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.”

I slipped back to my room without making a sound and lay there staring at the ceiling.

So Kieran had planned it from the beginning.

He didn’t like me. Not my personality, not my place in his life, not the thought of being tied to me for the rest of his life. Men like him cared too much about pride, status, and always coming out on top. Being matched to me was the one thing in his life he couldn’t twist into a victory.

But if he ended it first, people would talk. A beast walking away from a human never looked good. He would be the one blamed for throwing me aside.

So he wouldn’t be the first to say it.

At first, the plan must have been simple: let Adrian keep me calm, then wait for me to leave on my own when the trial year ended.

Except Adrian had changed his mind.

He wanted to keep me.

So now Kieran was stuck with me, unwillingly.

He could live with it, he had said. He could get used to me. He could make do.

But I didn’t want to be something a man merely made do with.

When I was little, the clothes I got in foster care were always wrong somehow—too big, too small, in ugly colors no one would ever choose. The adults told us to wear them anyway.

The food was the same too—lukewarm casseroles, canned vegetables, boxed mac and cheese gone cold. Still, we were told to eat it and be grateful.

So I did.

I made do for years.

But I wasn’t a child anymore.

For the rest of my life, I didn’t want to be endured.

If Kieran wanted out that badly, then I would be the one to end it.

The next morning, I sat at the breakfast table, distracted, turning my coffee cup in slow circles.

I still didn’t know how to say it. Should I tell him now, or wait until the trial year was almost over?

Then laughter broke across the room.

I looked up just as Adrian came downstairs.

Even half awake, he looked severe and put together, all broad shoulders and sharp lines. Kieran was pointing at the mug in his hand, laughing so hard he had to lean back in his chair.

“Jesus, Adrian,” he said. “What the hell is that? Did you drag it out of a kindergarten art sale?”

I followed his gaze.

It was a cream-colored ceramic mug, slightly uneven in shape, with the glaze thicker on one side than the other. Near the handle, there was a tiny painted crescent moon with two little stars beside it.

Supposed to be, anyway.

From a distance, it looked more like a crooked yellow smudge.

Heat rushed straight to my face.

I got up at once and hurried over. “The glaze ran a little,” I muttered, reaching for it.

Adrian stopped beside me without protest and let me turn the mug in his hand so the messy side faced inward.

Behind us, Kieran was still laughing.

Then Adrian glanced at him and said calmly, “Lil made it for me. Christmas gift. You get one too?”

Silence.

Kieran’s smile vanished completely.