The second girl—Lucy, with the sharpest gaze—broke formation first, stepping past her sisters to stand between the scattered paper and the man with her jawline. “So you said no,” she murmured, not a question, more an accusation wrapped in awe. Camila’s instinct was to gather them, to smooth this over with practiced phrases about timing and protection, but the room had shifted; explanations felt flimsy against the raw fact of those matching compasses. Mae’s fingers tightened around Regina’s, and together they moved closer to Elias, drawn not by charm but by the visible refusal at his feet. When Leo barreled back into the workshop, dinosaur held high like a peace flag, he crashed straight into Elias’s leg and clung there, as if choosing sides without realizing there were any. The triplets watched the easy way Elias bent to scoop the boy up, the way Leo’s small hand automatically patted his cheek, and something in their expression hardened—not rejection, not acceptance, but a new, wary claim. Camila felt it land like a verdict she hadn’t prepared for, the kind that couldn’t be appealed with contracts or corpo… Continues…