Page 171 of Griffin Food

I see submission not as a one-way route that passes control from one to another, but as a push and pull between equal and opposite forces. I feel their love even as my body feels their passion. I feel my mates, all of them, both the two present in this room and the three who wait for us beyond.

“Lass, you have ever been a test,” Rafe says. The words are punched from him in hoarse breaths. But there is affection there, too.

I am a test.

I have been lost.

And confused about who or what I am.

The bond does not hide anything. It reveals the keenest, sharpest edge of emotions in all their stark, messy glory.

Today, I see myself through the eyes of my mates, who have waited for me to come back to them. Through their eyes, I see myself anew, as someone worthy… someone worthy of my mate’s seed and the honor of carrying their child.

Someone worthy of love.

The kind that comes without reservation or conditions. The kind that makes a man willing to sacrifice everything for you. And although the old me wants to reject the idea that such love is possible, today, I see clearly that it is, for each and every one of my mates feels this love for me.

I break open.

Rupture and spin.

A sharp sting is followed by rapture, and a hot flood as Atlas fills my womb.

“Ah, gods!” Rafe fills my mouth.

Atlas is still inside me, deep and certain, when I feel the barbs release and the first tears come.

Not grief. Not guilt. Something closer to the opposite of both—a loosening of something that has been wound tight for eighteen days, spilling out of me now that there is finally room for it.

“I’ve got you,” Rafe says. His hand is warm at the back of my neck, steadying as he gathers me from the floor and into his arms. He always knows.

I breathe. In and out. Feeling them through the bond, the two present and the three waiting. Skin and warmth and the familiar weight of being held.

All of them mine.

“Take her to the nest,” Atlas says, his voice almost back to normal. Almost.

“Thank fuck,” Rafe says. “I thought you’d never ask.”

I sigh and smile, and then a giggle bubbles up.

“Gods, the lass is high,” Rafe mutters, rises, and tosses me over his shoulder in one movement.

My next giggle is more of a snort, and entirely inelegant.

And just like that, I am back. Nothing more or less than a limp, well-sated woman over one mate’s shoulder as my other mate follows. Atlas, still gloriously naked, makes an arresting sight as I peer back at him with a sleepy smile.

“Incorrigible,” Atlas says with a shake of his head. “I have forewarned the others that it shall be a long night.”

Epilogue

Violet

“So,” Lark says casually from where he stands gazing out of the picture window in Atlas’s suite, “about the winter solstice…”

He leaves the thought hanging.

Darrion chuckles, the sound low and knowing. I glance back over my shoulder at him—sprawled across what I have come to think of as my secondary nest on Atlas’s couch, entirely at ease, as though he were put on this earth specifically to be my pillow.