Caspian’s POV
Days pass in tension so thick I can barely breathe.
The unknown wolf hasn't been found. Scouts report movement at the borders—shadows that disappear before anyone can track them. Sera has moved to the lodge for safety, and I am going slowly, beautifully insane.
She's down the hall.
Every night, she's right there—twenty feet of hardwood floor and a single door between us. I lie awake listening to her breathe, feeling her presence through the bond like a flame I can't touch. When she shifts in her sleep, I feel it. When she dreams, I catch fragments—heat and wanting and images that make me grip my sheets until my knuckles ache.
I know Dominic feels it too. I see it in the way his jaw tightens every time Sera walks past. The way his hands flex like he's physically restraining himself from reaching for her. We've always been able to read each other, but now there's something new in his eyes when he looks at me.
Understanding. Shared hunger. Permission.
Tonight, the lodge is empty.
Others are on patrol. The elders are meeting elsewhere. The common rooms echo with silence, broken only by the crackle of the fire I built an hour ago because I needed something to do with my hands.
Then she walks in.
Firelight catches the red in her hair, turns her skin to gold. She's wearing one of my shirts—when did she steal that?—and it hangs to mid-thigh, leaving miles of bare leg that make my mouth go dry.
My heart doesn't just stutter. It stops.
I've wanted women before. Enjoyed them, even cared for some of them. But I've never wanted like this—with my whole body, my whole soul, a hunger that feels like it might consume me if I don't touch her soon.
Dominic is already there, standing by the window. He turns when she enters, and I watch his control crack. Just a little. Just enough.
"We've been giving you space," he says, voice rough as gravel. "But every night you're down the hall, I'm going insane."
I find my voice somehow. "What he means is—we want you. Both of us. Together." I swallow hard. "If you want that too."
The words hang in the air like smoke.
I wait for her rejection. For the careful letdown. For the moment she looks at Dominic—strong, capable, alpha Dominic—and I become what I've always been. Second choice. Consolation prize. The one you settle for when you can't have what you really want.
Instead, she looks at both of us with eyes gone dark with desire.
"I'm tired of being careful."
She moves to Dominic first.
I watch them kiss—deep and hungry, all the restraint between them finally snapping. His hands grip her hips like she might disappear. She arches into him, making sounds that send heat pooling low in my belly.
Watching them didn’t make me look away, not even for a single second.
Instead, there's only heat. Anticipation. The knowledge that she's about to turn to me, and when she does—
She does.
She pulls away from Dominic and crosses to me, and then her mouth is on mine and the world narrows to a single point of contact. The taste of her—sweet and warm and hungry. The softness of her lips. The small sound she makes when I deepen the kiss, when my tongue slides against hers.
My hands find her waist, pull her closer. She fits against me like she was made to be there.
"Bedroom," Dominic growls behind her. "Now."
We move together, a tangle of reaching hands and stolen kisses. Clothes fall away—my shirt first, then hers (my shirt, on her body, and I'll never stop finding that hot), then Dominic's. By the time we reach the bed, we're down to skin and wanting.
My hands shake as I touch her.
Not from nerves. From the overwhelming reality that this is happening. She wants me. Not as second choice. Not as backup. Me.
Dominic takes her mouth again, and I press against her back, lips finding the curve of her neck. She shivers between us—caught, held, worshipped from both directions.
We're different in how we touch her, and I know it.
Dominic is intensity and possession. He kisses like he's claiming her, hands mapping her body with desperate ownership. When he touches her, she gasps. When he whispers against her skin—dark promises, filthy praise—she moans and arches toward him like a flower seeking sun.
I'm tenderness and play. I find the spot behind her ear that makes her gasp. The curve of her hip that makes her squirm. I trace patterns on her skin with my tongue, learning what makes her breath catch, what makes her whimper my name. I make her laugh even as I make her desperate, teasing until she's begging, then giving her exactly what she needs.
Between us, she's trembling. Overwhelmed. Beautiful.
"Please," she whispers, and I don't know which of us she's talking to. Maybe both. Maybe it doesn't matter.
"I love you," I breathe against her throat, and I mean it with every fiber of my being. "Not because Dom does. Because you're mine."
"Yours," she agrees, and turns her head to kiss me while Dominic's hands work magic lower. I swallow her moan, taste her pleasure, feel it echo through the bond until I can't tell where she ends and I begin.
Then we're moving together—three bodies finding a rhythm that shouldn't work but does. The bond blazes gold between us, connecting us, amplifying everything.
I feel what she feels—every touch, every slide, every building wave of pleasure. I feel what Dominic feels—the fierce possessiveness, the desperate love. And they feel me—my wonder, my gratitude, my disbelief that this is real.
She's at the center—not torn between us but completed by both. We worship her together, moving in sync like we've done this a thousand times, reading her body, reading each other.
When the tension finally breaks, it breaks for all of us. I feel her shatter through the bond—a cascade of golden light and wordless pleasure. Feel Dominic follow with a groan that vibrates through all three of us. And then I'm falling too—crying out against her shoulder, holding on like she's the only solid thing in a spinning world.
Something ancient clicks into place.
I feel it in my bones—the rightness of this. The wholeness I've been searching for my entire life without knowing what I was looking for.
This. Them. Us.
Afterward, we lie tangled in sheets damp with sweat. Her head rests on Dominic's chest. Her leg is thrown over mine. We're a mess of limbs and heartbeats, and I never want to move again.
"I love you both," she whispers into the darkness. "I didn't know I could feel this for two people."
"The bond doesn't divide love," Dominic murmurs, fingers trailing through her hair. "It multiplies."
I press my lips to her shoulder, too overwhelmed to speak. Tears prick my eyes—stupid, embarrassing, unstoppable. For the first time in my life, I don't feel second.
I feel essential.
She falls asleep between us, and I stay awake, memorizing the feel of her. The weight of her body against mine. The rhythm of her breathing. The faint flutter of the baby's heartbeat beneath my palm when I rest my hand on her belly.
I'm terrified this will disappear like every good thing in my life. That I'll wake up and she'll have chosen Dominic, chosen simplicity, chosen a love that doesn't require sharing.
But she's here. She's ours. And I'll spend the rest of my life being worthy of that.
Morning comes too soon.
I wake to cold sheets on one side—Dominic's side. He's standing by the window, dressed, jaw tight with tension I recognize.
"What is it?" I ask, sitting up carefully so I don't wake Sera.
Too late. She stirs, blinking awake, reaching for both of us instinctively.
Dominic turns from the window. His expression makes my blood run cold.
"Scouts found something. Hunters at the eastern border." His golden eyes find Sera's face. "They're asking about a woman named Sera Mitchell."