Chapter 5 Quentin
quentin
Her apartment smells like her. Not the faint traces I catch at practice or in meeting rooms, diluted by distance and other scents.
This is concentrated, warm vanilla and sandalwood soaked into the furniture and the walls and the air itself.
It hits me the moment she opens the door, and my hands go into my pockets because I need to do something with them that isn't reaching for her.
The space is small but lived-in. Art supplies cover the kitchen table, tubes of paint lined up beside a jar of murky water and a palette smeared with teals and golds.
A half-finished canvas sits on an easel near the window, shapes bleeding into each other without resolution.
Books are stacked in piles on the floor rather than shelved, organized by some system only she understands, a mug ring stained into the coffee table beside a graphing calculator and a sketchpad.
"I have wine, water, or tea that's probably expired," Iris says from the kitchen, pulling glasses from the cabinet.
"Wine." Milo has already migrated to the bookshelf.
He lasted approximately twelve seconds before the wandering started, his fingers trailing along the spines, picking things up and putting them down, tilting his head at the canvas on the easel.
He processes every new space through his fingertips, unable to hold still until he's mapped the entire room.
I take the opposite approach, staying near the door and letting the room come to me.
"Red or white?" Iris asks.
"Red. Please." Her braids swing forward as she reaches for the corkscrew, the beads clicking together. Milo's footsteps drift past the living room and down the short hallway, a door creaking open a second later. I don't think anything of it until the footsteps stop and Milo goes quiet.
Milo is never quiet.
Iris is still working the cork out of the bottle, humming something under her breath, her back to the hallway. She hasn't noticed yet, but I'm already turning toward the silence because nothing good has ever come from my brother shutting up unexpectedly.
He's standing just inside Iris's bedroom, frozen mid-step, his lips parted. His scent has gone soft, almost reverent, like he's walked into somewhere sacred. I step up beside him and look past his shoulder.
The bed isn't a bed. It's a nest.
Layers of blankets cover a large mattress on the floor in specific arrangements, each one folded and tucked with a precision that borders on architectural.
Pillows are nested inside each other, stacked against the wall in different sizes, some velvet, some knit, all in soft teals and golds and creams. Fairy lights are strung along the headboard and up the wall, woven through a canopy of sheer fabric that drapes from the ceiling.
More blankets are folded at the foot, extras waiting to be pulled in.
This is a sanctuary someone built piece by piece, alone, in secret. And we just wandered into it without being invited.
"Q." Milo's voice comes out barely above a whisper. "Look at it."
My chest has gone tight because I know what this is, and I know what it means.
Milo's had a nest since we were fourteen.
I've helped him rearrange his at least a dozen times, hauled blankets up three flights of dorm stairs, and argued with him about pillow placement.
Nesting is an Omega trait. A biological drive that Alphas aren't supposed to have.
And Iris has been building one in secret for what looks like years.
She's been hiding this the same way I've been hiding what I want.
The sound of a cork popping comes from the kitchen, followed by footsteps down the hall. Iris rounds the corner holding two glasses of wine, and the composure she's carried all evening cracks clean open.
The glasses shake in her hands as her eyes dart from Milo to me to the nest and back, her scent spiking with something close to panic.
"It's not what it looks like." The words come out fast, stumbling into each other.
"I just like blankets. It's not a real nest, I'm not—" She stops mid-sentence, swallows hard, and tries again. "I'm not like..."
She can't finish it. She can't say "I'm not like an Omega" because the evidence is right behind us, arranged with the kind of care that goes beyond preference into something she can't talk away.
Milo crosses to her before I can move, takes both wine glasses out of her hands, sets them on the dresser, and turns back to face her. "Iris. It's beautiful."
He says it with his whole chest, his scent softening even further, his expression leaving no room for doubt.
Iris just stares at him. There's a sliver of fear in her eyes that wasn't there before, and I can only imagine the reactions she'd been bracing herself for every time she brought someone close to that hallway.
