Chapter 38 Beth
Beth
The four of us spill into the apartment like we're being chased.
The door clicks shut. Mason's mouth is on mine before I get a full breath.
I grab the front of his shirt with both hands and pull until there's no gap left. He tastes like champagne and cedar, and the sound I make into his mouth is something I will deny under oath.
His hands frame my face. Thumbs against my jaw. He's thorough about it. Deliberate. Like he's had this planned since dessert.
My knees stop cooperating.
When we break apart I'm panting and he's looking at me like I just told him he won the lottery, which is flattering, but I don't get to see it long because Knox turns me by the shoulder.
His hand slides to the back of my neck, fingers curling into my hair, and the kiss he gives me is different. Slower. Deeper. Eucalyptus and amberwood flooding everything, and I press into him, chasing it.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. His pupils are enormous.
Arthur steps in behind me and his lips find the curve of my neck and my head drops back against his shoulder. Rosemary and bourbon and cigar leaf, and my body just stops being solid. His mouth moves to the spot below my ear and I reach back, fingers threading into his hair.
"You have been killing me all night," he murmurs against my skin. "Your dress... Your scent."
"You should try being on the inside of it," I manage. "The dress."
Mason's hand finds my hip. Knox's thumb is still moving along the back of my neck. Arthur's lips haven't left my throat, and three scents layer over mine until the air in the apartment is something new.
My hindbrain goes: Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
And then, underneath that, louder and more urgent: Nest.
The thought cuts through everything like a fire alarm at a concert.
My body goes rigid.
"Beth?" Mason says.
I step out of the center of them. It takes enormous physical effort, like I'm a metal pulling against an industrial magnet, and the omega whine that comes out of me is completely involuntary. They step toward me at once.
"I'm fine," I say, holding up a hand. My voice is wrecked. "I just— I need—"
I look toward the hallway. Toward my bedroom.
Nest. Nest. Nest.
It's not a thought anymore. It's a drumbeat. It's the only thing my brain is willing to process and it is getting louder by the second and I am going to have this conversation while it happens, apparently.
"I need things," I say.
Mason blinks. "Things."
"Comfortable things. Blankets. Pillows. Soft— just, soft things. Everything soft you can find." I gesture vaguely at the apartment. "That throw on the couch. The cushions on the reading chair. The wool blanket on the top shelf of the linen closet—not the scratchy one, the other one. The good one."
"The good blanket," Knox repeats.
"And your shirts." My face is so hot I could light a candle with it. "I need your shirts."
Knox looks at Mason. Looks at Arthur. Looks back at me.
"Shirts," I say again, because my brain has exited the building. "Now, please."
Mason reaches back and pulls his dress shirt over his head without unbuttoning it. So does Knox, the light from the kitchen catching the lines of their shoulders... their chests...
Arthur unbuttons his with maddening, deliberate slowness. One. Two. Three. He lets it slide off and catches it without looking.
Three shirtless alphas. Three scents at maximum intensity. My vision whites out for a half-second.
I gather the shirts against my chest. Then I bury my face in Mason's first, then Knox's, then Arthur's, and I need to leave now before my nesting instincts lose the war to every other instinct currently lighting my nervous system on fire.
"Blankets," I say into the fabric. "Linen closet. Top shelf. And the couch throw. And anything else that's soft. Bring them to the door. Knock first."
***
My bedroom door clicks shut and the drumbeat takes over.
Nest. Build. Safe.
I look at my bed. It's wrong. Everything about it is wrong. The pillows are flat. The duvet is bunched at the foot like it gave up. The sheets are cold and they don't smell like anything and the whole arrangement is an insult to whatever ancient part of my brain just seized the controls.
I strip the bed in thirty seconds. Everything on the floor. Sheets, pillowcases, the sad decorative throw Harper gave me last Christmas. Gone.
A knock at the door.
I crack it six inches. Mason is on the other side holding a stack of blankets so high he's peering around the side.
Behind him, Knox has the couch cushions under both arms. Arthur is holding the good wool blanket and the fleece from the reading chair and what appears to be every throw pillow from the living room.
"We didn't know which ones," Mason says.
"All of them," I say, and take the stack from his hands. It's warm where he was holding it. That helps.
Knox passes the cushions through the gap. "There's also a quilt in the hall closet. Floral. Looked soft."
"Bring it."
Arthur holds up the wool blanket. "This is the good one?"
"That's the good one."
He hands it over. His fingers brush mine and the contact sends a jolt up my arm that I am struggling to ignore.
"Is there anything else you—" Mason starts.
"The microfiber throw somewhere in the apartment," I say. "And if anyone has a hoodie that hasn't been washed yet, I want it."
Knox is already turning. "On it."
I shut the door and stand there for a second.
My arms are full of blankets that smell faintly like them, and the warm thing blooming in my chest alongside the frantic nesting energy is almost worse than the heat.
The fact tey're out there raiding like it's a supply run makes me want to purr or jump them (or both).
But I don't have time to think. I have a nest to build.
The mattress stays. Everything else changes. I start with the base layer, smoothing the wool blanket across the mattress until there isn't a single wrinkle. I run my palms over it three times. Four. The texture has to be right. It has to be right.
Another knock. I crack the door. Knox holds up a heather-gray hoodie and the floral quilt.
"Hoodie's mine," he says.
I take it. Press it to my face. Delicious.
"Thank you," I say, and my voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.
Something shifts in his expression. "Take your time, Beth."
I shut the door again.
Mason's shirt goes on the left side. I tuck it under the pillow, arranging it so the collar is exposed, so I can turn my head and breathe him in. Cedar and woodsmoke. My hands are trembling.
Knox's shirt gets woven into the right side, threaded through the blankets so his scent bleeds through the layers.
His hoodie goes at the foot for extra warmth, extra scent, extra him.
I press my nose into the fabric and a sound comes out of me, half purr, half whimper, that I'm grateful no one is here to witness.
Arthur's shirt becomes the headboard. I drape it across the pillows I've stacked three high so the cigar leaf wraps around everything else.
Now the walls.
I build them from blankets and cushions, raising the edges until it becomes a cocoon. Not so high I feel trapped. Just high enough to feel held. The wool blanket forms the left wall. The fleece covers the right. Cushions fill the gaps, wedged into place.
I crawl into the center and something inside me releases.
Yes. This. Here.
The nest smells like all of them—Cedar, eucalyptus, rosemary—and my omega brain goes briefly quiet for the first time all night.
I adjust one more pillow. Move Knox's shirt half an inch to the left. Smooth a wrinkle from the base layer, then sink into the center of it and breathe.
For about forty-five seconds, this is enough. The nest. The scents. The cocoon.
Then the heat comes back like a door getting kicked in.
My skin goes tight. My breath goes shallow. The warmth concentrates low in my belly and radiates outward, and the nest that was everything thirty seconds ago is suddenly missing the only things that actually matter.
I grab the edge of the blanket wall. Squeeze.
Alpha. Need. Now.
I look down at myself and pull my wedding dress over my head and toss it somewhere beyond the walls, and find the oversized t-shirt I sleep in. It hits mid-thigh.
"Alphas," I call.
My voice is thick and rough and barely mine.
My door almost immediately opens.
Mason first. Then Knox. Then Arthur, ducking slightly through the frame.
They stop and take in the nest. The walls. The blankets layered just so. Their shirts woven through the fabric. Me...
Mason's lips part.
Knox's hand grips the doorframe.
Arthur makes a low sound in the back of his throat that sends electricity straight down my spine.
"I'm ready," I say.