Before the Storm

Lyra’s POV

I woke up to someone playing with my hair.

Not unusual, considering my brothers had gotten even more touchy-feely since our kitchen revelation. What was unusual was that I was pretty sure I’d fallen asleep alone in my room last night.

“Please tell me you didn’t all sneak in here while I was sleeping,” I mumbled into my pillow.

“Define ‘sneak,’” Kael’s voice came from somewhere near my left shoulder.

I opened one eye. Kael sat on the floor next to my bed, gently braiding my hair. Marcus was in the chair by the window with a book, but he seemed to be watching me more than reading. Zane leaned against the doorframe, and Darius…

“Where’s Darius?” I asked.

“Making you breakfast,” Zane said with a grin. “He’s going through some kind of domestic phase. Yesterday he organized your closet by color.”

“He what?”

“Don’t ask,” Marcus said without looking up from his definitely-not-being-read book. “Just accept that we’ve all lost our minds since last week.”

I sat up, which made Kael pout because he wasn’t finished with whatever elaborate hairstyle he was creating. “You guys can’t just… move into my room.”

“We’re not moving in,” Zane protested. “We’re just… spending time here.”

“You spent the night.”

“Some of the night,” Kael corrected. “I only got here around four AM.”

“Kael!”

“What? I couldn’t sleep! I kept thinking about the ceremony, and about you, and about how in six days everything changes, and, ”

“Breathe,” Marcus said calmly. “You’re going to hyperventilate.”

“I don’t hyperventilate, I’m a wolf, ”

“You definitely hyperventilate,” Zane said. “Remember when Lyra got sick last year and you convinced yourself she was dying?”

“She had a fever of 103!”

“It was the flu, Kael.”

I watched them argue with a silly smile on my face. This was my life now. It was a beautiful, chaotic, and unconventional life where four amazing men cared for me enough to lose sleep over a ceremony that would officially define our relationship. But what exactly would that make us?

“What are we going to be?” I asked suddenly, interrupting their argument about my historical medical emergencies.

They all went quiet.

“After the ceremony,” I clarified. “What do we call this? What do we call each other?”

“Mates,” Zane said simply. “All of us.”

“But how does that work exactly? I mean, traditionally, ”

“Traditionally,” Marcus interrupted, closing his book and looking at me seriously, “the Moon Goddess chooses one mate for each wolf. But there have been exceptions throughout history. Rare ones, but they exist.”

“Multiple mate bonds are considered the highest blessing,” Darius said from the doorway, carrying a tray that smelled like heaven. “It means the Goddess sees something special in the connection.”

“Special how?” I asked, accepting the plate of perfectly prepared eggs Benedict he handed me. When had Darius learned to make hollandaise sauce?

“It usually happens when wolves have gone through significant trauma together,” he explained, settling on the edge of my bed. “When they’ve formed bonds that transcend normal pack relationships. The Goddess recognizes that separating them would cause more harm than good.”

“So because we found each other after…” I gestured vaguely, not wanting to say ‘after my parents were murdered and my entire pack was destroyed’ before breakfast.

“Because we became a family,” Kael said softly. “And then became something more.”

“The Goddess doesn’t split families,” Marcus added. “She completes them.”

I took a bite of breakfast to give myself time to process that. The eggs were perfect, obviously, because Darius had apparently become some kind of culinary genius overnight.

“You’re all very confident about this,” I observed.

“Shouldn’t we be?” Zane asked, moving to sit on the other side of my bed. “Lyra, what we have… I’ve never heard of anything like it. The way we’re connected, the way we can practically read each other’s thoughts, the way we all feel incomplete when one of us is missing…”

“That’s not normal pack bonding,” Darius agreed. “That’s mate bonding. With all of us.”

“Plus,” Kael added with a grin, “Elder Marcus says he’s never seen the moon react to anyone the way it reacts to you.”

I nearly choked on my orange juice. “What do you mean, reacts to me?”

The four of them exchanged one of their looks.

“You haven’t noticed?” Marcus asked carefully.

“Noticed what?”

“When you’re upset, or scared, or really happy,” Zane explained, “the moon gets brighter. Even during the day sometimes, you can see it.”

“That’s…” I stared at them. “That’s not possible.”

“We have witnesses,” Darius said. “Half the pack has noticed it by now.”

“Which is another reason everyone’s so confident about the ceremony,” Kael added. “The moon already recognizes you. The official blessing is just a formality.”

I set down my fork, suddenly not hungry anymore. “What if it doesn’t work? What if the Goddess doesn’t, ”

“Hey.” Zane’s hand found mine, warm and steady. “That’s not going to happen.”

“But what if, ”

“Lyra.” Darius’s voice was firm but gentle. “Look at me.”

I did.

“Do you feel it? When we’re together like this?”

I knew what he meant immediately. That sense of rightness, of completeness. Like all the broken pieces of myself had finally found where they belonged.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Do you think the Goddess would let us feel that if it wasn’t real? If it wasn’t meant to be?”

“No,” I said, more firmly this time.

“Then trust it,” Marcus said. “Trust us. Trust what we have.”

I looked around at all of them, these four amazing men who’d saved me, raised me, loved me, and were now offering me a future I’d never dared to dream of.

“Okay,” I said. “I trust it.”

“Good,” Kael said, immediately brightening. “Because I already picked out what you’re wearing to the ceremony, and it’s going to look amazing on you.”

“You picked out, never mind. I don’t want to know.”

“It’s blue,” he said helpfully. “Like your eyes.”

“All my dresses are blue, Kael.”

“This one’s special blue.”

“There’s no such thing as, ”

“It matches the moon when you make it glow,” Zane said quietly.

That shut me up pretty effectively.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of ceremony preparations, visiting pack members arriving, and increasingly elaborate security protocols courtesy of my overprotective almost-mates. By afternoon, I was ready to scream.

“I need air,” I announced, heading for the door.

“We’ll come with, ” Darius started.

“Alone,” I said firmly. “I need ten minutes alone, or I’m going to commit violence.”

“But, ”

“Ten minutes,” I repeated. “I’m just going to the garden. You can watch from the windows if it makes you feel better.”

I escaped before they could protest further, making my way to the small herb garden behind the pack house. It was quiet here, peaceful, with just the sound of bees in the lavender and the distant chatter from the main compound.

I closed my eyes and tilted my face up to the afternoon sun, trying to calm the nervous energy that had been building all week. In five days, everything would change. In five days, we’d know for sure if this crazy, beautiful thing we’d built together was blessed by the Goddess or just wishful thinking.

“Please,” I whispered to the sky, to the moon I couldn’t see but knew was there. “Please let this be real. Please don’t take them away from me.”

A warm breeze stirred the air around me, carrying the scent of jasmine and something else, something wild and free and full of promise.

It felt like an answer.

When I opened my eyes, all four of them were standing at the kitchen window, watching me with identical expressions of love and longing and absolute certainty.

Five more days.

I could wait five more days.