Chapter 6: She's our mate!

Alaric's room was the largest of the three, which was less about preference and more about function, it was where they ended up when something needed to be said between all of them, the unofficial war room of whatever the three of them had been doing since they were old enough to have things that needed war rooms. The furniture was dark, heavy, the kind that had been in the estate longer than any of them had been alive. One reading chair by the window. A desk that was always clear. A bed that was rarely just slept in.

Tonight Alaric was sitting  on the chair.

Aiden was on the bed.

And Archer was pacing up and down inside the room. Four steps to the window. Turn. Four steps back. Turn. His wolf was loud tonight, louder than it had been in years, and the only thing keeping him from doing something inadvisable was the thin, fraying thread of his own self-control and the fact that his brothers were watching.

Alaric sat in the chair looking at nothing in particular.

His hands were flat on the armrests. His face was still. He had the particular quality of a man doing very intensive internal work and showing none of it on the surface, which was his default, which Archer normally found reassuring, which tonight was making him want to put his fist through a wall.

Aiden was on the bed, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling with his fingers laced over his chest. He had not said anything since they left the dining hall. His jaw was set in the way it got when he was thinking through something he hadn't finished yet.

The silence had been going on for eleven minutes.

Archer knew because he had been counting, and waiting for his brothers to say something.

Then He stopped pacing.

"Are we going to talk about the hunter girl?" He looked at his brothers. Alaric didn't move. Aiden blinked once at the ceiling. Archer spread his hands. "Because you have both been silent for a very long time and I need someone to acknowledge what just happened in that dining room before I lose my mind completely." He paused. "Also ....." He looked between them with the expression of a man about to say something he was going to say regardless of the reception. "Am I the only one dying to bury my cock inside her right now?"

Aiden continued staring at the ceiling above his head.

Alaric's hands stayed flat on the armrests.

Then Aiden laughed.

It came out low, genuine, slightly helpless.....the laugh of a man who had been holding something back and had just been given permission to stop. He pushed himself up from the bed, running a hand through his hair, and looked at Archer with an expression that was warm and sharp and hungry in equal measure.

"You want to bury yourself inside her, brother." He shook his head slowly, still smiling, and the smile had teeth in it. "That's where you want to start." He stood up fully, rolling his shoulders back, and there was something different about the way he was standing now....something that had been contained at dinner and wasn't contained anymore. "I want to do considerably worse than that."

Archer raised an eyebrow. "Define worse."

"I want to fuck her until this entire palace hears her cry." Aiden said it the way he said everything.... precisely, without apology. "I want to feel her break on my cock. I want to look into those eyes ....." He paused briefly on that, something moving across his face. "Those eyes that didn't look away. I want to look into them while I pound her pussy until she can't walk. Until she can't think. Until the only word she remembers is mine." He looked at Archer. "So when you say you're the only one thinking about this....." The smile came back, slower this time. "Where exactly does that leave me?"

Archer stared at him for a moment.

"I feel like I've never respected you more," he said.

"Enough."

Both of them looked at Alaric.

He had not moved from the chair. He was looking at them now.....not at the wall, at them.....and the quality of his attention had shifted in the way it shifted when he was done letting a conversation run its course and had decided to redirect it. His silver eyes moved between his brothers with the unhurried patience of someone who was not even slightly threatened by the energy in the room.

"Have you both forgotten," he said, "that she is human."

Silence.

"And that she infiltrated this palace under a false identity." He let that sit. "She is a hunter's daughter who constructed a professional cover, applied for a position in our household, and is currently sleeping two floors below us waiting for an opportunity to rob us." He looked at Archer. "Think with your brains. Not your cocks. For once."

Archer opened his mouth.

"For once," Alaric repeated.

Archer closed his mouth.

Aiden, who had sat back down on the edge of the bed, was looking at the floor with his elbows on his knees. He was quiet for a moment. Then: "I was already thinking about what her breasts would taste like." He said it without looking up, thoughtful rather than defensive, like a man reporting accurate data. "What she would taste like." A pause. "All of her."

"Aiden."

"I know what you're going to say."

"Then don't make me say it."

Archer had resumed pacing....slower now, more deliberate, the frantic edge of it settling into something that looked more like thinking on his feet. He turned at the window. He looked at Alaric.

"We already know why she's here," he said. "We knew before she arrived. We made the decision to let her come anyway...to let her think the cover worked, to watch and wait and see how she moves." He stopped pacing. "We're already playing the game, brother. We just haven't decided what we want to win." He held Alaric's gaze. "I don't see why we can't have some fun while we're waiting for her to show her hand."

Alaric looked at him.

"She's our mate," Aiden said quietly.

The room went very still.

He looked up from the floor. His green eyes moved between his brothers with the directness he used when he was done being diplomatic about something. "I know we haven't said it out loud. I know we're all still turning it over, looking for the piece that doesn't fit, waiting for the part where it stops being true." He shook his head. "There is no such part. There is no explanation for what happened in that dining room that doesn't end there." His jaw tightened slightly. "We confirmed it. All three of us, simultaneously, in a room full of other people. Redro responded to her." He glanced at Alaric. "Tell me I'm wrong."

Alaric said nothing.

Which was, from Alaric, an answer.

Archer's wolf....Redro, who had been snarling quietly at the back of his consciousness since the moment the scent hit....went briefly, intensely loud and then settled into something that felt less like agitation and more like certainty. The deep, bone-level certainty of a wolf who had found what it had always been looking for and was done pretending otherwise.

"She's mate," Archer said. Saying it out loud felt like setting something down that he hadn't known he was carrying. "That's not nothing."

"No," Alaric said. "It's not nothing." He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was measured....carefully so, in the way he was careful when something had gotten under his control and he was managing it rather than feeling it. "It's also not simple. She's human. She's here under false pretenses. She came to steal from us and she is going to try to steal from us and we have no certainty ...." He paused. "No certainty that this isn't exactly that."

Aiden frowned. "You think the scent is manufactured?"