Chapter 1 #2
We go back and forth for ten minutes. Jude types increasingly filthy options.
Benji vetoes most of them on aesthetic grounds.
Soren suggests one line—something simple and warm that's also somehow hotter than anything Jude wrote—and everyone agrees it stays.
I insist on keeping one thing: a mention of late-night baking.
Because it's mine, it's real, and if someone doesn't like it, they can keep scrolling.
Halfway through the great bio debate, my phone buzzes with a text. Ava's name lights up the notification bar.
Friday still good? Cal's bringing his garlic bread. Fair warning he's been weird about it, like practicing or something lol
My hand jerks toward the phone. I hope nobody notices. Cal. Callum in Ava's kitchen on Friday, sleeves rolled up, that quiet, focused expression he gets when he's doing something with his hands—
"Earth to Milo." Jude snaps his fingers. "Who texted?"
"Ava. About dinner Friday." My voice comes out normal. I'm a miracle.
"Oh, fun. Tell her I said hi. Is Callum coming?" This is Jude asking a perfectly innocent question, and it drops like a stone in my stomach.
I nod, keeping my eyes on the phone, typing back yeah sounds good! with a thumbs-up emoji. Because I'm a person who sends thumbs-up emojis to the sister of the man I've been fantasizing about since the moment I met him. Cool. Normal.
"All right, this is it." Jude holds the phone up ceremonially. The profile stares back at me—my photo, my bio, my preferences ticked off in little boxes. "Ready?"
Benji raises an invisible glass. Soren gives me an encouraging nod.
I look at the photo one more time. The sweater, the strip of stomach, the golden light.
My thumb hits the button.
"He's live!" Jude yells, loud enough that someone in the next apartment definitely hears. He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me. "My baby boy is on KnotMe! I take full credit! Rhys, babe, if you're listening through the bond—" He cups his hands around his mouth. "ANOTHER ONE ENTERS THE ARENA."
"You are so embarrassing," Benji says, but he's almost smiling.
Soren unfolds himself from my bed, brushing lint off his joggers. He squeezes my shoulder on his way past—his hand steady and grounding—and pauses in the doorway. "Goodnight, Milo. I hope you find someone nice."
"He doesn't want nice," Jude calls after him. "He wants someone who can—"
"Goodnight, Jude," I say firmly.
He cackles but takes the hint, grabbing the weighted blanket off my floor—"This is MINE, for the record"—and heading for the door. "Rhys is waiting. My alpha gets clingy when I'm gone too long. It's disgusting and I love it. Bye!"
Benji lingers for a second after Jude's gone, still in the desk chair, scrolling his own phone.
He doesn't look up, but he says, "The photo really is good, Milo," in a voice so stripped of his usual edge that I almost don't recognize it.
Then he stands, shoves his phone in his pocket, and disappears down the hall.
His bedroom door clicks shut a moment later, and the bass line of something moody starts thumping through the wall.
The room feels bigger without them in it.
Quieter. Jude's cedar-and-leather scent is already fading, mixed with chamomile from Soren's abandoned mug on my nightstand.
My bed is a wreck—Soren's butt-print in the pile of rejected clothes, the dent where Jude was sprawled, my pillow on the floor from when he threw it at Benji.
I straighten the blankets, put the pillow back, and lie down. My phone rests on my chest. It buzzes. And buzzes. And buzzes again.
I open KnotMe. Seven matches already, and more rolling in.
Alphas with strong jaws and gym selfies and bios that say things like 6'2, dominant, generous or looking for a good omega to take care of.
One has kind eyes and a golden retriever in his photo, and I tap through his profile because he seems.. .fine. He seems fine.
His message says hey gorgeous, wanna chat? and it's perfectly nice and I feel absolutely nothing.
I swipe through more. A dick pic. A sweet-looking alpha who says you have a really nice smile, and I think—that's kind, this is a person being kind to me—and I close his message anyway.
A firefighter with broad shoulders and an easy grin, and for half a second my thumb stops and my gut flutters.
But his eyes are brown, not blue-green, and I close his profile before I can talk myself into settling for close enough.
I put the phone face-down on the nightstand. The screen keeps lighting up, little pulses of notification against the wood, flickers on the ceiling that I don't look at.
Benji's bass line thumps faintly through the wall.
He'd deny being in his feelings to his grave, but the playlist says otherwise.
The fridge hums. My pile of blankets is warm and arranged the way I like them, tucked around me in a shape I'd never call a nest—because calling it that would make it real, would make it an omega thing I'm doing alone, and that thought sits too close to something that aches.
The bed smells like clean sheets and the cinnamon from whatever I baked this afternoon. Nothing else. No one else's scent. Just mine. Just the same smell I fall asleep to every night, alone, in a bed that's only ever held one person. Some nights that's fine. Some nights it isn't.
The phone buzzes again. I don't look.
I press my face into the pillow beside mine—the empty one, the one that's always cold—and close my eyes.