Page 30 of Keep My Alpha

My face goes hot. I bump my shoulder against his arm because I need to touch him, and a shoulder bump is the most I can get away with in a room full of my entire friend group. He smells like pine and warm cotton, and standing this close makes my whole body hum.

“Come home with me?” I ask, smaller than I intended. “After. Callum said he’d give us a ride.”

Wren’s expression goes soft in a way that wrecks me. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Wren

Callum’s truck smells like this weird mix of smoke and one of those cinnamon pine tree air fresheners, and Soren’s thigh is pressed against mine in the back seat.

“You two good?” Callum asks, eyes finding us in the rearview. He’s got that solid, steady energy where nothing seems that serious as long as he’s driving. Milo’s in the passenger seat, twisted all the way around with his chin on the headrest, watching us with soft eyes that say way too much.

“We’re good,” Soren says. His voice is a little rough from the reading. His fingers find mine on the seat between us, threading through like it’s something he’s done a hundred times.

I look down at our hands. My brain is doing the thing where it wants to memorize every detail. The shape of his knuckles. The ink stain on his index finger. The way he holds on like he means it.

Callum pulls away from the gallery curb. In the side mirror, I catch Jude with his arm slung around Rhys’s waist, holding his phone up to snap a picture of us leaving.

“The reading was beautiful,” Milo says quietly. “Professor Hannover was crying, Soren. Actual tears.”

“She was not.”

“She was. Dabbing her eyes with a program. I have pictures.”

Soren laughs, ducking his head, and his thumb sweeps across my knuckle. Once. Small and deliberate. My whole hand goes hot.

It’s a short ride. Callum drops us at Soren’s building with a “text if you need anything” that’s aimed at both of us but mostly Soren. Milo gives a little wave through the window that somehow says I’m rooting for you, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and okay, actually do everything I wouldn’t do all at once.

Then the truck is gone, and it’s the two of us on the sidewalk. The streetlight hums and flickers.

“Come up?” Soren asks. “Just... to decompress. I’m too wired to sleep.”

“Yeah.” My voice comes out rough. “Okay.”

His apartment is different.

Last time I was here, the emptiness hit me first. Rooms too big, hollowed out by roommates who’d paired off and moved on. But he’s been working. His bedroom door is open, light spilling warm and golden into the hall, and when I follow him in, I stop in the doorway.

He’s turned his bed into a nest. Blankets everywhere, all different kinds, piled up like he raided every closet in the apartment.

And then there are the birds. All seven of them lined up on the headboard shelf, watching like they’re on guard duty.

My whole body reacts before I can stop it. That deep, territorial roll of scent I’ve never been able to control around him, pine and honey pouring out of me, layering over everything that’s Soren: his lavender and ink and warm paper. The room goes thick with both of us.

He turns to look at me, lips parted.

“Is this—“ He gestures at the nest. “Is it too much? Milo said it might be too much. Jude said it wasn’t enough. Benji said, and I quote, ‘If the man doesn’t lose his entire mind over this, he’s broken.’”

“It’s not too much.”

“You stopped walking.”

“I stopped walking because my knees aren’t working right now.”

He smiles. Not the big, bright one he gave the crowd at the gallery. This one is small and private and a little crooked. A little scared.

“Thank you for being there tonight,” he says. “I kept looking for you in the audience, and you were always... right there. Every single time.”

I cross the room in two steps. My hands find his waist like they’ve memorized the route. “I was proud of you.”