giving me strange looks. “What?” I ask.
“I thought you hated your wings,” Echo muses, giving my hand that’s still petting my feathers a pointed look.
I narrow my eyes and drop my hand. “We’ve seen some shit together now,” I reply. “They tried to get me away and got broken in the process. That’s some ride or die shit.”
Echo and Crux chuckle while I scoot back on the bed, feeling suddenly exhausted. “How long do you think until Taz or Nefta wake up?”
Iceman shrugs. “Could be hours, could be days. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Fuck, I’m tired,” I admit. “Is that normal?”
“We haven’t seen or fought against anything of this magnitude before. We’re all completely wiped,” Iceman confesses.
I look over at each of them and notice the exhaustion etched in their features. Their eyes are hollow and their bodies in desperate need of sleep. It feels weird to want to crash after all the insanity that just happened, but I feel so run down that I can’t even process anything properly. I’m sluggish and overwhelmed, but there’s so much to do. We have to figure out how to protect ourselves and pinpoint what went wrong.
I just don’t know how.
“Sleep, Maverick,” Iceman offers, as though he knows I need encouragement. “Strut will come get us as soon as Nefta or Tazreel are awake. We’ve all been through a lot, and we can’t solve it right now at this moment, especially if we’re dead on our feet.”
I nod in agreement, but I still feel weird about the need to just shut down and deal with everything later.
“Our problems aren’t going anywhere,” Echo assures me, and with that, I finally let loose the yawn that’s been building in my throat.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted in my life. I crawl into the bed and almost moan at how warm and inviting it feels. I want to worship the shit out of it, sing its praises with the snores of deep sleep, and give it drool offerings in trade for good dreams where all the snakes in the world die.
I look over at the guys and notice they’re kind of awkward and fidgety in a sloth-like I’m about to fall asleep on my feet kind of way.
“What?” I ask with budding apprehension.
“We should rest, too,” Iceman says carefully.
“Okay…”
Crux scratches the back of his blond head. “Ah...do you want to sleep in here alone, or…”
Brow furrowed, I look at the four of them with confusion until realization dawns on me. They all want to stay with me, but they aren’t sure how I feel about that. I think they expect me to pick one of them and kick three of them out. Fuck that.
I know we haven’t discussed this, or really any part of our unique relationship, but the last thing I want is to be separated from any of them right now.
I settle, becoming one with the mattress, and then pat either side of me. “Will you guys stay with me?” I ask.
Echo and Crux are already in the bed before I can finish my sentence. I laugh as they both aim for the same spot on my left, running into each other in the process. They shove and elbow at each other, trying to get the upper hand as giggles rent through me, my spirits feeling instantly lighter.
“Easy with her wing. Don’t jostle her,” Iceman says as he comes around on my right side.
Echo and Crux immediately stop shoving each other. Echo uses Crux’s pause to his advantage and slips onto the bed at my left, blocking Crux with a cocky grin.
Crux rolls his green eyes and then stretches out on the bottom of the bed on his back, picking up my feet and laying them on his muscled stomach. He starts to massage the arches, making me groan. “Oh man, that feels so good.”
Crux snorts, giving my arch another squeeze. “Hmm, I think you said that to me before…”
I kick him playfully, earning a little, “Oomph.”
Iceman settles on my right, moving his leg beneath mine to tangle together comfortably, while Echo’s arm gets slung over my middle. I trace his pale skin, noting that all of his tattoos are gone. It looks strange to see him without them—I’ve gotten used to them constantly shifting and sitting around his skin. “When will your shadows come back?” I ask, feeling a pang of anxiety at the fact that he’s so depleted because he overworked his power so much that all his