It started with the elevator ride.
Thane stood at the front of the lift, one eye twitching, his claws flexing as behind him, the rest of the Feral Eclipse crew slowly devolved into a stack of barely-functioning chaos. Gabriel leaned against the mirrored wall muttering the opening bassline to “Blood Moon Static” between yawns. Jonah had fallen asleep on Cassie’s shoulder standing up. Mark’s eyes were open, but the lights inside had very clearly gone out.
“Just make it to your rooms,” Thane muttered under his breath.
They didn’t.
The doors opened onto the penthouse floor and that was the moment Emily dropped her water bottle, panicked, and turned to look for it — only to walk headfirst into the elevator frame and groan like a zombie. Maya blinked at the hallway like it had personally offended her. Rico wandered off the opposite direction muttering about needing to “find the pitch of the mattress” like it was a note he’d misplaced.
It was 2:17 a.m. London time.
And the pack had officially hit the wall.
Gabriel kicked open the door to his suite, flopped face-first onto the bed, and passed out immediately — still wearing his jeans and holding a half-eaten breadstick he’d smuggled out of The Ivy. Thirty seconds later he bolted upright and shouted, “WHERE’S THE COFFEE?” before collapsing again in a dramatic heap.
In the suite next door, Jonah managed to get his pants off, but not his hoodie, and was discovered later sprawled upside down across an armchair like a feral comma. Cassie, after brushing her teeth with what turned out to be Gabriel’s extra hair gel, decided to lie down on the marble bathroom floor “just for five minutes” and woke up there four hours later using a folded towel as a pillow and muttering lyrics from three different songs in her sleep.
Mark made it to bed fully clothed and snoring before his head even hit the pillow. Thirty minutes in, he sat up, opened his eyes, pointed at the ceiling, and said “Dimmer channel thirty-four needs to come up by five percent,” then laid back down and continued snoring.
Thane, somehow, managed to wrangle everyone into their rooms, triple-check the hotel’s security lockouts, respond to three fan emails, and still had the presence of mind to pack away his laptop and ear monitors in their cases before collapsing onto the plush hotel bed and whispering, “One hour. Just one hour.”
He slept for eleven.
Emily, bless her caffeinated soul, tried to stay awake to edit video clips from the show. She made it through two TikToks before falling face-down onto her laptop with the live caption filter still running, which cheerfully transcribed: “badddasssss wolf showw snore snore I want grilled cheese.”
Room service the next morning found eight variously disheveled rockstars and wolves scattered across luxurious bedding, hardwood floors, bathroom rugs, and one surprisingly cozy coat closet. The only one already awake was Gabriel, who had dragged a pillow into the hallway, set up a “Pop-Up Coffee Consultation” sign in the hotel corridor, and was offering espresso shots to passing guests in exchange for affirmations.
One woman in a robe cried. Gabriel cried too.
Thane emerged, eyes barely open, ears back. “Gabriel.”
“Mornin’, my wolf! You want Ethiopian or Guatemalan roast today?”
“I want you to stop waking up before the sun and running a street café in the hallway.”
Gabriel handed him a cup. “You say that, but your ears perked when I said Guatemalan.”
Thane took the cup. Sipped. Closed his eyes.
“Shut up,” he mumbled.