As human fertility rates kept falling, the government created a matching system between humans and beasts.

That was how I became engaged to the Blackwood brothers—two wolf beasts who never wanted me.

For a year, I made coffee for both of them every morning.The older brother, Adrian, kept his distance, but he always took the mug and thanked me quietly.

The younger one, Kieran, was all temper and sharp teeth.

He snapped at me, broke the mug, and acted like I was a nuisance.

I told myself this was fair.

If I treated them the same, maybe one day this arranged bond would feel like home.

Then my best friend saw it and asked, “Have you ever thought that treating them equally might be unfair to the one who’s actually kind to you?”

I thought about that all day.

Then one morning, I walked out of the kitchen carrying only one cup.

As human fertility rates kept falling, the government created a matching system between humans and beasts.

That was how I became engaged to the Blackwood brothers—two wolf beasts who never wanted me.

For a year, I made coffee for both of them every morning.The older brother, Adrian, kept his distance, but he always took the mug and thanked me quietly.

The younger one, Kieran, was all temper and sharp teeth.

He snapped at me, broke the mug, and acted like I was a nuisance.

I told myself this was fair.

If I treated them the same, maybe one day this arranged bond would feel like home.

Then my best friend saw it and asked, “Have you ever thought that treating them equally might be unfair to the one who’s actually kind to you?”

I thought about that all day.

Then one morning, I walked out of the kitchen carrying only one cup.

...

Adrian was the first to notice the change.

He didn’t say anything. As usual, he took the cup of pour-over coffee from my hands and thanked me in that low, quiet voice of his.

Kieran was slouched at the kitchen island, scrolling through sports highlights on his phone while the morning news murmured from the TV. It wasn’t until I set Adrian’s cup beside him and turned back toward the coffee station that he finally realized what was missing.

“Hey,” he called, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I stopped.

His gaze moved from Adrian’s cup to my empty hands. “Did you run out of coffee,” he asked, “or did you suddenly decide only one of us gets any?”

Adrian carried himself with cool restraint. Kieran was all temper and teeth—volatile, arrogant, sharp enough to draw blood with a sentence.

“What?” he said. “You can see I’m right here.”

Whatever explanation I’d been about to give died in my throat.

My smile faded. “No.”

“No?” Kieran let out a short laugh. “Then what exactly is this supposed to be?”

A point?

My thoughts drifted back to a few mornings ago.

Adrian and Kieran had both been called out on an emergency response and had to leave at four in the morning. I was woken by the sounds of them washing up, jumped out of bed, hurried to the kitchen, and pulled breakfast from the warming drawer. I set out the roast chicken and potatoes I’d saved for them, then filled two mugs with hot pour-over coffee.

Kieran looked exhausted as he came downstairs, ready to head out. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, his hair was tousled, and he was still yawning. The moment I saw him, I stepped toward him, about to ask if he was okay.

I picked up one of the mugs and moved to hand it to him, but before I could speak, he shoved me away.

Wolf beasts were naturally stronger than humans. I hit the floor hard, and the mug slipped from my hand and shattered. Scalding coffee splashed across my legs and the hardwood.

Kieran froze for half a second, but the irritation came right back.

“For fuck’s sake,” he snapped. “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something?”

I stared up at him, stunned. He didn’t sound worried that I had fallen. He sounded annoyed that I had interrupted him.

“Your clingy little act is bad enough on a normal day,” he said coldly. “But I’m dead tired tonight. I just got home, and you’re already all over me again like some pathetic stray.”

A stray.

So that was all my waiting and worrying meant to him. Not care, not concern, not love. Just something pathetic. Something that kept coming back no matter how many times it was pushed away.

The disgust in his voice cut straight through me. Heat rushed into my face so fast it burned, and I was too humiliated to even lift my head. I simply stumbled back to my room without saying a word.

A moment later, I heard a dull thud from the living room.

Adrian had punched him.

Not long after that, Adrian came into my room carrying the first-aid kit and knelt in front of me.

Only then did I realize the skin along my calf had gone red and swollen where the coffee had splashed me.

I had always known the Blackwood brothers resented me. Anyone could see I was the one who didn’t belong.

They were the golden boys of beast society—wolf twins, brilliant, beautiful, strong, admired everywhere they went. And I was soft, ordinary, the kind of woman people’s eyes slid right past.

If it weren’t for the compatibility score, the government never would have matched us. Our lives never would have crossed paths.

At first, I had been happy.

I grew up in foster care, and more than anything, I had always wanted a home. Back then, I had been foolish enough to believe Adrian and Kieran could become my family.

So no matter how cold they were, no matter how dismissive or cruel, I kept reaching for them anyway. I kept smiling, kept caring, kept trying.

