She swats at the air.
Her hand arcs through the darkness with the coordination of someone swinging at a piñata while blindfolded, missing me by approximately fourteen inches and connecting with nothing but cold air. The gesture is clearly intended to smack some part of my body in sleepy retaliation, but her aim is so catastrophically off that I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing out loud.
"Your combat skills are terrifying," I whisper. "Truly. I feel threatened."
She grumbles in a language that might be French or might be gibberish and burrows deeper into the pillow.
I leave the room.
The thermostat is in the hallway, a small digital panel that glows blue when I tap it to life. The display confirms my suspicion. The heat turned itself off at some point during the night, either through a timer I did not know existed or a malfunction that this aging university building has decided to spring on us at the worst possible hour. The current temperaturereads fifty-eight degrees, which explains why the apartment feels like the inside of a cooler.
I adjust the settings, cranking the heat to seventy-two and listening for the telltale hum of the system engaging. It clicks on after a five-second delay, the vents in the ceiling beginning to push warm air into the hallway with the sluggish reluctance of machinery that resents being woken up as much as the rest of us.
It will take a while to warm the place.
I detour to the linen closet, pulling out a blanket. One of the thick ones, the kind the university provides that feels like it was woven from industrial carpet fibers but retains heat with the efficiency of a furnace. Not glamorous, but functional.
Mae's door is still open.
I step inside, and in the faint glow from the hallway, I can see her more clearly now. She is curled on her side, the jersey clinging to her frame in a way that traces the curve of her waist and the line of her hip with a fidelity that the garment was never designed to provide. Her legs are drawn up, her arms wrapped around herself in a self-embrace that is equal parts cold and habit, the posture of someone who learned to hold themselves because no one else was doing it.
She is stunning.
The thought arrives uninvited and unapologetic, settling into my consciousness with the casual permanence of a fact that has been waiting for me to acknowledge it. Mae Rose, asleep in a hockey jersey that is three sizes too large for her, with messy hair and cold-flushed cheeks and bare legs tucked into a fetal curl, is the most attractive person I have ever shared breathing space with.
And I need to get a grip.
I need to tame the thing in my chest that accelerates every time she is close. Need to remind my Alpha instincts that admiring an unconscious Omega is not the foundation of ahealthy romantic narrative. Need to quiet the primal voice in the back of my skull that keeps whispering mine in a possessive frequency that I have never experienced with anyone, not the hookups, not the one-night stands, not the Omegas whose names I forgot before my sheets were cold.
None of them made my pulse do this.
I unfold the blanket and drape it over her, tucking the edges around her shoulders with a care that surprises me. My hands, these big, calloused, hockey-roughened hands that have checked opponents into boards and thrown punches in scrums, move with a gentleness I did not know they were capable of.
She exhales beneath the warmth, her body uncurling by a fraction, her grip on herself loosening as the blanket absorbs the chill.
I should leave.
I should walk out of this room, close the door, and go to my own bed where I can process the events of today in the privacy of my own thoughts without the complication of proximity.
I turn to go.
"Cold."
Her voice again. Small and groggy and carrying a dissatisfaction that even the blanket has not resolved. I pause in the doorway, looking back.
Mae has turned over. Her eyes are half open, glazed with sleep, her hazel irises catching the faint hallway light in a way that makes them glow amber at the edges. The pout is back. That devastating, bottom-lip-forward pout that she deploys with the precision of a weapon she has no idea she possesses.
She pats the pillow beside her.
Twice. The gesture is slow and deliberate, the universal invitation that transcends language and consciousness level, and the implication is so clear that my brain does not even bother pretending to misinterpret it.
I arch an eyebrow.
"You want me to sleep next to you?" I ask, keeping my voice neutral, because I need to hear her confirm it. Need the explicit, spoken acknowledgment that this is her choice and not my projection, because I have spent enough years misreading signals and assuming interest where none existed to know that clarity matters.
She nods.
A single, sleepy nod that involves her entire head dipping forward against the pillow and then tilting back up, her eyes barely maintaining their half-open status, her lips still pushed into that pout that is simultaneously the cutest and hottest thing I have ever witnessed on a human face.
