Chapter 10
The toast crunched between Ren’s teeth with a sharp crack that echoed through the kitchen. He chewed slowly. Swallowed. Grabbed another piece. Bit into it with the same unnecessary force.
Jax watched him from across the island, his fork suspended halfway between the plate of scrambled eggs and his mouth. He tilted his head.
“Who pissed in your cereal?”
Ren didn’t look up. He tore off another piece of toast.
“No one.”
“Yeah, right.” Jax shoved the fork into his mouth and chewed without taking his eyes off him. “You’ve been tearing up the bread for ten minutes like it insulted you. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Ren.”
The omega set the toast down on the plate. His fingers were trembling, not from fear but from something hotter, more acidic. Something that had eaten away at his sleep and left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth that even coffee couldn’t wash away.
“Brody and Zev,” he blurted out without preamble. “Are they together?”
Jax blinked. Once. Twice. The fork clinked against the plate when he dropped it. And then laughter exploded in his chest like thunder, huge, brutal, the guffaw that made the glasses on the counter rattle.
“Brody and…?” He clutched his side. His shoulders rose and fell like pistons. “Brody and Zev?”
Ren clenched his jaw. Heat climbed up his neck.
“I don’t see what’s so funny.”
“It’s not that it’s not funny… it’s all of it.” Jax wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He took a breath to compose himself, and looked at him. And the laughter cut off abruptly, as if someone had pulled a switch.
“Wait. You’re serious.”
Ren didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The color of his cheeks spoke for him, red from his ears to his collarbone, a visible fire beneath his pale skin.
Jax rested his elbows on the island and leaned forward. The smile curving his mouth was different from the laughter: precise, sharp, surgical.
“You’re jealous.”
“No.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m not jealous.” Ren pushed the plate away from him. “It’s a question. Simple curiosity.”
“Simple curiosity.” Jax repeated the words, savoring them like a piece of candy. “At seven in the morning. With that face. Tearing bread with your hands. Simple curiosity, he says.”
“Jax.”
“No, no, let me enjoy this.” He raised his hands. “I’ve been here three years and never, never, have I seen someone blush for asking something out of simple curiosity.”
Ren closed his eyes. The blood was pounding in his temples.
“Zev’s like his little brother,” Jax said, and his voice lost some of its edge. “Brody got him out of a shitty situation a long time ago. But there’s nothing like what you think. Zev’s an alpha, too.”
Ren opened his eyes.
“What you saw last night is exactly what it is. Brody makes sure he eats because Zev forgets. He forgets to eat, to sleep, to exist outside of whatever he’s doing on that tablet or his laptop. So Brody reminds him he has a body. That’s all.”
The information settled in Ren’s chest like cold water on a burn. Relief. Shame. Relief again, more intense, followed by a worse shame because the relief existed and it shouldn’t.
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered.
“It does matter.” Jax picked up his coffee. “You’re jealous that Brody’s looking out for someone else right under your nose. That’s what’s going on.”
“I’m not…”
The kitchen door opened.
Brody entered with damp hair, wearing a gray t-shirt that clung to his shoulders, its thin fabric seemingly unable to conceal what was underneath. He paused as he took in the scene: Ren lit up like a match, Jax with the look of a cat that had just found a bowl of cream.
“What?” Brody asked.
“Nothing,” Ren said.
“Everything,” Jax said at the same time.
Brody looked back and forth between them. His jaw tightened. The scent of raisins and walnuts flooded the kitchen, subtle at first, then thick, as if Ren’s presence were stealing the essence from his body without permission. Ren held his breath.
Brody poured himself some coffee and leaned against the counter. His gray eyes, rimmed with red, settled on Ren.
“Did you sleep?”
“I slept well.” The answer came out sharp. Cold. Ren felt it leave his mouth like a shard of glass and did nothing to soften it.
Brody held the cup halfway to his lips.
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t you believe me?”
Jax whistled softly.
“I told you. He’s been like this since he woke up.”
Ren fixed him with a stare that could have melted steel. Jax returned a placid, unfazed smile.
Brody set the cup down on the counter. The movement was slow and controlled.
“Ren, if something’s bothering you…”
“Nothing bothers me.” Ren cut him off and stood up from the stool, breathless.
“Why would anything bother me? I’m in a house that isn’t mine, surrounded by people I don’t know, with no idea when I’ll be able to leave or if I’ll be able to leave at all, wearing clothes that aren’t mine and sleeping in a bed that isn’t mine.