Every time they ate the meals I cooked, I felt this ridiculous rush of satisfaction, as if I was needed, as if I finally belonged somewhere.

People need something to tether them to the world. For the longest time, Adrian and Kieran were mine.

The first six months were miserable.

They hated the match. Men like them were used to being envied, but once the Bureau matched them to me, everyone who had ever wanted to see them brought low finally had something to laugh at.

“So that’s who the Blackwood twins got?”

It was a humiliation they couldn’t swallow, so they made me swallow it instead.

Adrian was the steadier one. Most of the time, he acted as though I wasn’t there—cold, distant, polite only when absolutely necessary.

Kieran was worse.

Kieran was openly cruel.

He mocked everything: my clothes, my job, the way I spoke, the way I carried myself. To him, I was hopeless, embarrassing, never enough in any way that mattered.

And still, I stayed.

Then, little by little, things started to shift. I couldn’t even tell when it began.

Adrian stopped treating me like I was invisible. Whenever I set his coffee beside him in the mornings, he took it. Sometimes he even thanked me. Every now and then, he would glance at me and smooth a hand over my hair, almost absently, in a gesture so gentle it left me stunned.

I wasn’t used to tenderness, and every tiny bit of it felt enormous.

Kieran changed too, or at least I thought he had. He mocked me less. Sometimes he would jerk his chin toward the couch and tell me to sit down for the second half of whatever game he was watching, complaining the entire time that I didn’t know anything about sports. But if anyone on screen annoyed me, he’d immediately start tearing into them too, like my opinion mattered more than the game itself.

I thought things were getting better. I thought maybe I had finally gotten through to them. Maybe persistence meant something. Maybe while I was trying so hard to make this work, they were slowly learning to accept me too.

Until that broken mug.

It felt like waking up from a dream and realizing I had been the only one dreaming.

All those years of effort, all that warmth, all that care, all that humiliating devotion—in the end, Kieran had reduced it all to one pathetic little thing.

A stray.

Unwanted. Needy. Embarrassing.

After that night, I barely slept.

Humiliation sat under my skin for days. I avoided both of them whenever I could.

When my best friend found out what had happened, she was furious.

I sat across from her, twisting the sleeve of my cardigan around my fingers, and said quietly, “It’s over. I’ve made up my mind. I’ll keep my distance from now on. If I don’t get too close, he won’t get another chance to shove me away.”

The worst-case scenario was simple enough.

We stayed civil. We stayed useful to each other.

My compatibility with them was high enough that I was the only one who could reliably calm them during rut. And the life they had built for themselves—their status, their wealth, the exclusive circles they moved in—gave me a stability I never could have reached on my own.

Maybe that was all this was.

A trade.

My friend was quiet for a moment before she asked, “So what now? Are you still going to make coffee for both of them every morning?”

I thought about it.

“Probably,” I said.

Keeping things polite still mattered to me.

She hesitated, then said, “But if you keep giving them both the exact same thing, is that really fair?”

Fair?

Because Adrian and Kieran were twins, and because my compatibility with both of them was unusually high, the Bureau counselors had told me the same thing from the start.

Balance mattered.

In a match like ours, fairness was everything.

Don’t favor one partner over the other. Don’t create instability in the household. Don’t make one feel overlooked, or the whole bond could sour.

I had taken that seriously.

So everything came in pairs.

Two cups every morning. Two gifts during the holidays. When I packed meals for them, I divided everything evenly, down to the last detail.

I had done all of that.

How was that not fair?

Seeing the confusion on my face, my friend leaned forward.

“That night,” she said carefully, “Kieran was the one who treated you badly, right? Adrian didn’t.”

I nodded.

He hadn’t just stayed quiet. He had punched Kieran for it.

And afterward—

My eyes dropped to the fading redness along my calf.

Adrian had knelt in front of me with the first-aid kit and treated the burn like it mattered. Before he left, he pressed a wrapped dark chocolate truffle from his coat pocket into my hand. He wiped my tears, told me to get some sleep, and later apologized for his brother.

And none of it had even been his fault.

Kieran was the one who had hurt me.

My friend watched my face and said, “Exactly. They act completely differently, but they still get the same reward. The same care. The same gifts. If Adrian is the one who’s kind to you, then isn’t treating them the same unfair to him?”

I opened my mouth to argue.

Nothing came out.

That night, I couldn’t sleep again.

I kept thinking about something from years ago, back when I was still in foster care.

One winter, our teacher stayed after school to clear out the classroom before break. While the other kids were goofing around in the hallway, I stayed behind to help stack books, wipe down shelves, and carry boxes to the supply closet until my arms ached.

