Page 40 of Keep My Alpha

“I know,” I gasp. And I do. The fairy tale wasn’t out there waiting to be found. It was in a campus maintenance workshop, sanding my bench at dawn.

I’m even wetter now than I was before he confessed, which is honestly ridiculous, but apparently my body is really into being told the truth while I’m literally impaled. Good to know, I guess. I’ll keep that in mind for next time.

His knot is fully locked now, stretching me wide, and every time he grinds forward it presses against that spot, and my muscles clench in these tight, rhythmic pulses I can’t control, each one dragging against the thick swell of him. My hand finds his where it’s splayed on my stomach, and I lace our fingers together. His grip goes so tight I feel every callus. Carving calluses. Whittling calluses. The hands that made my birds.

It builds like warmth filling me from the inside out. Not crashing. Rising. His knot grinds against that spot on every slow roll, and my body starts clenching in waves, each one squeezing down around him, and when it finally crests I press my face into the pillow and let it take me. Long, shuddering, my hole gripping his knot in pulse after pulse, my cock twitching hard against the ruined sheets. Heat floods my belly, my thighs. Every aftershock pulls another clench, and I feel everything: the oversensitive drag of him too swollen to move, the slick mess between us, the wet heat of his cum pulsing into me in thick, steady throbs I swear I can feel in my chest.

He follows me over. His teeth find my shoulder, his breath ragged, his arm so tight I can barely breathe, and I don’t care. I don’t care about anything except that he’s here and he’s real.

After, we just lie there in the mess. Sweat, tears, slick everywhere, the sheets are ruined, his cum still warm inside me where the knot keeps it in, and the whole nest looks like a disaster zone. His thumb draws slow, lazy circles on my stomach. I can feel his heartbeat pounding against my back.

“You’re shaking,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Is it the confession-during-sex thing or the knotting thing?”

A pause. Something almost like a laugh against my hair. “Both.”

“Are you okay?”

His forehead drops to his shoulder. “I don’t know. Are you?”

I think about it. Actually think, not the polished I’m fine I’ve been handing everyone for weeks. Milo got hurt before he found Callum. Benji spent years building walls before Knox showed up and loved him past them. But Wren was here the whole time, loving me right from the start, too quiet and too scared to sign his name. Maybe I got the right one first and was too busy being terrified to see it.

“I’m overwhelmed,” I say honestly. “And kind of mad at you. And kind of in love with you so hard I can’t breathe.”

His arm tightens. His nose presses behind my ear.

“Those can all be true at the same time,” he says quietly.

“Yeah.” I pull his hand up to my mouth and kiss his knuckles. Sawdust and salt. “Yeah, they can.”

Overhead, the fan clicks. My flock watches from the windowsill, seven tiny wooden witnesses. His knot pulses warm and heavy inside me, and I close my eyes.

He carved me birds because he couldn’t find the words.

I wrote poems about him because I couldn’t find the man.

Wren

His hair smells like my soap.

He’s wrapped around me like I might disappear, leg thrown over my hip, arm slung across my chest, face pressed into the hollow of my throat, and he’s purring. So low it’s barely there, more vibration than sound, like a tiny motor idling in his chest. The claiming bite on his neck is silvering at the edges and still tender in the middle, and when I tilt my head to look at it, my whole body goes tight. Half possessive, half terrified.

I did that. He asked me to. It’s permanent, and he’s here.

Mine.

He’s awake. I can tell by his breathing, and neither of us has said anything yet, and I could stay inside that for an hour.

His purring stops.

“Soren—“

“I know.” His voice is quiet. Careful. “I know. I just need a second.”

I give him a second. I give him ten. My hand stays on his shoulder because I don’t know if taking it away would be worse.