Chapter 13 #2
Brody looked better. The purplish dark circles that had marked his eyes since Ren had arrived at the mansion had softened.
His shoulders no longer bore the tension of a cable about to snap.
His skin, usually as pale as Ren’s, had a warmer tone, as if the blood were circulating better. As if something inside him had settled.
And Ren knew what that something was. He knew because his own body was screaming it at him from every cell, from every nerve ending that had ignited under Brody’s hands the night before.
He was glad for him. In some small, hidden corner he didn’t plan to admit out loud, he was glad that Brody seemed less broken.
“I need you to move your things into my room.”
That small, hidden corner burst into flames.
“What?”
“Your clothes. Your stuff. Whatever you have in the other room.” Brody said it as if he were announcing the lunch menu. “We’re sleeping together from now on.”
“No.”
“Ren.”
“I said no.”
“Why?”
Ren let out a dry laugh that scraped his throat.
“Why? Are you seriously asking me why?”
Brody stepped away from the desk. One step toward Ren that Ren countered with a step back.
“You said yes to me. You asked me to fuck you. Those were your exact words.”
Every syllable landed on Ren’s chest like a punch more accurate than the one he’d thrown at the gym.
“I was in heat.”
“And you said yes to me.”
“I said yes to sleeping with you.” Ren pointed at himself with the box of suppressors still in his hand as if it were legal evidence. “To fucking, Kovac. Not to move into your room as if we were a damn newlywed couple.”
Brody’s gray eyes darkened. The red rims of his eyelids flared in a way that sent a chill down Ren’s spine from top to bottom.
“It’s the same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“It is to me.”
“Well, not for me.”
Brody took another step. Ren bumped into the back of the leather chair in front of the desk, and the chair rolled to the side with a pathetic squeak.
“You gave me your consent. You accepted the bond with your body. What else do you need to understand that we’re together?”
The words burned. Because they were true, and because they were a lie at the same time.
“I didn’t accept any bond. I accepted your help with the heat because the pain was killing me. That’s not the same as saying ‘I do’ Brody, let’s move in together and share a closet.”
“I’m not talking about sharing a closet.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you being my mate.” His voice trembled as he said it. Just for a moment. A tiny crack in that concrete facade. “And that the night we spent together wasn’t just sex.”
Ren felt the pull. He felt it in his gut, in his ribs, at the base of his skull where Brody’s pheromones pooled like thick honey. His whole body leaned toward the alpha like a compass needle toward the north.
And that was precisely why he stepped back.
“I don’t know how to do this, Brody.”
“Do what?”
“This.” He gestured toward the space between them with a sharp flick of his hand. “Whatever you think this is. I don’t know about relationships. I don’t know about mates. I don’t know about sleeping with someone based on my desire, instead of being sold, given away, or traded as a bargaining chip.
The silence that followed was thick. Brody absorbed it with his jaw clenched and his knuckles white against the edge of the desk.
“This isn’t the same.”
“How do you know? How do I know?” Ren backed up to the door.
The box of suppressors crinkled between his fingers.
“I’ve been the omega my father rents out to the highest bidder for too long.
I don’t have the faintest idea what it means for someone to want to sleep with me without expecting something in return.
So no, I’m not moving my stuff into your room just because you fucked an omega in heat and now you think that gives you some rights. ”
“I’m not talking about rights.”
“Then what?”
“I’m talking about protecting you.”
“I can protect myself.”
Brody exhaled through his nose. A low, animalistic sound, heavy with frustration that filled the room with dark, heavy pheromones that clouded Ren’s vision for a second.
“I’ve seen you protect yourself, Ren. I picked you up off the floor of my security booth, half-dead with fear, with a crumpled piece of paper in your hand. Don’t tell me you can protect yourself!”
The blow landed where it hurt the most. In his pride. In the truth.
Ren clenched his teeth until his molars ground together.
“Fuck you, Kovac.”
“You already did that last night.”
Ren’s eyes widened. The flush returned to his face with such force that even his eyelids burned. Brody didn’t move. He kept a straight face. He didn’t apologize. He stood there, his eyes fixed on Ren and that stony expression that offered no apology for anything.
“I’m not moving into your room.”
“Ren.”
“I said no.”
He yanked the door open and stepped out into the hallway with the box of suppressors pressed against his ribs and his heart pounding in his ears so loudly he didn’t hear if Brody said anything else.
The air smelled of wet earth and jasmine.
Ren was sitting on the stone bench under the magnolia tree in the backyard, his legs drawn up to his chest and the box of suppressors balanced on his knee.
He hadn’t opened it. He looked at it as if it contained instructions for a life he didn’t know how to live.
The mid-afternoon sun warmed the back of his neck. The birds were singing. Everything was absurdly peaceful for someone who felt a storm raging inside his skull.
He heard the footsteps before he saw Jax. Heavy, wide footsteps that made the gravel on the path crunch with the delicacy of a rhinoceros strolling through a glassware shop. Jax plopped down next to him on the bench, and the stone groaned under his weight.
“What the hell have you done to him?”
Ren didn’t look up from the box.
“Who?”
