Sloane’s hands gripped the armchair hard enough to make her knuckles go white as she watched her mother lay out the framework like this was a business proposal instead of a conversation about sharing her boyfriend with his own guardian. The leather creaked under her fingers, a small sound that seemed impossibly loud in the otherwise silent room.

"First," Mom said, crossing her legs and settling deeper into the couch like she was running a board meeting, "honesty. Complete transparency about who’s with whom and when. No sneaking around. No secrets. If that happens again, this entire arrangement ends immediately."

Lukas nodded from his end of the couch. He looked like he wanted to sink into the cushions and disappear entirely, his shoulders drawn tight with tension that radiated across the space between them. His amber eyes kept flickering between Sloane and her mother, never settling anywhere long enough to seem comfortable.

Good. He should feel uncomfortable. They both should.

"Second," Mom continued, her blue eyes flicking between Sloane and Lukas with that sharp awareness that came from twenty years of managing egos bigger than houses, "respect. We treat each other with dignity. That means no weaponizing information, no using intimacy as leverage, and absolutely no deliberate attempts to make anyone feel less important." Her voice carried the same measured authority she used with difficult clients, the kind that brooked no argument but somehow never felt cold.

"How exactly does that work?" Sloane heard herself ask, her voice coming out sharper than she meant it to. The words tasted bitter in her mouth, edged with the kind of frustration that had been building since she’d walked into the kitchen and found them pressed against the counter like teenagers. "Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve already got two weeks of a head start. That feels like leverage to me."

"Which is why we’re having this conversation now instead of letting it fester." Mom’s tone didn’t shift, but something in her expression softened slightly, the professional mask slipping just enough to let genuine concern show through. "Sugar, I know this isn’t fair to you. I know you’re hurt. But if we’re going to make this work, we need to establish that going forward, everything operates on equal footing."

"Equal footing." Sloane repeated the words like they might make more sense the second time. They didn’t. The concept felt as foreign as trying to explain color to someone born blind. "How is anything about this equal?" 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Lukas shifted on the couch, his amber eyes locked on her face with an intensity that made her chest tight. "Sloane—"

"Don’t." She held up one hand, cutting him off before he could finish whatever placating thing he was about to say. Her palm faced him like a shield, trembling slightly despite her best efforts to appear composed. "You don’t get to tell me how to feel about this. Not after yesterday."

"That’s fair," he said quietly, his voice rough around the edges in a way that suggested he’d been swallowing words all morning.

Mom waited a beat, letting the tension settle like dust after an explosion before continuing. Her patience was absolute, practiced from years of navigating conversations where every word carried weight. "Third boundary. Sloane’s comfort takes priority during the adjustment period. If something’s too much, we stop. No questions asked. No guilt trips. We pause and reassess."

That was... better than Sloane expected. Still insane, but better. The knot in her chest loosened fractionally, though she wasn’t sure if that made things easier or harder to process.

"How long is the adjustment period?" Sloane asked, her fingers finally releasing their death grip on the armchair. Blood rushed back into her knuckles, bringing with it a thousand tiny pinpricks of sensation.

"However long you need it to be."

"And what happens after that?"

Mom’s lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile but carried warmth nonetheless. "Then we reassess again. This isn’t a contract with an expiration date, sugar. It’s a framework that we modify as we go."

Sloane’s stomach twisted itself into complicated knots that had nothing to do with the french toast she’d eaten earlier. Her mind kept circling back to the same impossible question: was she actually considering this? The rational part of her brain screamed that normal families didn’t have these conversations, didn’t negotiate boundaries around sharing romantic partners like they were discussing household chores.

She looked at Lukas, who sat there looking guilty and conflicted and still somehow making her chest ache just by existing. His hair caught the afternoon light streaming through the windows, highlighting the dirty-blonde strands that never quite laid flat no matter what he did with them. Then she looked at her mother, who was watching both of them with that particular quality of attention that meant she was reading the room and adjusting her approach in real time.

"What about when we go to Halloran?" The question came out before Sloane could stop it, her practical mind latching onto logistics because the emotional implications were too vast to navigate. "Are we supposed to just... what, pretend this is normal?"

"We’re not pretending anything," Mom said, her voice carrying the kind of certainty that came from having already thought through every angle. "But we’re also not advertising our private arrangements to the entire academy. What happens in this house stays in this house."

"So we hide it."

"We maintain appropriate boundaries between our personal lives and our public ones. That’s not hiding, sugar. That’s common sense." The distinction was delivered with the kind of precision that made it sound reasonable, even inevitable.

Sloane wanted to argue, but the logic held with uncomfortable strength. Halloran would eat them alive if word got out about this particular domestic situation. The daughter of Diane Fitzgerald, CEO of one of California’s top Hero agencies, in a relationship with an Unmarked boy who recently manifested powers. Already complicated enough without the media circus that would follow. Add in the fact that said CEO was also sleeping with him?

The tabloids would have a field day that would make their current problems look quaint by comparison.