Page 60 of Stream Heat
And it all had to be integrated so she never once felt like an invalid.
Twenty minutes later, I had it all listed out: air purification, smart lighting she could tweak from her phone, audio filtrationsystem layered under her gaming setup, custom chair options for chronic pain. None of it screamed “hospital.” None of it did anything but make her life easier.
Placed the orders, paid for rush. If she decided to stay, no way she was suffering through subpar conditions. If she left…she’d still have one less thing to fight against.
Phone again. Jace this time.
“Heard you’ve been researching,” he said, not even bothering with hello.
“House grapevine's running hot, yeah.”
“Lot of nervous alphas upstairs.” He didn’t sound cheery about it. “What’d you find?”
I summarized the poison they’d pumped into Quinn, along with the odds, and how critical it was that we play this out as a unified pack. Jace just listened, sharp as ever, asking for details only when something didn’t add up.
“So it's not just about helping her through detox,” he said at last. “It’s about stepping up and being her primary medical team for the foreseeable.”
“Right.”
“And we can’t half-ass it. Months. Could be years.”
“Yeah.” My jaw was tight. “If she lets us.”
Jace went quiet. “You know what that means for the content arrangement? Contracts, whole ‘temporary housemate’ premise?”
“Pack bonding isn’t business,” I replied flatly. “We stopped being fake the instant we all started circling her without admitting it.”
He actually laughed, if you could call it that. “Makes sense.” Then he asked, “What are you building down there?”
I eyed the screens, now awash in product SKUs and prototype layouts. “Everything I can.”
“Good,” he said. “Reid’s stress-pacing. Theo’s making enough food for an army. Malik’s got incense burning in every room. Glad someone’s working the problem.”
After Jace hung up, I went all in. Every accommodation I could design, every mitigation for symptoms I might not have even seen yet. If she got unpredictable heats, I’d wire up the rooms for discrete tracking. If she was going hypersensitive, I’d make scent-neutral zones. If she needed support, the house would physically mold to make it happen.
Three hours deep into drawing up a proprietary air-handling system, footsteps rattled on the stairs. Quinn, at the bottom, dwarfed by one of Reid’s hoodies, looking about ten years younger and five times more vulnerable than usual.
“Hey,” she said, hovering on the bottom step like a cat ready to bolt. “Sorry to interrupt. I just…needed somewhere quiet.”
“You’re not interrupting,” I said. Killed all the desktop windows so she wasn’t looking at her own private medical file. “How are you feeling?”
Shrug, half-miserable. “Like my body is trying to kill me for fun.”
“Withdrawal?”
“And everything else.” She inched closer, gaze skating over the wall of monitors and desktop builds. “What are you working on?”
Honesty seemed like the only card left. “Upgrades. Medical stuff. For you.”
Que the instant defensive posture. “I didn’t ask for–”
“No,” I cut in. “You don’t have to ask for basics. Not when you’re coming off a decade of chemical trauma.”
She blinked. Processing.
“The sensory spikes Dr. Levine mentioned? Light, sound, scent. They're technical issues with technical solutions.”
I showed her the plans, all of it. Light settings that auto-adapted for eye strain. Noise filters you could dial down with a finger flick. Air systems that could kill scent trails on demand.
