Page 1 of Keep My Alpha

Soren

“Take the blondies,” Milo says, shoving a warm Tupperware into my. “All of them. Don’t argue.”

“I had two inside.”

“You had one and a half. The half you gave to Jude doesn’t count. He inhaled it like a seagull.”

“He looked hungry!”

“Jude always looks hungry. Jude is a bottomless pit wearing eyeliner. Take the blondies, Soren.”

I take the blondies. Milo has this way of offering things where refusing isn’t really an option, and honestly, brown-butter blondies at eleven on a Tuesday night is not the worst thing that could happen to a person. The Tupperware is still warm against my palm, and the campus path stretches ahead of us, summer-dark and quiet except for the lazy buzz of the streetlights and someone’s music drifting from an open window.

It’s early June and everything has that vibe of the last gasp of finals week. Half the student body is gone. The other half is clinging to summer leases and bar tabs and that beautiful, stupid conviction that real life can wait a little longer. I like it. The whole campus gets gentler when the crowds thin out, like it can finally stretch and breathe.

Milo’s wearing Callum’s fire department hoodie, which hangs past his wrists and makes him look like a kid playing dress-up in his dad’s clothes. It’s sweet, the way Milo lives inside his alpha’s stuff now, like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it.

“Tonight was nice,” I say, because it was. Byrne’s & Thompson on a Tuesday is the best version of itself. I’m still not over the fact that it’s Byrne’s & Thompson now, that Declan put Shay’s name on the sign like it was the most obvious thing in the world. The bar was quiet enough that we could actually hear each other, which never happens these days now that Shay’s instituted a bunch of theme nights. Benji’s cackle bounced off the walls when Knox told a story about the apprentice who tattooed a dolphin backwards, and I laughed so hard I had to put my drink down. Declan kept Shay’s glass full without being asked. Jude was draped across Rhys in the corner booth, boots up, stealing sips of Rhys’s beer while Rhys highlighted a journal article and occasionally said something dry and perfect that made Jude beam at him.

I looked around at all of them and thought, these people are mine.

That thought didn’t even hurt tonight.

“It was,” Milo agrees. “Callum texted that he set out the good bread for tomorrow, the sourdough from the farmers market. And also, that he found a moth in the bathroom and trapped it under a cup because he ‘didn’t want to hurt it but also didn’t want it flying at his face while he brushed his teeth.’” He smiles down at his phone, and honestly the rest of us might as well be pressing our noses to the glass.

“That’s ridiculously cute. He made it a little moth house.”

“I know.” He doesn’t even try to look embarrassed about it. “Do you think there’s a word for when someone does something completely unnecessary and that’s what makes it romantic? Like, the uselessness is the whole point?”

“Superfluous devotion,” I say immediately. “Or, no. Gratuitous tenderness.”

Milo points at me. “See, this is why you need to submit to the Festival.”

“Wow. Smooth transition.”

“Thank you, I’ve been workshopping it.” He links his arm through mine like we’re in some period drama, and I let him, because it’s warm out and the night smells like jasmine and I’m the kind of person who walks arm in arm with his best friend under old trees. I contain multitudes. “Professor Hannover specifically said your name. She pulled you aside after workshop and told you to submit. That’s not a casual suggestion, Soren, that’s a woman who has read your work and thinks—“

“She thinks I should get more experience with public submissions, which is professor-speak for ‘you need to toughen up, kid.’”

“It’s professor-speak for ‘your poetry is good enough to show people.’”

The Festival is this thing the university runs every July. Visual art, music, creative writing, the whole deal. It’s actually beautiful. They string lights across the quad and set up these little white tents. People wander around with lemonade looking at paintings and listening to student readings. Last year I went and cried a little at a watercolor of a heron, which was, uh, awkward for the artist.

Submitting my own work is a completely different thing.

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’ve been thinking about it for weeks.”

“I’m a thorough thinker.”

“You’re a chicken.”

“A cautious and discerning chicken with excellent taste in blondies.” I pop the lid on the Tupperware and pull one out, take a bite, and make a sound that should honestly only ever happen in private. “Oh my god, Milo, did you put miso in these?”

“Brown butter and white miso. Callum said it was weird and then ate four.”

“It’s perfect. It’s, like, salty and nutty and the edges are crunchy but the middle is still soft. Hang on, is this what we taste like to alphas? Because if so, I fully understand the whole ‘grrr I want to bite you even though I just met you’ thing.”