"Did a nesting supply store explode in here?"
"Shut up and give me that. Rex still won't let me tell him I'm an omega. No omega-adjacent words right now or he'll catch on and freak out." I grab the weighted blanket from the couch, unfold it, and drape it across the mattress.
"What do you mean, he won't let you tell him?" Phoenix asks, frowning.
"I mean every time I try, he stops me," I grumble, layering two throws on top of a couple of pillows and squishing them into submission to create a pocket of softness that makes my starving inner omega purr happily.
Shit, I feel kind of bad for it.
Her?
"He probably already knows and he's in denial," Phoenix murmurs, helping me push one of the mattresses over.
"Whatever he's in denial about, the answer isyes," says Raf, shoving his own mattress into the room with a series of thuds and creative profanity. He angles it alongside Phoenix's, creating one massive padded platform that fills most of the living room floor.
"Shhhh," Phoenix whispers to him, as if he isn't the one with the megaphone mouth.
"One more. We'll leave Rex's since he'll skin us alive if we touch it," Raf pants, swiping the sweat off his brow.
Phoenix smiles mildly. "Maybe if we get skinned alive, we won't need to watch a horror movie? Considering our lives will be horrifying enough?"
"That was dark," I say through another mouthful of candy.
Raf gives a low chuckle and pokes Phoenix's soft side. Phoenix yelps and smacks his hand away. "You trying to get out of the movie? What, are youscared,Phoenix?"
"No," Phoenix hisses. "I'm not fuckingscared."
He is scared. I can tell.
He vanishes again.
I keep building. More pillows along the perimeter. The cedar quilt folded into a bolster along one edge. Phoenix's softest throw—the sherpa one that feels like petting a cloud—laid out in the center where someone could burrow into it.
That someone is gonna beme.
I'm standing in the middle of it, barefoot in Rex's oversized hoodie, surveying my work with the critical eye of an architect who just completed a cathedral, when the final mattress hits the bookcase.
It happens fast.
The whole unit lurches forward, books sliding, the top shelf tilting toward me like a falling tree.
"SHIT!" Raf yells.
Someone grabs me by the waist and yanks me sideways.
The bookcase crashes onto the mattress pile with a spectacularWHAM, books exploding across the blankets like shrapnel, a hardcover copy ofThe Count of Monte Cristopinwheeling past my face close enough to ruffle my hair.
I'm pressed against a chest.
A warm, solid chest.
Rex's arm is banded around my waist, his hand gripping my hip. He pulled me clear in one motion, spinning us both out of the impact zone, his body between me and the falling furniture.
He's in black sleep pants and a black long-sleeve shirt, his simple mask in place and his dark hair still wet from the shower and plastered to his face.
"Holy fuck," I say, staring at the wreckage of the bookcase. "Myhero."
Rex's visible eye narrows with a growl and he releases me. He doesn't push me away exactly. Just drops his arm and steps back, looking mildly annoyed about the entire concept of having just saved me.