A message from his profile. The first reply he's ever sent me.
You owe me a new shirt. This one smells like you now and I can't wear it in public without getting hard.
I stare at the screen. Read it twice. Three times.
Then I type:Keep it. I'll give you more.
The typing indicator appears immediately. Then:
Don't make promises you can't keep, TA boy.
I'm smiling. Sitting in my wrecked, slick-stained office with beard burn on my neck and his taste still in my mouth, I'm smiling so hard my face hurts.
I keep all my promises. You know that.
He sends back a single emoji. The little fire one. And then, a minute later:
Thursday. 2pm. Don't be late for your own office hours.
I lock my phone and lean back in my chair and let his scent soak into me. The bond hums in my chest, warm and steady and, for the first time since the hotel, answered.
Jude
I've rearranged my bed again and it's still wrong.
The pillows are wrong. The blanket is wrong. The sheets are clean and I hate them because clean means they don't smell like anything useful. I've got Rhys's button-down balled up against my pillow, the one from his office that still carries his scent. My omega latches onto it like a life raft every time I lie down. But one shirt in an apartment that smells like five omegas and Benji's incense and whatever lavender thing Soren plugged into the outlet last week is not cutting it. My body wants something I can't build here.
It's making me insane. I catch myself fluffing the same pillow for the third time and throw it across the room.
"You good in there?" Shay calls from the kitchen.
"Great. Fantastic. Living my best life."
"You just threw a pillow at the wall."
"It deserved it."
Shay appears in my doorway, mug in hand, eyebrows raised. He takes in the state of my room: the stripped-and-remade bed,the pile of discarded blankets in the corner, the shirt clutched against my chest that I'm definitely not hugging.
"You're nesting," he says.
"I'm redecorating."
"Jude. You pulled every blanket out of the hall closet at seven a.m. Soren had to wrap himself in a towel."
"Soren should mind his own business."
"You're nesting and you can't get it right because this apartment isn't where your omega wants to be." He says it flat, like he's reading the weather. That's Shay. No softness, no pity. Just the truth, handed over like a receipt.
I don't answer because he's right and I'd rather eat my own shoe than admit it.
He takes a sip of his coffee. "Text your alpha."
"He's not my alpha."
"He literally bit you."
"That's not— it's complicated."
