Page 9 of Keep My Alpha

“I don’t have a set.”

“You have poems about anonymous wooden birds and a perfect alpha who might not exist. That’s a set, Soren.”

Hearing it out loud makes it sound insane. It also sounds like exactly the kind of thing I’d pay to hear someone else read, which is unfortunate.

“I don’t want to mess anything up.” I know she doesn’t understand what I mean, but it’s the truth. I’m too embarrassed to explain it to her.

Hannover gives me a look that’s somewhere between affection and exasperation. “Soren. You’re a writer. The whole job is saying the thing out loud and trusting that it survives. Believing in the story doesn’t break it.”

She squeezes my shoulder once, firm, and walks away. Her sandals slap softly on the library carpet until she rounds the corner and I’m alone again with the books and the flyer crumpling in my fist.

I smooth it out. The deadline is coming up soon.

Keats shifts in my pocket, and I press my thumb against her for comfort. How do I explain without sounding crazy that putting my poems on a stage feels like ripping the glass off a snow globe and expecting the scene to stay perfect?

I pull a sticky note from the pad in my back pocket, uncap the pen behind my ear, and hover it there. This is something else I do: leave little notes in the books for people to find. Usually I write stuff like You’ll get through this or Make today a good day. But today, words are hard. I stare at the pen for a long time, so long that an ink spot forms underneath the tip. Then I sigh and scribble out Say yes. I tuck the note into the book I just shelved, fingers hovering on the edge of the paper for one heartbeat before I let it go.

Someone will find it. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next month. They’ll read the words and feel a little better, and they won’t know where it came from. Anonymous kindness. Tiny spells for strangers.

***

“Absolutely not,” I say, watching Jude scroll through KnotMe profiles on his laptop with the laser focus he usually reserves for sneaker drops. “I’m not doing this.”

“You’re doing this,” Jude says without looking up. He’s on the floor, cross-legged, laptop on his knees. His claiming mark peeks above the collar of Rhys’s stolen shirt, silver-pink and healed. “You’ve been waiting for fate to hand-deliver you a soulmate via woodland creature, and I love that for you, but we need a backup plan.”

“The birds aren’t a plan. They’re a...” I search for the word. “Situation.”

“A situation,” Benji repeats from the rug, where he’s sprawled on his stomach drawing tiny, furious birds on one of my coasters with a Sharpie. Which is apparently his version of solidarity. “That’s what we’re calling it.”

“Benji drew you anger birds,” Milo calls from the kitchen, where he’s mixing cookie dough with the focus most people reserve for defusing bombs. He nudges a glass of water toward the edge of the counter, like someone might want it later. Milo always sets out more than anyone asked for. “That means he cares.”

“They’re not anger birds. They’re punk birds.” Benji holds up the coaster. The bird has a mohawk and what appears to be a middle finger. “See? Punk.”

“Gorgeous. I’ll treasure it forever.”

Jude pats the floor next to him. “Come here. Sit. Look at options. You don’t have to swipe right on anyone, just look.”

“I don’t want to look. Looking feels like giving up on—“

“On the mystery wood elf who’s been leaving you handmade gifts for a year and hasn’t introduced himself?” Jude raises both eyebrows. “Babe. I love the romance of it. I made you a playlist about it. But at some point, waiting for someone who won’t show their face starts to feel less like faith and more like a really pretty cage.”

That stings. Not because he’s wrong, but because I already know what the backup plan looks like. I’ve done the KnotMe thing, once or twice. Matched with perfectly nice alphas who had good hair and warm hands. Went on dates that were fine. Ended up in beds that were also fine, but felt absolutely nothing close to the ache I carry around for a person I’ve never met. One of them wrapped a blanket around me afterward and asked if I wanted to stay, and I almost cried because it was so close to the thing I actually want but not quite, the way a photocopy of a painting is technically the same image.

None of them carved me anything. None of them noticed which bench I sit on.

“You know what I think?” Benji says, still drawing. His voice goes flat and casual, the way it does right before he says something sharp enough to draw blood. “Whoever’s leaving those birds has it bad. That’s not a prank and it’s not random. That’s long-game courting behavior. That’s siege-level commitment.”

The room goes quiet. Even Jude stops scrolling.

“I’m just saying.” Benji shrugs and goes back to his coaster. “Anyway. The app’s also fine, I guess.”

“Statistically,” Shay says from the hallway, where he’s doing something to the router with a screwdriver and his phone flashlight, “the probability of your anonymous admirer also being on KnotMe is nonzero. If fate is real, the app is just a delivery mechanism. You’re not betraying destiny by expanding your data set.”

“Thank you, Shay, for making romance sound like a research methodology.”

“You’re welcome.”

Milo appears with a glass of wine I didn’t ask for and sets it on the coffee table near my knee. He gives me a pointed look. “You don’t have to go on a date if you don’t want to. But maybe just... see who’s out there? It doesn’t have to mean anything.”