Before I’d met Louise, the patterns of rhythms of the Saints had felt unmistakably like home. Of all my fellow Saints, I would have said that Frank and I shared a closeness that extended even beyond that which I already share with Caz and Sébastien…but even I have to admit that there were, are parts of Frank that are closed off to me—that may remain locked away from me forever.

The thought chills me for the briefest of moments before my body, still in the thralls of heat, turns my attention back to the matter of my hard cock in my hand and the unfolding beauty of the scene before me.

Louise tenuously balances above the surface of the wooden slab farm table arms wrapped around Seb’s neck, Sébastien on his knees—his kneel spread wide to provide stability as his arms thread beneath Louise’s knees, his cock buried inside her slick cunt up to the knot; Caz’s hands cupping either cheek of Louise’s Ass as his cock head pushes against the dripping junction of Louise and Seb’s cock.

Caz dips his face down toward Louise’s as she lets her head loll back toward him—their tongues twining softly before their lips fit together in a deep kiss. Caz’s prince Albert disappears inside Louise alongside Seb’s cock.

My hardness jumps in my hand as I remember the ribbed strokes of Caz’s pierced cock sliding against me with delicious pressure inside Louise’s tight heat.

The three of them moan and whisper against one another as the trio undulate in a writhing of glistening bodies; Louise pinky-alabaster and smattered with freckles between Caz’s salt white and Seb’s rich deep bronze—the leagues of black and rainbow ink scrawled across Caz and Seb’s flesh seeming to dance with their slow, intense gyration.

Something inside me snaps—not the tether breaking jolt of orgasm, but the nascent epiphany that this overwhelming resonation, this near impossible unity and congruity—can only mean one thing…

Fated Mates. An unbreakable, unshakable mating bond that thrums like a single, near imperceptible note in the cosmic background noise of our very existence.

I would second guess myself, tell myself that there’s no way to be sure in this moment—but the inevitable feeling of our connection makes everything feel obvious—embarrassing to have missed in hindsight.

Do they already know too? Did it crystalize for them? Or, are they so close they cannot see the wave of the tsunami about to break over them?

I watch as Louise, Caz, and Sébastien breathe in one another—their grinding and gyrating nearing a fever pitch; Louise’s face turned to the side so that Both Sébastien and Caz can press their foreheads to hers.

Surely they must. Caz, pleading Louise’s case on our escape from Liberty city—insisting on her freedom. He may very well have been the first, whether he’s fully conscious of it or not.

“Louise, Sebby, I—” Caz gasps out before his body gutters against Louise’s back. His hips hook upward, deep inside asSeb’s knot forces both he and Caz as deep as they can go. Caz’s glutes spasm as he grits his teeth against his orgasm.

Seb barks out a sharp sound as his knot anchors them within. Louise shatters into a near liquid state, her eyes all white’s as she rag-dolls in their arms.

I cum as silently as I can manage, a hand clasped over my mouth as I pump ropes of pearly cum from my aching cock into the crumpled bed sheets beneath me.

Without revealing that I had seen their little pre-lunch show, I rejoin the others in the kitchen just in time to have Seb and Caz force Louise and I to have a bit to eat.

I want to blurt out my discovery about the fated mates, to insist that our pack celebrate right here on the table, to exchange bonding bites and lose ourselves in the rest of the heat; breeding and never leaving this magical place in the woods where we found each other for real—where we became family.

Maybe it’s because I’ve had too many sad endings in this life, or because I’ve so often been the deceiver that I believe my luck’s run up and I will surely find myself to be the deceived—but I hold my tongue.

I can’t say exactly why, but it has something to do with that unfamiliar gleam I sometimes catch in Frank’s eye—when I feel as if I don’t know the man staring back at me. I know Frank belongs to us, to the Saints, to our Lucifer—but that other man? I’m not so sure.

Instead of any grand proclamations, I sit in silence, as Louise actually falls asleep at the lunch table, head laid on her foldedhands beside her soup bowl—Seb draping a small fleece blanket over her bare shoulders rather than trying to move her.

“Better let her get her rest where she can get it,” he chuckles softly before nodding over his shoulder at Frank’s feet—hanging over the edge of the loft above.

I try not to let it affront my omega dignity that Frank crawled right up that ship’s ladder and passed out as soon as he saw Louise’s eyes drift closed—without checking to see if I needed his knot beforehand. Of course, Seb’s still up and about and can help keep me comfortable until Frank or Louise rallies, but still.

As if he’s caught wind of my thoughts, Caz leans over and squeezes my thigh just above my uninjured knee playfully.

“How are you holding up Q? Anything I can do to help you out?” he purrs, his soothing scent easing my nerves as he begins to gently perfume, those icy blue eyes drifting down to my ever-strengthening erection.

“I could ask you boys the same,” I lob back, an arch in one of my copper-brown brows.

“Eh? What do you mean by that, Tin-tin?” Seb drops into the empty bench seat beside me.

In that moment—the two of them, heads nearly pressed together as they regard me with such tender concern; black and gold—that’s when I decide I can tell them.

Coyly, I press my index finger upright against my sealed lips and nod to the door to the side of the cabin, the outdoor shower, and the hot tub.

“I don’t know if I can get back in that water, mon ami.” Seb scrubs a hand through his hair ruefully, “I’m still waterlogged from earlier.”

I get up and retrieve a pair of my pants, long abandoned over a rung of the ship’s ladder to the loft bed, stepping into them—carefully tucking my hardness up into my waistband before I pick up my sweater from its place on the floor and shrug into it.