Page 37 of Sold to the wrong Alpha
He lathered himself up twice. He scrubbed his neck with care. His wrists. Behind his ears. Every spot where the pheromones clung most tightly. The water washed it all away, and Ren closed his eyes and breathed in the scentless steam.
You can accept his protection without accepting the bond.
He repeated it to himself as he turned off the faucet. As he dried himself with the white towel someone had left folded next to the shower. As he dressed in the jeans and t-shirt from the day before. It could be practical. It could be transactional. Brody offered security. Ren needed it. End of the equation. There was no need to add anything else. He didn’t need the sweatshirt, or the warmth, or the feeling of belonging somewhere.
He combed his wet hair back with his fingers. In the mirror, the person staring back at him had a firm jaw and straight shoulders. Good. That was better.
The sweatshirt was still on the floor when he stepped out of the bathroom. He didn’t pick it up. He didn’t look at it.
The hallway smelled of coffee, and something fried. Ren went down to the first floor and followed the scent to the kitchen, his stomach tight with hunger and nerves. He didn’t know if Brody would be there. He didn’t know what face to make if he was. He didn’t know how to look a man in the eye after having slept wrapped in his clothes like an abandoned puppy seeking comfort.
He pushed open the kitchen door and stopped.
Jax took up half of the kitchen island. Not metaphorically. Literally. The man was a mountain in human form: a back as broad as a two-door wardrobe, arms straining the seams of a black t-shirt that would likely have been loose on any other body, and hands the size of frying pans clutching a bowl of cereal. He chewed with his mouth closed and read something on a tablet propped against the juice pitcher.
Ren walked in without saying hello. He opened the fridge.
“You’re look like shit.”
Ren didn’t turn around. He studied the inside of the fridge more closely than necessary: milk, eggs, a Tupperware container with what looked like rice, fruit, butter.
“Thanks.”
“No, seriously.” Jax left the spoon in the bowl. The metal clinked against the ceramic. “Did you get any sleep?”
Ren took out the milk and the fruit. He closed the fridge with his elbow.
“I slept.”
“And yet you still look like that?”
Ren set the milk down on the counter harder than necessary.
“I don’t have a choice but to feel this way, okay? It’s not like I can choose to wake up fresh and rested when my body thinks every alpha within a twenty-meter radius is an invitation.”
Jax looked at him. No mockery, no trace of the sarcastic tone from the night before. He just looked at him, with those dark eyes that didn’t match his size because there was something too calm in them, something too measured for a body built for destruction.
“You can always choose.”
Ren opened his mouth to reply. He closed it. The phrase hit him sideways, at an angle he hadn’t expected, and lodged there like a splinter under a fingernail.
You can always choose.
“It’s easy to say when your biology isn’t holding you hostage.”
Jax picked up his spoon. He shoveled a mouthful of cereal into his mouth, then chewed and swallowed.
“Your biology doesn’t choose for you. It pushes you. Pushing isn’t the same as deciding. You decide whether you walk in that direction or plant your feet on the ground.”
Ren stood motionless by the counter with a banana in his hand and the milk open. Jax’s words were simple. Almost banal. The thing someone would write on a motivational mug or the back cover of a cheap self-help book. But coming from a man who could probably break a table with his bare hands and who, yet, sat eating cereal for breakfast like a twelve-year-old reading his tablet, they carried a different weight. They carried the weight of someone who knew strength and had decided not to use it.
You always have a choice.
Ren peeled the banana slowly. He sliced it onto a plate. He poured milk into a glass. The motion gave him time to think, to let the splinter sink in a little deeper. Because Jax was right. Ren had been in that house for three days, blaming his biology for every moment of weakness. For the shiver when he ran into Brody. For the erection in the shower. For the deep sleep wrapped in someone else’s sweatshirt. As if his body were a separate entity acting against him, a traitor lodged beneath his own skin, an enemy he couldn’t expel because they shared the same flesh. But that wasn’t it.
His body was pushing him. It was making his pulse race. It was making his skin damp. That was true. But the decision to grab the sweatshirt had been his. The decision to put it on, his. The decision to fall asleep breathing in Brody, his. His biology had set the table, but Ren had sat down to eat. He leaned against the counter and bit into a slice of banana. He chewed it slowly. And then the thought shifted.
Because if he could choose, if biology pushed but didn’t decide, if the agency was still his even when his body screamed at him to give in, then every resistance he had offered until now was also a choice. Every time he had pulled away from Brody. Every time he’d fought against the pull of the bond. That wasn’t biology overcome by will. It was will against biology.
