curls onto her side, her knees drawing up toward her chest. Her breathing stays even, deep.
“She’ll need a nest,” Silas says. “Something that smells like us. It helps with the between periods.”
“Between periods?”
“The lulls. Heats come in waves. She’ll crash after each one, and when she wakes up, it’ll start again. The nest makes her feel safe. Protected.”
I look at him. “How do you know all this?”
“Like I said. Training manuals.”
Damon is already stripping off his shirt.
He drapes it over the pillow near Caroline’s face, then adds his pants, creating a barrier of fabric around her head.
I do the same with my clothes—my damp shirt, my ruined pants.
Silas contributes his own, and within minutes, we’ve built a makeshift nest of worn cotton and denim, all of it saturated in our scents.
Caroline burrows into it, her face pressing against Damon’s shirt, and sighs.
“Boxers,” Damon says. “We can’t stand around naked in her kitchen.”
We dig through the pile of discarded clothes on the living room floor and find three pairs of boxers—mine, Damon’s, and Silas’s. We pull them on in silence and file into the kitchen.
Thistle is curled up on the counter, his bowl empty, his eyes closed. He opens one when we enter, assesses us, and goes back to sleep.
Damon leans against the counter, arms crossed. Silas opens the fridge and starts pulling out ingredients. I take a seat at the small kitchen table, my body aching in places I didn’t know could ache.
“We need to talk about what this is,” I say.
No one responds right away.
“It was intense,” I continue. “And that was only night one.”
Damon exhales. “I’ve got duties. The storm, the aftermath, the Rift flare. I should be out there right now, coordinating with the deputies, assessing the damage.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I can’t bring myself to fucking care.”
I almost laugh. The irony is too perfect. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”
“What feeling is that?”
“All I can think about is going back to that bed and fucking her again. Not because she’s in heat and I’m an Alpha responding to pheromones. Because she’s Caroline. Because I’ve wanted her back for years, and right now, she’s letting me have her.”
The admission hangs in the air. Damon doesn’t flinch. Silas doesn’t pause in his ingredient-gathering.
“She has food,” Silas says, pulling a container of soup from the fridge. “We need to keep her fed and hydrated. The heat can last up to four days, and she’ll burn through calories fast.”
Four days. My cock twitches at the thought, and I have to shift in my seat to adjust myself.
“Damon, you should call your operator,” Silas continues. “Tell your deputies to handle the storm damage. You’re off the grid for the next few days.”
“I can’t just—”
“You can. You’re the sheriff. You have deputies for a reason.
” Silas sets the soup on the counter and starts rummaging through the cabinets.
“If the Rift flares again or there’s an emergency, they can reach you by phone.
But the day-to-day stuff? The downed power lines, the flooded streets? That’s not you. That’s them.”
Damon’s jaw tightens. I can see him wrestling with the duty he feels to this town versus the pull he feels toward the woman in the next room.
“He’s right,” I say. “I’m off the clock anyway. Rosehill can survive without me for a few days. And right now, she needs all three of us. Not one of us popping in between shifts.”
Damon is quiet for a long moment. Then he pushes off the counter, finds his phone in the living room, and steps onto the back porch. Through the kitchen window, I can see him pacing, the phone pressed to his ear.
Silas pulls a small pot from the cabinet and sets it on the stove. “I can prepare aftercare tea for her. Chamomile, valerian, a few other things. She’ll need a lot of it during the heat period. It helps with the cramping, the exhaustion.”
“You really did study this.”
“Part of envoy training. We’re deployed to areas with high Omega populations. Understanding their biology isn’t optional—it’s tactical.” He pauses, his hand resting on the pot handle. “But I’ve never… I’ve never applied any of it. Not like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the manuals tell you what to expect. The physical signs, the behavioral patterns, the recommended protocols. They don’t tell you what it feels like.
They don’t tell you about the way she looks at you when she’s coming.
They don’t tell you about the sound she makes when you knot her, or the way she clings to you afterward like you’re the only thing keeping her anchored. ”
He turns to face me. His expression is open in a way I haven’t seen before—not the calculated mask of the Council envoy, not the guarded look of a man hiding something. Just Silas. Raw.
“I’ve had a lot of sex, Griffin. Casual and forgettable. This isn’t that. This is something else entirely, and I don’t have a framework for it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me neither.”
Damon comes back inside. He sets his phone on the counter and nods once. “Done. Gallagher is taking over. If anything major comes up, they’ll call.”
