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“I know.”

For a while, nobody says anything. We just… lie there. Breathing. Existing. Tangled in limbs and scent and something too big to name but impossible to ignore.

It’s warm. Heavy. Sacred.

Eventually, because someone has to ruin the moment, I croak out,

“So... what now?”

Ash huffs. “Now?”

He lifts his head, glancing around at the scattered pile of discarded clothes, the come-stained cushions, the still-fogged glass of the Solarium.

He smirks.

“Now, we nap.”

Kai groans, nuzzling into my back. “Amen.”

Theo’s hand slides into mine, fingers twining. Lucian exhales, long and quiet, his hand never stopping its slow rhythm through my hair.

I close my eyes.

I’m home.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Rhea

The bed smells like him.

Lucian.

Leather and steel and smug superiority - but under it all, something warmer. Something I’ve started to think of as home.

The sheets are rumpled, the air thick with the scent of bond and sex and… well,us. It’s overwhelming in the kind of way that makes you want to lie still forever and hope no one asks you to move. Lucian’s arms are wrapped around me, one hand splayed over my belly like he’s claiming the entire lower half of my body for the alpha nation.

I should feel claustrophobic. I should feel unmoored.

But all I feel is safe. And deeply, deeply sore.

I stretch a little and immediately regret it. My thighs ache. My back twinges. I might never recover full range of motion.

Lucian shifts behind me, pressing his nose to the back of my neck.

“You’re awake,” he murmurs.

“Barely,” I croak. “You broke my pelvic floor.”

He chuckles, low and unbothered, brushing a kiss along my shoulder like that somehow makes up for wrecking me from five separate angles.

We lie there in the quiet, until I say the thing that’s been crawling up my spine since the moment I opened my eyes.

“What happens now?”

Lucian's hand stills. His voice is calm, but there's tension underneath.

“Now, we figure it out. Together.”

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