Chapter 19 Assault And Kidnapping
Assault And Kidnapping
~MILA~
I have never been this warm in my entire life.
Not the uncomfortable, tangled-in-too-many-blankets kind of warm.
The specific, bone-deep warmth of a body that has finally been given adequate conditions to rest and has fully committed to the opportunity.
Something is rising and falling slowly beneath my left ear—a chest, I register distantly—and underneath it, a heartbeat.
Steady. Unhurried. So consistent that I've been unconsciously timing my own breathing to it.
The scents.
That's what's keeping me half-under even as my brain starts pulling toward awareness.
The room smells like a combination that has no business being this effective—cedarwood and leather and Irish whiskey layered with the bourbon-and-orange warmth from somewhere to my left, and underneath both, that black pepper and dark chocolate base that I now recognize as Rowan's.
Three distinct signatures woven together into something that should be overwhelming and instead registers as—settled.
Like the air in a room that has been occupied by people who belong in it.
My apartment is flooded.
That arrives with the particular cruelty of returning consciousness—the thing your brain was managing for you while you slept hitting you the moment you're too awake to redirect it.
Flooded apartment. Dead phone. Dead car fifteen minutes from nowhere.
Collectors who made their position very clear. I force my eyes open.
Darkness, mostly, from blackout curtains doing their job. Thin lines of daylight at the edges—afternoon light from the angle of it, which means I've been asleep for—
I'm lying on someone.
That thought completes itself slowly, with the building quality of information arriving in order: the chest under my ear is real and present and belongs to a person. The arm somewhere loosely across my back is real. The bed I'm in is real. The bed is also—
I sit up.
Very slowly.
On my left: Rowan, on his side, dark hair against the pillow, breathing in the even silence of deep sleep. The black pepper and ink of his scent warm and present from proximity.
Across the bed, on his back with one arm flung to the side in the unself-conscious sprawl of a man completely at home in whatever space he occupies: Finn. Eyes closed. Actually snoring, just slightly, the soft, rhythmic kind that means he is in absolutely no way waking up any time soon.
Which leaves the person I was sleeping on.
I look.
He's on his back in the middle of the bed, and he is—
Okay.
Whatever the blackout curtains are allowing through is doing him an entirely unfair number of favors.
The light catches the definition of a torso that has been built through the kind of sustained, deliberate effort that doesn't come from a gym membership but from years of actual physical work.
Six-pack is technically the right word for what I'm looking at and also deeply insufficient.
The V-lines that disappear into the waistband of his trunks are the kind of architectural detail that should require a permit.
I follow the line of his collarbone upward.
The jaw, even relaxed in sleep, has that sharp, clean edge I've been aware of since a balcony at midnight.
The hair falling slightly across his forehead.
No.
I lean closer.
The cedarwood and leather and Irish whiskey is concentrated here, close and undeniable, the scent I've been cataloguing and replaying for twenty-four hours landing with the finality of something confirmed rather than imagined.
The dark auburn hair with the silver at the temples.
The particular quality of stillness in his face—even asleep, this man looks like someone who makes deliberate decisions about everything, including how he occupies a bed.
My hand moves before my brain has finished processing.
My fingers brush the hair at his temple—barely, the lightest possible contact, the kind that shouldn't register—
His hand catches mine.
Fast. Not rough—controlled, the reflex of someone trained for it, fingers closing around my wrist in one motion. His eyes open halfway: the grey-green, sleep-hazed, confused for exactly two seconds before they find my face and—
I know the moment he places me.
"This is a form of kidnapping," I say.
The smirk arrives before he's fully awake.
One corner of his mouth, unhurried, the same quarter-rotation I remember from a courtyard with roses on the columns.
His eyes drop briefly—taking in the oversized pajamas, the hair that has done whatever it wanted overnight, the expression of a woman who has just realized exactly where she is and is choosing offense as her opening position.
"Climbing into a shared bed," he says, voice low and rough from sleep, "is arguably assault."
"Since when—"
"Since you crossed from your bed to mine at approximately three in the morning."
"I was asleep!"
A little too loud.
