Chapter 33
Tamsin
I’d spent the day in too many rooms with too little air, explaining the same thing over and over.
No, we couldn’t simply ‘go back to the way things were’ now that Ashcroft was dead.
Every time I thought I’d convinced one person, two more appeared with new questions and the same old fear, dressed in new words.
My head throbbed behind my eyes. My throat felt raw from too much talking and too little water.
My knife hung heavy at my hip, the weight of it a constant reminder of the world I had come from and hoped I could recreate.
A world where wolves and humans could live side by side in peaceful cooperation.
When I got home, I pushed the door open expecting more work. Maps spread on the table. My wolves mid-argument over security patrols or rationing. Bishop with another list of names we needed to find before someone else did.
Instead, I stepped into warmth and quiet.
The lamps were turned low, their light softened by cloth draped over the shades. The smell of ink and paper had been pushed back by the gentler scents of woodsmoke, soap, and some herbal aroma I couldn’t immediately place. The clutter was… minimized. Someone had actually cleared the table.
When I traipsed up to the third floor, the big bed in the middle of the room looked different too. The furs had been shaken out and layered fresh over clean linens. There was a basin on a stand near the foot of the bed, steam still curling up from the water.
And there were my five wolves, in human form, waiting.
For me.
Elias sat on the edge of the bed, sleeves rolled up, watching the door like he’d been listening for my footsteps.
Griff leaned against one of the bedposts, arms folded, expression softer than he probably realized.
Nox lounged on the far side, back against the headboard, legs stretched out, looking infuriatingly at home.
Eamon stood near the basin with a cloth draped over his arm like he was about to scold someone into washing up.
Bishop was by the window, his outline clear in the lamplight.
All of them were looking at me.
I stopped just inside the door. “What did you break?”
Nox snorted. “Why do you assume we broke something?”
“Because you all look guilty,” I said.
“We look concerned,” Griff corrected.
“Same thing,” I muttered.
Elias rose and crossed the space between us in a few long strides. He stopped close enough that I could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. His hand came up to my cheek, thumb brushing lightly along my jaw.
“You’re late,” he said.
“The council wouldn’t stop talking,” I said. “I kept waiting for them to realize they can’t argue the sky is green when we’ve all watched the sun rise, but somehow—”
He kissed my forehead, warm and firm, cutting off the rest.
“You’re done,” he murmured, voice quiet but final. “For tonight.”
“I still need to—”
“No,” he replied. “You don’t.”
Griff pushed off the post and moved in behind me, fingers finding the collar of my coat. “Let us have this, Tam.”
Before I could protest, he eased the coat off my shoulders with careful hands. It slid down my arms and he caught it, folding it over one arm instead of just tossing it somewhere. His knuckles brushed the back of my neck along the way, sending a fiery bolt of desire straight down to my core.
“I smell politics,” Nox said from the bed. “And frustration. And not nearly enough food.”
“That’s because there was none,” I said. I hadn’t meant it as a complaint, but it came out sounding like one.
Eamon made a disapproving noise. “You didn’t eat.”
“I forgot,” I said.
“You worked through three meal bells,” Bishop said from the window. “Four, if you count the one you skipped at midday.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
He lifted a shoulder. “I keep track.”
Of course he did.
Elias’s hand slid down from my cheek to my shoulder. “You can argue with us tomorrow,” he said. “Tonight, you’re ours.”
“I’m already yours,” I said.
“Then let us act like it,” Griff said.
Eamon stepped closer, the cloth and basin steam in his hands. “Sit,” he said, nodding toward the edge of the bed.
“I’m not—”
“Tamsin,” he said, in the same tone he used on patients who insisted they were fine with a broken arm, but for me, probably meant a spanking.
I sighed and let them herd me without putting up a real fight. My boots thudded softly on the floor as I sat. My legs ached in ways I hadn’t realized until I stopped moving.
“Boots,” Griff said.
I started to bend, but he was already kneeling in front of me, big hands deftly undoing the laces. He slid one boot off, then the other, his fingers warm around my ankles.
“That’s better,” he murmured.
Eamon dipped the cloth into the basin, wrung it out until it was just damp, and then knelt in front of me on the other side.
