Chapter 3
The alarm slices through unconsciousness, dragging me from sleep while my body screams in protest. Five thirty comes four hours too soon.
My hand slaps at my phone, silencing the noise before it can penetrate the thin wall separating my room from Lena’s. The dark silence cocoons me as I lie still for ten precious seconds, gathering the will to move.
The sheet peels away from my skin as I sit up, the chill of the apartment rushing to fill the warm space I vacated. Four hours and twenty-seven minutes of sleep. I read once that successful people can function on four hours a night. I was not built for success.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and plant my feet on the floor. The cold travels up through my bones, a jolt that does more to wake me than the alarm. I run my hands through my hair, the grease from too many days of dry shampoo and quick rinses sticky beneath my fingers.
No time for a real shower this morning, either.
Standing requires more effort than it should, as my back twinges with a reminder of the heavy boxes I unloaded yesterday. My shoulders carry the tension of too many hours hunched over prep tables and locks. The persistent ache in my knees speaks of miles walked between bus stops.
The apartment offers no comfort as I shuffle to the bathroom, where the mirror reveals a ghost with skin pale from lack of sunlight and circles beneath my eyes dark enough to look like bruises. I splash cold water on my face, the shock of it pulling me further into wakefulness.
Teeth brushed, deodorant applied. Each action takes place without conscious thought, muscle memory carrying me through the motions while my brain struggles to catch up.
In the kitchen, the linoleum sticks to my bare feet as I move to the coffee maker and hit start.
While it gurgles to life, I pull Lena’s breakfast from the fridge and pop it into the microwave. When it heats up, I add rice from the cooker, mixing it to stretch the protein further.
Six o’clock. Fifteen minutes until Lena should emerge from her room, sleep-rumpled but ready to take on another day.
I pour coffee into my chipped mug, watching steam rise in the dim kitchen light. The liquid burns my tongue, but I welcome the pain as another jolt of wakefulness.
Six ten, and still no sound from Lena’s room.
She’s cutting it close. The bus comes at six forty-five, and she needs time for breakfast and to gather her things. I drum my fingers on the counter, counting the taps to keep my mind from spiraling into calculations of what a late start means for our carefully orchestrated day.
Six fifteen. Still nothing.
Tension creeps up my neck and settles at the base of my skull. Lena never misses breakfast, and she’s never late for school. The routine matters to both of us. The twenty minutes at the table are our only real connection some days.
Six twenty. The coffee turns bitter in my mouth.
My jaw tightens as I wash my mug with unnecessary force. The apartment remains quiet except for the sound of running water and my own breathing, controlled and even despite the irritation building within.
I put her breakfast back into the microwave to reheat it.
Six twenty-five. This isn’t like her.
I check the calendar on the wall, scanning for notes about early meetings or study groups I might have forgotten. Nothing. Monday is just Monday, a school day like any other.
The microwave beeps for the second time, reminding me that her breakfast sits inside.
I open the door and stare at the container.
The smell of reheated chicken fills the kitchen, unappetizing but necessary.
Calories to fuel her brain through morning classes.
Protein to keep her satisfied until lunch.
Six thirty. We’re now behind schedule.
My shoulders stiffen as I stride down the hallway to her door. If she overslept, it means she stayed up too late studying. If she’s sick, it means doctor bills we can’t afford and missed work for me. Neither option fits into the system that keeps us afloat.
I pause outside her door, listening for the rustle of bedsheets, water running in her bathroom, or the soft pad of feet on carpet. Nothing.
I check the time. Six thirty. I picture the bus pulling away without her, the empty seat where she should be, the attendance mark added to her record. One absence becomes two, becomes a pattern that draws attention we can’t afford.
The seconds tick away, each one pushing us further from the safety of routine. I count backward from ten, a trick I use when tension threatens to crack my control.
Nine. Eight. Seven.
I flatten my palm on her door, as if I can sense her presence through the wood.
Six. Five. Four.
My fingers curl into a fist.
Three. Two. One.
The knock I deliver is too soft for the urgency coursing through me, a contradiction born from years of balancing between protection and suffocation. I wait, counting each inhale and exhale. No response comes.
Six thirty-five. Ten minutes until we need to leave for the bus stop.
