Rowan
Nick’s crestfallen expression would have been amusing if I couldn’t still feel his metal-studded cock through her pussy. I’d wanted him in the room because he was one of us—I just hadn’t expected him to lose control the way he did.
I glanced down at Ella. She was completely out.
“Alec—grab a towel,” I said calmly, feeling Nick finally pull free, another warm spill soaking between us.
Alec returned quickly and set to cleaning us with practiced efficiency.
“I want to keep her,” he said quietly.
I looked over at Nick as he stripped off his clothes.
“Trial period,” he muttered.
I slipped an arm around Ella’s waist and lifted my hips, pressing myself back inside her. She was still wet. Still tight. No barrier between us.
Her reaction tonight hadn’t been anticipated. When Alec had choked her out, she’d come apart like a goddamn rocket. Nothing had gone to plan—and yet everything had clicked because of her.
Ella fit.
Between all of us.
A pliable little fucktoy—made to be used however we pleased.
I stood, keeping her impaled as I moved toward the bed. Nick pulled the covers back while Alec stepped in to help guide her to the centre. His fingers brushed the red marks along her throat.
“On her side,” he said roughly. “I’m not done. One load wasn’t enough.”
I agreed. That was why I hadn’t pulled out.
Nick climbed onto the bed with us.
?
?
?
“She won’t last.”
I woke to Nick’s murmur, the words bleeding into my consciousness before I fully surfaced. I stayed still, eyes closed, listening. Letting them speak freely while they thought I was still asleep.
“I’ve known Rowan for more than double the time you have,” Alec replied carefully, his tone measured. “And it’s rare that he’s wrong.”
“There’s no guarantee when it comes to humans,” Nick said. “People change.”
“Do you think that about us?”
“No. Not us. Others,” Nick grunted.
“Well,” Alec scoffed quietly, shifting somewhere on the other side of the bed, “I’m glad it’s not up to you then.”
I almost smiled to myself.
The next few days would be interesting. But for this morning, we could afford to linger in the aftermath. To be lazy. To observe.
“Oh,” Alec said lightly, his voice shifting into something falsely gentle, “there she is. Good morning.”
I felt Ella move between us before I opened my eyes. A subtle tension in the mattress. Her body was still stiff, uncertain of its place, positioned as a barrier without realising it—separating me from them.
“Aww,” Alec continued, syrupy sweet. “Does your throat hurt? Let me see those marks.”
That was when I opened my eyes.
Alec was propped on his elbow, looking down at Ella with open interest. Nick lay beyond him, close but silent, his attention fixed on her in a way that bordered on unsettling.
Nick didn’t say a word. He simply watched her for a long moment—long enough for the weight of it to sink in—before he rose from the bed.
The sheets slid from his hips as he stood.
Ella’s gaze dropped instinctively.
Then froze.
The skeleton along his side came into view first.
It wasn’t decorative. It wasn’t stylised.
The ink looked torn into his skin rather than laid there—ribs warped and fractured, the spine crooked as though it had collapsed inward on itself.
The thing appeared mid-motion, clawing its way out of him, jaw split wide in a silent scream.
It followed the natural lines of his body too closely to be coincidence, as though the artist had traced something already living beneath the surface.
Ella’s breath caught.
I saw the moment it registered—not fear, not revulsion, but something far more dangerous.
Recognition.
As if she understood this wasn’t art meant to be admired. It was something worn. Something carried.
Nick turned toward the bathroom.
That was when she saw the rest.
The demon across his back unfurled as he moved—wings stretched wide, jagged and torn, their tips clawing toward his shoulders.
The body at the centre was twisted and malformed, crowned with horns that curved inward like a prison.
Dark ink bled into darker shadows, the edges deliberately uneven, violent in their restraint.
It didn’t dominate his back so much as cling to it, like something that had latched on and refused to let go.
Not a monster.
A confession of how he saw himself.
Ella’s eyes followed him until the bathroom door closed behind him. She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. One hand tightened in the sheets, fingers curling into the fabric as if she needed the anchor.
She wasn’t disturbed by the brutality of it.
She was disturbed because she understood exactly what it meant.
They shared a common denominator—their fathers.
Nick wore his damage openly. What tore him apart was etched into skin instead of buried where it could rot unseen. Messy. Grotesque. Honest.
Human.
And for the first time since she’d come into our house, I saw something shift in Ella’s expression that had nothing to do with fear.
She had seen a fraction of Nick’s truth.
And God help her if she ever crossed him.
While my attention had been on Ella, Alec had been watching me just as closely. I felt it before I acknowledged it. I closed my eyes for a brief second and gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
If handled carefully, this didn’t have to remain a trio.
It could become four.