Adam thought for a moment that the adrenaline was catching up with him, now that the fight was all over. After another few breaths he realized that something was definitely hitting his bloodstream and it was not adrenaline, or not only. His lips and tongue were tingling, and if he wasn’t mistaken the forest clearing probably looked so bright partly because his pupils were dilating.

He loosened his grip on Casey and said, very calmly, “So I think I’m reacting to the wolfsbane a little.”

Casey pushed away from him, eyes wide; he looked panicked for a second and then Adam saw him snap into professional mode. He bent and scooped up a double handful of snow, holding it up to Adam’s face as he said, “Wash your mouth out as well as you can, right now, and let’s get you to my tent so I can take a look at you.”

Adam took a quick look around at the pack, but they all seemed to be snapping out of the frozen moment of crisis, stumbling into the aftermath. A few people were moving toward Declan as he stood up from kneeling in the snow by the Mactire’s body, and others were breaking away here and there. He and Casey wouldn’t be missed for a few minutes, and he wouldn’t help anything by having an adverse reaction or driving Casey into a panic by refusing to let him handle this.

Adam crammed the snow into his mouth and used what wouldn’t fit to scrub at his tingling lips. Casey steered him by the elbow through the camp, backtracking along what Adam realized were his own footprints. Running footprints; Casey couldn’t walk in them.

“You’re barefoot,” Adam observed, spitting out a mouthful of snowmelt and the last shards of plastic from the capsules. His mouth was mostly numb now, and he couldn’t tell whether that was from the snow or the wolfsbane. His head was spinning, or floating, or something. Casey’s bare feet in the snow seemed crucial to focus on.

“You’re naked,” Casey replied, glancing over at him with a little smile. “And high. So I guess the shoe’s finally on the other foot, there.”

“No, I’m not wearing shoes either,” Adam said, and he was pretty sure even as he said it that that wasn’t what Casey meant, but it was kind of funny. He pressed a hand over his mouth to hold back the laughter that threatened; he just knew it would be a giggle if it got out.

Casey snorted and pushed Adam through the flap of a dome-shaped tent. It was pleasantly dim inside, and he could smell Casey in the confined space. He made for the bed where Casey’s scent was strongest without having to be pushed, and stretched out on it, pressing his face into Casey’s pillow. “That’s better. C’mere, you’ll fit if we spoon.”

“You’re talking directly into the pillow,” Casey informed him. “How about you look at me and don’t repeat whatever you just said?”

Adam turned his head and let his eyes rest on Casey. There he was, the most beautiful sight Adam had ever seen. Casey, alive and safe and not even angry with him. He never wanted to look at anything else.

“Did anyone tell you what to expect, if you ingested some of it or absorbed it through your mouth?”

“Uh,” Adam said. “They said I might get kinda high. Or sleepy. They said it shouldn’t last long or be dangerous unless I managed to swallow the whole wad. I didn’t. I spit it out.”

“I noticed,” Casey said dryly. “Are you sleepy?”

Adam shook his head and reached for Casey, trying to pull him into the bed. Not even for sex, just to touch all over. Just to know that Casey was really here, and safe, and here.

“I’m going to go find something for you to rinse out your mouth with before I kiss you,” Casey said. “And find wherever I dropped your dad’s notebook, but it’s still in the plastic, so it’s probably okay.”

“I got like a hundred more, I don’t care,” Adam assured him. What did a notebook even matter? He’d only told Casey to bring the notebook back to him so he would get Casey back, and Casey was here. “That’s how I figured it out. That we’re bonded. So I knew I wasn’t just dreaming last night, I knew you were dreaming.”

Casey’s smile turned sad. “Yeah, I was. But we’re not going to talk about it while you’re under the influence, and I’m still not going to kiss you until you’ve rinsed with salt water about five times, so you just stay here, okay? Even if it seems like a long time, I want you to stay here.”

“Time,” Adam said, and then pushed himself up to sit, “Fuck. Casey. My father and your sister and, uh, about a hundred assorted werewolves, I don’t even know—”

Casey’s eyes went wide. “Callie’s coming?”

“Alpha was gonna come but he’s,” Adam waved a hand. “Coordinating? I don’t know. I asked for backup and I got, like, an army. Posse? Lots, anyway. They just kept showing up, all night.”

“Time,” Casey repeated. “Adam, how much time? When were they going to come in?”

“Thirty minutes after me,” Adam said. “Uh. If they actually stay with the plan and don’t rush it.”

