Chapter Twenty-Four
Alex
Alex leans against the kitchen counter, toying with the cup of steaming coffee in his hands. Charlotte was still upstairs sleeping in her nest and none of them have wanted to wake her. She could use her sleep after that heat spike. Especially knowing what it meant. What it heralded.
Her heat.
The possibility of being able to bond with her.
Tomas is standing at the stove, frying eggs with a strangely thoughtful look on his face, while Silas reads emails on his phone at the table, brow furrowed in concentration.
Outside the full-length windows of the kitchen, his eyes catch on the drizzly overcast weather.
Good, he thinks idly, the garden will appreciate a watering, and he wants to show Charlotte their prize-winning rose bushes.
He can't stop thinking about her. Not just the way that her body fits against his, or how he makes her laugh out that sweet little giggle even when he can tell she's trying to hold it back. Not even the way she melts between them in bed, how she so readily yields and submits to them.
It’s the way she lingers in the back of his mind, even when he's supposed to be working. It’s the way all three of them look for her, even when they pretend they’re not. The way they can finally get some restful sleep now that she's under their roof.
He can’t do this halfway any longer. He wants her. All of her.
He clears his throat, setting the mug down with a click. "We need to talk," he says, trying for casual and failing.
Tomas looks at him, spatula poised above the pan, silently waiting for him to say his piece.
Silas glances up, distracted. "If it's the quarterly report again, Alex, I—"
"It’s not the report. It's Charlotte."
Both men still. Silas’ phone lowers and Tomas slowly slides the pan off the heat.
Alex forges ahead, adrenaline making his voice too bright. "I think we should ask her to be our mate. To stay with us. Officially. Not just this—" he gestures vaguely at the kitchen "—this arrangement. I want her to be ours. Permanently."
Tomas’s eyes sharpen, but he still says nothing. But Alex knew. He knew Tomas had already been thinking the exact same thing, his instincts riding him harder than his own or Silas' had been since the first time they'd met her.
It's Silas who breaks the silence. Anxiety rolls off him, permeating through the bond, so out of character for any of them. He sits back in his chair, thumb pressed hard against his jaw, his other hand clenching where it rests against the table.
"Charlotte came to us because she needed help. We don't know that there is anything more to it than that for her. If we press for more, she might leave. If we make her uncomfortable, make her think that we expect more from her..."
"She wants more." Alex knew this the same way he knew the sky was up and his dick was big. It just was.
"And what if she agrees simply because she thinks she has to?
Because she has no one else? She does not even have a separate place to live anymore, doesn't even have her own job–" Silas’ scent turns dark as he speaks, wanting to protect her, even from them, apparently.
The man would put her in bubble wrap and tuck her away in a bulletproof safe if he could, Alex thinks with a twitch of his lips.
Alex shrugs. "So, we tell her it's not conditional. We will still financially support her even if she leaves. Fuck, I'll even throw in a PhD scholarship as an exit package."
Tomas' side glance makes Alex wonder if he's already done that, but he still says nothing.
Silas grunts in response. "She’s skittish," he says, but already his voice is fraying. "If we ask too soon—"
Tomas finally speaks up, his voice unyielding. "If we do not ask her, she is going to continue thinking that we only want her until someone better comes along. Is that what you want her to think?”
Well damn, whatever the two of them had gotten up to after Charlotte's heat spike had apparently cemented something for Tomas.
Silas looks down at the table, then up at Tomas, then back to Alex. "And what if she says no?"
"Then we wait," Tomas says, voice iron. "But we ask. She deserves to know she's wanted. Not just for a semester, not just as a transaction."
Alex nods. "I'd rather she knows how we feel than to have her think we don't give a shit. I can't stand seeing her flinch every time we mention the money."
Silas closes his eyes for a moment. "We have to do this carefully. No pressure—"
"We go at her pace," Tomas agrees. "But we make it clear. She's not a placeholder and it's not about the money. We will wait for her to be ready."
Alex feels something optimistic rising in him as he stands, resting a hand on Silas' shoulder. "We'll do it together. No grand gestures, no surprises. We'll just talk to her. She deserves better than what we've given her."
But when Charlotte enters the kitchen a few minutes later, her eyes are drawn and distant.
They're too late.