He reached up and gently bathed my face with the cloth.
Bliss. Then he took one of my hands in his and began to wash it with slow, careful strokes, wiping away the faint ink smudges and city grime.
The water was warm. It felt really nice.
Elias sat down on the bed beside me, close enough that his thigh pressed against mine. Griff rose and moved behind me, his hands settling on my shoulders, thumbs pressing into the tight muscles at the base of my neck.
I sucked in a breath as he kneaded a knot loose.
“Too much?” he asked.
“No,” I said quickly. “Just right—keep going.”
He did, silently working down the line of my neck and across my shoulders, finding tension I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying until he massaged it all out. Eamon finished with one hand and took the other, repeating the same slow ritual.
“I could have kept going,” I muttered, because some habits were hard to kill.
“Of course you could have,” Elias responded. “That doesn’t mean you should.”
“Such a stubborn little thing,” Nox said cheerfully.
“Hypocrites, all of you,” I replied, but it didn’t have any real bite.
Griff’s fingers dug in a little harder in response. Not enough to hurt me. Just enough to remind me that they were my mates right now and that meant I wasn’t the alpha.
“You did good,” he said quietly, close to my ear. “Out there. In there. Wherever they shoved you today.”
“They shoved me into too many chairs in rooms with not enough air,” I complained.
“You didn’t let them shove you into any corners, though,” Bishop said. “That matters more.”
Eamon finished with bathing my feet, having massaged the soreness from them as he went, and set the cloth aside. He smoothed his thumbs over my knuckles. “I’m very proud you didn’t punch anyone,” he said.
“I thought about it,” I admitted.
“I know,” he grinned. “That’s why I’m proud.”
Nox shifted on the bed, leaning forward, bracing his elbows on his knees so his face was level with mine. “You realize you did it, right?” he asked. “Not just with Ashcroft. The rest of it. You broke the story they built around us.”
“I had help,” I said. “All of you. Zara. Sera. Their wolves. Mirae. The people in Ireland and on the Isle of Man. It took all of us, working together to make this happen.”
“Yes,” he answered. “We know. But you were the one with the knife in your hand leading the charge.”
Heat crawled up my neck.
Elias’s hand came up to my cheek again, turning my face toward him. His eyes were warm and comforting and so full of adoration it was almost hard to look at.
“I love you,” he said.
Something in me went very still.
“I know you’ve been hearing a lot of people tell you what you are this week,” he went on. “Hero. Monster. Problem. Solution. I just want to make sure you hear this too. I love you, Tamsin Drake. For the way you fight. For the way you care. For the way you don’t break even when you think you might.”
My throat tightened.
“Elias…” I started.
He leaned in and kissed me. There was nothing hard or demanding about it. Just a slow, deep press of his mouth to mine, tasting of tea and warmth and the kind of patience that made my bones loose.
When he pulled back, Griff’s hands moved from my shoulders down to my upper arms. He squeezed once.
“Me too,” Griff said. “I love you.”
He sounded almost surprised at himself. I twisted to look back at him.
“I’ve loved you since Skye,” he went on, eyes serious. “Since you decided that you were going to fix the world with that knife and sheer willpower and dragged me along with you. I’d follow you through worse than this and I’d still think it was worth it.”
“You idiot,” I replied, voice cracking just a little.
He smiled, eyes soft. “Your idiot.” And he kissed me so gently for such a big man. My constant protector.
Eamon’s fingers tightened around mine briefly.
“I love you too,” he said, voice quieter than the others, but no less sure.
“You pulled me out of a life where I was patching up a broken system and pretending that was enough. You gave me a better life than hiding records and lying to parents. You made me believe in fixing the source of the problem, and not just the symptoms.”
I blinked hard.
Nox reached out and caught a tear with his thumb before it could fall. “I love you too,” he said. “Obviously.”
I let out a laugh. “Obviously?”
“Look at me,” he grinned. “I could have run a dozen times. Before Ireland. Before the Isle of Man. Before coming here to London. I didn’t. That’s how you know I’m serious, because I’m very well practiced at running.”
“You stayed,” I whispered.
