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Koa goes straight to Finley.

Tank starts giving Dani shit about our extremely scientific illustration before pulling her against him.

Luca touches Annabeth almost absently, like reaching for his wife is so ingrained he doesn't even have to think about it.

Dane bends to kiss Carolina.

No hesitation.

No self-consciousness.

Just affection.

Open and easy and everywhere.

I've interviewed hundreds of couples over the years. Famous ones. Powerful ones. Couples who knew exactly how to perform happiness when the cameras were rolling.

This isn't that.

Nobody here is performing.

These people genuinely adore each other. And suddenly I see something I've been missing. The Carolina Rovers aren't simply a rugby team.

They're a family.

A weird, loud, inappropriate, apparently shifter-romance-reading family. But a family nonetheless.

And they've built something here. Something extraordinary.

I wonder if they even know how rare it is. To work beside people you love. To have friends become family. To have wives become friends because their husbands became brothers.

To win together and lose together and raise babies and celebrate weddings and apparently gather in their billionaire team owner's library to debate the logistics of supernatural sex.

This isn't just rugby.

It isn't just a business Mitchell purchased.

It's a community.

His community.

And suddenly the question that brought me here in the first place feels different.

Why did Mitchell Knight buy the Carolina Rovers?

Maybe I've been asking it backward.

Maybe the more interesting question is what the Rovers have given him.

Then Mitchell looks across the room. At me.

Everything inside me goes strangely still.

His expression changes.

It's subtle.

Most people probably wouldn't notice. I'm trained to notice. The sharpness around his eyes eases. His shoulders relax. And this man who walked into the room surrounded by professional athletes somehow looks only at me.