From the far side of the bed, one of Finn's eyes opens. He stares at the ceiling for a moment with the expression of a man reassembling the sequence of events that led to this morning. Then he looks over.
"When did our lucky charm get in our bed?"
"Lucky charm," I repeat. "I'm carrying the plague at this point. I'm the opposite of luck."
Finn laughs—the full, unguarded version, delighted with the morning despite everything. From my left, Rowan makes a sound that is not a laugh but contains the same information. He doesn't open his eyes.
"Do you sleepwalk?" he asks, the question delivered into the pillow with the flat inquiry of a man who has accepted the morning and is simply gathering data.
I think about it. "As a kid. Only when I was sleeping really deeply."
"That's an answer," Rowan says, and goes back to sleep.
Finn stretches—the full-body, theatrical stretch of someone reclaiming their physical presence in a space after hours of inactivity—and announces: "I am going back to sleep. Eight hours is not enough for my body, my spirit, or my emotional wellbeing. Good morning and goodbye."
He closes his eyes.
I look at the man whose wrist is still loosely circling mine—he hasn't let go, and I haven't moved, and we are occupying approximately six inches of shared air in a hotel bed while two of his packmates sleep on either side of us with the specific indifference of people who have accepted this situation as the morning's established fact.
"Declan," he says.
And there it is—the name I didn't have at the train station, on a platform at midnight with a coin I'd just lost and a masked Alpha getting smaller through the glass.
The name that goes with the cedarwood-and-whiskey scent and the grey-green eyes and the hand that caught a fist before it reached my face in the ballroom, except I didn't know that last part until now.
All three of them.
He releases my wrist. Then he elbows Finn.
Not lightly.
Finn goes off the edge of the bed with a sound that is half-curse and half-genuine grievance. A beat of silence from the floor, during which I press my lips together very hard, and then: "What the actual—Declan. I said I was sleeping. I specifically said—"
"You were awake."
"I was barely awake!"
"Same thing."
Finn's face appears at the side of the mattress—chin resting on the edge, blue eyes projecting a sulk that is approximately seventy percent performance and thirty percent genuine. He looks at me. Then at Declan. Then back at me with the expression of a man doing math.
"I feel like I don't have a chance here," he says.
"You literally got my number last night," I point out.
"On a dead phone."
I open my mouth. Close it. He has a point and I hate that he has a point.
"Maybe if you came to the gym occasionally—" Declan starts.
"Don't." Finn points at him from the floor. "Don't finish that sentence. It's too early for your specific brand of motivational condescension and I won't survive it."
"I was going to say you'd be in better shape to handle mornings."
"That's exactly what I said you'd say."
From Rowan's side of the bed, without opening his eyes or adjusting position in any way: "If either of you says another word before I've had coffee, I will make both of your financial quarters considerably less comfortable."
Silence.
Finn looks at me.
"Rowan is—" He stage-whispers, as if Rowan is not directly on the other side of me, "—a specific kind of person before caffeine. Stay away from him until he's had coffee or unless you have a financial deal to discuss. Those are the two things that work."
"I heard that," Rowan says.
"You were meant to."
I look at Declan. He's sitting up now, properly awake, the sleep-roughness in his expression resolving into the specific deliberate alertness I remember from a balcony at midnight.
He runs one hand through the auburn-silver hair—which does not help the situation—and reaches for his phone on the nightstand.
"What time is it?"
"Just past three."
Three in the afternoon.
Ten hours.
I slept ten hours. The last time I slept ten consecutive hours was—I genuinely cannot identify a reference point. The last time I slept eight was probably November. My body apparently took the opportunity to make up several months of deficit simultaneously and without consulting me.
"I might have work tonight," I say, the thought arriving with the cold urgency of someone who just remembered they have a life. "Danny will want to know where I am. And my phone—"
"Use mine."
He holds it out. No hesitation, no production—just the phone, extended across the small space between us, the same matter-of-fact delivery that appears to be his baseline for everything. I take it.
Danny's number is in my head the way important numbers get in there—through repetition rather than effort, the digits as automatic as my own. I dial. It rings twice.
"Who's this?"
"Danny, it's Mila."
A beat of silence. "You're alive."
"Mostly."