“Fuck,” Casey said. “I have to go tell Declan, everyone’s going to lose their shit. You stay here. No matter what, Adam, do you hear me? You do not move from this bed or I will not fuck you until after this baby’s born, I mean it.”

Adam grinned. “Baby, huh?”

Casey growled and pushed Adam’s face back into the pillow. “Stay.”

Adam held one thumb up and snuggled into Casey’s pillow. It was a good place to be. He didn’t want to move anyway.

He hadn’t slept all night and had barely sat down. There had been so much to do, and so much of it could only be done by him, and every time anyone tried to speak to him it took all his strength not to reply with a howl of Casey Casey Casey. He was the only one who could find Casey, and the only one who had a hope of walking into the camp and getting him free without starting some kind of all-out war.

And he’d done it, and now Casey would take care of making sure the war didn’t start anyway for no reason. Like... Helen. Adam had been the Trojan wolf, getting the guards to bring him in with the poison hidden in his mouth.

He was half dozing when he was startled into alertness by a cold draft from someone opening the tent flap and then saying, “Oh,” in a very small voice.

Adam sat up, hauling a fold of blanket over his lap as he did.

An omega stood in the entrance of the tent, wearing all the signifiers of femininity: long hair braided and pinned up on her head, and a long skirt, and even the suggestion of small soft breasts under her sweater. But he would have called Casey she, too, if he’d met Casey when he was called Catie.

“Hi,” Adam said. “Sorry, I—Casey forbade me to move from this spot.”

Adam licked his lips. They felt less tingly already, and his head wasn’t floating quite so badly. Probably that stoned feeling had been adrenaline as much as whatever trace of wolfsbane he’d absorbed. Hopefully. He really didn’t want to fuck up and spook this omega, who looked plenty spooked already. Possibly because they’d just seen their Alpha killed in front of them.

Still, the omega smiled a little, raising dark brows. They shared Casey’s general coloring, but the expression wasn’t quite what Casey’s would have been. “Forbade you?”

“He does that,” Adam said. “When there’s a good reason. I don’t mind. Alphas need to be told no sometimes. A lot of times, actually.”

Adam clamped his mouth shut. Possibly he wasn’t as recovered as he thought he was.

But the omega came further inside, going over to the other bed in the tent and sitting down on it, wrapping arms around knees. “Can I...”

Adam tried to make his face open and inviting without saying anything.

The omega wrinkled their nose, so Adam was probably trying a little too hard, but at least they didn’t look scared. “You said there were other packs. You said... Casey’s pack? Would... would...”

Adam nodded and risked actual words. “Yeah. The Niemis would be happy for you to come stay, on exchange or as long as you want. And...” Adam struggled to find a way to say it as obliquely as possible. “Well, they raised Casey, so you can see they don’t mind omegas being whoever they want to be.”

The omega looked down at that, but Adam thought that meant his message had been received.

They sat together in silence for a while. Adam turned his attention to listening beyond the walls of the tent, and he thought he heard the tone of the quiet bustle outside changing, and maybe a few more voices being added. Maybe it was going smoothly, then. Maybe everyone had been careful enough.

He looked at the omega sitting there and said, as gently as he could, “May I ask your name?”

The omega looked up, startled, lips parting to give an automatic answer, and then they stopped and looked down again. Clearly it wasn’t a simple question.

“I don’t... I’m not sure,” they said quietly. “I... what if...”

“It could just be a nickname,” Adam offered when they’d been quiet for a minute. “Or, you know, something you’re trying out. Joey, this omega I grew up with—” who might or might not be walking into the camp about now; that argument had been ongoing the last time Adam saw them, “they kept trying out different names around the time they were coming of age. Some of them were variations on the name their parents gave them—Jo and Seff and stuff like that—and some were totally different. So if you say something now and change it later... it’s not a problem.”

“Would you,” they said, barely above a whisper. “Would you call me Ethan?”

“I’ll never call you anything else unless you say so,” Adam said firmly. “It’s good to meet you, Ethan. Can I ask, also...”

Ethan looked up at him with wide eyes, a little wild, like they’d thought they were done answering difficult questions. Adam wondered if he shouldn’t push—he could guess by the name Ethan had chosen—but... he wanted to get this right, and Ethan deserved to be asked.

“Just for now,” Adam said, trying to soften his voice even further. “It’s okay if you want something else later, but—should I say he when I talk about you? Or...”

