LOGINPractice the next morning was a punishment I chose for myself.I was on the ice before half the team had finished lacing up, running drills until my thighs burned and my lungs screamed and there was nothing left in my head but the next rep, the next stride, the next hit. Coach watched from the boards with his arms crossed and said nothing, which meant he was either pleased or concerned and I didn't particularly care which.The ice helped. It always helped. The cold and the speed and the violence of it — there was no room for anything else when you were moving that fast.And then Finn stepped onto the ice.He didn't even look at me. That was the thing. He came through the gate laughing at something Luke had said, his hair still damp from the shower, green eyes bright, and he didn't look at me once. Just took his position for the drill like I didn't exist.Which I shouldn't have registered at all.I registered it like a splinter under my skin.I told myself to focus. I ran the drill. I
COLEI came so hard my vision went white at the edges.For about thirty seconds, everything was quiet.Then my brain came back online.I lay there staring at the ceiling with my heart slamming against my ribs, breathing through my nose, waiting for the disgust to arrive. It always arrived. That was the pattern — want, give in, immediate self-loathing, repeat.The disgust didn't come.What came instead was something almost worse.Relief.I was on my feet before I'd thought it through, cleaning up, moving. I needed to do something with my hands. I needed to prove something. I needed — I needed to demonstrate to myself, concretely, that this was nothing. A stress response. Three weeks of proximity to a situation I didn't understand, messing with my head. That was all.I was straight. I had always been straight. I had twenty-nine years of evidence.I picked up my phone.Scrolled to Amber's name. We'd hooked up a handful of times over the years — no expectations, no complications, just eas
COLEThe ceiling hadn't changed in three nights.Same water stain in the corner, the one shaped vaguely like a hockey skate if you looked at it long enough, which I had. Too many times. I knew every crack in the plaster above my bed like I knew the lines on my own palms.Sleep wasn't coming. Hadn't come in three days.I lay there in the dark with my arms behind my head and my jaw clenched and every light in the apartment off, listening to the building settle around me. The pipes knocked. Someone two floors up walked across their kitchen. A car alarm went off somewhere on the street below and then stopped.I was so tired my eyes burned.I still couldn't sleep.The problem — and I'd been very carefully not calling it a problem — was that every time I got close, my brain did the thing. The uninvited thing. The thing I'd been shutting down for weeks with varying degrees of success.Tonight I was too exhausted to shut it down.So when it started, I just — let it.Luke's jaw. The particular
NADIA; Finn told me the next day. We were at my place, just the two of us. Luke had a team meeting he couldn't skip, and I'd been half-reading a medical journal on the couch, not really absorbing any of it. The afternoon light was doing that golden late-day thing through my curtains, turning everything warm and slow. Finn was sprawled across the other end of the couch with his feet in my lap, eating an apple like he'd lived here for years. Which, increasingly, he kind of did. "So," he said, not looking up. Casual. Too casual. "So," I echoed. He took another bite. Chewed. "Luke came over last night." I set the journal down. "Yeah?" "Yeah." Still not looking at me. His jaw worked around the apple. "And I—" A pause. He finally glanced over, something almost shy in his expression, which was so unlike Finn that it made my chest squeeze. "I went down on him." The words landed soft in the quiet apartment. Outside, a car passed. The refrigerator hummed. "Just the two of you
Finn's apartment was smaller. Just one bedroom, barely any furniture. But it felt lived in, comfortable. Clothes draped over chairs, hockey equipment in the corner, the faint smell of coffee and something sweet—vanilla, maybe. Luke stood in the middle of the living room, hands in his pockets, looking at Finn like he wasn't quite sure why he was here. "Thanks for letting me come over," Luke said. Finn closed the door behind them. "You said you wanted to talk." "Yeah. I did." Luke ran a hand through his hair. "About us. About... what we're doing." "Okay." Finn moved to the couch, sitting on the arm. "Talk." "I don't know how to do this," Luke admitted. "The whole relationship thing. With you. Without Nadia there." "Do you want to do it?" "Yes." No hesitation this time. "But I don't know what I'm supposed to—" He gestured vaguely. "I don't know the rules." "There are no rules," Finn said softly. "We make them up as we go." Luke moved closer. "And if I wanted to kiss yo
COLE; Cole's apartment was dark when he got home. Good. He didn't want to see anyone. Didn't want to talk. Just wanted to be alone with the chaos in his head. He dropped his bag by the door and headed straight for the shower, stripping off his clothes as he went. The hot water felt good on his sore muscles, but it did nothing to quiet his thoughts. *We share each other.* Her words kept replaying in his head. Three people. Together. All of them touching each other, fucking each other, loving each other. It was wrong. It had to be wrong. So why couldn't he stop thinking about it? He pressed his forehead against the tile wall, water streaming over his back. Tried to think about anything else. The upcoming game. His stats. The fight he'd gotten into during practice. But his mind kept circling back to Nadia. The way she'd looked at him in the medical bay. Not afraid. Not judging. Just honest. *Yes, I think I do.* She loved them. Luke and Finn. Both of them. And Col
Daemon pulled back slowly, the drag of his cock in my ass sending fresh pain shooting through me. But before I could adjust, he thrust back in, and the pain shifted. Changed. Underneath the burn was something else—pleasure, dark and forbidden.Magnus moved beneath me, his cock stroking my inner wal
Three days had passed since that night. Three days of my body slowly recovering from being claimed by all three of them at once. My ass still ached when I sat down—a reminder of Daemon's cock stretching me open for the first time. The brand on my shoulder was healing, the angry red fading to pink s
CHAPTER 25I came to slowly, consciousness dragging me up through layers of pain.My shoulder was on fire. Not the white-hot agony of the brand itself, but a deep, throbbing burn that pulsed with every heartbeat. Even the smallest movement sent fresh waves of pain radiating down my arm.I was in a
The words were meant to hurt, to break me. And they did. Tears spilled down my cheeks, mixing with the blood from my split lip."Please," I sobbed. "Please don't—""Where should we put it?" Luna examined me like I was a piece of meat. "Her face? No, too visible. The Alphas might object.""Her shoul







