Roman’s fork is suspended midway between his plate and his mouth, where it has apparently been frozen for an indeterminate amount of time. Alaric’s coffee cup is raised but un-sipped, held at lip height like he’d started the motion and then forgotten to complete it. Oakley has both elbows on the table, chin resting on his interlaced fingers, green eyes wide with something I can’t immediately categorize.
They’re looking at me like I’ve grown another head.
I blink.
Several times, the rapid flutter of someone who has been jolted from a private activity into the sudden awareness that the private activity was being observed.
Heat rises to my cheeks.
Actual, physical, blood-to-the-surface heat that I cannot attribute to the fever because the fever broke hours ago and this is something else entirely—the specific, mortifying warmth of a woman who has been eating like a feral animal in the presence of three men and has just realized that the reason nobody was talking is because they were all watching her.
“What?” The word comes out as a whisper, which makes the blush deepen because Hazel Martinez does not whisper and does not blush and is currently doing both simultaneously at a breakfast table. “Do I…have jam on my nose or something?”
My hand moves toward my face reflexively, checking for evidence of the kind of culinary indignity that would explain the intensity of their collective attention.
Alaric speaks first.
“I’ve never been so fascinated watching a woman eat before.”
The statement is delivered with the quiet, observational sincerity that characterizes everything Alaric says—not as a joke, not as mockery, but as a genuine declaration of data. As if my consumption of three plates of scrambled eggs constitutes a phenomenon worthy of academic documentation.
Oakley nods.
Slowly, his chin still balanced on his fingers, the green eyes carrying something warm and something sad in equal measure.
Roman lowers his suspended fork.
“Why don’t you just…try to eat like three times a day?” he asks, and the question is delivered with the frustrated directness of a man who has encountered a problem he considers solvable and cannot understand why the solution hasn’t been implemented.
I blink.
“I don’t normally have time to eatperiod, Roman.” The response is automatic—not defensive, just factual, the recitation of a reality I’ve accepted so thoroughly that questioning it feels like questioning gravity. “I eat whatever’s available at the station during shifts. If there’s nothing, I don’t eat. It’s not complicated.”
Oakley tilts his head.
“Doesn’t your pack try to bring you food? On their breaks or whatever.”
I frown.
The expression is genuine—not the strategic frown I deploy in professional settings but the unfiltered contraction of facial muscles that occurs when the brain encounters a statement that doesn’t compute.
“Why would they do that?”
The question leaves my mouth with the sincere confusion of someone who has genuinely never considered this possibility. Packs don’t bring you food. Packs share heat cycles and household expenses and the institutional benefits that come with documented partnership. Packs are functional units designed to navigate a system that penalizes packless Omegas and rewards compliance with biological norms. Packs serve purposes.
They don’t servelunch.
The three of them exchange a look.
It happens fast—a triangulated glance that moves from Alaric to Roman to Oakley in the space of a second, communicating something in the nonverbal shorthand of men who have been reading each other’s expressions long enough to hold entire conversations without opening their mouths.
What was in that look?
Concern? Confusion? The dawning recognition that my definition of “pack” doesn’t match theirs?
I choose not to find out. I rise from the chair, plate in hand, the motion carrying the decisive finality of a woman redirecting a conversation she doesn’t want to continue.
I’ll assess the fourth-plate situation after the dishes are done. Strategic delay. Tactical digestion assessment.