"Can I come closer?" My voice pulls her attention to me. She nods, and I close the gap, stopping just inside her space, close enough that her scent fills my lungs with every breath, close enough to see the rapid pulse in her throat. "You don't have to explain anything to us."
Her eyes search my face for the catch, the judgment, the moment I take it back. When she doesn't find any of it, her chin dips, her shoulders drop, and she exhales like she's been holding her breath for years.
"Can we see it?" Milo's hand finds her elbow. "Like, properly?"
A wet laugh escapes her. "You want to see my nest?"
"I really, really do."
She leads us in, adjusting pillows as we enter, pulling back the top layer of blankets to make room.
I've been in nests before. Milo cycles through arrangements every few months, and I've sat through enough of his redesigns to know the architecture of one by heart.
But settling into this one, knowing an Alpha's hands built it, that Iris spent time layering these blankets and tucking these pillows into place in secret, carrying the same instinct my brother does while hiding it from everyone.
.. that's what sits heavy in my chest as the three of us find our places.
Iris settles cross-legged against the headboard with a pillow clutched to her chest, the wine retrieved from the dresser and passed between us. Her composure pieces itself back together slowly, less rigid this time, more honest.
"My father doesn't know." She says it to the pillow more than to us. "About any of this. If he found out his Alpha daughter nests..." The sentence dies on her tongue as she turns her wine glass by the stem. "I've hidden it since I started building it. Two years. Nobody's seen this room."
"Until now," Milo says.
"Until now."
The quiet that follows is heavy. Milo's shoulder presses warm against mine as Iris sits with her wine glass turning slowly between her fingers, her gaze somewhere past the fairy lights. Then she sets down her glass, turns to Milo, and reaches for his face.
Her palm cups his jaw, her thumb tracing slowly along his cheekbone, as Milo's eyes flutter shut. He leans into her hand, pressing his cheek against her palm, his whole body going soft, his breath stuttering against her wrist, his scent flooding the nest so thick I can taste it on my tongue.
"You're good," she murmurs. "You know that?"
The sound he makes isn't quite a word. His hand wraps around her wrist, holding her there, his fingers trembling against her skin. My twin brother has been waiting for a moment like this for I don’t know how long.
But seeing them together, I realize I’ve been waiting for something like this much longer.
Something raw presses up against the composure I've held all night, my scent deepening, heat pooling low in my stomach. Milo is beautiful like this, open and unguarded and given over completely, and Iris is steady above him, her thumb still stroking his cheek.
Then she turns to me.
Her hand falls away from Milo's face but she doesn't reach for me. Her dark blue eyes find mine across the nest, her chin lifting slightly. She's waiting, giving me the same choice I gave her in the doorway.
I close the distance myself.
My hand finds the back of her neck, fingers sliding around the nape of her neck, and I pull hard enough to make my intention clear.
Her breath catches in her throat but she doesn't yield, her fingers gripping the front of my hoodie, pulling back with equal force.
We hold there, inches apart, neither giving ground, her breath warm against my mouth, mine coming harder than I want it to.
A slow smile spreads across her lips. "You don't want to give in, do you?"
"No."
"Good." Her grip tightens on my hoodie. "Neither do I."
I kiss her. Or she kisses me. The line blurs because neither of us concedes the distance, meeting in the middle with enough force that her teeth catch my bottom lip.
My hand tightens in her braids as she makes a sound against my mouth that drops straight through me, my control slipping another inch.
Milo presses close against Iris' side, his mouth finding the curve of her neck.
Her head tips back with a sharp inhale, but my hand stays in her braids, keeping her gaze on mine even as Milo's lips trace down to her collarbone.
Her pupils are blown wide, the composure she rebuilt after the nest reveal dissolving willingly this time, and when Milo's mouth reaches the swell of her chest she lets out a shaky breath.
"Tell me what you want," I say against her mouth. This night could ruin everything but I don’t care. There’s no real future come tomorrow morning when we have to return to the reality of our lives with classes and practice and staring at our coach like we didn’t enter Iris’ nest the night before.
Her hand fists tighter in my hoodie. "Both of you."