The system is failing. The routine is crumbling. And beneath my exhaustion and irritation burns the ever-present pilot light of fear that never extinguishes, no matter how stable our lives appear.
Something is wrong.
“Lena!” I call, loud enough to penetrate sleep.
The persistent silence from her room becomes deliberate now, not the oversight of a teenager running late. I knock again, louder this time. “Lena, we’re running late.”
Still nothing.
I rap my knuckles on the door with more force, the wood vibrating under the impact. The sound echoes in the narrow hallway, cutting through the quiet apartment.
“Bus leaves in eight minutes,” I say. “You need to get moving now.”
The silence stretches before her response drifts through the door. “I don’t feel good. I think I’m sick.” My hand freezes mid-knock, suspended in the air as I process what I’m hearing.
Lena is never sick, not for tests, not for presentations, not even when she had the actual flu last winter, and I found her trying to get dressed while running a temperature of a-hundred-and-two.
“What kind of sick?” I ask, keeping my tone neutral.
“Stomach.” Her answer comes too fast, with no pause to consider symptoms. “I was up all night. Must’ve been something I ate.”
A lie. I prepare her school lunch, dinner leftovers, and breakfast from the diner. Nothing that would cause food poisoning without affecting me, too.
I inhale, catching the faint scent of her strawberry shampoo lingering in the hallway from her shower yesterday morning. No hint of sickness, no acrid tang of vomit, no bitter note of fever sweat.
I try the handle and find it locked, which means she got up to lock it after I checked on her last night.
“Open this door right now, Lena.” Not a request.
“Can’t I just rest?” A sniffle drifts through the cracks. “I’ll email my teachers for the assignments.”
I flatten my palm on the door. “Either you open this door in the next ten seconds, or I do.” A rustling sound comes from inside the room, but the door remains closed.
She knows I mean it. I don’t bluff, I don’t threaten, and I don’t posture. When I say ten seconds, I mean ten seconds.
The lock doesn’t click. The door doesn’t open.
My hands move to my pocket, extracting the key ring, and I separate the correct key from the others by touch alone, my fingers knowing its weight and ridges.
I try hard to respect Lena’s boundaries as a young woman, but we have rules in this house, and she’s breaking one of them right now.
The key slides into the lock, and I push the door open.
The first breath of air from her room brings me up short as the wrongness from last night now burns my nostrils.
Beneath the strawberry shampoo, the vanilla body spray, and the sweetness of Lena’s pheromones threads a foreign scent.
Lena doesn’t bolt upright in surprise or pull the covers higher in embarrassment, the way a teenager might when a parent enters unannounced. She remains still, only her eyes tracking me as I step into the room.
“You’re not sick,” I say, certainty locking into place.
Her hands grip the blanket, knuckles white with tension. The comforter rises to her chin, held there like a shield. Beneath the covers, I can see the outline of her rigid body. This isn’t the loose-limbed sprawl of a teenager sleeping in, nor the curled protection of genuine illness.
“I just need to rest today,” she whispers, her bottom lip trembling.
I move closer, and her fingers tighten on the blanket. The foreign scent grows stronger with each step, familiar yet out of place in her room. It reminds me of a spice we use at the diner, with undertones of something else I can’t place.
Her hair spills across the pillow in tangled, unwashed waves, out of the norm for her usual meticulous morning routine. Dark circles frame her eyes, not the purple smudges of typical teenage sleep deprivation, but the shadows of true exhaustion.
“What happened?” I ask, maintaining control despite the alarm bells ringing in my head.
“Nothing.”
Too quick again. Too defensive.
I sit on her desk chair, close enough to see the minute tremors in her hands but far enough not to crowd her.
Her eyes dart away from mine, then back, and her wariness hurts more than any lie she could tell.
“I need you to tell me what’s going on,” I say, my heart pounding hard enough to show in my wrist.
She swallows before shaking her head once. “I just don’t feel well.”
The lie hangs between us, fragile as smoke and as impossible to grasp. I could push harder, demand truth, leverage the authority I’ve earned through years of sacrifice on her behalf.
But the way she clutches the blanket, unblinking… All of it signals a deeper issue than teenage rebellion or minor trouble she’s afraid to confess.
“Show me your nape, Lena.”
The words leave my mouth before the suspicion clicks into place, an instinct born from years of living in a world where Omegas are vulnerable to forces beyond their control.