Sneaking in through the back door after dark was totally ridiculous, Sebastian knew, but sometimes he just didn't want to bother arguing it out with either of his parents. Plus, Logan had refused to let him crash on his couch, so he didn't really have anywhere else to go right now.

He slipped off his boots on the mat and picked his way across the cool tiles of the kitchen floor in the dark. The clock on the stove cast a faint greenish glow that turned the edges of the counters and the appliances into the faint lines of a maze. The stainless steel fridge practically shone, tempting Sebastian to risk making himself a snack. The take-out he'd shared on Logan's couch had been practically a million years ago, and either way, Sebastian was starving again. He'd been hungry all the time lately, actually, and he knew if he slept on it, he'd only make things worse. Besides, how loud could making himself a sandwich actually get?

Very loud, it turned out.

It seemed like the fridge was conspiring against him to make bottles of hot sauce leap out and crash down onto the floor. That they didn't smash everywhere was a minor miracle, but they could hardly have been louder if they had. Even the knife that he tried to pull out of the cutlery drawer to cut himself some cheese was somehow tangled in every single other knife, all of them jangling wildly as Sebastian tried to sneak one out of the pile.

He made his sandwich at top speed after that. The clink of the knife against the plate or the soft smack of the fridge door opening and closing could hardly be louder than the noises he'd already made.

Sneaking up the stairs was more difficult: the house was prone to creaks and groans, particularly at the landing on the second floor, and in the dark, it was harder to see the joins in the wood that he needed to avoid. Finally, two or three loud, wooden shrieks later, he was tucked up in bed, wolfing down his sandwich and checking his phone.

Going to these lengths was ridiculous, of course. It wasn't as if there was anything Sebastian's parents could do to him. But he was just trying to get through his last year of college without fighting with them too many times, and then he'd be free as a bird. Maybe he could even leave town. There had to be a city somewhere that needed an IT guy, and contained one million percent fewer relatives constantly telling him that he just needed to find the right Alpha and settle down. Sure, maybe he'd find some Alpha eventually, but he wasn't going to die if he didn't manage to hook one. A fact that his family seemed to be willfully refusing to recognize.

He put the empty plate onto the stack of dishes by the bed and sighed. It would get better when school started again, that was for sure. He'd be spending less time at home, which meant fewer chances for him to annoy his parents by existing, and fewer chances that they would say things that made him want to run screaming out of the house. He was grateful to be able to save on bills by staying at home during college, but he was so stupidly close to graduation that the inconveniences of the situation were really starting to weigh on him.

Thumping his pillow into shape with more vigor than necessary, Sebastian rolled over and prepared to try and sleep.

He wasn't expecting to succeed, which made it all the more shocking when he awoke in the morning to the sound of his mom bursting into the room with absolutely no warning at all.

"Oh, you're here!" she said, fooling no one. "I was just coming in to get your laundry."

"Where else would I be?" Sebastian replied groggily.

She ignored his question and moved on to what had clearly been her real reason for barging into his room at the disgustingly early hour of ten o'clock in the morning. "You shouldn't come home so late, you know? Did you see the terrible mess you made of my kitchen?"

"It was one sandwich," Sebastian protested.

She sniffed. "Not a three course meal? I'm surprised, considering the crumbs."

He groaned. "I get it, okay? I'll try to be tidier when I'm trying not to wake you up."

"Good." She wrinkled her nose in dissatisfaction. "Now, where's your laundry?"

"I can do it myself, you know," Sebastian reminded her blearily.

The look of pure disbelief that passed across her face showed just what she thought of that. "Laundry?" she said again.

"On the chair." Sebastian pointed to the other side of the room, giving up the fight for the moment. He wasn’t that devoted to the limited amusement value of doing his own; he was simply tired of being treated like a child. It didn't seem to matter what he did or said: the only thing that would convince his parents that he was able to make decisions on his own would be to turn up with his very own Alpha.

And that was never going to happen.