They brought plates.
They brought groceries and cooked breakfast and set a table in my apartment, and someone went and bought plates because mine consists of one chipped department-issue ceramic mug that doubles as a cereal bowl on the nights I don’t bother pretending I’m eating a real meal.
“Sorry,” I say, and the word feels foreign in my mouth—not the professional apology I issue when protocol demands it, but the genuine, slightly embarrassed variety that surfaces when you realize your living space has been witnessed by people whose opinions you’re starting to care about. “The place is kinda small.”
Kinda small is generous. The apartment was designed for one person operating at minimum capacity, and the addition ofthree Alpha males—one six-four, one six-three, one a compact but intensely present five-ten—has transformed the square footage from “tight” to “physically improbable.” Alaric alone takes up more atmospheric space than the floor plan accounts for. Roman’s shoulders practically brush the walls when he shifts position. And Oakley, despite being the smallest, fills whatever room remains with a scent and energy that makes four hundred square feet feel like a phone booth.
Three Alphas in my apartment.
Three Alphas who stayed the night.
Three Alphas who are currently cooking me breakfast like this is a normal Tuesday morning and not the most surreal twenty-four hours of my already deeply surreal existence.
I look at the stove. The counter lined with groceries—a carton of eggs, a package of bacon, bread, butter, a container of fresh berries that I’m certain the convenience store doesn’t carry, which means someone drove to the actual grocery store in the next town over.
“How did you get all this?” I ask, my eyes sweeping the counter’s unfamiliar abundance. “I don’t really…have anything.”
Roman sighs.
“Yeah, we fucking noticed.” The statement is delivered with his characteristic blend of irritation and concern—the verbal equivalent of someone simultaneously scolding and worrying, which I’m beginning to understand is Roman’s native emotional dialect. “Like, do you not stay home at all? Your fridge looked like a crime scene of neglect. I’ve investigated abandoned buildings with more provisions.”
I open my mouth to counter with something sharp—something about his unsolicited opinions and my refrigerator’s contents being precisely none of his concern—but Oakley speaks first.
“Do you just cook at the station because it’s easier?” His voice is gentle. Not gentle in the patronizing way that makes my teeth clench, but in the genuine way—the way of someone who is asking because they want to understand, not because they want to fix. “Since you’re pulling such long hours?”
I frown.
The question is closer to the truth than I want to admit, but still misses the mark. Cooking at the station implies a routine, a system, a relationship with food that involves preparation and intention. What I have is the dietary equivalent of triage—grabbing whatever caloric source is nearest to my current location and consuming it with the same urgency and enthusiasm I’d apply to refueling a patrol car.
I shake my head slowly.
“I just buy out. Or not eat at all, I guess.”
The honesty surprises me. Not the content—I’m aware of my own habits—but the willingness to voice them to three people who have no operational need for the information. Something about the morning light, the smell of breakfast, the residual softness of waking up safe after a night that should have been anything but—it’s loosening bolts I normally keep torqued to specification.
“I’m home too late to cook and I leave too early,” I continue, my gaze drifting to the window where Sweetwater Falls is performing its picturesque morning routine beyond the glass. “I pick up a protein shake from the convenience store every day for lunch. Breakfast from the shop across the station if I can get there before briefing. Maybe a donut if I pass the bakery.”
A pause.
Something warm flickers behind my sternum.
“The Omega who runs it gives me some for free,” I add, and I’m not sure why this detail surfaces—why, of all the information I could share, my brain selects this particular kindness from awoman whose name I haven’t even learned yet. “Which I can keep to bring home for later. But essentially…there’s no time. For any of it. The cooking. The grocery shopping. The sitting-down-at-a-table part.”
I shrug.
The gesture is aimed at all of it—the empty fridge, the missing meals, the lifestyle of a woman who has optimized every waking hour for professional output and left exactly zero margin for the basic human act of feeding herself.
Alaric’s frown is the first I notice.
It’s not the dramatic, furrowed-brow variety. It’s subtle—a tightening at the corners of his mouth, a slight narrowing of dark eyes that have seen too many case files documenting the consequences of systemic neglect. When he speaks, his voice is quiet in the way that means he’s choosing his words with the same precision he applies to investigation reports.
“No time to actually take care of yourself?”
The question isn’t accusatory. It’s diagnostic. The voice of a man who has spent his career identifying patterns and has just identified one he doesn’t like.
I shrug again.
“Yeah. Basically, I guess.”
