Page 32 of Into Ember

I stop.

Two sentences late. Today, that counts as discipline.

Elara is very still.

“Mates,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Plural.”

“Famously.”

“For — " Her hands do something in the air. “For WHAT?”

“Nesting.”

“For mating,” Rayner says. Warm. Sincere. A friend to no one.

“Thank you, Rayner.”

“You’re welcome.”

She’s gone from pink to a red I’d usually take credit for.

Then she stops looking at me. And that should be a relief but it isn’t. Not even a little bit. Because she’s looking at Erik.

“The face,” she says. “You made a FACE. When you saw the pull-out you went completely — I thought you were SICK. I offered you WATER. And then you slept in it. You — oh my god. You slept in it.”

“I did.” No apology anywhere in the man.

“I built you a — I did RESEARCH — there was a SYSTEM — " She’s out of the chair. Pacing. Both hands in her hair. “Okay. No. Here’s the thing about your story. For that word to even apply, I would have to be a — and I’m not. I’m a WRITER. From CHICAGO. I have a Costco membership. Human women make nice guest beds all the time. It’s called being raised right—”

Nobody agrees with her.

I know exactly how that feels. Freshly.

“AND — " Louder. One finger up. Wheeling around. “Even if — EVEN IF — your little fairy tale worked the way you say it does, it can’t mean — that. It can’t mean the thing you’re all carefully not saying. Because HE — "

The finger comes around to me.

Loaded.

“— sat in it. Flopped right in like it was a couch at a party. Made himself completely at home. And nothing happened. No lightning. No objection. NOTHING. So either your sacred mate nest doesn’t care who climbs in, or it’s a blanket fort with a mythology problem, and either way, everyone can stop looking at me like that.”

She sits. Vindicated. Breathing hard. Reaches for her coffee. Case closed.

And everyone looks at me.

Brock, over his mug, with centuries of I-know-you in one eyebrow. Rayner, gently, which is worse. Leif, level. Even Erik turns from the stove.

Because they caught it. Same as I did.

She just used me as proof it means nothing.

And she’s got the story wrong.

She was in her room. Texting. She never saw the two times I couldn’t make myself sit in the thing. Never saw Erik pull my wrist, or the swearing. All she saw was the morning — me homesteading with a coffee, squaring her pillow wall. As far as she knows, I strolled in.