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“Puck.”
I wait, but he doesn’t add anything more. “Just Puck? Like… Shakespeare?”
Huck shrugs. “I guess. The rich man called me Huck and called my Hyde Puck. He never said why.”
A pained sort of horror sinks over me. Creepy Mabel’s full name is a sign of who and what the two of us are to each other. But Huck doesn’t know where he comes from. He has no family name. No past. No history rooting him in the world.
Just that secret room and that cage and that bastard I hope is dead.
Aching for all that was taken from him, I want to reach out all over again, but I stop myself. I know what he said about touch, but getting close to Huck—getting close to any of them—is just going to be painful when they all go.
“Do you like that?” I ask instead.
He seems confused. “Like…?”
“Your name. And your Hyde’s name. Do you two like them?”
His brow furrows. “No one’s ever asked us that.”
All of a sudden, I kind of want to smack Zeb and Phineas. For gods’ sakes, a monster named their friend. A real monster, not just someone supernatural. And those two never thought to ask if Huck or Puck wanted to choose something different?
Before I can figure out what to say, though, Huck nods to himself. “We do. We… Zeb says our names come from troublemakers, and”—a bright grin flashes across Huck’s face—“we like that.”
My words still fail me, but now it’s for a totally new reason. Seeing him grin like that, all playful and devilish…
Gods, he’s beautiful.
“We don’t want that for you, though,” Huck amends, turning to me.
“What?”
“Trouble.” He inches his hand toward me again.
I can’t help myself. I let him take mine, even if it just makes the tingling shivers start up all over again. “Why not?”
He looks down, shrugging one shoulder like he’s searching for the right words.
“Because you’re our fulcrum.” Zeb’s voice comes from the bedroom doorway, startling me. “Our center to balance us all.”
I turn to him, alarmed. “I’m—what?”
His brow rises like he’s just waiting for me to agree.
And that’s insane. I push away from the sofa, retreating from them both. “You’re… I’m not…”
Still sitting on the couch, Huck nods like he’s confirming what Zeb said. “You’re our mate.”
I gape at them, utterly lost for words. It’s not that I don’t know what they’re talking about. Of course I do. Dad always talked about how Mom was the fulcrum for him, and she’d always gotten this secretive, loving smile when he said it. They said they’d been destined for one another, like fated mates among the shifters, but with a quality unique to Jekylls and Hydes.
Because for our kind, finding our mates gives us more than the comfort of not being alone in a world that can’t really understand what we are. It stabilizes us, in a way. And at the core of that stabilization is the fulcrum. One member of the mate group who is like the center of a teeter-totter, keeping all sides in balance.
My parents had been rare. Most of our kind were polyamorous and formed bonds with several mates. But Mom and Dad only had each other, and when I was a child, their stories of love at first sight, of just knowing they were meant for one another, had always seemed so romantic. Creepy had practically decorated the inside of my skull with little black hearts every time Mom or Dad told us how they met.
But they’d been the two rational adults who’d raised me. Smart, stable people who never did anything more impulsive than ordering a pizza on a Friday night. As I got older, I never really believed they’d simply known they were meant for each other from day one. Sure, it was a sweet story, but rational people didn’t operate that way. They didn’t change their career plans and their living situation and fucking everything, all in an instant, just because they met someone.
But this… the way these two are looking at me right now…
Gods help me, it’s madness. “You can’t seriously believe I’m—” I choke. “For both of you? That… We just met, for the gods’ sakes. You can’t?—”
