Chapter 17 #3
I drag every blanket I own onto the bed. The thin comforter from the closet, the throw from the couch, the old quilt my aunt sent me last Christmas. I stack pillows. I make a little hollow in the middle and crawl into it, tugging fabric up around my shoulders.
It looks like a nest. Sort of.
It doesn’t feel like one.
The mattress is too firm. The sheets smell like detergent and me. Just me. No warm beta notes at the edges, no alpha spice curling through the cotton.
I grab Declan’s hoodie from the laundry hamper and bury my face in it, inhaling so hard my chest hurts.
It helps. A little.
I pull it on over my head, needing the weight of it, needing the smell of him. Under the detergent is the faint, unmistakable smell of him. And under that, the others. The ghost of their nest clinging to the fabric.
It just makes the ache worse.
I curl up tighter, fists twisted in the hoodie, and try to breathe through the waves of heat rolling over me.
It’s getting worse. Fast.
My skin is too hot. My thighs are slick. The ache in my belly has sharpened into something almost painful, a hollow need that makes me whimper into the pillow.
I shift. Every movement drags fabric over my skin and sparks along my nerves.
I’ve done this alone before, I remind myself. I survived. It sucks, but I can do it. Three days. Maybe four. I have food. I have water. But a sharp cramp twists low in my abdomen. Tears spring to my eyes.
I’m shaking.
Heats are hard enough with a partner. Alone, they’re brutal. And this one already feels different. It feels hotter, more desperate. Like my body has finally noticed there are four very attentive neighbors next door and is filing a formal complaint.
I roll onto my back, staring at the ceiling, breathing too fast.
You can do this.
A whimper cuts through all the positive self-talk as pain clutches low in my belly. Tears swell in my eyes.
I can’t do this.
I grab my phone off the nightstand with a shaking hand. The screen swims; I have to blink a few times to focus. My fingers hover over the keypad, trembling.
I shouldn’t.
They’ve already done so much. Letting them see me like this, all sweaty and shaking and needy in a sad little blanket pile feels like stepping off a cliff.
But I keep hearing Eli’s voice. If you need anything at all…
My thumb moves before I’ve really decided. To my messages. To the new contact in my phone:
Eli.
I type one word.
Me: Help.
My finger hovers over send for half a heartbeat. When I finally hit it, the response is instant. Three moving dots like a lifeline.
Eli: On our way. All of us?
My breath stutters.
This is the part where I’m supposed to keep it tidy and manageable and safe. Where I don’t open the door all the way and invite the tidal wave in.
But I’m so tired. So tired of being alone.
I type back, fingers clumsy.
Me: All.
The dots appear again, then vanish.
For a second there’s only the roar of my own pulse in my ears and the hum of the fridge down the hall.
Then I hear it.
The front door opening.
Boots on hardwood. The low murmur of male voices.
They came.
“Mia?” Eli’s voice carries up the stairs. “We’re here. Where are you?”
“Bedroom,” I manage. It comes out more like a croak.
Footsteps on the stairs, then the door eases open. All four of them fill the doorway like something conjured by fever.
Eli in front, eyes sweeping the room, taking in the pathetic tangle of blankets on my bed and me curled in the center of it, flushed and shaking.
Knox just behind him, jaw clenched. Rhys, broad shoulders braced, hands flexing at his sides like he’s physically restraining himself.
Declan in the back, hair damp, t-shirt wrinkled, looking like he sprinted here and forgot what to do with his hands.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Eli says softly.
The gentleness in it breaks me.
I let out a ragged sob.
And then they move.
Eli crosses to the bed first, sitting carefully on the edge, not jostling the blankets. “Hey,” he murmurs. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re here. You’re not doing this alone.”
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, words tumbling out. “I know this is weird, I know I shouldn’t have texted, I just—”
“Stop,” Rhys cuts in, voice rough. He steps to the foot of the bed, fingers curling into the duvet like he needs something to hold. He looks at me like I’m something soft and precious. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“It’s too thin,” Declan says from the doorway.
I flinch, but when I look at him, he’s not looking at me with judgment. He’s looking at the blankets with something close to pain.
“Dek,” Eli says warningly.
“Look at her, Eli,” Declan argues, gesturing at my sad pile of blankets. “She’s shivering. This isn’t holding enough heat. It’s not enough for her.”
“He’s right,” Knox says, stepping closer, his expression grim as he takes in my shaking frame. “She’s freezing.”
I drag my forearm over my eyes, shame burning hot in my chest. “It’s fine,” I mutter. “I was going to make it…better.”
Knox moves to the other side of the bed and crouches so we’re eye level.
“Mia, listen,” he says gently. “We can stay here if you want. We can bring stuff from our place. More blankets and pillows. We can help you build this up properly.”
He hesitates, nostrils flaring again as my scent thickens.
“Or…” His voice drops. “You can come back to ours. We have a nest. A real one. It already smells like us, and we can make it smell like you too.”
Heat claws through me at the thought.
