I will not turn you in.
No one had ever said that to him. No one. His mother had died before she could say it. His father had done exactly the opposite.And every alpha, every beta, every person Ren had met since he came out as an omega at fifteen had looked at him as one looks at an object with a fluctuating price tag.
Ren clenched his teeth. He clenched his fists. He clenched everything he could clench inside his body to keep his frame upright, to keep from collapsing right there, in the black-and-white marble lobby, in front of an alpha who smelled of home and who was telling him he would not hand him over to his buyer.
It wasn’t enough.
The first sob burst from his chest as if torn from him. Soundless at the start, just a sharp spasm that shook his shoulders. Then came the air, wet, ragged, and with it a noise Ren didn’t recognize. Guttural. Animal. The sound of someone who has been holding a weight they cannot bear for too long.
Tears burned his eyes before they fell. Ren brought his hands to his face, covering it, because if Brody saw him like this, he could never look at him again. His knees trembled. The marble floor pulled him down, and Ren let himself fall because he had no strength left to resist gravity.
Ren didn’t reach the floor.
Arms caught him mid-fall—huge, firm—and the scent of raisins and walnuts enveloped him like a thick blanket someone had thrown over him without asking. Ren tried to push against Brody’s chest, his palms flat on the fabric of the T-shirt, but the muscles in his arms wouldn’t obey him. His fingers curled inward, clutching the fabric instead of pushing it away, and that made him cry even harder.
Brody said nothing. He lifted him off the floor in one fluid motion, one arm under Ren’s knees and the other on his back, and the shift in orientation—the world tilting, the ceiling taking the place of the walls—drew a wet gasp from him. Ren closed his eyes. If he didn’t see, he could pretend it wasn’t happening. That an alpha wasn’t carrying him like a child down the hallway of a mansion that wasn’t his, his face drenched and his body trembling against a chest that beat with a slow, steady pulse.
The rhythm of Brody’s heart was steady. Ren felt it through the T-shirt, through his own skin, setting a pace different from that of his own racing heart. Every beat told himyou’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe, and Ren wanted to tear his ears off for hearing it.
Brody’s footsteps echoed on the stairs. They were going up. Ren recognized the turn to the right, the stretch of carpeted hallway where the sound was muffled, the distinctive creak of the third door. His room. The smell changed when they entered, mingling with that of clean sheets and the wood of the headboard. Brody laid him on the bed with a care that Ren felt like a second humiliation.
He turned onto his side, his back to Brody, and wiped his face with the backs of his hands. His eyes were swollen and his nose was running. All was pathetic, from the fetal position his body had adopted without permission to the trembling he couldn’t stop.
The mattress sank beneath his back. Brody had sat down on the edge.
“Look at me.”
Ren shook his head.
“Ren.”
His name in that deep voice ran down Ren’s spine like something liquid and hot. Ren sunk his teeth into the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste the metallic flavor of blood.
“Never try to leave this house again.”
“I’m not your prisoner.”
“No. But Reznov’s men are out there, and they’re not the type to give up. If you leave this property, they’ll find you. And whatever happens after that, there’s no turning back.”
Ren stood still. The trembling subsided, replaced by a dense cold that filled his chest.
“Promise me.”
“What?”
“That you won’t try to walk out that door again.”
Ren turned his head just enough to see Brody over his shoulder. The alpha had his forearms resting on his knees, his hands hanging between his legs. His black hair fell over his forehead. His gray eyes looked at him without blinking, without pressure, without the predatory intensity Ren had seen in them before. He was just waiting.
“And if I promise nothing?”
“Then I’ll post someone at your door.”
“So I am a prisoner.”
“You’re someone I will not let die out of pride.”
The word pride hurt him more than anything else Brody could have chosen. Because it was accurate. Because Ren knew that going out into the street in his condition, with half the criminal underworld looking for him, wasn’t bravery. It was pride by another name.
