A door, downstairs. The front door.
My body registers it before my brain does. Something shifts beneath my skin, a small current of warmth that I mistake for the blankets until it doesn’t stop.
Another door. The kitchen.
Voices. Muffled, low, familiar in a way that makes my omega lift her head without permission.
They’re home.
The thought lands somewhere instinctive, not conscious. I don’t move. My eyes stay closed. But the warmth beneath my skin spreads, quick and sudden, and my breathing changes before I can catch it.
Footsteps on the stairs.
More than one set. The house creaks in the specific way it does when multiple people move through it at once, and the sound of it reaches me through layers of sleep I can’t quite shake.
Their scents hit the landing.
All three at once.
Cedar-amber from Adrian, warm and grounding. Bergamot and dark spice from Bash, sharp then warm underneath. The cool mineral thread of Elias, clean and controlled.
My omega wakes violently.
The shift happens so fast I don’t have time to brace. One moment I’m half-asleep and warm beneath the blankets. The next my skin is burning. My pulse hammers so hard I feel it in my throat, my wrists, behind my knees. The blankets that felt perfect ten seconds ago are suddenly too heavy, too hot, the fabric dragging against my skin with an intensity that makes me gasp.
I’m overheating.
The room is cool. I know it’s cool. But my body is running too hot to register it, and the scent of all three alphas drifting through the door is making it worse by the second.
Every sense sharpens at once.
The cedar from Adrian’s blanket, suddenly so strong it makes my head swim. The spiced edge of Bash’s hoodie pressed against my face, now overwhelming. Elias’s mineral scent from the blanket across my legs, clean and sharp and impossible to ignore. My own vanilla-citrus flooding the nest around me, blooming so powerfully I can taste it.
My thighs clench.
The movement is involuntary. My body does it before I understand why, and the realization lands with a slow, cold horror that creeps up from my stomach into my chest.
This is different.
The kitchen flare was urgent. The paintball course was intense. But this—
This is heat.
My breathing turns uneven. Each inhale pulls their scents deeper, and each exhale comes out ragged. My skin feels hypersensitive everywhere the blankets touch, everywhere the air touches, everywhere my own clothes press against me. The nest I built this morning suddenly doesn’t feel close enough. The blankets aren’t enough. The hoodies and the scented pillows and the careful arrangement of everything—none of it is close enough to them, and the distance between this bed and the hallway where their footsteps are growing louder feels unbearable.
I’m terrified.
The bedroom door opens.
All three of them enter at once. Adrian first, then Bash, then Elias filling the doorway behind them. They stop.
The room floods with their scents.
My omega surges toward them with a violence that steals my breath. Before I fully think about it, my hand is reaching from the center of the nest, reaching for them, and the sound that comes out of me isn’t a word. It’s instinct, raw and desperate.
My scent spills into the room harder. Vanilla-citrus blooms warm and thick, filling the space between us until the air feels heavy with it.
All three alphas freeze.
