The realization filters in alongside the pain, assembling context from the scattered pieces of my sleep-fogged brain. The apartment is dark, lit only by the faint blue glow of the television that went to its idle screen at some point during the night, casting the living room in a muted underwater light that makes the furniture look like shapes at the bottom of a pool. The air is cold. Not the comfortable coolness of a well-regulated space but the biting, seeping kind that means the thermostat has eithergiven up on its responsibilities or someone forgot to adjust it before we passed out.
I rub the back of my neck, kneading the knot that has taken up permanent residence between my C4 and C5 vertebrae, and squint at the clock on the wall.
Three in the morning.
Three. In the morning. I fell asleep on a couch at God knows what hour, in a position that my spine will hold against me for the rest of the week, and it is currently the dead center of the night, that liminal hour when the world belongs exclusively to insomniacs, shift workers, and college athletes with terrible sleeping habits.
I take inventory of the room.
Mae is beside me.
Curled into the cushion on my left, her body folded into a position that looks both uncomfortable and impossibly cozy, the way only small people can contort themselves into spaces designed for throw pillows and still look peaceful. My jersey engulfs her frame, the fabric bunched around her thighs, her bare legs tucked beneath her with her toes peeking out from under the hem. Her dark hair is fanned across the armrest, a few strands caught against her cheek, and her lips are slightly parted with the slow, rhythmic breathing of deep sleep.
Her scent fills my lungs before I can consciously register it. Vanilla sugar and frosted roses, warm despite the chill in the apartment, threading through the stale air with a sweetness that makes my chest loosen by a fraction. Even unconscious, even at three in the morning in a freezing living room, her fragrance is a constant. A soft, persistent presence that has started to feel less like a scent I notice and more like a frequency I am tuned to.
On the opposite end of the couch, Etienne is folded into the remaining cushion space.
His long frame is compressed into a position that defies the basic principles of ergonomics, his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms crossed over his torso, his dark curls smashed against the armrest at an angle that guarantees he will wake up with the same neck situation I am currently suffering through. His breathing is deep and even, his face relaxed in sleep with a softness that disappears the moment consciousness returns and the walls go back up.
And in the corner, Raphaël.
The Frenchman has claimed the single-seater armchair that he commandeered on arrival and has apparently decided is his personal property. He is sprawled with the boneless ease of a man who can fall asleep anywhere and look dignified doing it, his head tilted back against the cushion, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his dark auburn hair falling across his forehead. A book rests open on his chest, its pages fanning gently with each rise and fall of his breathing, the cover facing upward with a title I cannot read in the dim light.
He fell asleep reading. That tracks.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, taking a deep breath through my mouth because breathing through my nose at this proximity delivers a concentrated hit of everyone's combined scents that my half-awake brain is not equipped to process. Cedar and pine from Etienne. Vanilla ice cream and dark sandalwood from Raphaël. Vanilla sugar and frosted roses from Mae. The layered fragrance of a pack sleeping in close quarters, their pheromones mingling in the still air until the room smells like belonging.
When did we all fall asleep?
The last thing I remember is the movie. Mae's pick. Some animated film about a girl and a dragon that she had seen twelve times and insisted we would love if we gave it a chance. Raphaël argued for a French thriller. Etienne suggested a documentary about deep-sea creatures. I wanted the new action movie withthe car chases and the explosions and the plot that requires zero emotional investment.
Mae won. Mae always wins. She deployed the pout and the wide hazel eyes and the strategic "please" that she draws out into three syllables, and three Alphas who collectively weigh over six hundred pounds folded like origami.
I remember the opening credits. I remember Mae's running commentary on the animation quality. I remember Raphaël grudgingly admitting that the score was impressive. I remember Etienne's quiet observation about the narrative structure.
I do not remember falling asleep.
But here we are. Four people unconscious in a living room that is rapidly approaching refrigerator temperature, arranged across the furniture like a Renaissance painting of terrible decision-making.
I stand, my joints protesting with a series of cracks and pops that sound like someone stepping on a bag of chips. My back aches. My shoulders are concrete. The cold air hits my skin the moment I leave the residual warmth of the couch cushion, and I suppress a shiver as I roll my neck in a slow circle, trying to coax my vertebrae back into their correct alignment.
Raphaël first.
I cross the room to the armchair, navigating the obstacle course of discarded shoes and Mae's phone charger cable that is snaking across the floor like a tripwire she set specifically to assassinate anyone who moves through the apartment after dark. I tap Raphaël's knee. Twice. Firm but not aggressive, because waking a sleeping Alpha with too much force is a gamble I am not willing to take at three in the morning.
He stirs.
"Raph." I keep my voice low. "Go to your room. You are going to destroy your back sleeping like that, and I am not carrying asix-foot-three Frenchman down a hallway. That is above my pay grade."
He grunts.
One gray eye cracks open, unfocused and heavy with sleep. He stares at me for approximately two seconds with the vacant incomprehension of a man whose brain has not yet decided whether consciousness is worth the effort.
He decides it is not.
His hand lifts from the armrest in a lazy, dismissive wave, the universal gesture for go away, I am not participating in wakefulness, and then he shifts deeper into the chair, pulling the open book tighter against his chest like a paper teddy bear, and drops straight back into unconsciousness.
I shake my head.