“Good.” Silas turns back to the stove. “Then we have a truce.”
“A truce?”
“The three of us. We’re going to be in close quarters for the next several days, sharing a woman who’s in heat.
If we fight over her, if we let our Alpha instincts turn this into a competition, we’ll exhaust her—and worse, we’ll hurt her.
” He pours water into the pot. “So we agree to a truce. We share. We cooperate. We put her needs above our egos. Agreed?”
Damon looks at me. I look at him. There’s still tension there—there will always be tension between two Alphas who want the same woman—but underneath it, there’s something else. Respect, maybe. Or just the shared understanding that neither of us is willing to walk away.
“Agreed,” I say.
“Agreed,” Damon echoes.
Silas nods. “Good. Now help me find the honey. I know she’s got some somewhere.”
The next three days blur together.
It’s not all sex. That’s the thing nobody tells you about Omega heats.
There are lulls—periods where the fever breaks, where she sleeps so deeply we have to check her breathing, where she wakes up disoriented and hungry and embarrassed.
During those lulls, we feed her. Silas makes his tea, and Damon heats cans of soup, and I hold her on my lap while she eats, her fingers curling into my chest like she’s afraid I’ll disappear.
Then the fever comes back.
It starts with a flush on her cheeks, a slight glassiness in her eyes.
Her scent shifts, deepens, thickens until it coats the back of my throat and my cock goes hard without me touching it.
She starts touching us first—her hands sliding over whatever skin is closest, her mouth finding a neck, a chest, a jaw.
“Please,” she whispers, the first time it happens. “I need—I can’t—”
And then we’re on her.
We develop a rhythm. Not planned, not discussed—just organic, instinctive.
When she needs to be fucked, one of us takes her while the others touch her, kiss her, hold her down.
When she needs to be filled, we take turns, one after another, until she’s dripping with come and her thighs are shaking.
When she needs to be held, we wrap around her, three bodies forming a cage of warmth and skin and scent.
The second night, Damon knots her on the floor of her bedroom while Silas fucks her mouth and I stroke myself beside them.
The sight of her—stuffed from both ends, her body jerking with each thrust, her eyes rolled back in her head—is enough to make me come.
I spill over my own fist, watching her choke on Silas’s cock while Damon’s hips lock against hers, his knot swelling inside her.
“Mine,” Damon growls against her throat. “You’re mine, sweetheart.”
She can’t answer—her mouth is full—but she reaches for me, her fingers finding my hand and squeezing. Holding on. Keeping me close.
The third day is the worst. The fever peaks, and nothing we do is enough.
She begs for more, for harder, for deeper, and we give it to her until our bodies are screaming for rest. I fuck her against the wall of her shower, the water streaming over us, her legs wrapped around my waist. I pound into her until my knees buckle, until I have to brace one hand against the tile to stay upright.
When I finally come, my knot barely swells—I’m too drained—but she doesn’t seem to care.
She just clings to me, whimpering, her cunt still clenching around me.
Silas takes her after that. He’s gentler than the rest of us—or maybe just more controlled.
He lays her on the bed and works her open with his fingers first, one, then two, then three, stretching her until she’s writhing.
Then he pushes inside, slow and careful, and rocks into her with a patience I don’t possess.
She comes twice before he does, and when he finally knots her, she sobs his name.
Damon and I watch from the foot of the bed. My cock is hard again, despite everything. Damon is stroking himself slowly, his eyes fixed on Caroline’s face, on the tear tracks sliding down her temples.
By the fourth day, we’re all marked. Bite marks bloom on Caroline’s skin—her neck, her shoulders, her inner thighs, the curve of her breasts.
Some are mine. Some are Damon’s. A few are Silas’s, placed low on her hip where only we’ll ever see them.
The marks have faded from angry red to a deep purple, and every time I look at them, something primal and satisfied purrs in my chest.
We’re scented too. All of us. My skin carries Caroline’s honey-and-cinnamon undernotes mixed with the clean woodsmoke of Damon and the dark spice of Silas.
She’s asleep in the nest again—rebuilt fresh this morning with clean clothes from our overnight bags, because the first one got too soaked through to salvage. Her face is peaceful, her breathing even. The flush has faded from her cheeks. The fever is breaking.
I sit on the edge of the bed, watching her, and I think about that girl in my truck. The one who laughed at me when I fumbled with her bra. The one who said, “We’ll get better at it.”
We did, sweetheart. We really did.