My Yandere Tamer System: Every Beast Becomes a Sexy Goddess

Chapter 160: They Declared My Bed A Shared Resource and Voted Me Down Six To One

The festival gave one day off in the middle, and Soren made the mistake of sleeping in.

He woke because there was weight on him.

Maren was across his legs, face down, fully asleep and radiating heat, a fox who had decided his shins were a stove she was entitled to.

Selah was along his left side, on top of the blanket, cold coming off her in a thin steady drift that had turned the sheet on that side stiff with frost.

Yara was on his right, under the blanket, warm, one arm across his chest and her red eyes already open and watching the door because Yara watched the door even in bed.

He did the count without meaning to.

Three.

There were supposed to be zero.

"Explain," Soren said, to the ceiling.

"You were warm," Selah said. "I run cold. It’s thermodynamics."

"You froze my sheet."

"I said I run cold. I didn’t say I was good at it."

Maren mumbled something into his shin that might have been a defense and might have been about breakfast.

Yara said nothing. Yara had gotten there first and had no need to justify a position she’d already won.

The door opened.

Dani stood in it with a mug, took in the arrangement, and did not change expression.

"There’s a schedule," Dani said.

"There is not a schedule," Soren said.

"There’s an informal schedule." She sipped. "Maren’s not on it this morning. She jumped the queue."

"There’s a queue?"

"You don’t want to know about the queue."

Maren woke up enough to be indignant.

"There’s no queue. I go where it’s warm. He’s warm. Ergo."

"Ergo you’re on top of his legs and Selah’s got seniority on the left," Dani said. "There’s a queue. You broke it. I’m just the one who writes it down."

"You write it down?" Soren said.

"I write everything down." Dani sipped again. "You told me to."

Soren tried to sit up.

This was a mistake, because sitting up required moving three people, and three people who had claimed a warm spot did not surrender it for a reason as thin as the owner of the spot wanting to breathe.

Maren clamped onto his leg.

Selah went dead weight, which for Selah was a strategy, because dead weight plus cold meant he’d have to physically peel a frost-cold girl off his side and she knew he hated the first shock of it.

Yara simply tightened her arm and said, "No."

"Yara."

"You’re comfortable. I checked. You don’t get to be uncomfortable now just because you’re awake."

"This is a hostage situation," Soren said.

"It’s a cuddle," Maren said into his shin.

"It’s a hostage situation with cuddling."

"Those are the best kind." Maren finally lifted her head, hair a disaster, one ear-tip poking through it. "Also I’m hungry, and you’re the one who makes the eggs the way I like, so this is also extortion."

"You’re extorting me for eggs."

"I’m extorting you for eggs while sitting on you. It’s efficient. Selah taught me. She’s all about efficiency."

"I taught you nothing," Selah said. "Do not put your chaos on my name."

Selah shifted then, which Soren felt as a slow drift of cold sliding up his side, and propped herself on one elbow to look down at him.

Her hair had come loose in the night.

The frost trace at her nails had spread in her sleep, thin patterns crawling across the back of the hand she’d left on his chest, and she was close enough that her breath came out visible in the warm air of the room.

"You’re overheating on Maren’s side," she said. "You need balancing."

"I do not need balancing."

"You’re flushed. Here." She laid her cold palm flat against the side of his neck, and the shock of it ran the length of his spine, and she watched his reaction with the flat interest of a woman confirming an experiment. "Better. Your pulse just did something."

"That’s because you put ice on my throat."

"That’s one theory." She did not move the hand.

◆◆◆◆

Yara, on the other side, did not appreciate the competition.

She rolled in, deliberate, and set her chin on Soren’s shoulder so her mouth was near his ear, and her voice went low enough that it was clearly meant to be overheard by exactly one rival.

"I was here first," Yara said. "Warm side. Best side. She can have the neck. I have the rest."

"You’re negotiating over me while I’m in the bed."

"You’re the territory. Territory doesn’t get a vote." She said it fond, red eyes half-lidded, her arm heavy and certain across his chest. "Go back to sleep. You lost the morning. Lose it gracefully."

Soren gave up on sitting and lay back down.

The ceiling was familiar. He’d been looking at it a lot lately.

Yara’s arm was warm. Selah’s cold had reached the point where it stopped biting and started being pleasant, the shift cold water makes once you stop fighting it. Maren was a heated weight anchoring the whole lower half of him to the bed.

Somewhere in the middle of it he stopped planning his escape.

That was the thing they’d actually been after. Not the warmth. The stopping.

He was bad at stopping. They knew it. So six of them had, over months, worked out that the only reliable way to make him rest was to physically prevent him from doing anything else.

"Dani," Soren said. "You could help me."

"I could."

"Are you going to?"

Dani looked at the pile. She looked at her mug. She walked over, sat down on the edge of the bed at the one open corner, near his shoulder, and drank her coffee.

"No," she said. "I’m going to supervise."

"That’s not supervising. That’s joining."

"It’s supervising. I’m fully dressed and I have coffee. Those are the two things that distinguish a supervisor from a participant."

Selah snorted, which from Selah was the equivalent of falling off the bed laughing.

◆◆◆◆

Joan appeared in the doorway a moment later, took one look, and set a stack of folded laundry on the dresser without a word.

"Joan," Soren said. "You see this."

"I see it."

"Say something."

"You look warm," Joan said, and left.

That was Joan. She didn’t join the pile and she didn’t rescue him from it.

◆◆◆◆

Mona emerged from wherever Mona slept, waddled up the blanket, and lay down on the one square inch of Soren’s chest that Yara’s arm wasn’t covering.

Now it was official.

Every bonded creature he had was physically on top of him, and the day off had not technically started, and he was not going to win.

"Fine," Soren said. "Ten more minutes."

"Thirty," Maren said.

"Twenty," Selah said.

"Twenty-five and I make the eggs," Soren said.

The pile voted by not moving.

Twenty-five it was.