My Roommate's Alpha Father (Primal Alphas #15)

1. Maya

MAYA

The elevator opens directly into his apartment, which is my first indication that Grant Lawson lives in a different world than I do.

I step out with my notebook under my arm, secondhand coat buttoned to the throat, and take in the penthouse—floor-to-ceiling glass, neutral stone, furniture that costs more than my annual stipend. I am approximately the size of a thumbtack.

Becca said it would be weird.

He's going to do weekly check-ins, she told me from the airport, loading her carry-on into the overhead bin over FaceTime. He does it with all my roommates. He's just like that. Say yes and he'll cover your rent, Maya. I'm serious. Just say yes.

I said yes. What I did not account for was this: Grant Lawson at six-foot-five in a charcoal suit on a Friday evening, already watching me exit the elevator like he was expecting me and is mildly disappointed I'm only exactly on time.

"Maya." He doesn't ask if I'm her. He just knows.

"Mr. Lawson." I extend my hand. He takes it—firm, brief, warm—and something in the air catches me off guard. Cedar, dark and layered, something underneath that I can't quite name but that makes my breath slow in a way I'd prefer it not to. "Thank you for having me."

"Sit." He gestures toward the low couch facing the window. "Do you want coffee?"

"I'm fine, thank you."

He comes back with coffee for himself anyway and sits across from me—unhurried, no small talk, not filling the silence with anything—and I wait for him to start and he just looks at me.

Studies me. The city glitters forty stories below.

I keep my eyes on it rather than his face, which is the kind of face that repays extended attention in ways that are not appropriate for a first meeting with your landlord's parent.

Sharp jaw. Dark eyes. The kind of authority that isn't performed. Load-bearing.

"How long since Becca left?" he says.

"Three weeks."

"And in those three weeks, how many meals have you skipped?"

My eyes come back to him. "How do you—" I stop. "That's a specific question."

"You've lost weight since her graduation dinner. That was six weeks ago. I noticed then that you were thin for an Omega your height. You're thinner now."

He noticed six weeks ago. At a table with twelve people, five competing conversations, two bottles of wine. He noticed.

I process this and don't know what to do with it, so I set it aside.

"Grad school," I say. "Busy semester."

"When did you last eat breakfast?"

I open my mouth. Close it.

He waits. He's good at waiting—it's the same patience as his stillness, the same discipline. He's going to wait as long as it takes.

"Tuesday," I say.

"It's Friday."

"Yes."

He sets down his coffee cup—precise little sound against glass. "Do you skip breakfast because you believe it's unnecessary, or because you run out of time?"

"Time. And sometimes food."

"What time is your first class?"

"Nine-thirty."

"And you're up at?"

"Seven. Sometimes seven-fifteen."

"That's two hours." Flat. No judgment, just math. "There's no version of that schedule where breakfast is impossible. You're choosing to skip it."

My spine goes up a little. "I'm choosing to prioritize other things."

"You're an Omega in a doctoral program under chronic stress.

Your biology requires more caloric support than you're providing.

Your cognition degrades without consistent glucose.

Your heat cycles will become irregular." He picks up his coffee again.

"None of those outcomes serve you or your research. "

He's not wrong, which is irritating.

"So you're saying I should eat breakfast," I say.

"I'm saying you're going to eat breakfast before every class. Starting Monday."

Something in the sentence lands different from what I expected. Not you should—advice, a suggestion, easily dismissed. You're going to. Present tense. Certain. The words hit my chest with a weight that Becca's seven texts a day about taking care of myself never had.

"That's a rule," I say.

"Yes."

"You're giving me rules."

"The check-ins have structure. Structure requires accountability.

" He meets my eyes and there's nothing unkind in his—no condescension, nothing that treats me like a child.

Just attention. Complete. Without gaps. "I'm not your father.

I'm your landlord, and I told Becca I'd look after who I put in her apartment.

You are not currently being looked after. I'm correcting that."

"And if I don't follow the rule?"

"Then you'll tell me why when you come back Friday. And I'll want the specific reason." His gaze doesn't move. "Not a general reason. Not 'I was busy.' What happened, precisely, that made breakfast impossible?"

He's not threatening me. He's promising accountability—its own kind of threat and its own kind of relief.

I've been making promises to myself for four months and breaking every one and I haven't had to answer to anyone about any of it.

Becca worries in a warm, unfocused way. My advisor checks on my thesis, not on me.

My family is three time zones away and I tell them everything is fine.

Nothing is fine. But no one has asked the right questions.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay?"

"I'll eat breakfast."

The corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile—an acknowledgment. The way he acknowledges a correct answer. "Good."

After that he asks about my thesis. Not the polite version—the actual research.

He asks what problem I'm solving, why the field has failed to solve it, and who the existing literature is protecting by not solving it.

He listens while I explain the gap I've been trying to fill for eight months and he doesn't say interesting approach the way everyone else does, including my committee.

His questions are sharper than anything I've heard in eight months.

"The gap you're identifying," he says when I finish. "Is it a limitation of prior research or deliberate exclusion?"

I open my mouth. Close it. "I've been framing it as a limitation."

"Don't." He sets down his coffee. "Exclusion is a stronger argument. It makes the counter-evidence non-accidental. Your entire theoretical contribution strengthens."

I write it down. He watches me write it down and says nothing until I look up.

I've been in this program for eight months. I've sat in my advisor's office for seventy-minute meetings and come out with interesting approach and a to-do list. Grant Lawson gave me a thesis reframe in six minutes while his coffee went cold.

"Next Friday," he says. "Same time."

"Okay."

"I'll ask about breakfast."

I nod.

"I want the honest answer." He stands and I stand with him—all of him, six-foot-five, the cedar scent a little stronger at close range, something warm underneath it that makes my Omega biology register Alpha, present, calm in a way it hasn't registered since I moved to this city.

I step back toward the elevator before the biology has time to become a thought. "Thank you, Mr. Lawson."

"Grant." Flat. Non-negotiable. "You're not a student here."

"Grant," I say.

He walks me to the elevator and presses the button and we wait and the cedar of him is closer at this distance, dark and warm and threading into the air I'm trying to breathe normally.

My pulse has gone slightly off-rhythm. I keep my eyes on the floor numbers above the door and pretend I am not aware of him at all. The doors open. I step in.

"Goodnight, Maya."

"Goodnight."

The doors close.

On the way down I stand in the mirrored elevator and look at myself. I look like someone who has just been given a rule about breakfast by her best friend's father and is somehow going to follow it.

I eat breakfast on Saturday. And Sunday.

Monday morning I set an alarm fifteen minutes earlier and make eggs and eat them at the kitchen table where Becca's houseplant is slowly dying in the window, and the whole time I'm thinking about Friday.

About the way he said good when I agreed.

About how the word landed somewhere it had no business landing.

I eat breakfast every day that week.

Not because I want to. Not because I'm deeply committed to my own glucose levels or my heat cycle regularity.

Because Grant Lawson is going to ask me on Friday and he'll want the real reason if I failed, and I do not want to sit across from him at that glass table and tell him I couldn't manage the one thing he asked of me.

I don't examine why that is. Not yet.

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