"We are going with the option that keeps us alive," replied Elias, already pulling out the sleeping bag that was in his bookbag. "But Alexei is also right. We need to get back on a schedule if we want to be healthy enough to survive. Even if it means sleeping in the sun."

"Sleep in daylight," Lachlan mused, licking chocolate from his thumb even as he rolled his eyes. "How romantic."

"Sleep while the world’s pretending to be simple," Alexei corrected, rinsing his cup with a stingy splash and shaking it dry.

They worked through the house again, this time not as soldiers, but as owners. They checked all the windows and made sure they were properly locked. The curtain were pinned shut with anything they could find, including knives that Alexei had found in the kitchen.

Chairs were braced under the back doorknob when Elias pointed out that the screws in the locks weren’t long enough to prevent someone from kicking down the door.

Sera tossed sleeping bags across the primary bedroom like bright islands.

Elias put his away as he took her, and set the med kit within reach of the bed. But it was becoming clear that he was trying to adjust his habits.

Taking a second look at the med kit, he shook his head and put it back in his bag along with the sleeping bag.

They killed the noise of the house one click at a time until the only sound left was Luci’s slow breath and a fly that had survived everything.

The sun didn’t move, but that was fine. They didn’t need the sun to go down in order to sleep. The light through the curtain was the same square it had been an hour ago, a day ago, forever.

Lachlan stood at the doorway a beat longer than the rest.

He had kept the jokes running all afternoon like a man timing a fuse. But when the silence came, and the room settled, he couldn’t take it anymore.

Crossing the room, he went over to the bed where Sera and Luci were lying down on the mattress with the rest of the men around her like ray coming from the sun. Sera looked up at him and cocked her head to the side as if waiting for him to speak.

"Question," he started, no grin this time, his shoulders loose so he wouldn’t spook her. It would have worked, too, if his hands weren’t clutched into fists.

Sera adjusted the sleeping bag zipper and glanced up. "Okay?" she replied as Luci walked up between her legs and flopped down so that there was no way for her to move. "What’s going on?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, looked at the bed, then at her. "Last night—well, whatever we’re calling nights here—the voice at the door was you. Not you, you. The bad echo. It got in my head anyway, and I really can’t deal with it anymore."

He took a breath even as the other four seemed to be holding theirs. "I know it wasn’t real," he continued. "I saw you in front of me, I know that it wasn’t you on the other side of the door begging us to save you... But it doesn’t change the part where I felt like I failed you. That I didn’t lift a finger to save you when I easily could have."

Sera’s expression softened into something new— not mercy, not amusement. More like acceptance...and understanding. "You didn’t fail me," she said, her voice soft. But it didn’t matter how soft her voice was, it was easy to hear in the silence around them. "You managed to protect me simply by not moving."

"I know," he nodded, swallowing it like medicine, then let the truth out anyway. "Still... can I sleep here? I need to touch you, to hold you, so that I don’t wake up thinking that I was the reason you were killed."

Zubair felt the quiet stretch from the hall where he’d paused, listening without intruding. The request didn’t set his hackles up. It loosened something else instead.

Besides, Lachlan wasn’t the only one feeling like they were ripping out their own hearts when Sera’s voice begged to be let into the hotel room.

All of the men felt the siren’s call. Whatever was on the other side almost got what they wanted. If Sera wasn’t in the room with them, it would have.

Everyone let out a sigh when Sera patted the space beside her sleeping bag. "Of course," she agreed. "But you are also sharing with Luci... and he takes up a lot of space on the bed."

Lachlan exhaled like he’d been holding a wall up for hours.

He slid in on top of the bag, not pushing any boundaries, but also not pretending not to want to.

His hand found her wrist and gently gripped it, feeling the heat and her pulse. He could feel every time she took a breath, and if he closed his eyes, he could hear her heartbeat.

But he didn’t close his eyes for a while.

None of them did.

Elias drifted to the other side of the bed and sat with his back against Sera’s side of the bed.

After a minute, he let his shoulder touch Sera’s foot through the sleeping bag like he’d learned something from watching Lachlan ask.

He didn’t name the thing that he was feeling. But he didn’t have to.

The contact steadied him in a way he never thought possible, and that was enough for him.

Alexei lay on the floor with one arm crooked under his head and the knife set not under the pillow but on the floor between him and the door, where his fingers could find it blind.

He watched the ceiling for cracks that weren’t there and let the rhythm of their breathing set his own.

Zubair took first watch without declaring it.

He stood at the window with the curtain barely lifted, a blade-wide gap to the white-bright world.

No shapes moved in the yard; the porch didn’t make so much as a sound. The truck looked like it belonged there, parked in shade.

From the bedroom came the small sounds of sleep starting in pieces. Fabric shifted, the soft huff of a laugh Lachlan didn’t mean to let out as the last of fear bled into tiredness.

There was also the barely-there sound that Sera made when Luci pushed his nose into her palm and she scratched his ear automatically.

Elias’s breath smoothing into even rails like a train finding perfect track.

Zubair let the curtain fall and set his back to the wall. Closing his eyes, he let the creature inside of him take up more space in his mind.

I will keep you alive simply so that we keep her alive, sneered the creature. That is the only thing we agree on.

Zubair stiffened for a moment before absently nodding his head. He hated the feeling of something inside of him that he couldn’t control.

He hated that it was almost completely separate, and yet it was a part of him. He couldn’t trust it. It liked blood and death a bit too much.

But now, hearing that the creature’s only purpose was to take care and protect Sera, he felt like he could breathe.