“I’m not leaving.”
Ren lay on his side, facing the armchair. In the dim light, he could barely make out the alpha’s outline: the broad line of his shoulders, his sharp profile against the faint light filtering through the curtain. He didn’t ask him to send his pheromones again. It wasn’t necessary. That he was there, breathing three meters away, taking up space in the darkness, was enough. Ren closed his eyes. Sleep didn’t come quickly, but when it did, it brought no nightmares.
The darkness helped. It was like a curtain stretched between them, a reasonable excuse to stare at the ceiling instead of meeting those gray eyes, to let the words flow without having to see what expression crossed the other’s face as he listened. Without light, there were no expressions to read, no pity to reject, no horror to pretend not to look at.
Only the thick gloom of the room and the sound of his own voice, which belonged to him more when it had no real audience.
“It was my father.”
The words came out hoarse. Ren swallowed them for a moment, regretted it, and then let them go because they were already out and he couldn’t take them back.
“The first time he did it, I was sixteen.” He moistened his lips. The ceiling was a dark smudge above his head, without shape or depth. “He took me to the home studio. He told me he had a friend who wanted to meet me. To be nice. That the family needed me to be accommodating.”
From the armchair, an indistinct sound came. Guttural. It wasn’t a word.
“The man’s name was Whitmore. Something like that. I don’t remember exactly. I remember the yellow wallpaper and that it smelled of pipe tobacco and something acidic, like metal. And I remember my father closing the door behind him as he left.”
Another growl. Lower this time, deeper. Ren felt the vibration in his ribcage as if the room itself had shaken.
“He didn’t… he didn’t actually rape me. Not that night.” He rolled over in bed until he was lying completely on his back. The sheets weighed heavily on his chest. “But he touched me. He took off my t-shirt. He put his hands on me, and I couldn’tmove because my father had told me to be nice. I was sixteen and didn’t know I could say no.”
The growl turned into something else. Something that made the hair on his forearms stand on end. It wasn’t pheromones. It was pure sound, animal and uncontrolled, the rumbling of something dangerous held in by force within a body too big for that armchair.
“Brody?”
Silence. Then a sharp crack. The alpha’s knuckles against the armrest.
“Brody, say something.”
Another crack. The wood of the armrest protested.
“Say something other than a growl.”
Brody’s breath filled the room. Heavy. Forcibly controlled. When he spoke, his voice sounded unfamiliar. Ragged at the edges, as if every syllable cost him something he couldn’t afford to spend.
“I can’t.” A brief silence. “If I let myself go any further than this, if I open my mouth and let out what’s inside me right now, I’m going to get up from this chair, and I can’t afford that. Because if I get up I’m going to drive to your father’s house.” Pause. “And I’m going to kill him.”
The words fell into the darkness with the weight of a sentence. No rhetoric. No embellishment. The simplicity of an inevitable fact stated aloud.
Ren propped himself up on one elbow. His heart was beating in a strange place in his chest, displaced, as if Brody’s declaration had moved it.
“Why?”
The question sounded stupid even to his own ears. But he asked it because he wanted to understand. He needed to know if it was generic rage, moral outrage, the protective instinct of any alpha toward an omega in danger, or something else. Something worse. Something he couldn’t ignore.
Brody laughed. There was nothing joyful about the sound. It was dry and weary, frayed at the edges.
“You don’t understand, do you?”
Ren didn’t answer.
“Ren.” The armchair creaked again. Brody’s body must have leaned forward because his voice sounded closer, even though he was still several feet away. “What’s between us isn’t… it isn’t attraction. It isn’t chemistry. It isn’t your body reacting to the nearest alpha.”
“I know what…”
“No. You don’t.” Brody’s voice cut through the air. “Our bond is exceptional. You understand the concept, but not what it means to me. It’s possible for you to hate it. You are able to resist it. You can throw my sweatshirt across the room every night before you put it on.”
Ren clenched his jaw.
