Page 108 of Crucible
“Yes, wolf. We get bored. Sometimes downright feral with cabin fever, but that’s only been an issue of late. For the first year, we were too busy learning how to hunt and survive to be bored. And then we started building this cabin somewhere between the second and third year. I wish I could say it went flawlessly, but it didn’t, and it ate up four more years. Learning every inch of this mountain forward, backward, and sideways took another three.”
“Okay, well, that’s eight years. You said you’ve been out here for nine. What did you do with the last year of your life? How did you pass the time?”
Seth is the one who answers, closing his book so that he can meet her gaze. “We thought about you.”
Aurelia immediately stiffens. “But you said you didn’t know who I was.”
“We didn’t. But we knew the kind of woman it would take to handle all three of us. We knew it would have to be someone just as monumentally and irrevocably fucked up—whose darknessrivals our own.” Picking his book again and staring at the pages, Seth says with an ironic lift of his brows, “Got to say, Sunshine, you didnotdisappoint.”
“If I’m so dark and screwed up, why do you call me that? I’m like the least pleasant person ever.”
Seth sighs wistfully while his gaze moves across the page he isn’t reading. “Because I’ve lived my entire life without seeing the sunrise, and then one day, there it was, sleeping in my brother’s bed.”
The last thing any of us expect is for Aurelia to crawl out of Khalil’s lap and into Seth’s.
Khalil is so pissed he drops his carving when she stands from the recliner and walks the short distance to the couch where Seth and I are sitting. I watch from under my lashes as Seth welcomes her with a grin, and then they kiss.
For a really long fucking time.
When they finally come up for air, Aurelia rests her head on his shoulder while Seth beams like she just reached inside her chest and offered him her beating heart. “Read to me.”
Seth starts reading.
“So, she’s definitely working Seth,” Khalil whispers to me an hour later. Once I was done cleaning and sharpening the weapons, Khalil offered to help me carry them back down to the basement. Seth and Aurelia are still upstairs, and we can hear Seth reading animatedly to her.
“Of course she is.”
She’d be dumb not to, and our girl is fucking amazing.
Out of the three of us, Seth’s the softest on her. He actuallylikesher, while I enjoy using her mouth and pussy and nothing more. Well, maybe her ass too, but that will come later.
“Any thoughts on what we should do about it?”
“Nothing.” I shrug as I store the crossbow inside and shut the locker doors before securing the chain around the handle and locking the padlock with the key dangling from twine around my neck. It’s a fucking risk keeping our only protection locked up like this and not easily accessible, but Aurelia has given us no choice.
Our wolf is bloodthirsty, just like us.
“Nothing?” Khalil echoes.
“Seth may be a virgin, but he isn’t dumb, Khalil. You see the way she lets him touch her. He’s working her too.”
Khalil hums like he hasn’t considered that before. His senseless jealousy over Aurelia pretending to like Seth more has been clouding his head.
“All right then, so we do nothing.” Khalil is just starting to relax when the sound of Aurelia’s shrieking laughter floats down the stairs, and his hackles raise once more. “But I swear to God, Seth better fuck it up soon, or I might smother them both.” In a flowery voice, he mocks with his arm outstretched, “I didn’t see the sunrise until you. Who the fuck does he think he is? Yeats Jr?”
I smirk as I tuck the locker key back inside my shirt where it stays safely hidden from Aurelia. “Mad that the student has become the master or because you’ve lost your touch?”
“Can never happen,” he returns smugly. “I’m Khalil motherfucking Poverly.”
I groan as I start for the stairs. “Please don’t tell me she’s rubbing off on you already.”
Aurelia has finally stopped obnoxiously reminding us of who she is—as if we could forget—and now Khalil’s ass is taking a page from her book.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Khalil denies as he wraps his hands and then grabs his boxing gloves from the hook.
The sound of him warming up on one of the speed bags follows me up the stairs.
“And the dragon that everyone thought a myth soared across the field, roaring its fury at being disturbed from its centuries-long slumber,” Seth narrates.
