Chapter 10 A Table Set For Four #2
“I’m done, if any of you need the washroom,” I announce, stepping into the main space with the controlled posture of a woman who is choosing to enter a room rather than being drawn into it.
My voice comes out steadier than last night’s croak—closer to normal, if a bit rougher around the edges, the vocal cords still recovering from the screaming they endured into a towel.
Three heads turn.
Three different scents hit me simultaneously—frozen pine and candied blood orange and burnt vanilla colliding in the confined airspace of four hundred square feet with a combined potency that makes my sinuses sing and my defenses scramble for purchase.
And I stop.
Because the apartment that I’d left an empty, depressing, utilitarian box when I walked into the bathroom is no longer empty.
Alaric has shed the beige coat, which hangs on the hook beside my patrol jacket like it belongs there.
He’s in a black crewneck, sleeves pushed to the forearms, the dark fabric making the silver at his temples more visible and the tattoo at his collarbone a contrast of ink against shadow.
He looks exhausted in a way that his composure nearly conceals—the dark circles beneath his eyes matching my own, the set of his jaw carrying the particular tension of a man who has been managing a crisis since the small hours and hasn’t sat down yet.
Roman has put on a T-shirt—presumably retrieved from whatever go-bag the oversight crew keeps in their cruiser—but the fabric is doing an insufficient job of concealing the architecture beneath it.
He’s leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, platinum hair still disheveled from sleep, ice-blue eyes tracking my emergence from the bathroom with the vigilant focus of a man who has been listening to a shower run for fifteen minutes and counting every second.
And Oakley is at the stove.
Actually at the stove, spatula in hand, a dish towel thrown over one shoulder with the casual competence of someone who navigates kitchens the way other people navigate tactical scenarios.
His auburn hair catches the morning light from the window, copper threads glinting as he manages two pans simultaneously—eggs in one, bacon in the other—while a toaster on the counter produces golden bread at intervals he seems to be tracking without looking.
The small folding table that I’d been using as a document workspace has been cleared of case files and corkboard overflow, its surface wiped clean and set with four plates, four mugs, and utensils that I’m certain I don’t own.
They brought plates.
They brought groceries and cooked breakfast and set a table in my apartment, and someone went and bought plates because mine consists of one chipped department-issue ceramic mug that doubles as a cereal bowl on the nights I don’t bother pretending I’m eating a real meal.
“Sorry,” I say, and the word feels foreign in my mouth—not the professional apology I issue when protocol demands it, but the genuine, slightly embarrassed variety that surfaces when you realize your living space has been witnessed by people whose opinions you’re starting to care about. “The place is kinda small.”
Kinda small is generous. The apartment was designed for one person operating at minimum capacity, and the addition of three Alpha males—one six-four, one six-three, one a compact but intensely present five-ten—has transformed the square footage from “tight” to “physically improbable.” Alaric alone takes up more atmospheric space than the floor plan accounts for.
Roman’s shoulders practically brush the walls when he shifts position.
And Oakley, despite being the smallest, fills whatever room remains with a scent and energy that makes four hundred square feet feel like a phone booth.
Three Alphas in my apartment.
Three Alphas who stayed the night.
Three Alphas who are currently cooking me breakfast like this is a normal Tuesday morning and not the most surreal twenty-four hours of my already deeply surreal existence.
I look at the stove. The counter lined with groceries—a carton of eggs, a package of bacon, bread, butter, a container of fresh berries that I’m certain the convenience store doesn’t carry, which means someone drove to the actual grocery store in the next town over.
“How did you get all this?” I ask, my eyes sweeping the counter’s unfamiliar abundance. “I don’t really…have anything.”
Roman sighs.
“Yeah, we fucking noticed.” The statement is delivered with his characteristic blend of irritation and concern—the verbal equivalent of someone simultaneously scolding and worrying, which I’m beginning to understand is Roman’s native emotional dialect.
“Like, do you not stay home at all? Your fridge looked like a crime scene of neglect. I’ve investigated abandoned buildings with more provisions. ”
I open my mouth to counter with something sharp—something about his unsolicited opinions and my refrigerator’s contents being precisely none of his concern—but Oakley speaks first.