“The only alpha in this house who looks like he just swallowed a hornet’s nest.” Jax stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. “He has locked himself in his office for an hour, growling at anyone who comes near. Rocco brought him coffee, and he nearly ripped his head off. And I’m not kidding.”
“I have done nothing to him.”
“Ren.”
“We had an argument.”
“About what?”
Ren twirled the box between his fingers. The pills rattled inside with a dry, medicinal sound.
“He wants me to move into his room.”
Jax said nothing for three seconds. Ren counted each one.
“And?”
“And I told him no.”
Another three seconds of silence. Ren looked up and met Jax’s expression, which wasn’t one of mockery or amusement but of genuine incomprehension. As if Ren had spoken to him in a language that didn’t exist.
“Wait. Let me get this straight.” Jax leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“Yesterday you were the one who went to his office to ask him to help you with your heat. You slept with him in his bed willingly, sealing the bond between you. And today you’re telling him you don’t want to sleep in his bed because fucking doesn’t mean being together. ”
Put that way, it sounded awful. Ren clenched his jaw.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s exactly that simple.” Jax ran a hand over his face. “Ren, do you know what it means to an alpha when his destined omega seeks him out during his heat?”
The wind rustled the magnolia leaves.
“I’m not his omega.”
“You are. You know it. He knows it. Everyone in this damn house knows it because you two reek of each other in a way that gives me a headache.” Jax looked him straight in the eye.
No amusement, no mockery, just a gravity Ren had never seen in him before.
“When a destined omega seeks out his alpha during his heat and asks him to take him, for the alpha, that’s an acceptance.
Not of sex. Of the bond. Of everything. It’s the holiest thing that exists between fated mates, and you gave it to him and then ripped it away as if it meant nothing. ”
Something snapped inside Ren’s chest. Not with a crash. With a dull crack, like an old branch giving way under the weight of snow.
“I didn’t know…”
“What didn’t you know? Haven’t you read that book I saw you fiddling with in the library about fated mates?”
“Apparently I didn’t get to that part.”
“Well, you should have read it before you went and climbed into the bed of an alpha who’s been tearing himself apart inside for days just to keep from touching you.”
The words landed on Ren like stones. One by one. Precise. Necessary.
He remained silent. The birds kept singing. The jasmine kept smelling. The world kept turning as if it hadn’t tilted on its axis.
“I didn’t do it on purpose, Jax.”
“I know.”
“I was dying of pain. I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t think.”
“I know.” Jax softened his voice by half a degree. Just half. “But he doesn’t know that. He only knows that his partner came to him, gave himself to him, and this morning walked out of his bed without saying a word, and now he’s telling him that fucking isn’t the same as being together.”
Ren lowered his feet to the floor. The gravel pricked through the thin soles of his borrowed shoes.
“It’s not that I don’t want…” he started, then fell silent.
“It’s not that you don’t want what?”
“A relationship with him.”
Jax raised an eyebrow. He waited.
“It’s just that I don’t know what to do with my life, Jax.
” Ren rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
They stung. “A week ago I was at home thinking my father had sold me for one more night, like always. Then it turns out he’s sold me for a year.
Then they auction me off like cattle. Then a stranger hands me a piece of paper.
Then I run away. Then I end up here. Then it turns out I have a partner who smells like everything I’ve ever wanted and never had.
And my body says yes, but my head doesn’t even know where I am or who I am or if I’ll still be alive tomorrow or if they’ll sell me again. ”
His voice cracked on the last sentence. Just a little. Just enough.
Jax didn’t touch him. He didn’t come closer. But his presence grew denser, more solid, like a wall blocking the wind.
“Tell him that.”
“Tell him what?”
“What you just told me. That it’s not that you don’t want him. It’s that you don’t even know who you are right now.”
Ren let out a bitter laugh that scraped his throat.
“And is that going to fix anything?”
“It’s going to fix him stopping believing that you used him and discarded him.” Jax stared at him without blinking. “Because that’s what he believes right now, Ren. That his destined mate fucked him for convenience and then told him it meant nothing. Do you know what that does to a bonded alpha?”
No, he didn’t know. But he could imagine it.
He thought of the exhaustion he’d seen on Brody’s face days ago, the dark circles etched beneath his gray eyes, how the unrequited bond had been consuming him from the inside ever since Ren arrived at that house.
And now, after a night in which Brody believed Ren was finally giving in, the rejection must feel like a knife between his ribs.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Shit.”
Ren stood up from the bench. His legs were shaking. Not from fear. From something worse: shame.
“Go talk to him,” Jax said from behind him. “And apologize.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Open your mouth. Say you’re sorry. Then tell the truth. The hard part comes on its own afterward.”
Ren looked at him over his shoulder. Jax was now sitting on the bench with his arms crossed, the evening light casting shadows across his cheekbones. There was no trace of mockery. Nor of his usual humor.
“Since when are you a relationship counselor?”
“Since the two idiots I live with are incapable of talking without tearing each other apart.”
Ren swallowed. His hand held the heavy box of suppressors, which felt as if it were made of lead.
He started walking toward the house. The jasmine accompanied him for a few meters and then gave way to the older scent that already permeated the mansion’s walls. Raisins. Nuts. Warmth.
Home.
His body leaned toward it as it always did. But this time, for the first time, his head didn’t protest.