I cried out, and then continued to do so, over and over, as wave after wave of impressions hit: Pritkin’s body in mine, hard, almost punishing, pounding me into the mattress now; Mircea’s hair sliding over my breasts, his eyes brilliant fire, his fangs in my flesh; and the constant thrum, thrum, thrum of incubus magic running through everything, magnifying it out of all proportion, turning every sigh into a hurricane, every touch into an orgasm, every sight into a memory seared into my brain.

I suddenly couldn’t look at them, couldn’t process any more. I closed my eyes, pushed away the crazy mental vision I’d been stealing from somebody, and tried just to breathe for a moment. And discovered that that worked a little too well.

For in the darkness, the men surrounding me weren’t metaphysical warriors taking on an elder god, they were just men: ones I loved, whether I was supposed to or not; ones who were risking themselves for me, as they always had, as they always would. I’d never had anyone in my life like that. I’d gone through twenty-three years with no one, and now I had two, and I didn’t deserve them, didn’t deserve this. But I had it. For a brief moment, I had it.

And crazy battle or not, just for a moment, I let myself feel it.

I let myself feel them.

Not just the physical sensations, but everything that went with along with them: Mircea’s hands on my body, giving me a sense of safety, even as the battle raged inside me. I saw him in my memory standing up to Tony, making the fat man back down, the first person I had ever seen do that; I saw him claiming me in front of the senate— “this one is mine” –despite the fact that I was Pythia, and that doing so could have easily resulted in a duel; I remembered him making me his second, the most powerful figure in a vampire family after the master himself, trusting me to care, not only for him while he was incapacitated, but for the entire clan.

And, yes, he’d had ulterior motives; he was a vampire, after all. But that hadn’t changed the pride I’d felt when he put his faith in me, or the sense of belonging—for the first time ever—to anyone, anywhere. Or the love…

I felt it all again, wrapping around me like a warm blanket; felt them, the thousands of people we were connected to, the first family I’d ever had and the one I would always belong to, no matter what happened; felt the tears on my cheeks, the ones I was leaking now and the ones of that orphan who had finally found a home.