“Do you just cook at the station because it’s easier?” His voice is gentle. Not gentle in the patronizing way that makes my teeth clench, but in the genuine way—the way of someone who is asking because they want to understand, not because they want to fix. “Since you’re pulling such long hours?”
I frown.
The question is closer to the truth than I want to admit, but still misses the mark.
Cooking at the station implies a routine, a system, a relationship with food that involves preparation and intention.
What I have is the dietary equivalent of triage—grabbing whatever caloric source is nearest to my current location and consuming it with the same urgency and enthusiasm I’d apply to refueling a patrol car.
I shake my head slowly.
“I just buy out. Or not eat at all, I guess.”
The honesty surprises me. Not the content—I’m aware of my own habits—but the willingness to voice them to three people who have no operational need for the information.
Something about the morning light, the smell of breakfast, the residual softness of waking up safe after a night that should have been anything but—it’s loosening bolts I normally keep torqued to specification.
“I’m home too late to cook and I leave too early,” I continue, my gaze drifting to the window where Sweetwater Falls is performing its picturesque morning routine beyond the glass.
“I pick up a protein shake from the convenience store every day for lunch. Breakfast from the shop across the station if I can get there before briefing. Maybe a donut if I pass the bakery.”
A pause.
Something warm flickers behind my sternum.
“The Omega who runs it gives me some for free,” I add, and I’m not sure why this detail surfaces—why, of all the information I could share, my brain selects this particular kindness from a woman whose name I haven’t even learned yet.
“Which I can keep to bring home for later. But essentially…there’s no time.
For any of it. The cooking. The grocery shopping. The sitting-down-at-a-table part.”
I shrug.
The gesture is aimed at all of it—the empty fridge, the missing meals, the lifestyle of a woman who has optimized every waking hour for professional output and left exactly zero margin for the basic human act of feeding herself.
Alaric’s frown is the first I notice.
It’s not the dramatic, furrowed-brow variety.
It’s subtle—a tightening at the corners of his mouth, a slight narrowing of dark eyes that have seen too many case files documenting the consequences of systemic neglect.
When he speaks, his voice is quiet in the way that means he’s choosing his words with the same precision he applies to investigation reports.
“No time to actually take care of yourself?”
The question isn’t accusatory. It’s diagnostic. The voice of a man who has spent his career identifying patterns and has just identified one he doesn’t like.
I shrug again.
“Yeah. Basically, I guess.”
The three of them frown.
Simultaneously. In unison. Three separate men with three separate faces producing the exact same expression of concerned disapproval at the exact same moment, like a synchronized team of emotional responders who have been trained to deploy frowns in formation.
It would be funny if it weren’t aimed at me.
It would be funny if the genuine concern on three Alpha faces—faces that belong to men who have known me for less than a week—didn’t make something fragile and long-neglected ache behind my ribs.
I clear my throat.
“Why don’t we eat so the food doesn’t get cold,” I say, because redirecting a conversation away from my personal failures and toward practical logistics is a skill I’ve been honing since I learned that vulnerability invites exploitation and self-disclosure invites judgment. “Um…is there anything I can help with?”
The offer feels clumsy in my mouth. I’m a woman who commands departments and orchestrates investigations and has navigated institutional politics with the strategic acuity of a chess grandmaster, and here I am, standing in my own kitchen, asking three men if there’s something I can contribute to a breakfast I didn’t know was being prepared in a home I’ve been treating like a storage locker.
“Actually, let me go get my wallet,” I add, already turning toward the nightstand where I keep it. “So I can pay you guys.”
“Pay?”
Three voices.
In unison.
Again.
The word ricochets through the apartment like a rubber bullet, bouncing off each Alpha with identical incredulity. I stop mid-turn, caught between the nightstand and the kitchen by the wall of synchronized disbelief that three men have just erected in my path.
Roman speaks first, because Roman always speaks first when the emotion is outrage-adjacent.
“Why the fuck would you pay us?”
I blink.