She placed the novel over her stomach and greeted me with a tremulous smile. Knowing I was not adept at filtering and storing an onslaught of such unexpected emotions, she thankfully didn’t touch on the mess the young wolf had made of them.

“I know it’s not just Berk who worries.” She rubbed her finger over the book’s spine. “I know you do, too.”

I kicked off my boots and nudged them beside the door. “You do not?”

She smiled once more.

I sighed and set my dagger in its nightly resting place on the windowsill behind the bed, then stripped free of my clothes. “It’s hard not to after so many years of being trained to believe the enemy lies everywhere and that everything can be taken from you in a heartbeat.”

“That is also why Berk worries so much? As he was also trained to.”

“Not as thoroughly and as brutally as those of us who came after the death of Dade’s parents, but yes. That”—I leaped over top of her, snatching the book and setting it facedown beside us—“and he has little else to do but dwell.”

After the arrival of Helvectus and the falling of the towers, Aster and I sat Berk, Mariana, and Fang down to tell them everything. None of them had been shocked. They’d already known about me, and Berk and Mariana had assumed correctly about Aster.

And we’d all agreed that unless Helvectus required it, then it was safest to never speak on it again.

Concern etched Aster’s brows low. “Is there not something more he can do?” It was not the first, nor the third time Aster had found herself worried over Berk’s well-being. Though she knew there wasn’t a task in the world that would shake the surly from him, she still thought it would do him good to have more to focus on. We both did.

“Dade and I have been talking about giving veterans military roles many of them can still handle. He seems to be heavily considering it.”

“Which means after Opal and I talk of it, he will inevitably agree,” she whispered to my throat and then licked it. Indeed, with Aster and Opal being such close friends, it would likely not be long before Dade implemented such changes.

“Inevitably,” I concurred, untying her robe to feast upon her chest.

Aster discarded the moss-green silk and clutched my head. A mewl escaped her, her back curling off the bed when I ran my fingers over her soft stomach and danced them teasingly atop her mound.

Hel made a loud show of leaving for the woods, items placed upon the kitchen countertop with a clang and the door slamming.