” The words came out fast, sharp, with a venom that wasn’t entirely directed at Brody, but that landed on him because he was the one closest. “Everything’s perfect. ”
The silence that followed was thick. Brody didn’t move. He didn’t respond. He just looked at him with those still, storm-gray eyes, absorbing the blow without acknowledging it.
“Well,” Jax muttered. “I’d say something is bothering you.”
“Jax, shut your mouth.”
“I’ll shut it, I’ll shut it.” He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying that for someone who’s fine, your jaw’s pretty clenched.”
Ren spun on his heel. His face was burning. His chest was burning. Everything he could name, and everything he couldn’t, was burning. He wanted to get out of that kitchen, out of that house, out of that body that betrayed him with every breath that caught Brody’s scent and turned it into hunger.
“Don’t you have a gym around here?”
The question came out of nowhere. Or maybe not. It came from where it had been building up ever since he set foot in the mansion: the need to hit something, to feel his muscles work, to regain some control over a body that belonged to him less and less each day.
Jax raised his eyebrows.
“Look around,” Ren said, pointing first at Jax and then, unintentionally, at Brody. “You’re all made of concrete. There’s a gym somewhere. Don’t tell me there isn’t.”
Jax turned his head toward Brody. His smile widened with the poisonous slowness of a snake opening its mouth.
“Shall I show him the training room?”
Brody didn’t answer right away. His gray eyes shifted from Jax to Ren, from Ren to the space between them. His jaw tightened.
“Be careful with his right shoulder.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my shoulder,” Ren cut in.
Brody looked at him.
“You hit the library doorframe when you ran out last night.”
Ren felt the air catch in his throat. Had Brody seen it? Brody saw everything.
“I’m fine.”
“Right.” Brody picked up the mug and took a long sip. The conversation ended there, sealed by the sound of the ceramic against the countertop.
Jax stood up. The chair scraped against the tiles. He walked over to Ren and slung an arm around his shoulders—a quick, brotherly, carefree gesture—and guided him toward the door.
“Come on, blondie. I’m going to show you what real sweat feels like.”
Ren allowed Jax to lead him. As he crossed the threshold, he turned his head. Brody was still leaning against the counter, the mug in his hands, his knuckles white around the ceramic. His gray eyes fixed on Jax’s hand on Ren’s shoulder.
Jax saw him too. And the smile he directed at Brody over Ren’s head was neither brotherly nor carefree. It was a statement, a challenge wrapped in amusement, and Ren knew, even if he didn’t want to, that Jax was doing it on purpose.
The door closed behind him. The scent of raisins and walnuts faded into the hallway like the smoke from an extinguished candle.
Ren took a deep breath for the first time all morning.
The training room occupied the entire basement of the east wing.
Black rubber flooring, mirrors on two walls, a heavy punching bag suspended from the ceiling by industrial chains, bars, weights, and in the center an open space covered with dark gray tatami mats that smelled of old sweat and disinfectant.
Ren stopped at the door. His eyes scanned every corner hungrily.
“Not bad, huh?” Jax tossed him some hand wraps from a metal locker. Ren caught them on the fly. “Do you know how to use them, or should I put them on for you?”
Ren was already wrapping them around his knuckles. Quickly, tightly, without a single crease out of place. Jax watched him with his arms crossed, and something shifted in his expression. The mocking smile faded, replaced by something more serious, more attentive.
“Where did you train?”
“At a gym way shabbier than this one.” Ren flexed his fingers inside the wraps. “My instructor was excellent, but the facilities were nothing like these.”
“What discipline?”
“Krav Maga. Some boxing. Whatever my instructor thought would be useful for someone my size.”
Jax nodded. He took off his shirt and tossed it into a corner.
“Let’s see what you remember.”
The first twenty minutes were a disaster.
Not for lack of technique, but for lack of use.
Ren felt his muscles stiff, his joints rusty, like machinery abandoned in a garage for too long.
His legs responded half a second too late.
His arms blocked where they should, but the impact of Jax’s blows reverberated right down to his bones.
And Jax was huge. Bigger than Brody, which Ren wouldn’t have thought possible.
Every time the alpha took a step forward, Ren felt like a brick wall was bearing down on him.
But Ren knew that feeling. He’d spent his whole life being the smallest, the lightest, the one the alphas looked at and dismissed.
He ducked under a hook, spun, and drove an elbow into Jax’s ribs.
The impact was solid. Jax let out a gasp.
“That hurt.”
“Good.”