The air was still thick with heat, a faint sweetness clinging to the back of your throat as you stepped out of the bathroom. Steam curled from your damp hair, trailing down bare shoulders, and for a moment you just breathed—slow, deep, trying to force your body back into the calm rhythm it hadn’t known for hours.

The dorm room was quiet, the muffled hum of the campus night barely reaching through the closed windows. You’d left Venti tangled in sweat-damp sheets, his flushed cheeks and parted lips framed by messy teal hair. But when you returned, the bed was… different.

The stale scent of earlier was gone, replaced with fresh linen, a faint trace of floral detergent, and—most strikingly—Venti’s scent. It lingered in the air, stronger now, richer, threaded through every breath you took. The sheets had been stripped and replaced with soft, clean ones, smoothed with a precision that felt almost ceremonial.

But what caught your eye wasn’t the bed itself.

It was the nest.

Pillows—far more than you owned—were piled into a semicircle on the mattress, layered with blankets and comforters in every shade of cream and blue. A few of your own hoodies had been tucked in between, their fabric holding the faint musk of your scent. The arrangement was messy yet deliberate, an instinctive fortress of warmth and safety.

And in the middle of it, Venti sat cross-legged, hair brushed but still curling at the ends, wearing an oversized hoodie that looked suspiciously like yours. His hands rested loosely in his lap, fingers idly tracing the edge of a throw blanket. He glanced up when you froze in the doorway, and the corners of his mouth lifted in a soft, almost shy smile—not his usual teasing smirk.

“You were gone a while,” he murmured, voice hoarse from earlier but sweet as honey. “So I thought… I’d make us somewhere warm to rest.”

You didn’t answer right away. Your gaze swept over the space, the careful way he’d worked your scent into the nest, the way his pupils widened when your eyes met. Something about it felt more intimate than the agreement you’d made, more personal than the casual exchange of favors.

The air between you was charged again, but this time it wasn’t just heat—it was something quieter, something that settled in your chest like the steady beat of a drum.

Venti tilted his head, patting the space beside him. “Come on, Alpha,” he said softly, almost like an invitation to cross a line neither of you had named.

And despite every unspoken rule, you stepped forward.