Later, everyone in class got the same reward: paper treat bags filled with candy and little holiday trinkets.

Mine was exactly the same as everyone else’s. Even the kid who had spent most of the afternoon messing around instead of helping got one.

As I was leaving, my teacher stopped me.

Then she smiled, slipped a little bookstore gift card into my hand, and said, “The treat bags were for everyone. This is just for you.”

I remember staring down at it in my palm.

She smiled again and added, “Kids who help deserve a little extra. That’s what fair really looks like.”

That memory stayed with me long after she left.

The Bureau had told me fairness meant keeping everything equal.

But the teacher had taught me something else.

Maybe fairness wasn’t giving everyone the same thing.

Maybe it was giving more to the one who treated you better.

By morning, I knew which version made more sense to me.

The coffee was only the beginning.

At night, when we sat together in the living room, I stopped taking the middle seat on the couch. I sat closer to Adrian instead, leaving a clear stretch of space between Kieran and me.

In the mornings, I stopped setting out Kieran’s coffee altogether. If Adrian came into the kitchen, I slid his cup toward him and smiled at him alone.

If I had a question, I asked Adrian. If we went somewhere together, I stayed by Adrian’s side.

At dinner, if there was one portion left—the last slice of garlic bread, the best cut of steak, the final spoonful of mashed potatoes—I gave it to Adrian.

At first, it made me uneasy.

For so long, I had worked so hard to keep everything balanced that giving it up felt dangerous, like stepping off something narrow and high.

But very quickly, I realized the consequences weren’t nearly as bad as I had feared.

Adrian might be quiet, but he never humiliated me.

If I set his coffee beside him in the morning, he would thank me at once and ask how I had slept. If we went anywhere together, he would slow his steps to match mine and ask if I needed anything. When I cooked, he tasted everything and praised it with quiet sincerity.

And once I stopped forcing myself on Kieran, a lot of things stopped hurting too.

No more standing by the coffee station waiting for some sign that he even noticed what I had made for him.

No more walking beside him in public only for him to lengthen his stride and leave me behind because he hated being seen with me.

No more spending hours making dinner just to hear him complain that it was over-seasoned and barely edible.

For the first time in a long while, life inside that apartment felt softer.

I almost hid behind Adrian, the way something skittish might hide behind warmth.

And for a while, I let myself enjoy it.

Still, the atmosphere in the apartment began to shift.

Something turned tight and strange.

More than once, I felt his stare burning into my back.

Every time I turned around, Kieran was just sitting there, blank-faced, watching TV.

The last time it happened, he caught me glancing over and turned to me with a sneer.

“What?” he said. “You keep looking over here because you want to watch the game with me again?”

Once, I would have taken that as an invitation. Once, I would have crossed the room the moment he patted the cushion beside him.

Now, I only shook my head.

I wasn’t going to humiliate myself again.

Just then, Adrian came downstairs with a tennis racquet slung over one shoulder. I grabbed mine and followed him toward the door.

It was a new habit of ours. Over the past few weeks, he had started taking me to a private club outside the city, and we would stay out on the court for hours.

We had barely stepped into the hallway when something smashed behind us.

I turned at once.

Back in the living room, Kieran had hurled the remote onto the hardwood. It split apart and skidded across the floor.

His gaze was dark and fixed on Adrian’s hand around my wrist.

Then he smiled.

It wasn’t a kind smile.

“Come on, brother,” he said softly. “This is getting pathetic.”

His eyes flicked to me, then back to Adrian.

“You really going to keep playing the hero?” he asked. “You’re acting like you actually like that pathetic little fool.”

How long had it been since I had last heard him call me that?

Back when we were first matched, Kieran had never bothered to hide how much he disliked me. He had even argued with the Bureau staff in the matching hall, loudly enough to draw a crowd.

Pathetic little fool.

Pathetic stray.

Those had been some of his favorite names for me then.

I think that changed after the first time I helped them through rut.

Most of the time, Adrian and Kieran were impossible men—cold, arrogant, controlled. Rut stripped all of that away.

It was the only time either of them let me touch their wolf forms.

The same men who spent most of the month acting untouchable became restless and needy during rut, crowding close the second I sat down. In wolf form, they pressed against me, shoved their noses into my neck, and rubbed against me until I was flushed and breathless. If I tried to move away, they whined and followed. They curled around my legs, climbed half into my lap, and started fighting the moment one of them thought the other was getting more attention.

They called me their mate in voices so rough and desperate they barely sounded human.

I used to blush every time.

Even Kieran softened then.

Afterward, once rut had passed, he always looked half humiliated, as if he wanted to deny every second of it. But after that first cycle, he stopped taking quite so many shots at me.

