“That’s permanent,” he says.
“I know.”
Koa’s gaze softens. “There’s no undoing it.”
“I know.”
Finn watches me carefully. “And after? When the heat passes?”
“Then we deal with everything else,” I say. “The communication. The history. The bet. The mess. The getting-to-know-each-other properly… Is this crazy? I’m being crazy, right?”
I smile faintly.
“But I don’t want to pretend we’re not already moving toward this.”
The heat pulses again, stronger now, tightening low in my belly.
Sol rises carefully despite the bandage.
“Come here,” he says softly.
I shift forward in the nest.
He kneels at the edge, one hand bracing against the mattress, the other sliding into my hair.
“We do this right,” he says. “No chaos. No competition. No proving anything.”
Kai nods once.
Koa’s voice is steady. “You set the pace.”
Finn adds quietly, “And if at any point you change your mind, we stop.”
There is no hesitation in them. No pressure. Only offering.
I look at each of them again. Not boys playing a summer challenge. Men choosing permanence.
“Okay,” I say. The word feels heavier than any before it. “Yes. I want to bond. If you’ll have me.”
The heat rises in answer – no longer just a prickling. Awake. Intentional.
And this time, there is no fear threaded through it.
Only certainty.
FORTY-SIX
LANI
The heat doesn’t takeme.
It finds me.
Slowly. Patiently. Like sunlight slipping through curtains at dawn and warming skin before you’re fully awake.
I feel it first as a quiet heaviness low in my belly – not sharp, not urgent, just present. A steady pulse that spreads outward in widening rings, brushing my ribs, my thighs, my throat. My skin feels thinner somehow, like every inch of me has been tuned a fraction too high.
“I’m still here,” I murmur, though I’m not sure whether I’m reassuring them or myself.