31. Caroline #2
My mom. The woman who raised me alone, who taught me my first spells, who has always supported me no matter what. She doesn’t know about the heat. She doesn’t know about any of this. And I don’t know how to tell her.
I set the tea down on the side table. My hands are shaking, and it has nothing to do with the temperature in the room.
“I need a minute,” I say.
The words come out flat. Emptier than I intend. All three of them look at me, and I can see the concern on their faces—different flavors of it, but the same basic ingredient.
“That’s okay,” Damon says.
“You don’t have to explain anything,” Griffin adds.
Silas leans forward, his forearms on his thighs. “You might feel a drop in your system. The heat produces a chemical high—endorphins, oxytocin, a few other things. When it ends, those levels crash. It’s normal to feel… hollow. Or sad. Or confused.”
“I know.” I do know. June explained it to me years ago, back when my heats were still unpredictable and terrifying. “It doesn’t make it suck less.”
“No. It doesn’t.” Silas stands. “I made some potions for you. They’re in the kitchen. One for the cramping, one for the emotional drop, one for sleep if you need it. They’re labeled.”
“You made potions?”
“Part of the training.” A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “Turns out I’m actually useful for something other than playing at the Council’s bidding.”
The self-deprecation in his tone makes my chest ache. I reach out and touch his hand as he passes. He stops, looks down at my fingers on his wrist, and then covers my hand with his other palm.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You don’t need to thank me.” He squeezes my hand once and then disappears into the kitchen.
Damon is watching me. His gaze is warm, the same look he gave me the night of the storm when he cupped my face and promised to find Thistle. Protective. Steadfast.
“Amara called too,” Damon says. “She got back to town yesterday and started asking questions because you weren’t answering your phone. I told her you were safe, but I promised I'd let her know as soon as you were up for visitors.”
“Damon.”
“Yeah?”
“I need Amara.”
He nods. No hesitation, no questions, no awkwardness. Just understanding.
“I’ll get her,” he says. “She’s been waiting for me to say you were ready.”
He stands, grabs his phone from the coffee table, and steps onto the back porch. Through the glass, I can see him pacing, the phone pressed to his ear, his free hand running through his hair.
Griffin shifts beside me. His arm slides around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. I lean into him without thinking, my face pressing against his chest.
Thistle jumps back onto the armchair and curls into a ball, his tail wrapping around his nose. The fire crackles in the hearth. Silas clatters around in the kitchen, and somewhere outside, Damon is bringing my best friend to me.
All at once, the hollowness in my chest doesn’t feel quite so big.
The back door opens, and I hear Amara before I see her.
“Where is she?”
“Living room. Easy—”
She rounds the corner, and the first thing I notice is that she’s in pajama pants and a rain jacket, her hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head. No makeup. She must have thrown clothes on the second Damon called.
Her eyes find me on the couch, and she stops dead.
“Oh, Caroline.”
She crosses the room in three strides and drops to her knees in front of me. Her hands find my face, tilting it left, then right, her eyes scanning every inch of my skin. I know what she’s looking for—the marks.
They’re visible even in Damon’s flannel. A bruise peeking above the collar. A bite mark on my wrist that I don’t remember getting.
“I’m okay,” I say.
“You don’t look okay. You look like you got mauled by a pack of wolves.”
“Close enough.”
She pulls me into a hug, and I sink into it. Amara’s hugs are legendary—full-body, bone-crushing things that make you feel like everything’s going to be alright even when it’s not. I wrap my arms around her and hold on.
“I was so worried,” she says into my hair.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
She pulls back, her hands on my shoulders. “You went into heat.”
It’s not a question.
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t call me.”
“I didn’t know it was happening. It came on fast. The storm, Thistle running away—it just hit me out of nowhere.”
“Okay. That part I get. Unprecedented heat, stressful situation, your body does what your body does.” She pauses. “But you didn’t call me after. Four days, Caroline. You were in heat for four days, and you didn’t call me once.”
“I couldn’t. I wasn’t—I wasn’t in a state to make phone calls.”
“Then one of them could have called me. One of them—” She stops. Her gaze moves to Griffin on the couch beside me, then to the kitchen where Silas is still clattering around, then to the back door where Damon is re-entering. “All three of them were here?”
“Yeah.”
“All three of them.”
“Yeah.”
“For four days.”
“Amara—”
She holds up a hand. “I need a minute.”
She stands, paces to the window, presses her forehead against the glass, and stands there. The silence stretches.
Griffin’s hand finds mine on the couch cushion, his thumb tracing absent patterns on my knuckles. Damon leans against the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed, waiting. Silas has gone quiet in the other room.
“Can you guys give me a minute? I know you’re all territorial and shit right now, but I dropped everything the second Damon told me she was ready for visitors. So, please.”
The guys heed my friend’s request and make themselves scarce.
“You fucked Damon,” Amara says without turning around.
“Yeah.”
“My cousin Damon.”
“Yeah.”
She turns around. Her expression is complicated—surprised, confused, maybe a little amused underneath it all. “How long has that been going on?”
“It hasn’t. It just… happened.”
“So you just, what? Fell into bed with him?”
“I didn’t fall into bed with anyone. My body made decisions for me, and I went along with them.”
She swallows as she watches me. “Is this the first time? Have you two been dating and hiding it from me?”
Fuck. “No. I swear we weren’t. The first time—”
“The first time?” She cuts me off. “So this isn’t the first time?”
I can’t have her be mad at me right now. I can barely make sense of my emotions. I feel all frizzy. “Please let me explain. The first time was a fluke. I was in heat when he came to check on me after the Rift flare. It kind of sort of just happened. And then we agreed to never talk about it again.”
It was more like he regretted it, but I don’t want to come between her and her cousin. She would be pissed if she knew.
“So? Then this is the second time you guys hooked up?”
I nod.
“And Griffin?”
“Griffin is… Griffin. We have history.”
“Right.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “And the Council guy? Silas?”
“We met at the apothecary. There was something there, and then the heat happened, and—”
“And you decided to add him to the roster?”
“It wasn’t a decision. It was a… a culmination.”
“A culmination.” She says the word like she’s tasting it. “Caroline. Do you hear yourself right now?”
“Yeah, I do. And I know how it sounds. I know how it looks. But I’m telling you, it didn’t feel wrong. It felt like the only thing that could have happened.”
Amara stares at me for a long moment. Then she walks to the armchair, pushes Thistle off—he meows in indignation—and sits down, pulling her knees up to her chest.
“Start from the beginning,” she says. “And don’t leave anything out.”
So I tell her. Everything. The night Thistle ran away, finding Damon and Silas on the road, the heat hitting me like a freight train.
Griffin showing up, the four of us in my living room, the way Silas stayed behind while the others searched for my cat.
The song he sang. The things he told me about the Council, about his mother, about the way he’s starting to question everything he’s been taught.
I tell her about the kiss. About the heat. I tell her about the truce in the kitchen, about the four days that blurred together into something that felt less like sex and more like survival.
When I finish, the room is quiet. Amara hasn’t moved from the armchair, but I know her well enough to see the wheels turning behind her eyes.
“So you like them,” she says. Not a question.
“I like them.”
“All three of them.”
“Yeah.”
“Not just the sex.”
“No. Not just the sex.”