Page 110 of Sold to the wrong Alpha
The kitchen emptied the way a tide empties. Without urgency. Without noise.
Jax gathered the remaining plates from the table and carried them to the sink where Marta already had the water running. The beta made room beside her and the two of them started washing up in a companionable silence that did something strange to Ren’s chest. Jax, the man who could shatter a skull with his bare hands, drying cups with a checkered tea towel while Marta passed him the soapy plates. He found it endearing in a way he couldn’t explain. Something so domestic, so small, so ordinary in the middle of a life that was anything but. Jax set the cloth on the counter, winked at Ren and left without another word.
Marta dried her hands on her apron and looked at Sergei, who was still sitting with his half-finished coffee and his back straight as though keeping guard even there.
“You. Come with me.”
Sergei raised an eyebrow.
“I’m going to show you where you’ll sleep. And where the towels are. And where not to walk with wet feet if you don’t want me to kill you myself.”
Something that might have been the beginning of a smile crossed the Russian’s mouth. He stood, left his cup in the sink and followed Marta. The beta looked him up and down with an expression that contained more approval than suspicion and guided him out of the kitchen. Their voices faded down the hallway, hers giving instructions with the authority of someone who has governed that house for years, his answering in monosyllables that sounded almost docile to Ren.
And then the kitchen fell silent.
Just the two of them. The mid-morning sun came through the window overlooking the garden and bathed the wooden table in a soft light that smelled of coffee and toast and that background scent Ren no longer tried to separate from the air because it was the air itself. Raisins and walnuts. Home. Brody.
Brody hadn’t moved. He was still in his chair with his hand on Ren’s thigh and his eyes fixed on him with that quiet intensity that at first had felt unbearable and now felt necessary.
“Are you all right?”
The question was simple. Unadorned. Without a trap. Brody asked it with his voice slightly rough from tiredness and the weight of the night they had behind them and the hours of adrenaline that hadn’t yet finished draining from their bodies.
Ren turned his head to look at him. He had the black hood dropped over his shoulders and the tactical vest still on with one knife fewer in its sheath. His dark hair fell smooth across his forehead and the shadows carved dark grooves beneath his gray eyes with their reddened edges. He was beautiful in a way that shouldn’t have been possible after a night like that one.
“I’ve never been better in my life.”
He said it without thinking. Without calculating. Without measuring whether it sounded too vulnerable or too soft or too omega. He said it because it was true and because he was tired of being afraid of the truth.
The sound that came from Brody’s throat wasn’t a word. It was something deeper, more animal—a low groan that rose from his chest and vibrated in the space between them like a plucked string. Satisfaction. Relief. Something primitive that the alpha made no attempt to disguise or contain. His hand closed a little more firmly on Ren’s thigh.
Ren dropped his gaze to that hand. To the bruised knuckles and the black gloves he still hadn’t taken off.
“I thought you were dead.”
The words came out heavier than he had expected. Denser. Because he had been carrying them inside since he watched the blood soak through Brody’s chest in that wrecked car, since he shouted at Jax down the phone that Brody had been shot, since arms that weren’t his had torn him away.
“The bullet. The blood. You weren’t moving. And they dragged me out of the car and I couldn’t—”
His throat closed.
“But the bond didn’t break.”
Brody watched him without interrupting. Without filling his silences. Just watching.
“I felt it here.” Ren touched the center of his chest with his fingers. “Like a thread that wouldn’t go out. Faint. Very faint. But it was there. And every time I thought I was going to lose my mind in that room of Reznov’s, I focused on that. On the fact that you were still somewhere out there because the thread hadn’t been cut.”
He swallowed.
“And our child. That kept me alive too. Knowing that what was inside me was yours and mine and no one else’s. Not Reznov’s. Not my father’s. Not anyone who could buy it or sell it. Ours.”
Brody pulled off his right glove with his teeth, let it fall on the table, and took Ren’s hand. Skin against skin. Brody’s fingers were cold and Ren’s were warm and when they interlaced the contrast sent a shiver traveling up from his wrist to his chest, where the thread now vibrated with force.
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“To our room.”
