“You’ve been running around a paintball course for three hours and only drank water to refuel.” He opens the refrigerator. “Sit.”
I sit. Adrian leans against the counter and watches Bash move through the kitchen with a smirk on his face.
Elias appears in the doorway. One hand rests on the door frame as his gaze sweeps over my face, checking in the way he always does, and then his expression shifts by a fraction.
He doesn’t say anything. He just nods once, as if he’s come to a conclusion, then walks farther into the kitchen and sits at the corner of the island.
Bash puts food in front of me. It’s reheated leftovers from last night. I eat without much comment as I watch the alphas interact. Adrian tells Elias about the course in spare, factual sentences. Bash stealthily adds more food to my plate whenever I look away from him.
Something occurs to me while I'm eating.
I haven't spent the last ten minutes wondering what every reaction means.
The realization catches me off guard. I'm not analyzing every instinct or second-guessing every moment of comfort. I'm justsitting at the island eating reheated pasta with paint still faint on my forearms while the three of them move around the kitchen, and my omega is completely relaxed.
I feel good. I felt good this afternoon running across that course and laughing until I couldn't stand up straight, and I can still feel traces of it now, some lingering lightness in my chest from having been genuinely happy.
I haven't felt that in a while.
The conversation moves around me, and I let it. Bash makes a comment about the facility's liability waiver being three pages long, which he apparently read in detail on Adrian's phone while we were gone. Adrian points out that Bash reads every waiver, unprompted, in every situation, and Bash doesn't even attempt to deny it. Elias looks like he has a comment and is exercising impressive restraint by keeping it to himself.
After a while, I push back from the island. “I'm going to clean up,” I say. “Shower and decompress.”
Bash's eyes immediately drop to my plate. “You finished it.”
“I finished the first plate and everything you added afterward.”
He just smiles.
Adrian straightens slightly when I stand. “We'll be down here if you need us,” he says.
“Goodnight,” Elias adds from his seat.
I smile at him before heading for the stairs.
My nest is warm. The lamp is off, but evening light slips through the gap at the edge of one curtain, leaving a thin golden line across the wall. My eyes adjust quickly to the dimness, and I stand in the doorway for a moment before stepping inside.
The room looks lived in now. Really lived in. The blankets are layered the way I left them this morning, with the heaviest one slightly rumpled on Elias's side and two pillows migrated from the headboard to a corner of the mattress where they apparently belong now. My cardigan is draped over the chair beside the desk, and beneath it is Adrian's hoodie, the one I keep borrowing and never returning. My phone charger sits on the shelf beside a book I haven't opened and the tube of lip balm that appeared the first night I stayed over.
I step farther into the room, and the door swings shut behind me. The scent settles around me the way it always does.
A few weeks ago, I wouldn't have understood what I was breathing in. I would have noticed something pleasant about the air and moved on. Now I recognize it immediately. Cedar and amber linger deep in the fabric of the heaviest blanket. The softer throw on the left side carries the warm, dark edge that belongs to Bash, while Elias is woven through the blanket I always reach for first in a way that feels steady and unmistakably him.
All three of them are here.
Warmth spreads through my chest, and I stand there for a moment letting myself feel it.
A week ago, I would have looked at this room and seen a problem to solve. I would have told myself that needing aspace scented by other people before I could fully relax meant something was wrong. I would have treated every instinct as something to manage.
Now I'm standing here thinking that this is a nice room.
And I mean it.
I take my phone out of my pocket and set it on the side table before grabbing clean clothes from the drawer. My phone lights up.
The number on the screen is familiar in the way production contacts become familiar over eight months. It's not saved, but I've seen it often enough to recognize it immediately. I stare at it for a second before answering.
“Maya.” It's the director's voice. “I hope I'm not catching you at a bad time.”
