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Pepper looks back at me. “Are you both okay?”

Ezra slips an arm around my waist. “We were practicing for the next round of your heat.”

Understanding warms her expression. “I want both of you. That includes the part where you still want each other.”

My alpha quiets for one rare second.

Pepper reaches for us, and we move close enough for her to touch. I carry her back to the attic with Ezra beside us. Once she’s settled, I show her the photographs from the ledger and map. Her sleepiness clears.

“‘Gazebo relocated from east spring path,’” she reads. “And this says Home Road.”

“The original location was near the cemetery boundary,” I say.

Pepper looks at the picture of the plaque, then at the damp symbol in her notebook.

J. Vines. For the road home.

Her fingers trace the edge of the photograph on my phone. “The gazebo wasn’t built beside this house.”

“No.”

Her eyes lift to mine. “Someone moved it away from the road it was meant to mark.”

Chapter 10

Pepper Vines

The words Home Road are still glowing on Theo’s phone when my body decides research is over. One second, I’m looking at the old property map and trying to understand why anyone would move a gazebo away from the path it marked. The next, heat rolls through me so hard my fingers lose their grip on the blanket.

My notebook slips sideways. Theo catches it before the pages fold. Ezra catches me.

The room fills with peppermint, vanilla, rosemary, and the deep sweetness of heat. My pulse jumps. My breasts ache beneath Theo’s shirt. Slick gathers hot between my thighs, enough that I feel it when I shift.

“I had one more question,” I say. My voice comes out breathless.

Theo puts the phone and notebook on the trunk beside the stone. “It can wait.”

Another wave tightens low in my belly and steals my complaint.

Ezra’s arm circles my waist. “The science committee has adjourned.”

I turn into him, pressing my face to his neck. Linen, sea salt, apple. His body is solid beneath my hands, but cool at the edges in a way I recognize now. I breathe him in, then reach for Theo without looking. He’s there before my fingers close. His hand covers mine. Leather. Bourbon. Alpha.

The need inside me sharpens until my knees press together. “I want both of you,” I whisper.

Theo’s purr rolls through the nest.

Ezra kisses my temple. “We’re both here.”

My gaze drops to the hard line beneath Theo’s jeans. My body answers with another rush of slick. “I want you, and I want Ezra with us. I want all of it.”

Theo’s eyes darken. “Water first.”

I stare at him. His expression doesn’t change.

“Three swallows, little rabbit.”

“I’m in a medical emergency.”