"And your shirts." My face is so hot I could light a candle with it. "I need your shirts."
Knox looks at Mason. Looks at Arthur. Looks back at me.
"Shirts," I say again, because my brain has exited the building. "Now, please."
Mason reaches back and pulls his dress shirt over his head without unbuttoning it. So does Knox, the light from the kitchen catching the lines of their shoulders... their chests...
Arthur unbuttons his with maddening, deliberate slowness. One. Two. Three. He lets it slide off and catches it without looking.
Three shirtless alphas. Three scents at maximum intensity. My vision whites out for a half-second.
I gather the shirts against my chest. Then I bury my face in Mason's first, then Knox's, then Arthur's, and I need to leavenowbefore my nesting instincts lose the war to every other instinct currently lighting my nervous system on fire.
"Blankets," I say into the fabric. "Linen closet. Top shelf. And the couch throw. And anything else that's soft. Bring them to the door. Knock first."
***
My bedroom door clicks shut and the drumbeat takes over.
Nest. Build. Safe.
I look at my bed. It's wrong. Everything about it is wrong. The pillows are flat. The duvet is bunched at the foot like it gave up. The sheets are cold and they don't smell like anything and the whole arrangement is an insult to whatever ancient part of my brain just seized the controls.
I strip the bed in thirty seconds. Everything on the floor. Sheets, pillowcases, the sad decorative throw Harper gave me last Christmas. Gone.
A knock at the door.
I crack it six inches. Mason is on the other side holding a stack of blankets so high he's peering around the side. Behind him, Knox has the couch cushions under both arms. Arthur is holding the good wool blanket and the fleece from the reading chair and what appears to be every throw pillow from the living room.
"We didn't know which ones," Mason says.
"All of them," I say, and take the stack from his hands. It's warm where he was holding it. That helps.
Knox passes the cushions through the gap. "There's also a quilt in the hall closet. Floral. Looked soft."
"Bring it."
Arthur holds up the wool blanket. "This is the good one?"
"That's the good one."
He hands it over. His fingers brush mine and the contact sends a jolt up my arm that I am struggling to ignore.
"Is there anything else you—" Mason starts.
"The microfiber throw somewhere in the apartment," I say. "And if anyone has a hoodie that hasn't been washed yet, I want it."
Knox is already turning. "On it."
I shut the door and stand there for a second. My arms are full of blankets that smell faintly like them, and the warm thing blooming in my chest alongside the frantic nesting energy isalmost worse than the heat. The fact tey're out there raiding like it's a supply run makes me want to purr or jump them (or both).
But I don't have time to think. I have a nest to build.
The mattress stays. Everything else changes. I start with the base layer, smoothing the wool blanket across the mattress until there isn't a single wrinkle. I run my palms over it three times. Four. The texture has to be right. It has to beright.
Another knock. I crack the door. Knox holds up a heather-gray hoodie and the floral quilt.
"Hoodie's mine," he says.