For a while, I told myself that meant something.

A friend once told me that once a beast had clung to you like that, once he had let himself need you, even the coldest one would begin to soften.

Those were some of the sweetest memories I had of them.

And the truth was, I wasn’t as ridiculous as Kieran made me sound.

Maybe I looked small beside the Blackwood twins, but I wasn’t some joke.

So I told myself Kieran hadn’t meant it. I told myself that was just how he was—spoiled, sharp-tongued, too used to getting away with cruelty.

I had turned him down when he asked if I wanted to watch the game with him, bruised his pride, and he had lashed out.

That was what I told myself.

It still didn’t help me sleep.

Near midnight, I finally got out of bed and went downstairs for water.

A thin strip of light fell across the hall from the balcony doors.

Adrian and Kieran were out there.

One stood at the railing. The other leaned against the brick wall, a cigarette burning between his fingers.

I stopped just before the doorway and stayed hidden in the dark.

“Second time you’ve hit me over her,” Kieran said.

He blew smoke into the night. One side of his mouth was bruised, but he was smiling anyway.

It wasn’t a real smile.

“All because I called her a pathetic little fool?”

Adrian stood across from him with both hands in his pockets, his face unreadable.

Lately, he had been so gentle with me that I had almost forgotten what he was beneath it.

Wolf beasts were not gentle by nature. Neither Blackwood brother ever had been.

“If you don’t want her,” Adrian said evenly, “then stay away from her.”

He flicked ash over the railing. “And if I see you treat her like that again, I’ll hit you again.”

Kieran laughed.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You were right there with me when we filed the appeal. You hated this match just as much as I did. And now suddenly you’re playing the hero?”

He shook his head, still laughing.

Then he said, “All right. I get it. The trial year’s almost over, so now you’re being nice to her. You want her cooperative when it’s time to end it. If we hadn’t already agreed that was the plan, I might’ve actually believed you.”

The trial year.

My heart lurched.

Things had been so peaceful lately that I had almost forgotten.

The matching system wasn’t completely merciless. Even with high compatibility, not every bond worked. So after the assignment, there was a one-year trial period. If it worked, the bond became permanent. If it didn’t, both sides could walk away.

My fingers tightened against the edge of the wall.

So that was it.

Adrian had been kind to me because he wanted me to leave quietly.

He wasn’t any different from Kieran after all. He was just better at hiding it.

My chest hurt so badly I could barely breathe.

And then Adrian said, very simply—

“No.”

Kieran straightened. “What?”

“No,” Adrian said again. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

Kieran stared at him. “You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

“You actually want to keep the match?” Kieran’s voice sharpened. “That wasn’t the deal. We said if the trial year didn’t work, we’d end it and apply again.”

He let out a harsh laugh.

“Jesus, Adrian. She’s awkward, she’s a mess, and being tied to her makes us look ridiculous. We’ll be a joke.”

“Not us,” Adrian said. “You.”

Kieran’s face tightened.

“I never said I wanted anyone else,” Adrian continued.

Then, for the first time, something in his expression softened.

“Lil is good,” he said quietly. “She’s smart. She’s sweet. I was too blinded by my own prejudice to see it.”

Lil.

No one had ever shortened my name like that before.

I had never imagined Adrian thought of me that way. Never imagined that, in his mind, I was anything more than an obligation he was slowly learning to tolerate.

Then he looked back at Kieran and said, “So stay away from my mate.”

Kieran recoiled. “What the hell are you talking about? We haven’t ended the match. How is she your mate?”

“You were the one desperate to walk away,” Adrian said. “If you’ve already made up your mind, stop hanging around someone else’s mate.”

“Who the hell is hanging around her?” Kieran snapped. “You’re the one acting like she’s some kind of prize.”

He dragged a hand through his hair, suddenly restless.

“And rut doesn’t count,” he muttered. “That was instinct. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Adrian gave him one cold look.

“Idiot.”

Kieran ignored him. He took another drag from the cigarette, then said, more roughly, “Whatever. If you’re not ending it, then I’m not either. A beast dumping a human looks bad, and I’m not wearing that.”

He paused.

“And besides… Lila’s always looking at me like I hung the moon. Like she can’t help herself around me. She’s clingy as hell, but I’m not that cruel.”

Every word felt like another blow.

He kept going.

“We can make it work. You get used to someone after a while.” He shrugged. “Useless is whatever. It’s not like I need anything from her. But if I’m the one who walks, I’m the asshole. That sticks.”

He dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his heel.

“So fine. She stays. I can live with it.”

Then he added, with ugly finality, “But I’m not going to be the one who ends it.”