The normalcy of it – the humour threaded through intensity – steadies something inside me.
I hesitate at the doorway.
“My nest,” I say reluctantly. Suddenly I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave it. It may not be a proper nest but it’smine. I built it and filled it with pieces of them and it feels wrong to abandon it now.
All four of them pause.
“You’ll have plenty more,” Kai says gently. “We have so much we can give you.”
“I know,” I reply. “But I wantthoseitems.”
There’s something important about that. Those shirts were sent when I was alone. When they didn’t know if I would forgive them. When they offered scent without pressure.
That’s important.
Koa doesn’t argue. He turns immediately and heads down the hallway and up the stairs, returning moments later with the layered clothes folded carefully in his arms.
He doesn’t disturb the order.
He doesn’t comment.
He just brings them to me.
Finn steps closer to Sol. “Lean on me.”
“I don’t need?—”
“You do,” Finn says quietly. He doesn’t make a fuss, just says it in a way that allows Sol to keep his pride.
And this time Sol doesn’t argue.
We move together across the garden, the night air cool against my overheated skin. The fence that once felt like distance now feels symbolic as we cross it as a unit.
Inside their house, the scent is overwhelming in thebestway. Salt and smoke and warmth soaked into walls and wood and fabric. It wraps around me immediately, and the low hum beneath my skin deepens.
Kai leads us down the hallway and opens a door at the end.
The omega suite.
It’s unfinished but intentional – larger windows looking out over the ocean, heavier curtains, thicker insulation in the walls. The space is open and empty except for a mattress pushed against one side and stacked blankets in the corner.
“It’s not set up,” Kai says, suddenly almost sheepish.
“It’s perfect,” I reply. I’ve never had a nest - never needed one - never even dreamed of one. This empty room and pile of blankets is…everything.
Tears well in my eyes. But the first real wave hits then – not overwhelming, not uncontrollable – just a sharper prickling beneath my skin. My pulse jumps. My body feels too tight, too aware.
And then something else rises.
Instinct.
I step into the centre of the room and look around.
“I need to nest,” I say quietly.
The admission feels enormous.
It’s something I would never have been allowed to do if my father had known I was an omega. Even remotely comforting,softbehaviours were never encouraged. Never permitted. If I had shown signs of being an omega, my father would have beat it out of me.