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touch was a huge rock. The water crashed upward, spilled outward, and the rings of power went out and out and out.

Someone whispered, “Oh, my God,” and it was none of us who were touching because we had no words yet. Jason wasn’t touching us, but I felt the power stagger him, and he reached out, put his hand on my back so he could become part of that circuit. It was like throwing another, smaller boulder into the waters before they’d settled from the first. I felt Wicked and Truth when the power hit them, because they were ours, and Jamil was Richard’s wolf, and his body reacted to the power, and then the wererats resonated with the power because we’d fed on them through their rat king, so we knew the taste of the wererats and it was good, and then Shang-Da grabbed the back of the loveseat; I felt his hand close on the cloth to steady him. And finally the power found Asher, because all the vampires in this city were ours, but he must have moved away from us to be near Shang-Da. We felt him touch the werehyenas and he was protected from us, from the spill of our power, our heat, our warmth, our mix of death and life. He and his hyenas were like boulders in the wash of it, standing firm and not being swept along.

I heard one of the werehyenas say, “We need to go, Asher.”

I had to blink to clear my vision, almost like you do after really good sex where the orgasm leaves you blind and unable to focus. But it wasn’t sex, it was pure power.

Asher spoke into the stunned silence. “You’ve been holding back on us, Ulfric.”

Richard’s hand tightened on mine and on Jean-Claude’s, and for a moment I couldn’t tell which hand was mine, or if they both were. We’d had moments of this kind of sharing before, and always Richard or I panicked and broke the power, but there wasn’t enough of me solid to be afraid, and Richard was exhilarated as if it had worked even better than he’d planned.

It was his voice, hoarse, raw from the power, that answered for us. “I could say the same for you, Asher.”

I could see again, but I was staring at Richard’s chest so all I could see was his red shirt with its frame of jean jacket. Jean-Claude’s voice came even and unruffled, but I could feel the fierce joy in him. This was the power he’d bound Richard and me to him for; this was why he had locked us into our little three-way of hate, for this possibility. He said, “Why did you cut yourself off from our power, Asher?”

“Anita on her own made a slave out of a dominant werelion, her Nicky. The three of you together would be powerful enough, but with her leopard to call and her Nimir-Raj, I fear my poor heart will be enslaved.”

“We would never do that to you,” I said. Richard moved into the curve of Jean-Claude’s arm, and there was a moment when the vampire wasn’t touching me. It changed how the power felt, but it didn’t break the bond; we both belonged to Jean-Claude and to touch one was to touch the other.

I could see Asher and his hyenas now by the loveseat, near the curtains with the door just on the other side. He was watching us, face empty and unreadable, but his being over there so far away spoke more than any look could have.

“Unless you tried to do it to us first,” Richard said. He squeezed my hand tight and drew Jean-Claude closer to him. The other man moved so he could put his arms around both our waists as he stood between us. I kept my hand in Micah’s, and Jason moved to touch me and Jean-Claude.

“You know something, mon ami; share it with us,” Jean-Claude said.

“Narcissus has been bragging that his master was going to roll mine and then the werehyenas would own St. Louis.”

“Narcissus wants that, true,” Asher said, “but I did not agree to do it.”

“My information says differently, and I believed it enough to drive down here tonight with Shang-Da and Jamil. I believed it enough that I’m sleeping over, if they’ll have me.”

“And if I said I would bed the three of you, how long would it take for your newfound resolution to crumble?” Asher asked.

“If my choice is between opening a vein to you