Page 115 of Holly Jolly Heat
I stood in the doorway of our new apartment, keys still clutched in my hand, surrounded by bags and boxes and the lingering scent of my mother's tamales from the leftovers she'd insisted we take.
Our apartment. Our home.
The words felt surreal even in my own mind.
"You're overthinking again," Lucas said from behind me, his arms sliding around my waist. "I can feel it through the bond."
"I'm not overthinking. I'm processing."
"You've been processing for the entire drive from Cedar Falls," Ro observed, carrying in another box. "That's overthinking."
Dex appeared with the last of the bags, closing the door behind him with a definitive click. The sound echoed in the half-furnished space, and suddenly the reality hit me.
We were alone. Completely alone. No parents down the hall, no siblings bursting in, no cameras recording, no audience watching. Just us. Just pack.
"It's so quiet," I said, the words coming out smaller than intended.
"Is that bad?" Dex asked, setting the bags down.
"No, it's just..." I turned in Lucas's arms to look at all three of them. "We haven't actually been alone since… well, ever. There's always been family or viewers or someone around."
"And now it's just us," Ro said, moving closer. "Is that scary?"
"Terrifying," I admitted. Then, quieter, "I wanted you. During the holidays. During the ceremony. Every night in my childhood bed I wanted you, but I couldn't... not with my mother's superhuman hearing and her door-open policy and the whole house knowing exactly what we'd be doing."
Lucas's arms tightened around me. "We know. We felt it through the bond."
"Every night," Dex added, his voice rough. "Every night you wanted us and held back."
"I didn't want our first time as mates to be in my teenage bedroom with boy band posters watching," I said, attempting humor but my voice came out breathless. "I wanted it to be ours. Private. Just for us."
"Policy public, intimacy private," Ro quoted my own words back to me, and there was heat in his eyes that made my stomach flip.
"Exactly." I took a breath, gathering courage. "I want tonight to be for us. No cameras, no content, no performing for anyone. Can we... can we have that?"
"Michelle," Lucas said softly, turning me to face him fully. "Of course we can have that. We can have anything you want. Everything you want."
"I want to finish our nest," I said. "Properly. Make it ours. And then..." I met each of their eyes in turn. "Then I want my mates. All of you. The way we couldn't at my mother's house."
The tension in the room shifted, thickened, became something electric.
"Bedroom," Dex said simply, already moving to grab bags. "Nest first. Then we claim our omega properly."
The word 'claim' sent heat through me, and from their synchronized intake of breath, they all felt it through the bond.
We moved together with the coordination that had developed over the past weeks, carrying bags and boxes to the main bedroom. It was the largest room in the apartment, with windows overlooking Elliott Bay and enough space for what we needed, a proper nest that could hold all of us comfortably.
"We bought supplies," Ro said, opening one of the boxes to reveal soft blankets, pillows, fairy lights. "While you were on client calls yesterday. We wanted to be ready."
"You planned this?"
"We hoped," Lucas corrected, pulling out a string of warm white lights. "We hoped you'd want this as much as we did."
We worked together building the nest, and it felt different from the quick comfort nests we'd made at Mom's house. This was deliberate, permanent, ours. Ro arranged the fairy lights around the headboard and windows, creating soft, warm lighting. Dex layered blankets with tactical precision, ensuring both comfort and structural integrity. Lucas added pillows and the soft throws that smelled like cedar and vanilla from his apartment.
And I wove through it all, arranging and rearranging until the scents were perfectly mixed, until it smelled like pack, like home, like us.
"It's perfect," I said finally, standing back to look at what we'd created.
