The cottage holds us like a closed fist.
Rain drums against the roof—lighter than the storm that trapped us here weeks ago, steadier, the kind of rain that makes the world feel smaller. Rhys sits on the training mat with his back against the wall and his laptop open, scrolling through the championship schedule like the answer to surviving Thursday is buried somewhere in the halftime logistics.
"We could go to the headmaster." I lie on my stomach beside him, chin propped on my folded arms. "Aldrich has to have some authority over what happens on the field."
"Aldrich is terrified of the Vances." Rhys doesn't look up. "And the Ashfords. And every purist family Grayson's recruited. He'll lock himself in his office and pretend he didn't see the email."
"Your teammates. Aaron, the others. If they stood with you—"
"They'd be targets." His jaw tightens. "I won't ask them to burn for me."
"So we just wait? Show up Thursday and hope Grayson chokes on his own announcement?"
He closes the laptop. Sets it aside. Turns his head to look at me, and the exhaustion carved into his face makes my chest contract.
"What if we didn't show up at all?"
"Don't start."
"I'm serious." He shifts, pulling me up until we're sitting face to face, his knees bracketing mine. "We leave tonight. I have money. Enough to disappear for a while. There are places where nobody cares about bloodlines or species or what combination your parents were."
"And your mother?"
His hands still on my knees. The silence that follows carries the weight of a woman alone in a house full of stairs and a man who arranges accidents.
"If we run, he punishes her." I say it because he can't. "If we stay, Grayson exposes you and your father punishes her anyway."
"Yes."
"So either way—"
"Either way, she's the leverage." His thumb traces circles on my kneecap, mechanical, barely conscious. "She's been the leverage my entire life. Every choice I've ever made has been filtered through one question: does my mother survive it?"
"What would she want you to do?"
His hand stills. "She'd want me to live. Whatever that looks like."
"Then we stay." I cover his hand with mine. "We stay and we walk onto that field and Grayson says whatever he's going to say and we don't run."
"And then what?"
"I don't know." My thumb traces the ridge of his knuckles. "Maybe they tear us apart. Maybe your father drags you home. Maybe I end up at some human school pretending the last four months didn't happen."
"That's not a plan, Sloane. That's a list of disasters."
"Since when have we had anything better?" I squeeze his hand. "We've been improvising since the elevator. At least now we're improvising together."
His mouth twitches. Not a smile—the ghost of one, haunting the corners of his lips.
"What does together look like?" His voice drops. "After this. If we survive it. What does that even look like for us?"
"I don't know. An apartment somewhere? A shitty one, probably. You'd have to get a job."
"I have a trust fund."
"That your father controls."
"Fair point." He exhales through his nose. "A shitty apartment. What else?"
"You learn to cook. I'm not living off blood bags and protein shakes."
"I can cook."
"Heating blood in a microwave doesn't count."
"I make excellent pasta." His thumb resumes its circles on my knee, lighter now. "What else?"
"No more hiding." I hold his gaze. "No more masks. You shift when you want to. Your eyes go amber whenever they go amber. Nobody tells you what you're allowed to be."
His throat works. His hand comes up, fingers threading into my hair, cupping the back of my skull.
"You'd want that? Living with the full version of me?" His voice roughens. "The vampire mood swings and the wolf instincts and the part that wants to tear apart anyone who looks at you wrong?"
"That's the only version I want." My forehead tips against his. "I've never wanted the mask, Rhys. I've only ever wanted what's underneath."
His breathing changes. Hitches once, recovers, hitches again. His hand tightens in my hair.
"I love you." The words come out cracked and raw, like he's prying them loose from somewhere they've been cemented for years. "I don't—I've never said that. To anyone. I don't know if I'm saying it right."
"You're saying it right." My eyes burn. My hands find his face, thumbs pressing against his cheekbones, holding him steady. "I love you. Both halves. The cold and the warm and every terrible thing in between."
He kisses me. Not desperate this time. Not frantic or angry or driven by the clock ticking toward Thursday. Slow. His mouth moves against mine with the careful attention of someone who's decided to memorize this in case it's the last time, and the ache of that thought makes me pull him closer.
His hands slide beneath my shirt. My skin prickles where his cool fingers trail—ribs, waist, the curve of my spine. He peels the fabric over my head and presses his mouth to my collarbone, my sternum, the space between my breasts where my heartbeat pounds against his lips.
"I want to enjoy every second I have with you." I whisper it into his hair. "Every single one."
He gives me slow. His shirt joins mine on the mat. His body lowers over me, weight settling, familiar and grounding. His mouth traces the map he's drawn before—throat, shoulder, the hollow of my hip—but tonight each stop lingers. His tongue flattens against my pulse point, and the groan that hums from his chest vibrates through my ribs.
My hands trace the scar on his back. He doesn't flinch anymore—just presses deeper into the touch, his hips rolling against mine in a rhythm that matches our breathing. When the last barriers come away, the contact is so complete my back arches off the mat.
He moves inside me like a question he's afraid to finish. Each stroke measured, deliberate, his forehead against mine, his eyes open and unguarded. Gray bleeding to amber and staying there—both halves present, both halves watching me, and I hold his gaze because looking away would be a kind of leaving I'm not willing to do.
"Stay with me." His voice fractures on the words. "Whatever happens Thursday. Stay."
"Always." My legs tighten around him. "I'm not going anywhere."
His rhythm builds. My fingers dig into his shoulders, his back, the scarred skin that tells the story of everything he's survived. His mouth finds mine and we breathe into each other—his exhale filling my lungs, mine filling his—until the boundary between us dissolves and there's nothing left but heat and movement and the devastating tenderness of two people making love like the world ends in three days.
The finish is quiet. His forehead drops to my shoulder, his body shuddering, my name breathed against my skin so softly it could be prayer. I hold him through the aftershocks, my fingers combing through his hair, his heartbeat gradually slowing against my chest.
We lie tangled on the mat, blankets pulled around us, the rain still tapping its patient rhythm on the roof. His arm drapes heavy across my waist. My fingers trace the veins on the inside of his wrist—blue beneath pale skin, the blood that damns him visible even in the dark.
"Three days," I murmur.
"Three days." His lips press against my shoulder. "We'll figure it out."
"Together."
"Together."
My phone glows on the floor beside the mat. I almost ignore it. Almost.
The screen shows one new message. Grayson's name. Two words that turn the rain on the roof into something that sounds like counting down.
Grayson: Ready for the championship?
Rhys reads it over my shoulder. His arm tightens around my waist, and the amber in his eyes catches the phone light, burning steady in the dark.