Chapter 15
Devin
I'm wearing Silas's shirt. A faded gray thing with a small hole near the hem that smells like laundry detergent and him. It falls past my wrists and halfway down my thighs and I look ridiculous and I don't care.
"Ready?" he asks at the door.
"Define ready."
"Willing to walk downstairs and eat Jason's breakfast while the pride pretends they didn't hear us last night."
"They heard us?"
"Supernatural hearing, Dev."
"Oh god."
"Knox will pretend he didn't. Ezra will pretend he didn't. Jason will absolutely not pretend he didn't." Silas takes my hand. "Robin will have commentary."
"Robin always has commentary."
"That's the spirit."
We walk downstairs together. My hand in his. The stairwell is narrow and smells like coffee and bacon and the warmth of a building that's been lived in by people who care about each other for a very long time.
The bar is full. Saturday morning, the whole pride. Knox behind the bar, doing something with a coffee press that looks unnecessarily complicated. Jason at the stove, because of course Jason is at the stove. Ash is watching him. Vaughn at the pool table with a mug, not playing, just existing near aflat surface. Toby on a barstool with a romance novel and a cardigan covered in tiny cats. Ezra and Nico side by side with their laptops, because apparently they work even on Saturday mornings, though Nico's screen looks suspiciously like it might be a crossword puzzle.
Robin, perched on the end of the bar with his legs swinging, spots us first.
"Good morning!" he says with the precise tone of someone who is going to be insufferable about this. "Don't you two look well-rested."
"Robin," Silas says.
"What? I'm being polite. I didn't mention that someone was very enthusiastic at approximately —"
"Robin." Knox's voice. One word. The alpha voice that ends conversations.
"I'm just saying they look happy!" Robin protests. "That's a compliment!"
Toby looks up from his book, takes in my borrowed shirt and bare feet and what I'm sure is a thoroughly debauched appearance, and smiles. "Morning, Devin. Coffee's on the bar. The mug with the dragon is yours."
I look. There is, in fact, a mug with a dragon on it sitting at the empty spot next to Toby's stool. Not a random mug. A specific one, placed there deliberately, in a spot that was clearly saved.
"When did you —"
"I found it at the secondhand shop on Third," Toby says. "Last week."
He bought me a mug. A week ago. Before last night, before the confession, before any of this. He saw a dragon mug in a shop and thought of me and bought it and brought it here and put it at the bar.
"Thank you," I say, and my voice comes out smaller than I intended.
"Of course." Toby pats the stool next to him. "Sit. Jason's making his scrambled eggs."
I sit. Silas sits on my other side, his knee pressing against mine under the bar. Jason slides a plate in front of me without being asked. Eggs, toast, bacon, a small pile of fruit.
"Eat," Jason says. "You're too thin."
He puts a plate in front of Silas too. "Both of you. You didn't come down for dinner last night, which means you ran on sex and adrenaline for twelve hours, which is not a nutritional strategy."