Page 5 of Keep My Alpha

It runs along the back wall, right over the belt sander. On it, an assortment of half-finished and abandoned birds.

Because for the past year, I’ve been carving birds for an omega I’ve never actually spoken to. Which is totally reasonable. Anyone would do that. Other people doomscroll or play twelve hours of Elden Ring; I speedrun “deeply weird anonymous courtship ritual.”

Seven already delivered. Each one placed somewhere I knew he’d find it.

The last one took me almost a month to get right. I sanded the beak four times because the first three weren’t right, and Soren would know. He wouldn’t know he knew. He’d just hold it and something would feel off, some fraction of a millimeter, and the whole thing would lose its magic. The anonymous artist would become just some guy who rushed a beak.

That’s the thing. Off the shelf, in his hands, the birds are perfect. They say exactly what I mean. It’s the guy behind them who’d ruin it. Me, showing up with sawdust in my hair and nothing interesting to say, three-day-old cereal bowls piled in the sink, and watching whatever version of me he’s built in his head just... fall apart.

I pick up the gouge. Back to the bark.

My phone buzzes on the bench. I ignore it. It buzzes again. And again. Three in a row.

I sigh. Wipe my hands on my jeans and grab it.

Aaron: bro

Aaron: you’re in your sad cave aren’t you

I type back: Working.

Aaron: WORKING he says. working on what. the tree or another gift for your boyfriend who doesn’t know you exist

Aaron: come out tomorrow. coffee. noon. you’re coming. this is not a negotiation

Aaron: if you say “busy” i will come to your workshop and sing

Ugh. History says that he absolutely will.

Fine.

Aaron: wear a shirt without sawdust on it. it’s called making an effort

I switch the phone off and turn back to the tree. The bark needs another hour, maybe two.

It’s the rest of me that needs work.

***

Aaron’s already at a table when I get to the campus coffee shop the next day, which—okay, I’m like four minutes late, so that’s not the flex he thinks it is. He’s got two drinks ordered already and is hunched over an open engineering textbook, dark hair catching the light. There’s a dark streak of graphite along the side of his thumb. He must have come straight from lab. He straightens up when he sees me, eyes bright.

“You’re late,” he says.

“You’re early.” I pull out the chair across from him. The coffee shop is half-full, one of those generic playlists going, the kind that sounds like the acoustic cover of every song that’s ever existed.

“I’m always early. It’s called respect.” He pushes one of the drinks toward me. “You look like you slept in your workshop again.”

“I didn’t.”

“Your hair says you did.”

I try to flatten it with one hand. It doesn’t work. Aaron grins at me, the same grin he’s had since he was four and figured out that being louder than me was basically a cheat code, and I’ve never found a counter for it.

“So.” He leans back, crossing his arms, studying me with that look that means he’s about to be an asshole on purpose and enjoy every second of it. “How’s the tree?”

“Good. Third branch is roughed in. Canopy will take another week, maybe.”

“And the birds?”