Ethan gave a jerky nod, shoulders coiling tighter, as if bracing to be told no. Or to be hit.

“Okay,” Adam said. “Thanks for telling me. If you want to come with Casey and me, do you have everything packed up, that you want to take with you? I can go under the blanket if you need to change clothes or anything.”

“Clothes,” Ethan echoed, looking down at his long skirt, raising a hand to his hair. “I... everything I have is the same.”

That was decidedly not the same as Why would I want to change clothes, these are my clothes and I’m comfortable in them.

“Casey has extra,” Adam said, tapping Casey’s duffle bag. “I know for a fact, he won’t mind if you need to borrow some stuff until we can get you your own.” Ethan’s eyes fixed on Casey’s duffle bag like he was starving and the scent of fresh meat was wafting out of it.

“He’s got some sharp scissors in his kit, too,” Adam added, since Ethan’s hand was still lingering beside his head.

Ethan’s gaze jerked over to Adam, his fair skin going even paler. He brought his hand down to his lap sharply, balling it into a fist.

“Same as choosing a nickname,” Adam said, keeping his voice light with an effort. “Hair grows back, if you give yourself a trim and you don’t like the way it turns out. And on the other hand, if you don’t cut it now, you can always cut it later.”

Ethan looked away, sitting so rigidly still that Adam could almost see him vibrating with the effort.

“I could help,” Adam offered. “If your hands are shaking.”

Ethan looked up at him sharply again, and stiffly shook his head. “I—I can—could you just... Casey wouldn’t want me going in his things.”

Adam decided not to argue with that. He fished around until he found the largest and sharpest pair of scissors, mentally promising to re-sharpen or replace them, and leaned forward to set them on the floor as far from himself as he could reach.

Then he turned to Casey’s duffle and dug out clean jeans—the new pair that Casey had bought at the Farm Fleet when Adam was getting his own new wardrobe, nothing he would have gotten too personally attached to yet. He pulled out a few shirts Casey didn’t wear too often, too, and decided to spare himself and Ethan the question of underwear.

Adam laid those down by the scissors, and then, without looking directly at Ethan again, Adam lay down and pulled the covers over himself, hiding his face in the pillow for good measure. He evened his breath to a sleeping rhythm, letting Ethan have as much privacy as Adam could give him right now.

After a moment, he heard Ethan come closer. Adam did his best not to hear anything after that, and definitely not to paint any sort of mental picture out of the rustling of cloth and snicking of scissors and the cadence and quality of Ethan’s breathing.

Then time seemed to have turned in on itself, because even through the blanket Adam felt the cold draft and heard Casey say, “Oh.”

“I,” Ethan said, even that one syllable sounding faltering. “Your alpha said—”

Adam risked poking his head up, then, but Ethan had already changed, dressed now in Casey’s jeans, cuffed up at the bottoms, and Casey’s green plaid shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to Ethan’s elbows. Ethan’s hair was now cut unevenly short, even shorter than Casey’s—mostly too short to show whether it would curl like Casey’s, although there were longer bits still sticking out here and there. Even as Casey stared, Ethan kept running his fingers through it and tilting his head from side to side, as if trying to adjust to the strange sensations.

“Casey,” Adam said, trying not to stress the key words too obviously, “I told Ethan it was okay if he borrowed some things.”

“Ethan,” Casey repeated, sounding a little dazed, and Ethan’s shoulders curled in again, flinching from what must have sounded like disbelief.

Casey quickly put on a smile. “Ethan. Want me to even that up for you a little before we go?”

Ethan nodded hesitantly, holding out the scissors, and Casey stepped in to trim the last few longer pieces. When Casey stepped back, Ethan half-turned toward him, giving Adam a view of them both in profile.

Ethan dressed in Casey’s clothes looked oddly even less like Casey than before, probably because the sameness threw all the contrasts into higher relief. Ethan was a couple of inches shorter than Casey, and slimmer, too, judging by the way Casey’s clothes hung on him—his chest looked much flatter now. Ethan’s blue eyes were a darker shade than Casey’s, almost purple, and the curve of Ethan’s jaw was as hairless as Casey’s but a little softer. Still, Adam didn’t doubt that Ethan was at least as stubborn as Casey could ever be, to have lived a whole life in this place and come out able to speak up for himself the way he was now.

“Can I,” Casey said, his smile wobbling a little, “Um, can I give you a hug? And then maybe introduce you to some people?”

