Lachlan scrubbed a hand through his hair and found a grin that was more relief than joy. "You look like hell," he offered. "We were not sure anyone else would ever knock again."

"I try to keep life interesting." Noah lifted both hands a little, palms open, a gesture with no weight. "I brought things. Trade, if you like. Or gifts, if that’s easier."

Zubair’s gaze did not leave Noah’s face. "Open the pack."

"Here?" Noah lifted his brows. "On your rug?"

"Here," Zubair repeated.

Noah crouched. He unbuckled straps and peeled the top back. Cans rolled against each other with a soft metal clink. A coil of insulated wire sat beside a zip bag of screws. A folded tarp lay tight against a bundle of cloth wrapped around a small tin stove.

He backed away a step and lifted his hands again. "Tools. Food. Heat."

Alexei rose at last and wandered nearer, hands in his pockets, posture lazy like a cat watching a mirror. "You crossed the ice with a tarp and a camping stove?" The tone landed playful. The question underneath did not.

"Tarps make good walls when the wind gets teeth," Noah returned. "And heat buys time." He looked past Alexei, past Lachlan, past Zubair, and let his gaze rest on Sera like someone trying to find the center of a map. "You look well."

She did not move. "You look like a problem I did not invite," she shrugged, her voice taking on more of a bite than the guys had heard in the last few weeks.

Lachlan’s elbow nudged Alexei’s shoulder in a quiet warning. Elias’s pen resumed its small, nervous tap on the counter and then stopped again when he caught himself.

Noah’s smile held its line. "Then I will try to be useful."

"Rules," Zubair rumbled, voice low as a drum. "Lower floor only. You do not go up. You do not touch doors without one of us near. You do not feed the pup. You do not open windows. You keep your hands where my eyes can find them."

Noah’s eyes flicked to the staircase and back. "And here was me thinking that we were friends... after all, I am part of KAS, right?"

Lachlan drifted a step forward before he caught Sera’s gaze and halted. "He’s right," he agreed when no one else spoke up.

"He’s a friend and teammate. Let’s at least warm him up," he continued, turning it into something that sounded like hospitality instead of hope. "He made it here, and the wind will peel skin at this hour."

Sera weighed the room the way she weighed the weight of a blade in her palm.

Lachlan’s face carried sunshine that had survived artillery.

Zubair’s posture stacked into a wall. Elias watched like a scientist forced to care about what his hands discovered. Alexei’s grin sharpened at the edges, ready to cut or protect, whichever amused him more.

And Luci pressed harder into the top of her boot, the pressure small and certain.

"Lower floor," she agreed at last. "One night."

Noah inclined his head. "You always were the generous one."

"It is not generosity." Her voice smoothed to steel. "It is weather."

For a heartbeat Noah’s eyes cooled to something flat. Then the smile returned to its place. "Understood," he answered again, warmer this time.

Zubair lifted the pack with two fingers, as if touching less reduced risk. He passed the bundle to Lachlan. "Check the contents," he told him. "Nothing sharp where it should not be."

Lachlan worked the zippers and nodded at each item like he was checking off a mental list. "Wire’s good. Screws are new. Stove will need a careful hand." He glanced up with a quick grin. "No bear claws or broken glass hidden at the bottom."

Alexei drifted to the other side of the door and tested the bolt with his thumb as if to confirm it still obeyed. "How many knocks do we get in a lifetime?" he wondered out loud, tone mild. "Feels like we just spent one."

Elias closed his notebook and slid it under the open textbook. "I will prepare a space downstairs," he offered, practical at last. "You can sleep with the rest of us in the living room. Sera has taken the upstairs for herself."

"Kind of you," Noah replied, eyes flicking to the book before he hid the interest.

Sera watched that flick. She filed it with the way his boots had lined up heel to heel on their own, the way he had measured the staircase without turning his head, the way his eyes never warmed enough to match the rest of his face.

Luci’s growl faded to a thread, but the pup did not stop watching Noah’s hands.

"Welcome back," Zubair sighed after a while. "You’ll have to tell us where you have been and what you have been doing."

Noah nodded his head and wandered further into the penthouse and toward the living room.

As he passed, Lachlan tipped two fingers off his brow in a small salute. "Welcome back to the land of the living."

Noah’s mouth ticked. "I work hard to stay in it."

Alexei’s grin returned as he fell in at the rear. "Do you? We should compare notes."

Elias moved ahead to ready the space. Zubair kept pace one step behind Noah, every angle measured, every door counted. Sera did not follow.

She stayed by the chair where her book still waited open and rested her hand on Luci’s head until the pup’s breathing slowed.

The hallway swallowed their footsteps. The bolts shivered once in a draft and then stilled. The tower found its quiet again, the kind that held its breath instead of exhaling.

Luci lifted his muzzle and rested it on Sera’s knee, eyes still on the dark mouth of the hall. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"I know," she whispered, fingers sliding to the soft fur behind his ear. "I know."

The book lay open where she had left it. She did not turn the page. The story had already changed.

Down the hall, Zubair’s voice murmured, firm and even, explaining boundaries no one would mistake. Another door opened. Cold air moved. Metal clicked.

Lachlan’s laugh offered a scrap of warmth to fill a new room. Alexei’s lighter snapped and died, a little flare with nowhere to land. Elias’s steps made a neat rhythm on tile, left-right, left-right, as he set blanket, water, chair.

Noah’s tone stayed easy, grateful, helpful. It flowed around corners and came back thinner. The smile lived in the sound. Sera watched the hall as if the sound itself were a shadow she could weigh.

Luci’s ear twitched under her palm. His eyes did not leave the dark.

"Living room," she repeated under her breath, as much to the room as to herself. "One night. Not by himself."

A door clicked shut. The house held still. The fire remembered to crackle.

Sera lifted the book again and marked her place with a finger she did not move.

The words did not change on the page. The meaning did. She kept her posture loose, her breath slow, her touch steady.

Softer edges were a choice, not a surrender. The men had earned them, with work and time and quiet. The man in the hall had earned nothing.

She waited until Zubair’s step returned. He joined the room without announcement and set the clipboard on the counter. Their eyes met across the space, and he gave the smallest nod: contained, watched, restrained.

"Food later," he offered, voice low.

"Later," she agreed.

Luci finally closed his eyes.

Only then did Sera turn the next page.