Page 55 of Keep My Alpha

“And then I walked into a discussion section”—Jude snaps his fingers—“bam. My brain checked out. Completely vacated the building. And I thought, okay, this is a problem. This is a me problem. But it wasn’t. Because it turns out fate has a sense of humor, and its preferred delivery method is a hookup app with a knot emoji for a logo.”

He looks around the patio. At Milo leaning into Callum. At Benji sprawled across Knox’s lap. At Shay with his clipboard, Declan’s hand finding the small of his back as he passes. At me, with Soren tucked under my arm.

“We all came here for the same reason. We wanted something casual and easy and safe. And instead we got”—he gestures at the whole chaotic, loud, beautiful mess of us—“this. Fated mates. Claiming bites. And, in Soren’s case, a flock of hand-carved birds, plus whatever the hell Knox just contributed.”

“It’s a robin!” Knox yells.

“It’s an act of God,” Jude says. “But it’s got spirit.”

Soren hides his face against my shoulder. I pull him in closer. My hand lands on his hip, thumb pressing into the bare skin where his shirt’s ridden up. It’s a small thing, but it’s mine, and it’s exactly what I need.

“So.” Jude raises his bottle higher. His voice wobbles a little at the edge, and Rhys’s hand tightens on his calf. “To getting knotted.” He grins, wolfish and bright. “And keeping your alpha.”

He looks right at Soren when he says it.

Everyone raises their drinks. The chorus is ragged and overlapping and perfect: “To getting knotted and keeping your alpha!”

Soren finds my hand and squeezes. His eyes are wet, and he doesn’t even try to hide it.

I press my mouth to his temple. He’s warm from the summer air, warm from the toast, warm because he’s mine.

Benji drops into the chair across from us, beer dangling from his fingers, and his gaze snags on the bite mark above Soren’s collar. His expression doesn’t change. “So that healed up nice. Very photogenic. Did you plan the V-neck or just get carried away?”

Before I can answer, Jude is already there, shoving between chairs, eyes locked on Soren’s neck. His whole face crumples. “Oh my god.“ His voice cracks and he grabs Rhys’s arm without looking. “Rhys. Rhys, look. Look at them. It’s so cute. I can’t—I literally cannot—“ He presses both hands over his mouth and makes a sound like a teakettle.

Soren buries his face in my shoulder, probably blushing hard enough to catch fire. I pull him closer and don’t even try to hide my grin.

After that the party settles into its natural rhythm. Declan pulls burgers off the grill, Tessa pours drinks, and Aaron challenges Ava to a corn-eating contest that Callum referees with deadpan seriousness. Benji draws something obscene on a paper plate and slides it to Knox, who studies it with real artistic consideration before adding horns.

I end up at the grill with Declan. Not on purpose. I just drift over because grilling is something to do, and having a job still feels safer than standing around. Declan doesn’t say anything for a while. He flips some sausages, takes a drink, and watches Shay across the patio, who’s reorganizing the dessert table like he’s got a spreadsheet in his head.

“He rearranged my stockroom three times in the first week,” Declan says. Not to me, exactly. More like he’s talking to the sausages. “I thought he was criticizing my system. Took me two days to figure out he was nesting.”

I don’t say anything. I just stand there with the tongs and wait him out.

Declan turns to me, eyes steady. “You know the feeling. Where you think the only reason they keep you around is because of what you built.”

My grip tightens on the tongs.

“The bar,” he says. “That’s what I thought. Shay loves the bar, he loves the system, he loves fixing things. Take the bar away and what am I? Just some alpha who’s too old for him and talks too much about whiskey.”

He picks up a sausage, looks at it, puts it back down.

“Took me a while to figure out he wasn’t staying for the bar. He was staying for the man who built it.” He looks right at me. “You get that?”

My throat goes tight. I just nod.

“So stop staring at your own damn tree and look at the guy sitting under it.”

He claps me on the back, not as hard as Knox but it still lands heavy. Then he heads off to bring Shay a plate. Shay takes it without missing a beat in his conversation with Tessa, leans into Declan for half a second, then straightens up again like nothing happened.

I look across the patio. Soren’s in a lawn chair with Milo, their heads close together while Milo shows him something on his phone. Keats is balanced on Soren’s knee, and every so often his thumb goes back to the bird’s wing like he can’t help it. He laughs, and it takes over his whole body—shoulders shaking, head thrown back, the bite mark on his neck catching the lights.

My bite. My omega. He doesn’t know I’m watching, and all I want is to cross the patio, drag him out of that chair, and kiss him until he tastes like me for the rest of the night.

If he looked up and caught me staring, he’d just smile like he already knew what I was thinking.

The night gets softer as the beer kicks in and the music switches from Jude’s aggressive playlist to something slower—probably Soren’s doing. Couples start peeling off from the group, finding their own corners. Rhys pulls Jude off the bench and into a chair, and Jude immediately sprawls across his lap. Callum and Milo drift over to the porch steps, Milo’s head on Callum’s shoulder, Callum’s thumb tracing circles on his knee.