Page 31 of Sold to the wrong Alpha
On the fourth beat, shame washed over him like ice-cold water.
Valois. He was a Valois. But his grandmother had been a Foix and had had tea with the ambassador’s wife when Ren was still crawling across the marble floors of the house in Montpellier. His mother had played the piano in three concert halls in Paris before marrying Julian and letting that man strip her of everything, even of her name, until she was left empty. The Foix of Montpellier had been something. They had been a name, a history, a legacy. And Julian had sold it all—the estates, his mother’s jewels, their dignity, and finally his own son—for a poker table and a line of cocaine in a casino bathroom.
And now Ren was crying in the arms of a stranger because his omega body was begging for more.
He pushed him away. His hands flat against Brody’s chest, arms outstretched, all his strength poured into a sharp shove that moved the alpha a centimeter backward. Brody gave way. He didn’t resist, didn’t grab, didn’t growl. He gave way, his arms falling onto the bed, a look on his face that Ren didn’t want to decipher.
“Don’t touch me.”
His voice came out rough. Guttural. It didn’t sound like him. Ren wiped his tears with the back of his hand, and the gesture struck him as childish, unworthy of someone who had learned to fight in a Brooklyn underground gym at sixteen because he knew the world was going to eat him alive.
Brody raised his hands, palms open. A universal gesture. Don’t shoot.
“Okay.”
“Don’t touch me,” Ren repeated, because the first time hadn’t been enough. Because he needed the command to exist between them like a physical wall, something tangible that Brody couldn’t cross and that Ren couldn’t ignore.
“I won’t.”
Brody stood up. The air between them grew cold, and Ren felt the loss like a tear in his skin. His whole body screamed at him to close the distance, to put his hands back on that warm neck and the furious pulse, to bury his face in the hollow between the alpha’s shoulder and jaw where the scent would be denser, more concentrated, more his.
His hands trembled.
He stayed seated there. His fingers clenched the sheet until his knuckles turned white. The cotton smelled of mild detergent and nothing else, and Ren was grateful for that neutrality like a castaway is grateful for a plank.
Brody didn’t move. He stood two meters from the bed, his hands now in his pants pockets, his jaw clenched. His gray eyes fixed on Ren with an intensity that Ren felt in his stomach, in his thighs, at the base of his spine.
“Can you…” Ren swallowed. “Can you stop smelling like that?”
The question was ridiculous. He knew it. But he asked it anyway because he needed to say it, he needed Brody to know that every breath Ren took in his presence was a battle, that the kiss hadn’t been a choice but a surrender, and that Ren Valois didn’t surrender. Ever. Not when Julian beat him at fifteen for refusing to act like a submissive omega in front of his partners. Not when his father’s debt collectors broke two of his ribs at nineteen. Not when they stripped him naked, put him in a latex jumpsuit, and hoisted him onto a platform so that men with money could decide how much his body was worth.
Not now.
Brody took a slow breath. Ren saw him attempt to control his pheromones, pull them back, and chemically shrink in the room. The scent didn’t disappear—it couldn’t disappear—but it faded, retreating toward Brody like a receding tide.
The relief was partial. Ren’s body was still hungry, open, every pore oriented toward the alpha like a compass toward the north. But his mind could breathe. His mind could think again.
“Thank you,” he said, and the words tasted like ash.
Brody nodded. He took a step toward the door.
“Brody.”
The alpha stopped.
“Don’t ever kiss me again.”
The gray eyes held his gaze for a second that lasted too long. Then Brody opened the door and walked out without saying a word, and the air in the room remained empty, clean, unbearably cold.
Ren lay on his side and hugged his knees to his chest. His body ached as if he’d just had a fever.
Three days.
Three days without Brody crossing the line Ren had drawn between them. Three days without physical contact, without coming within a meter, without pheromones pulling him in or his voice drawing him in. Brody was keeping his end of the bargain. He showed up at meals, sat at the far end of the table, and spoke only when necessary. He relayed information in short sentences: that Reznov’s men were still searching, that Rocco was keeping the routes under surveillance, that Ren had to stay on the property.
Ren ate. Slept. Read in the library without retaining a single word. Walked through the gardens when the sun beat down hard because the heat numbed his skin and allowed him to forget for whole minutes that his body remained oriented toward a specific point in the mansion, always, like a broken compass.
And he observed.
