Fine. Sleep in the chair. Enjoy the scoliosis.
I move to Etienne next, crouching beside the couch and placing a hand on his shoulder. He surfaces faster than Raphaël, his dark eyes blinking open with the immediate alertness of someone who is accustomed to waking abruptly. Goalie reflexes. The man sleeps like he is expecting a puck to fly at his face at any moment.
"What time is it?" he mumbles, his voice rough with sleep, his French accent thicker in the drowsy state between unconscious and awake.
"Three."
He exhales. Rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm.
"I am going to take Mae to her room," I say, already moving before the sentence finishes. "Can you check the thermostat? It is cold as fuck in here. I think the heat turned itself off or the setting got bumped. Either way, the apartment is doing its best impression of an ice rink and I would prefer not to wake up frozen to a couch cushion."
"Sure," he murmurs, sitting up and reaching for the blanket that had been draped over Mae.
He wraps it around his own shoulders.
Then he leans back into the couch, pulls the blanket tighter, and closes his eyes.
"Etienne."
"I will check it in a minute," he mumbles, already halfway back to sleep, his body sinking into the vacated warmth of the cushion with the determination of a man who has no intention of leaving this couch for at least another hour.
I exhale through my nose.
Two for two. My packmates are as responsive as hibernating bears, and the only person in this apartment who can apparently function at three in the morning is me, the one with the worst neck injury this side of a car accident.
I turn to Mae.
She has not stirred through any of this. Not the conversation, not the movement, not my increasingly loud internal frustration at the sleeping habits of the men I share a living space with. She is out. Fully, deeply, irrevocably unconscious, her breathing slow and steady, her body curled into the couch like she has been vacuum-sealed to the cushion.
This girl sleeps like the dead. We have established this. Cal Whitmore's official field notes: Mabeline Rose can and will sleep through any disturbance up to and including what I suspect would be a minor earthquake. Her ability to remain unconscious is a biological marvel that should be studied by scientists.
I scoop her off the couch.
The motion is practiced at this point. One arm slides beneath her knees, the other supports her back, and I lift her against my chest in a single fluid movement that barely disrupts her breathing. She weighs nothing. Or next to nothing. Light enough that the effort of holding her registers closer to carrying apillow than a person, and the realization sends a flicker of protectiveness through my ribcage that I choose not to examine at this hour.
Her head lolls against my shoulder. Her scent concentrates against the collar of my shirt, vanilla sugar and frosted roses pressed into the fabric with the warmth of her skin, and the proximity makes my pulse do a thing that I am going to attribute to the cold and not to the Omega asleep in my arms.
I carry her down the hallway.
The corridor is dark, the overhead light mercifully off, and I navigate by muscle memory and the faint glow filtering from the living room behind me. Her door is ajar, which saves me the acrobatic challenge of opening a handle with no free hands, and I shoulder it wider as I step inside.
Mae's room is small but personal. She has been here only a few weeks and already the space carries her imprint. A handful of photos pinned to the wall above her desk, the faces too dim to identify in the dark. A stack of textbooks on the nightstand, spines cracked from use. The faint, lingering sweetness of her vanilla sugar scent embedded in the sheets, the pillowcase, the air itself, transforming the room into a cocoon of her fragrance that hits my senses with a warmth that makes my jaw clench.
I lower her onto the mattress.
Carefully. The way you handle things that matter. Her body meets the bed with a soft exhale, her head finding the pillow with the instinctive precision of someone who knows the exact topography of their own sleeping surface. The jersey rides up slightly with the transition, the hem inching along her thigh, and I reach down to tug it back into place because I am many things but I am not the kind of man who looks at an unconscious woman without adjusting her dignity first.
She stirs.
A small murmur escapes her lips, the sound halfway between a word and a sigh, her brows pinching as she turns onto her side. Her hand gropes blindly at the empty space beside her, patting the cold sheet with the dissatisfied rhythm of someone searching for warmth that is not there.
"Cold," she mutters.
The single syllable is thick with sleep, barely audible, delivered with the petulant frustration of a woman who has been deposited into a bed that does not meet her temperature standards.
I chuckle under my breath.
"I know. I am going to check the thermostat, since the two useless Alphas in the living room decided blanket theft and chair hibernation were more pressing priorities."
