Page 35 of Keep My Alpha

I pick her up again and run my thumb over the groove between her wing and body, the spot that’s smooth from being held so often.

I know what Milo would do. He’d make tea, sit with me on the kitchen floor, and gently ask what I’m really afraid of. And I’d have to tell him the truth.

My admirer saw the bite, saw that I’m claimed, and decided I didn’t need the birds anymore.

It makes sense. It’s logical. An anonymous admirer wouldn’t keep leaving gifts for an omega who already belongs to someone else.

But what really makes me want to scream into a pillow is that I never got to choose. I never had the chance to stand in front of both of them and say, you, it was always you. One stepped out of the shadows and the other disappeared. Now I have this perfect, overwhelming alpha in my bed and a shelf of wooden birds that feel like letters from a ghost.

If the universe had given me a choice, I would have picked Wren.

But knowing that doesn’t make the ache go away.

My friends all have their own ways of dealing with being overwhelmed. Milo bakes, Benji draws, and Jude talks until the feeling fades. I do this: I pace, rearrange things, and touch each of the seven birds one by one, like counting rosary beads. My whole body buzzes with energy that feels too big for my apartment, too much for the quiet, too much for the version of me who sits and writes poems and waits.

I try to write. I take out the notebook Wren gave me—the hand-bound one with a leather wrap and thick cotton pages he found at a craft market—and sit at my desk.

The birds stopped coming and I—

Nothing. The line just sits there, staring back at me.

The birds stopped coming, but I still check every morning.

I scratch the line out so hard the ink bleeds through the page.

He gave me everything I asked for and I’m still

Still what? Still hungry? Still ungrateful? Still convinced that if I stop looking over my shoulder, all of this will disappear like sugar in rain?

I close the notebook, press my palms flat against the cover, and take a breath.

This always happens. I want something too much and then it slips away. Birthday candles, shooting stars, the time I wished so hard to get into the creative writing program that I made myself sick for a week. Wanting feels like it jinxes things.

The apartment is too quiet. It’s been that way since Shay moved out, since the last bedroom door stopped opening and closing at odd hours. Now it’s just the AC unit dying in the window, the fridge humming, and my own pulse, too fast for someone sitting still.

Wren texted me forty minutes ago: Finishing a repair on the east hall lighting. Coming over after if that’s okay.

I texted back always with three hearts, because I really do use heart emojis without irony, and because it’s true. I couldn’t figure out how to say please come over, I’m reorganizing birds and I think I’m having a breakdown, without it sounding like I’m asking for help. Maybe I am. I’m not sure.

I get up, sit on the bed, then get up again. I open the closet and pull out Wren’s red-and-black flannel, the one he left last Tuesday, and press it to my face. It still smells like him, even after three days. My whole body feels soft and sharp at once, and I want him here so much it hurts. I put the flannel on. It hangs past my wrists. I love it, but tonight it isn’t enough.

I go back to the birds. I set Keats in the center of the shelf, the place of honor.

Who are you? I wondered, running my thumb over her tiny head. Who puts this much care into something for someone they’ve never even met?

It’s been almost a year of birds, and I still don’t know. Now I might never find out.

My throat tightens. I press my knuckle to my teeth and breathe through it.

This is ridiculous. I have a mate. I have a claiming bite I’ve been showing off like a new tattoo, a nest full of blankets that smell like both of us, an alpha who treated me like I was something sacred and then held me like I might break. I have the thing, the real thing I’ve been writing poems about since I was fifteen.

So why am I feeling this way?

There’s a knock on the door, and I open it to find Wren. His eyes are tired, tool bag slung over one shoulder, sawdust in his dark hair, and a grease smudge on his jaw he probably hasn’t noticed. He’s wearing his gray campus maintenance shirt and jeans stained at the knees. His eyes light up when he sees me, resting possessively on the bite mark on my neck.

He opens his mouth. “Hey, I—“

I grab the front of his shirt with both hands and haul him inside.