"It looks like a scab, Maceo," Samuel says. He pokes the yolk with a plastic fork he's been carrying around like a scepter. The yolk doesn't break. It jiggles, resilient and defiant. "Two out of ten. The two's for the juice. Because you didn't burn the juice."
"Fair," I rumble. It's a generous score.
I reach for the juice pitcher, but James is already there, sliding a small, steady hand along the counter to inspect the toaster. At five, James has the soul of a senior structural engineer and the quiet, unnerving observation of someone who sees the world in blueprints and thermal dynamics.
"The thermal regulator's inconsistent, Maceo," James says, his voice small but vibrating with certainty. He touches the side of the chrome appliance, squinting at the settings. "The heating coils are firing at an uneven rate. If you adjust the dial three millimeters to the left, it might stop hurting the bread. Also, the eggs are crying."
I look down. The eggs are, indeed, weeping a strange, translucent fluid onto the white porcelain. I've negotiated settlements that made grown Alphas weep. I've stood between my family and the darkest corners of the world. I've read contracts designed to bury men alive and found the single loose thread that unraveled them. But I'm currently being defeated by a dozen eggs and a toaster with poor impulse control. The frustration's a dull heat in my chest, not because I care about the food, but because I wanted this morning to be perfect. I wanted to give them a moment of normalcy where the gears of the house turned without anyone having to push them.
"Engineering noted," I say, leaning down to bump my forehead gently against James's soft curls. He smells like lavender detergent and young pup. "Where's your sister?"
"Nesting," Samuel announces, jumping off the chair with a thud that vibrates through my boots. He sticks his chest out. "She's the boss today. She said the kitchen smells like a campfire and we're moving the camp to the safe zone."
I frown. I hadn't heard them leave. The silence from the hallway isn't the normal morning quiet of a sleeping house. It's the careful, high-stakes silence of a coordinated heist. I abandon the pan, leaving the scorched sourdough to its grim fate, and follow the trail of discarded socks and one stray plastic triceratops toward the linen closet at the far end of the wing.
I round the corner and stop. The hallway's been transformed. This isn't just a pile of blankets; it's a fortification. A massive sprawl of plush duvets, silk pillows from the master suite, and heavy weighted blankets has been dragged into a sunlit corner near the antique cedar chest. It's a hall nest, deep and soft, smelling of cedar, vanilla, and the sweet, milky scent of the children. It's a physical manifestation of Luca's instinct to pull everyone into the center when the world outside gets too loud.
In the center of the pile, Rosalie's sitting like a tiny, terrifying queen, a plastic gold crown perched precariously on her dark hair. Luca's slumped beside her, looking soft and sleep-muddled in an oversized gray sweater that swallows his hands. His bright blue eyes widen as I round the corner, and for a second, the Alpha in me wants to growl at the sheer cuteness of it, but the Gamma in me's checking for sugar content.
They're all eating cookies.
Not breakfast cookies. Not healthy granola bars. Actual double-chocolate-chunk cookies from the bakery box Oliver brought over yesterday as a thank-you for the last pack dinner.
Luca freezes, a half-eaten cookie midway to his mouth. For exactly half a second, guilt flashes across his face, the old instinct of an Omega caught breaking the pack's unspoken rules, a ghost of a life before us where he had to hide his needs. Then he sees my face, looks at the prominent chocolate smudge on Rosalie's cheek, and realizes I'm not angry. His expression shifts into a defiant, sugary grin that makes his entire face light up.
"Maceo," he says, his voice a melodic lilt, smooth as honey. "You're up early. Is the kitchen still... active?"
"It's seven-sixteen, Luca. You're feeding our children chocolate for breakfast. I had a chart. There was a plan for proteins and complex carbohydrates."
"It's a grain-based circle," James says, appearing at my elbow with the gravity of a professor emeritus. He doesn't wait for an invitation; he settles into the nest with practiced ease, accepting a cookie from Rosalie. "Technically, flour's a plant. Sugar comes from a cane. It's practically a salad, Maceo. The math supports it."
Samuel doesn't even try for logic. He just hides his cookie behind his back, which involves holding it directly in my line of sight while he looks me dead in the eye with pure, unearned innocence. "I don't have anything. I'm just sitting here being good and supporting my sister's leadership."
I sigh, a long, slow exhale that ruffles the hair on Samuel's head. I pull out my phone and open the Sugar Log. It's a spreadsheet I started six months ago, mostly because Grayson's too soft to say no to their big eyes and Luther's too distracted by legal briefs to notice when they've had three helpings of dessert in a single afternoon. I treat it with the same seriousness I treat a tax audit.
"Seven-sixteen AM," I say, typing with one thumb. "Unauthorized bakery raid. High-level sugar event. Ringleaderidentified as a toddler in a plastic crown. The Omega's an accessory after the fact."
"Hey," Rosalie chirps, pointing a chocolate-stained finger at me. "I'm the boss. Bosses get cookies for the whole meeting. You can have one if you sit down and stop being a statue."
Luca reaches out, his fingers catching the hem of my heavy denim trousers. He tugs, a gentle, rhythmic pull that asks me to join the pile. I'm a man of stone and legal precedent, a man who values the perimeter and the hard lines of reality. But Luca's touch dissolves the edges of my frustration until I'm just a man standing in a hallway watching his family thrive in the chaos I'm trying to organize.
"You're thinking too loud, Mace," Luca murmurs, his voice dropping into that low, vibrating register he uses when he's reading my pulse through my skin. He reaches up, deft and quick, and snatches the coffee mug right out of my hand before I can protest.
"Fucking hell, Luca," I mutter, though there's no bite in the words. "That was the only thing I made this morning that wasn't a potential fire hazard."
He takes a long, deeply satisfied sip, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he leans back into the pillows. "It's a little bitter. You over-extracted the beans by about twenty seconds. But the theft makes it taste significantly better."
I drop down onto the edge of the nest, my knees cracking, a reminder of years spent on hard floors and in cold cars. The house is warm, the air thick with the scent of home and the faint, lingering smell of my failure in the kitchen. It's a domestic mess I never expected to own. For a long time, I was the observer, the man who stood at the periphery of Luther's life and ensured the bills were paid and the threats were neutralized. I was content to be the shadow.
Joining the pack didn't just change my legal status; it changed the texture of my mornings, the rhythm of where I'm expected to be. No one looks surprised when I sit. No one makes room like I'm a guest. Rosalie simply leans against my thigh with chocolate on her mouth, and Luca keeps my coffee because he knows I'll let him.
A floorboard creaks behind us, a slow, heavy step. I don't have to turn to know it's Blake. His scent reaches me first, pear dimmed by exhaustion and threaded with the sharp edge he gets when he's been awake too long and pretending his body doesn't need care. He looks wrecked. His dark curls are tangled, his glasses are sliding down the bridge of his nose, and his skin has that translucent, fragile quality that makes my chest tighten.
The nest shifts around him before anyone says a word. Luca reaches first, hooking his fingers into the hem of Blake's oversized shirt and pulling him down. Rosalie scoots back from the best pillow and pats it with sticky fingers. Samuel lowers his voice for once, and James watches Blake with that quiet, careful focus he gets when he's trying to solve a problem no one's named.
"Daddy can sit here," James says, touching the pillow again. "It's stable."
Blake's mouth softens. "Yeah?"