He nodded. “I stayed. Because you’re the only one that I’ve ever followed into a burning building and not regretted it. I’m proud of you, Tam. Not just for ending all of this. For refusing to give up.”
My chest hurt.
Bishop shifted away from the window, stepping closer. He placed his hand gently on my knee.
“I love you too,” he declared. “You could’ve left me on that Irish shore and called it fate. Instead, you hauled me up, looked me in the eye, and handed me purpose, and together, we went after it. Together, we saved the world.”
I swallowed hard. “You all helped,” I replied. “I didn’t—”
Elias’s thumb brushed another tear off my cheek. “We know,” he said. “We helped. You led. You’re allowed to be proud of that.”
“I’m just—” I broke off, shaking my head. “I’m tired.”
“We know that too,” Griff said.
“And we’re going to take care of you,” Eamon said.
My vision blurred with emotion. I let it. For once, I didn’t try to blink it away or harden it into something else. I just sat there on the edge of the bed, surrounded by my wolves, and let their words sink in.
It was almost too much.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I love you all, too. Come take care of me.”
Elias kissed me again, deeper this time. His hand slid to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair. I opened for him without thinking, without planning, the taste of him washing away the last of the council room sourness from my tongue.
Heat unfurled low in my belly, slow and heavy and familiar.
Griff’s mouth brushed the side of my throat, beard rasping lightly against my skin. His teeth grazed the spot where my pulse jumped, not hard enough to break skin, just enough to make me shiver.
Nox slid off the far side of the bed and came around, slipping between my knees, his hands resting lightly on my thighs.
Then Elias eased me back onto the bed, slow and careful, giving me time to protest if I wanted to.
I didn’t. The mattress was warm, the furs soft against the backs of my legs.
Nox’s hands slid up my thighs to my waist, fingers playing along the edge of my shirt.
Griff’s weight dipped the bed behind me as he stretched out along my back, his arm wrapping around my waist.
Eamon joined Nox, gliding his hand up my leg and I sighed softly. Bishop settled near the foot of the bed, one hand resting lightly on my calf. We were a tangle of limbs and heat and familiar scents.
“Let us take the world from you for a single night,” Elias murmured against my mouth. “You just… feel.”
I let out a shaky breath. “You are always so bossy.”
“I’m effective,” he said, lightly slapping the top of my thigh.
Nox laughed softly. “You have to admit, ‘lie back and let us worship you’ is a pretty good plan.”
“I didn’t say I objected,” I muttered.
“Good,” Griff said into my hair.
Their hands moved over me with a reverence that had everything to do with want and desire.
Fingers at my buttons. Mouths on my skin—Elias at my lips, Griff at my neck, Nox at the delicate line of my collarbone.
Eamon’s hand resting warm and firm over my heart.
Bishop’s thumb stroking absent patterns over my ankle.
Griff rolled me gently onto my side to face him, one broad hand cupping my jaw, his thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone like he was in no hurry at all.
He’d been patient his entire life. Patient through Skye, through Ireland, through every city and shore and burning building we’d walked out of together.
He was patient now too, but there was a quiet, absolute certainty in his eyes that had nothing to do with waiting anymore.
“Hey,” he said softly. Just that.
“Hey,” I said back.
He kissed me slow and deep, one hand sliding to the curve of my hip, drawing me flush against him. When he finally pulled back his forehead came to rest against mine, both of us just breathing for a moment.
Then he tucked me beneath him, unhurried, his weight settling over me like something that had always been meant to be there. I arched up into him and he let out a low sound against my throat that I felt more than heard.
He was careful with me. Deliberately, stubbornly careful, in the way only Griff could be. He was tender and immovable all at once.
His knot was inevitable, a slow, deep swell that locked us together with a warmth so complete it felt like the last word in a sentence that had been a very long time coming. His arms wrapped around me fully, his face pressed into my hair, and neither of us moved or spoke.
We didn’t need to.
For one night, there was no London. No Accord. No papers or plans or people waiting for me to fix things.
There was only this one bed, this room, and these men who had chosen me and stayed and loved me even when I didn’t quite know what to do with it.
The rest blurred into warmth and hands and mouths and the way they reminded me that I wasn’t just their leader, or their weapon, or their symbol.
I was their mate.
And they were mine.