Chapter 50: Five Obsessive Women Fighting Over Where I Sleep And The System Called It A "Dispute"

The resignation letter was still in his jacket pocket when he got back to the dorm at three in the morning.

Soren locked the door, pulled off his boots, then sat on the edge of his bed. His arms ached through the bandages.

Joan’s amber liquor was still burning a warm line down the center of his chest, while seven Fracture sites and Bureau-level access codes rattled around in his skull.

Someone had been building a continent-wide network for three hundred years.

He’d deal with that in the morning.

Right now, he needed four hours of sleep and a bed that wasn’t already spoken for.

He got neither.

Selah was already there when he got back.

She was sitting on the left side of his bed with a thermos of something that smelled like peppermint, reading a training manual with her legs crossed under the blanket.

She didn’t look up when he walked in.

"Your arms need sustained cold exposure overnight," she said. "The frostbite scarring responds better to prolonged low-grade treatment than short bursts."

"You’re on my bed."

"The treatment takes six to eight hours." 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Soren looked at the thermos then at Selah. She turned a page without making eye contact.

The first knock came at 3:21 AM.

Maren was leaning against the doorframe with her tail swishing behind her, still in her training clothes. Her eyes found Selah on the left side of the bed and her ears went flat.

"What are you doing here?"

"Medical supervision," Selah said without looking up.

"At three in the morning?"

"Burns don’t operate on a schedule."

Maren walked in, looked at the right side of the bed, looked at Soren, then dropped herself onto the right side with enough force to bounce the mattress. Her tail curled around his waist before he could say anything.

"My fire stabilizes tissue repair," Maren said. "Vesna’s research confirmed it."

"Vesna’s research was about dimensional tears."

"Same principle."

Selah’s frost crept across the sheets on the left.

Maren’s warmth radiated from the right.

The temperature difference hit Soren in the middle and he closed his eyes because arguing with two women who had memorized medical justifications for sleeping next to him was a war he couldn’t win.

"Both of you. Move over."

"No," they said at the same time, then looked at each other.

The temperature dropped two degrees on the left. Rose two degrees on the right.

Soren laid down in the narrow strip of mattress between them, stared at the ceiling, and accepted his fate.

Seventeen minutes of almost-silence.

Maren’s tail tightened every time Soren shifted.

Selah’s frost kept drifting toward his left arm, which did actually feel better, though he wasn’t going to admit it.

Then the shadow under the bed moved.

Soren felt it before he saw it.

The darkness beneath the mattress thickened, pooled, and Yara’s presence seeped upward through the bedframe. Not manifesting fully. Just... there.

A weight in the shadows that pressed against the underside of the mattress, pushing it up slightly.

"Yara."

"I’m not here." Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "I’m maintaining perimeter security."

"From under my bed?"

"The shadow substrate beneath sleeping platforms provides optimal surveillance coverage."

Maren leaned over the edge and looked down. "There is literally a goddess under the bed."

"I was here first," Yara said.

"You were not."

"I’ve been in the shadow layer of this room since he moved in."

Maren’s tail puffed up. Selah sat up on her elbow.

Soren pressed both hands over his face because the three strongest bonds in his system were fighting over sleeping positions at three thirty in the morning.

"Nobody was first," he said. "This is my bed."

"Correct," Yara said from below. "And I am beneath it."

"She’s been here since you moved in?" Selah asked.

"Perimeter security," Yara repeated.

Selah laid back down. Her frost spread another inch. "Fine, but I have the left."

"I have the right," Maren said.

"I have the foundation," Yara said.

Soren closed his eyes again. His arms hurt.

His head was full of Bureau conspiracies and seven Fracture sites. Three women had staked territorial claims on different zones of his bed. This was his life now.

He was almost asleep when the door opened.

Dani Sloan walked in carrying a stack of archive files, her moth perched on her shoulder.

She froze when she saw Maren and Selah on either side of Soren.

"I was just... I have reports that need reviewing. From the Fracture data Joan compiled. I thought since you’d want to see them in the morning I could just..." She trailed off, looked at the chair in the corner, and sat down in it. "I’ll wait here."

"Dani, it’s three in the morning."

"The data doesn’t sleep." She opened a file folder on her lap and started reading.

Five minutes later her head was tilted against the chair back, the file open on her chest, the moth’s wings folded shut.

That made four of them in his room.

The fifth arrived by mail.

The folded note had been slipped under the door at some point during the night. Soren didn’t notice it until Maren’s tail pulled it across the floor and deposited it on his chest at 4 AM.

He unfolded it one-handed in the dark.

Kane — Bureau protocol requires protected assets to sleep in designated secure wings during active threat periods. I have prepared quarters in the Bureau section. Secure. Private. Climate-controlled. Report by 0600.

— Investigator Sawyer

P.S. — This is a security recommendation, not an invitation. Stop smirking.

Soren folded the note and put it under his pillow. He was too tired to smirk but he appreciated the instruction.

Maren’s tail tightened around his waist.

Selah’s cold had settled into a steady, gentle chill along his left side, actually helping the frostbite scarring.

Yara’s shadow pressed up from below, a constant low hum of presence.

Dani snored softly in the chair.

Joan wanted him in the Bureau wing.

He wasn’t going to the Bureau wing.

[DING! — Territorial dispute detected. Four bonded entities occupying the same sleeping space. One non-bonded entity has submitted a formal relocation request.]

[DING! — Recommendation: establish rotation schedule to manage proximity-based stress on soul integrity.]

[DING! — Note: this recommendation will be ignored.]

The system had learned to predict him, which was either impressive or depressing.

He shifted onto his back.

Maren grumbled something about warmth distribution and pressed closer.

Selah’s frost adjusted automatically. Yara’s shadow pulsed once from below.

This was fine. Everything was fine.

He was the center point of a four-way territorial dispute in a bed meant for one person, his arms were bandaged and the Bureau was compromised from the inside.

But everyone was here and everyone was alive.

Tonight, he’d sleep with a fox tail around his waist, frost on his back, a goddess beneath him, and an archivist in the chair.

He was right at the edge.

Done for the day.

[DING! — ALERT.]

[DING! — Second Fracture Seed detected.]

[DING! — Location: 340km northeast. City: Verath. Status: ACTIVE.]

Soren opened his eyes in the dark.

There’s another one.