Page 15 of Sold to the wrong Alpha
And something else.
Something new welled up beneath his sternum and spread as a seismic wave, hot and liquid, and told him with the irrational certainty of an ancient instinct: this alpha is yours.
Ren jumped back. He tore himself away from the contact as if Brody’s arm were red-hot iron and retreated until his back hit the wall of the guardhouse. The impact rattled his teeth. He remained pressed against the surface, arms crossed over his chest, eyes wide open, his breath reduced to quick gasps that scraped at his throat.
Brody didn’t follow him. He stayed where he was, his arm still half-extended in the air, his gray eyes fixed on Ren with that impassive expression that never changed, that revealed nothing.
“All right.”
He let his arm drop. A deliberate gesture of retreat, like a large animal withdrawing its claws to show it could.
Ren didn’t move from the wall. His heart was pounding so hard he was sure Brody could hear it, could smell it, could read every damn signal his omega body was giving off.
Because that’s what it was. A betrayal.
Twenty-one years building a body that could defend itself. He spent those years training strikes, studying weak points, and learning to read intentions in the eyes of men larger than him. For twenty-one years, he swore to himself that no alpha would touch him without his permission, that his secondary gender wouldn’t define him, and that he would be more than the sum of his pheromones.
And all it took was an accidental hug for all of that to crumble.
The sensation was still there. Pulsing beneath his sternum like a second heart. Warm. Sweet. Obscene. It told him to get closer, to press his body against Brody Kovac’s again, to let that arm wrap around his shoulders and that hand hold him and that scent envelop him until the world disappeared. It told him that this alpha was his, that he belonged to him with the same inevitability that the river belongs to the sea, and that the only thing Ren had to do was surrender.
Surrender.
The word made him so nauseous that he had to clench his teeth to keep from vomiting.
His father expected surrender when he sold him. With his seven hundred thousand dollars, Dimitri Reznov had purchased surrender. The entire world expected a handsome, blond omega with crystal eyes to surrender, to lie down, to spread his legs, and to be thankful for the honor of being chosen.
And now his own body was asking him for the same thing.
A sound escaped him, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Brief. Dry. Bitter as bile.
“Don’t touch me.”
The words came out broken, but firm.
Brody nodded once. A minimal movement of the head. No offense, no surprise, nothing Ren could use as ammunition.
“I won’t. Follow me to the house. You can walk on your own.”
Without checking if Ren was following, he spun around and left the guardhouse. He didn’t slow his pace. He didn’t turn his head. With the same heavy, measured cadence as before, he walked toward the mansion glimpsed through the trees, leaving a trail of raisins, nuts, and cinnamon in the night air that Ren would follow even if he didn’t want to, because his body had already decided for him.
He hated it. Resented every step he took behind Brody Kovac. Detested the false calm that scent injected into his veins. Loathed that part of him which hurried to keep pace with his own footsteps. And above all, he hated the certainty that what he’d felt when he’d collided with that chest would not disappear just because he wanted it to.
The garden stretched out like a small, tamed forest. Old oak trees flanked a light-colored stone path that wound its waybetween trimmed hedges and dark flower beds, invisible under the waning moon. Ren walked three steps behind Brody, the exact distance at which the alpha’s scent lost enough intensity to be bearable while remaining traceable.
It wasn’t enough.
The night air tainted every breath. Raisins. Nuts. Something toasty and deep, like fresh-baked bread, like his grandmother’s kitchen when Ren was six, and the world hadn’t yet taught him what it meant to be an omega. As the scent entered his nose, it traveled down his spine, settling into a hot knot between his hips that throbbed with his heartbeat.
The suppressants.
How many hours has it been since the last pill? Before his brother placed him in the car, and he was told they were going to dinner with their father. Before the casino, the white room, the rubber hands that stripped him, the platform. His body had been running on terror and adrenaline ever since, and the terror was a brutal but temporary suppressant. Now that the immediate danger had faded, now that something primal inside him had decided that Brody Kovac’s presence equaled safety, the unregulated chemistry was collecting its debt.
His hands trembled. He clenched his fists.
The path crunched beneath his bare feet. The smooth stones were cold, and that sensation of discomfort was the only thing keeping him anchored to reality, because the rest of his body was doing things Ren hadn’t allowed it to do.
Heat. An intense heat rising from the center of his chest, softening the muscles in his thighs, shoulders, and jaw. A heat he knew from the simulations that the suppressors couldn’t fully block during his cycles—those brief flashes of need that lasted minutes and that he quelled with cold water and rage. But thiswasn’t like those flashes. This was a slow, thick, constant wave that licked at his ribs from the inside and whispered in the voice of his own cells that the alpha walking ahead of him was the answer to a question Ren had never asked himself.