Ethan nodded stiffly, and stood almost as stiffly while Casey hugged him, keeping his back straight and chin up. But for a second his arms went around Casey and squeezed right back.

When they parted, Casey held up a bundle he’d brought in, and Adam recognized his own coat, hopefully wrapped around clothes and shoes and something to rinse his mouth with so he could finally, finally kiss Casey again.

“Ready to get out of here?” Casey asked, bringing the bundle over. Adam couldn’t resist pulling him close, pressing his face against Casey’s belly this time to breathe in his scent. Casey set a hand on his hair and didn’t hurry him.

Eventually they did leave the tent, Casey toting his kit while Adam shouldered Casey’s duffle bag, his dad’s notebook safely stowed inside. Ethan had a small bundle in his arms, and he held it tight against his chest—like a baby, or a shield.

Casey led them through the camp, where there were enough outsiders everywhere that Adam couldn’t tell if any of the Mactire’s pack were staring at them—or at Ethan. He wondered if any of them would even recognize Ethan in this chaos, or if they just took him for one of the visitors at a glance.

Ethan didn’t look around at all, just walked steadily at Casey’s flank, eyes straight ahead. Adam was on Ethan’s other side, uncomfortably conscious that his day of playing Big Stereotypical Alpha was not yet over. Still, if it got Ethan out of here to somewhere where he could figure out who he was and what he wanted, it was worth the dissonance.

They were in among the largest concentration of tents when Adam heard a familiar voice cry, “Casey!” and turned to see Rory running toward them with the end of his rainbow-striped scarf flapping behind him, and Beau and Callie on his heels. Ethan edged away, slightly behind Adam, while Rory flung himself at Casey, who staggered but managed to stay upright, laughing and clinging right back.

“I can’t believe you—” Casey was saying, as Rory insisted indignantly, “We wouldn’t have just stayed home!”

Adam looked to Beau, who was, after all, still in the first year of his residency and had the standard grueling clinical schedule. Beau shrugged slightly and said, “My program understands about werewolf pack emergencies. I’ll work a double over the weekend to make it up.”

Adam nodded and took a few careful steps forward, trying to keep himself between Ethan and the newcomers as he reached for Beau, who beamed as he completed the hug. “Thanks for coming.”

“Well, like Rory said. We’re pack, we wouldn’t have just stayed home.”

Adam stepped back, studying Beau’s face, and Beau knocked his shoulder against Adam’s and added, “I figured it’d be about five hundred people showing up for Casey. Somebody had to show up for you.”

Adam swallowed and looked away, blinking quickly. It was probably the wolfsbane, or emotions leaking over from Casey. It wasn’t, at all, the knowledge that there were at least two, and maybe as many as three or four people here, who had come running because Adam had called.

“Hey,” Casey said, at his elbow, but when Adam turned to him he realized that Casey hadn’t been speaking to him, but to Beau. “I want you to know that this is all your fault,” he went on, but the statement was undercut somewhat by Casey lunging into a hug.

Beau looked startled; it took him a few extra seconds to curl an arm around Casey. “Sorry?”

“Nope, best thing you could’ve done. Made up with Rory and hooked me up with Adam. Good work.”

Beau shot a baffled look at Adam, who could only shrug. He had no idea what Casey was talking about either—it was Beau who had brought Adam to the Niemis, but he didn’t know what that had to do with Beau making up with Rory.

“Uh... you’re welcome, then,” Beau said. “Anytime.”

“Yep,” Casey said, finally detaching from him to run over to Callie and hug her, too. Adam was a little worried that he’d somehow managed to give Casey a contact high. Could that be transferred through their bond? But if it could, surely Casey would have felt it most strongly when Adam did.

“I’m cured!” Casey was saying into his sister’s throat. “I’m cured! Don’t tell Alpha, I’m gonna surprise him, okay?”

Oh. That. Adam turned back to Beau. “Did Casey, uh... spend a lot of time near you? Before I showed up?”

Beau ran a hand through his hair and then dropped his arm absently over Rory’s shoulders just as Rory stepped up to his side. “Uh. Well, I stayed over a few nights at the Midwives’ House with Rory, that was—that was how we patched things up? I don’t know what that had to do with getting him together with you.”

Adam patted Beau’s shoulder and decided not to explain that he’d triggered Casey into an ultimately life-altering extended panic attack. “Don’t worry about it. But thanks.”

