“I thought …” I just start blurting it all out. “The night we met was … I’d never had that kind of reaction to another person before. I wanted to burrow under Mirth’s skin. To be buried deep within her, yeah, of course. But I also wanted … needed … to ease the burden she carried, carries, within her.”
“Soul bound.” Christoph releases his grip on my shoulder slowly, as if worried I might fall over without him holding me.
Another cheer runs through the crowd in the stadium seats. The first race is over.
“That first morning, I lay there, watching her sleep,” I whisper. “I only managed to leave at all because Armin’s other horses arrived. I needed an actual excuse. That’s … too fast. And Mirth knew it, because she had no problem walking away, she … I was the one who reached out, maintained contact … and when the invitation came to the fucked-up matchmaking thing … I almost accepted it.”
“Why didn’t you?” Elias asks.
Lost in my own recollections, I blink at him. “Mirth didn’t want me dragged into all of that.” I glance at Bolan, then Sully. A hopeless sort of jealousy twists through my words. “She didn’t spare you.”
“Mirth didn’t know we’d been invited,” Bolan says. “Tried to kick me to the curb the moment she saw me, even with that perfect-princess mask firmly in place.”
“She practically begged me to stay,” Sully says with an affected shrug.
“That’s because you weren’t a threat,” Bolan lashes back. “You’re safe, Sully.”
Sully just smiles at that, perfectly content. Because he knows Mirth loves him. He’s known she’s loved him for a very long time.
“I didn’t know it would be you,” I say, drawing all the attention back to me. “All of you …”
“Mirth must have explained,” Elias says. “That she needed a bond group. That she couldn’t choose just one of us, even if she wanted to.”
“Of course she fucking explained,” I say, so, so angry at myself. “But I just wanted her. I wanted everything she could spare me. Every look, every touch … I understood that she had to have a bond group. An established bond group. For, like, political reasons or …” I glance at them all, feeling utterly stupid. Childish. “That it would just be … like a … contract. Only on paper. I thought it would be the Mertons.”
“You know the Mertons?” Christoph asks.
I can hear a lot I don’t understand loaded into the question. “No. They bid for my contract, but they’re … trophy collectors. Not serious about their horses.”
The four of them glance between themselves, sharing information that I don’t have access to, but it’s my own words I hear as they echo through my mind.
Trophy collectors. I knew it within minutes of sitting down with Archie to discuss my heading their then-nonexistent breeding program.
My stomach sinks. Mirth isn’t a trophy.
Oh, fuck. I’ve been looking at this all wrong.
“So,” Elias says coolly, “just so I understand your objections to the idea of being soul bound to us, through Mirth. Is it who we are? Our titles and positions? Or is it that you’re worried that we’re going to want to fuck you?”
Bolan’s head whips toward the earl. “Um, excuse me?”
“Way to woo, Earl,” Sully says sarcastically.
“We’re beyond wooing,” Elias says. “We have been since the moment Rian stopped answering Mirth’s calls.”
“Not even twelve hours’ grace?” Sully eyes the earl as if he’s seeing him differently. “Does that go for all of us?”
“You know it does,” Elias snaps.
“Just checking.”
“I’m not interested in fucking anyone but Mirth,” Bolan says utterly seriously. “I’m not homophobic. It’s sexy as fuck to participate. If you want me there. And I’m happy to lend a helping hand when more than two are desired, or four for that matter. But I can tell you now, I wouldn’t be able to get it up with any of you. And my fucking ass is off-limits.”
“Everyone knows that, Bolan,” Sully says sourly.
Looking at Sully, Bolan points at me. “You just said baby brother didn’t know. Baby fucking brother, Sully. Thereisa line.”
The intensity of the crowd shifts again. I glance up at the screen to confirm that the second race has begun. “Perseus is in the fifth race,” I say numbly.
