Chapter 184: Not Waking Up

"Goddamn it, it’s 12 already, wake up already!"

This time it was Naomi shouting, her voice sharp, loud, and clearly fed up with the lack of response.

The words echoed down the quiet fourth-floor hallway. Still there was no reply from inside the locked room.

How could anyone reply when they were busy recovering from complete physical exhaustion and drifting through heavy, contented dreams?

The four people on the bed remained exactly as they had collapsed hours earlier—naked, tangled, and deeply asleep.

Limbs overlapped without care. Soft breathing filled the space that still carried the thick scent of the previous night.

Even Fredrinn had allowed his usual guard to drop. He trusted his instincts when it came to genuine danger, and he also had Rose curled against his chest like a satisfied cat.

The succubus was at least as perceptive as he was—possibly more so—when it came to sensing external threats.

Selene and Charlie occupied the room right next door. He did not doubt for a single second that if Rose truly ordered them to intervene, they would break straight through the wall between the rooms without hesitation.

With those overlapping layers of security in place, he simply embraced all three of his women and sank into the rare luxury of a calm, uninterrupted rest.

Outside in the hallway, a somewhat lighter, more mature voice sighed in open exasperation.

"It’s useless... They must be tired."

Vivienne stood a short distance from the locked door, arms loosely folded, eyelids twitching with restrained impatience as she stared at the unmoving wood.

Most of the larger group had been awake since six in the morning. They had fully expected to pack up and hit the road at first light.

Unfortunately for everyone waiting downstairs and in the corridor, Fredrinn and all of his women had been nowhere to be found when the appointed departure time arrived.

Earlier that morning Max, Jacob, Ash, and Aadav had climbed the stairs to the fourth floor themselves.

They checked the entire corridor for any lingering threats—zombies, scavengers, or anything else that might have slipped past the lower defenses—and also tried to determine whether Fredrinn’s group was finally awake.

They knocked several times in succession, waited, then knocked again. No response of any kind came from inside. Eventually they had been forced to leave empty-handed and report the lack of progress.

That had been around nine o’clock.

Now the clock on Vivienne’s wrist read 11:34, and there was still no sign of movement, conversation, or even a muffled complaint from the other side of the door.

"Yeah, they must be VERY tired, no?"

Naomi replied with heavy, pointed sarcasm. She clicked her tongue in irritation as unwanted images flashed through her mind without permission—three women surrounding Fredrinn throughout the entire night, the bed a complete mess, the kind of activities that would leave anyone unable to wake before noon.

She did not even need to imagine the details very far before a traitorous little tingle ran down her spine. The sensation annoyed her almost as much as the silence behind the door.

She shoved both the feeling and the mental pictures aside with visible effort.

Rhea stood a little closer to the door than the others, a clear pout fixed on her face. Her displeasure ran deeper than simple impatience about the schedule.

She had been one of the first people to interact with Fredrinn directly after the world changed, yet she still was not particularly close to him.

Her own sister had somehow managed to claim a solid place at his side—something Rhea did not like one bit.

Just thinking about Andrea waking up tangled with him and the other two women made fresh annoyance rise hot in her chest.

She kept most of it from fully showing on her face, but the tightness around her mouth gave her away to anyone paying attention.

She stepped forward and banged on the door a couple more times, harder than before. The impacts echoed.

"Wake up, sis! I will break the door if you don’t wake up!"

Silence answered her.

"I REALLY WILL!"

Still nothing. Not even the creak of a mattress or a sleepy groan.

"UGH!"

Rhea groaned in pure frustration when even her escalating threats failed to draw a single response from inside. She stepped back, arms crossed tightly over her chest, and glared at the locked door as if sheer willpower might force it to open.

Max and Ash remained leaning against the opposite wall of the corridor, postures casual but eyes alert. Their presence was mostly practical.

They were there to make sure no zombies or other threats wandered up from the lower floors while the rest of the civilians waited around.

Neither of them particularly enjoyed standing around for the snobby Fredrinn and his growing collection of women, but they understood the unspoken social rules of the situation better than they liked to admit.

There was a noticeable difference between a woman making a scene and a man doing the same thing.

No matter what people claimed about equality in ordinary times, the reality after the collapse remained the same. If a woman accidentally pushed you in a crowded space, the automatic response was usually a quick "it’s fine" without a second thought.

The reaction changed the moment the person doing the pushing was a man—especially a younger or physically weaker one.

In that case the response often became a warning, a sharp threat, or at best a firm instruction to be more careful next time.

The same principle applied here in the hallway.

If Max, Ash, or Jacob started banging on the door themselves and throwing around loud threats about breaking it down, Fredrinn could very reasonably take personal offense and put them in their place with whatever authority or power he currently held.

If the same threats and noise came from Naomi, Rhea, or Vivienne, he was far less likely to react with genuine hostility. The double standard was obvious and irritating, but it was also practical.

Therefore the men had little real choice except to wait and let the women handle the noise.

Fortunately, they did not have to wait much longer.

"Sis, this is no time to wake up. Are you turning into a NEET these days or what? It is an apocalypse, not a global holiday!"

"Geez, shut up Carmen, your voice is so irritating in the morning... I am already having a hangover from drinking... Go find me a lemon and be useful."

"Bar is upstairs, not downstairs."

"I changed my mind, I want coffee now."

"Bruh."