Beau nodded, still looking baffled, but willing to accept it.

“We should get going, hon,” Rory said, bumping his hip into Beau’s. “Don’t want you missing another shift, and it looks like nobody needs any patching up. I can get some more practice driving while you take a nap.”

“I think the point of me being in the car with you is that I’m awake,” Beau said, smiling down at Rory, already lost to the rest of the world outside his mate. Adam patted his arm and stepped around him to see Casey, detached from Callie and looking around the camp. Ethan stepped up close to Adam’s shoulder as soon as he moved away from Beau and Rory, though Adam saw him looking back at the couple in apparent fascination.

“Ah,” Casey said, setting off again, and Adam stayed right beside him, with Ethan on his heels. Callie brought up the rear, visibly guarding their backs.

Adam spotted his father first, feeling unexpectedly glad to see him, and then realized that he was standing with Declan and another gray-clad local werewolf. When they got close enough, he also realized that they were standing watch over the Mactire’s corpse, now wrapped in white cloth.

“—Should be fine,” his father was saying. “She just needs a statement from you and a reasonable number of witnesses. But if Adam believed the challenge was ended and turned his back—oh, Adam, there you are. Local sheriff’s deputy is going to need you to swear out a statement, just to make sure everything’s...”

Declan looked over when Greg said Adam’s name, and Adam saw his eyes settle on Ethan, who went still as ice under the scrutiny. Greg trailed off when the silence between them got too loud to ignore.

Clearly Declan had no problem recognizing Ethan despite the new look.

“I’m going with them,” Ethan said, much more firmly than he’d said anything back in the tent. “I’ve asked them to call me Ethan. Because I’m—like Casey. Male.”

Declan’s lips parted, moving around the shape of something that might have been Ethan’s new name. Then his expression hardened, and he looked down at the corpse at his feet—the man he’d killed in front of all of them, and would have to answer to the sheriff for. His voice was clipped and harsh as he spoke. “I said you could go if you wanted. If that’s your choice, so be it.”

A spasm of rage crossed Ethan’s face, but just as quickly it froze over again, and he turned to Casey. “Are we going in a car? Now?”

Casey glanced over at Adam, then at Declan, before putting an arm around Ethan. “Yeah, uh, Adam just has to talk to the deputy first, but we can go to the car now. We’ll just make you some space in the back seat. Come on.”

Adam watched as Declan watched the omegas walking away. Declan allowed himself all of three seconds before he forced his attention back to matters at hand. It looked like it hurt—the watching and the looking away both.

At the end of a very long day, Adam found himself settling down in his childhood bedroom with Casey. It didn’t look much like it had then; even the trees out the windows were different now, one having grown and another having been cut down. The twin bed Adam had slept in was gone, replaced by one big enough for adult-sized Adam to share with Casey, even if they didn’t spoon.

Across the hall, the bedroom his parents had once shared had been converted into a guest room, with a bunk bed on one wall and a double bed on the other. Ethan had bedded down in there; he’d latched on to Casey and Adam and was tentatively planning to come with them all the way back to the Niemis. Adam was a little concerned that he might have two omegas living in his car if they couldn’t find someone to take Ethan under their wing.

He wouldn’t mind that, particularly, except that it meant that he hadn’t been alone with Casey since the few minutes in the tent while he was riding the high of a wolfsbane-and-adrenaline cocktail. Even now that Ethan was in the other room, Adam found himself listening for his heartbeat to slow, the sounds of movement to still, to be sure that Ethan wouldn’t hear what he and Casey said and did in here.

Casey lay half on top of him, equally quiet, and Adam thought he must be waiting for the same thing—or maybe he was listening to something else. Not that there would be, literally speaking, anything to hear just yet, but... they were probably going to need some practice with navigating around a third person in their living space, wherever that ended up being.

Ethan’s heartbeat finally settled, and Adam dared to murmur, picking up where they’d left off hours ago, “Baby, huh?”

Casey lifted his head and smiled tiredly. “I guess we should have talked about that in words at some point.”

Adam shrugged, smiling back, and ran his fingers through Casey’s hair, picturing the inevitably curly-headed baby they’d make. “I knew, Case. You weren’t exactly making a secret of it, even if we never laid it all out in bullet points. Yes, I would like to have a baby with you.”

Casey nodded. “In... Maryland?”