Eli’s hand hovers over my shoulder. “Can I touch you?” he asks quietly.
I nod so fast I might get whiplash.
His palm settles between my shoulder blades, big and warm and steady. The relief is almost obscene. My omega presses up to meet it like a cat into a hand.
“She’s burning up,” Rhys mutters. His fingers close gently around my ankle through the blankets, thumb stroking along the bone like he can read my pulse there.
“We need to get her somewhere better,” Knox says. “This isn’t sustainable.”
I don’t want to impose, but Eli’s hand is on my back, Rhys’s thumb is stroking my skin, and Knox is looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world right now.
“I don’t want to be a burden,” I whisper. “You have work, and your company, and…I’m just your neighbor, and this is—”
“Mia.” Eli’s voice goes very calm. “We’re grown men.
We can decide how we spend our time.” His thumb makes another slow pass between my shoulder blades.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he says.
“You decide what level of help you want. You want us outside the door running food and water? We do that. You want one of us inside and the rest out? We do that too. You come to our nest? We’ll keep our hands to ourselves unless you say otherwise.
You say stop, and we stop. You say out, and we leave. ”
Heat claws through me again, impatient and greedy. My brain feels slippery.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Okay yes?” Declan asks, hope flaring through his scent.
I swallow.
“Okay,” I say again. “Take me to yours.”
For a second, no one moves.
Then relief crashes off them in a wave so strong I can almost feel it against my skin.
“Good girl,” Eli says softly.
The praise makes my whole body shiver.
Rhys moves first.
One second I’m on my bed, trying to remember how to breathe. The next, the world tilts as he scoops me up, blankets and all.
He’s careful. One arm under my knees, the other solid behind my back, sending little sparks down my spine where his hand presses.
My duffel. I need to pack a bag and…
But then my face hits his chest. Espresso and soap and the darker, wilder edge that’s all alpha Rhys wrap around me. My omega all but purrs, pressing down into him, into the safety of his arms.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs into my hair. “We’re going to take care of you.”
Declan is already in motion, grabbing my phone, its charger dangling. We leave everything else behind. Knox jogs ahead, checking the stairs, nudging my shoes out of the way with his foot. Eli falls in behind us, one hand steadying the blanket cocoon around my shoulders.
I clutch the front of Rhys’s shirt, knuckles white in cotton, and let myself be carried. Down the stairs. Through my too-quiet living room. Out my front door. Across the small stretch of grass between my house and theirs.
It’s the same lawn I crossed to yell at them about their late night drilling; the same lawn I crossed to tell them they didn’t need to clean my bins. It has never felt like more of a line.
One life on one side. The one I planned, tidy and contained and safe. The other on the opposite side. Loud and messy and full of burning sugar and server noise and men who carry me like I’m the most important thing they’ve ever held.
Rhys’s chest rumbles under my cheek like a low purr.
Mine, my omega hums. Ours.
I bury my face deeper in his throat, because if I look, if I see us crossing that invisible border, I might panic and run.
The door at 126 swings open before we reach it. Knox holds it wide, backpedaling.
“Clear path,” he announces. “Hallway is good. No tripping hazards. I even moved the stack of server manuals, you’re welcome.”
“This is not the time for commentary,” Eli says, but there’s a smile hiding in it.
Into their house. Into that different air.
Servers hum. Someone’s mug sits abandoned on the coffee table. The faint lemon of dish soap twines with the thicker, wilder mix of their scents, all four of them on high alert.
I want to drown in it.
“This way,” Declan says, leading up the stairs. Toward the nest.
My heart pounds loud in my ears.
The doorway is low and wide. Beyond it: a spill of blankets and pillows in soft blues and grays and tans, the same warm lamp casting everything in honeyed light.
It looks different in daylight.
Less like a fantasy. More like a place someone actually lives. Like home.
Rhys hesitates on the threshold.
He looks down at me.
His eyes are dark, jaw tight. “Last chance to change your mind,” he says quietly.
My hands fist in his shirt. “If I go back now,” I whisper, throat raw, “I’m going to call you in an hour anyway. Or crawl across the lawn on my hands and knees. And that’s worse.”
Knox makes a strangled sound behind us.
“Okay,” Rhys says. His jaw ticks once. “Okay.”
He steps inside.
The nest dips as he kneels, setting me down as gently as if I’m made of glass. Eli’s hand is there, guiding me, helping me roll from Rhys’s arms into the soft heart of blankets and pillows.
It’s warm. Softer than anything I own. It smells like them.
All of them at once. Molasses and espresso and dark chocolate and oats, layered and interwoven, soaked into the fabric.
My own scent curls through it immediately, sweet and sharp, rising as my heat spikes, greedy and bright.
I sink.
Everything in me that’s been buzzing and tight since my app said 14 days exhales, long and shaking.
“Oh,” I say, a little broken sound. “Oh.”
“There she goes,” Declan murmurs somewhere near my feet. There’s awe in it. Devotion. A smug little edge, too, but I can live with that.