Page 59 of Wretched Thorns

The dark thread sat low in his chest, the way it always sat, steady where his brothers ran hot and sharp. He was the one the other two set leaned on without thinking about it, had been since the three of them shared a womb, and he had spent his life being the still waters, the foundation, the sanctuary. Being the shield had its own cost. It meant that when the bond with Serena went thin and absent, he could not howl it out the way Jasper did, could not bury it in work the way Eli did. He had to face the reality of it, and somehow still be the anchor. He found himself in the grove before dawn with his hands in the moss like a prayer.

***

He heard Jasper before he saw him.

Jasper came down the path stripped down to the wolf parts of himself. He stopped at the edge of the moss circle. Then he crossed it and knelt beside Callum on the same stretch of warmth and ethereal power.

Their shoulders didn’t quite touch.

Their breathing came up to the same tempo.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Jasper said.

“No.”

“Didn’t think you could.”

“No.”

A long silence.

Eli came up the path, eventually. His glasses had fogged at the bottom of the lenses from the walk through the dew and humid morning air. He was rubbing them clear with the hem of his shirt as he came onto the moss.

He knelt on Callum’s other side.

Three brothers in a semicircle. The old magnolia above them. The ley lines warm beneath.

They had knelt like this in this grove their whole lives, for smaller things and larger. Skinned knees. A dead dog when they were nine. The night their mother told them, once and never again, the crime she and their father committed, the burden they were born to. The grove took whatever you brought it and helped you navigate the complexities of it, asking nothing in return. Their ancestors had paid the price for this place and the three of them had learned to bring the things they should not carry into the house where their mother would have to watch them bear it. Callum brought it Serena now and the torment that came with her absence. He did not have to say so. Jasper’s shoulder came a half inch closer to his on the left, and Eli’s breathing dropped into the same slow tempo on the right, and the question Eli asked out loud was a courtesy.

“Are we doing this?” Eli asked.

“Yes,” Jasper didn’t hesitate.

Callum laid his other palm flat against the moss beside the first.

The chord that made up that most sacred of bonds opened.

***

She came through fast.

The onyx thread went from a hum to a wire pulled tight. The silver thread on his right and the gold thread on his left lit at the same instant.

Serena was on the other end.

She reached for them differently this time.

Not panic.

Choice.

Then she was in the grove with them.

On the moss between them in the strange, folded geometry of the bond. Naked. Warm. Dark hair spread beneath her on the moss. Her eyes met his.

“How is this…” Her mouth moved. “Is this real?”

Her voice came through both ears and through his chest all at once.