Adam grimaced. Casey had said it in a very carefully neutral tone, but Adam could guess how much he loved that idea. “It’s a one-year appointment, at the moment. Expiring at the end of next summer. If this study goes as well as the data collection has gone—and if my supervisor is willing to be understanding about the bumps in the road—I’m guessing they’ll be willing to extend it. But if they’re not, or if you don’t want to live in Maryland...” Adam gestured around them. “I’ve got a place for us to live, or I can sell it back to the pack to get the money to set up somewhere else. Will you still want to work as a midwife?”

Casey shrugged, nodded. “I could, if we lived with the Niemis, or here, or with another pack. There are a few in Maryland, for instance, who would probably be willing to have us on exchange for a few years.”

“Ah,” Adam said. Casey had obviously been considering the options too, and... he didn’t sound dubious at all now. “Liked your adventure outside the pack that much, huh?”

Casey smiled. “It’s had its moments. I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more of the world. And if there’s still a job opening as midwife liaison for research projects...”

“Always,” Adam agreed. “I should write a grant proposal, get funding, then I could probably hire you on officially.”

“I don’t know,” Casey said, smiling a little wickedly. “Would that mean you were the boss of me, alpha?”

Adam raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know, would it? That’s up to you.”

Casey kissed him. “Good answer.”

Adam pushed up into the kiss a little, keeping it going, but not for long. They were both exhausted, and if they did anything more energetic Adam honestly wasn’t sure they wouldn’t make enough noise to wake Ethan.

“Actually,” Adam said, reminded. “If you were willing to liaise with Ethan—uh, and yourself—the two of you would represent really useful data points in terms of adding genetic diversity to the study.”

Casey nodded, then said, “What about my mother? You said Alpha has her DNA, right? Could I... release it to you? Would that help?”

Adam had expected at least a pretense of argument, not even more help. “If... if you’re sure, we could probably work something out.”

Casey shrugged and nodded, settling down to rest his head against Adam’s shoulder.

After a while Casey picked his head up and said, “The bond, though.”

Adam blinked at him. “Is... that a problem?”

Casey rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “No, I just—we should have talked about that possibility. Having a kid together, we could still go our separate ways and work things out. But the bond... it’s just starting. It’s going to keep getting stronger, and even if we don’t seal it, it probably won’t go away entirely when the baby’s born. Even if—” Casey reached up and tapped his knuckles against the headboard, “Even if I miscarry in the next month or two, which happens a lot, the bond might hang on.”

Adam brushed his thumb over Casey’s unmarked throat. “Or we could just... settle the matter right now?”

“Yeah, because neither one of us is going to wind up throwing that at the other in an argument,” Casey said, grimacing. “Shotgun bonding? I think... we should just let it build, and see where it goes, okay? If it feels right to make it permanent, we’ll know when we know, and we’ll do it. In the meantime, we’ve got what we’ve got. We’ve got each other.”

“I don’t know if we should attempt to make any important decisions based on nasty things we might say to each other in a fight,” Adam pointed out. “That may rule out literally everything.”

Still, he thought Casey was probably right. It had been a long day, and this was no time to commit to something so permanently life-altering. They could always do it tomorrow, or next week, or a year from now, as long as nothing went horribly wrong in the meantime.

Adam shifted his hand to the nape of Casey’s neck, tightening his other arm around Casey’s back. “I may not let you out of earshot for the next year or so.”

“You will if I tell you you will,” Casey said, although he was rubbing his face against Adam’s throat as he said it, so it wasn’t the most authoritative possible delivery. “But. Same, yeah. Let’s not do anything like the last couple days again ever.”

Adam thought of saying that that seemed unlikely, but he didn’t think there was enough wood to knock on in the entire state of North Dakota, so he just held Casey closer. He was drifting toward sleep, and could feel Casey drifting too, when he abruptly remembered the other thing they hadn’t been able to talk about that morning.

“Your dream,” Adam said. “I still don’t know what I was supposed to remember.”

Casey tensed, his scent turning toward grief. “My mama. I... well. I only didn’t see her die in front of me because she threw me out a window first, trying to give me a chance to get away.”

Adam winced but loosened his grip on Casey to look him in the eye.

Casey shook his head a little and kissed him. “She told me to run once I got my feet under me, and not to stop until I found people who were kind and good. People I could make a new family with. It took me a while, but I got there.” Casey dropped a kiss on Adam’s lips and snuggled closer before he added, “And now I found another one, and I’m not letting him get away.”