Page 2 of Rebound My Alpha
“Did you tell him to fuck off?” I ask, already grinning. This is the energy I was missing.
“I told him I’d rather chew glass than let him buy me a drink, and he said”—Shay drops his voice into a mocking, gravelly alpha tone—“‘I love a challenge.’ Like, congratulations, you’ve watched one pickup artist YouTube video. Revolutionary.”
“Should’ve let Declan throw him out.”
Shay waves his hand. “Declan was just watching from behind the bar like he was observing a nature documentary. I handled it.” He pulls his phone out, scrolling aggressively. “And THEN on the way home I checked KnotMe, and my top match is a guy whose bio says ‘looking for my forever person’ with a photo of him holding a puppy. A PUPPY, Benji. As a prop.”
“A prop puppy. That’s bleak.”
“The whole thing is bleak. Fated mates, scent matching, the app—all of it. Jude and Milo got lucky. Statistically, the rest of us are going to end up matched with prop-puppy finance broswho think consent is a suggestion.” He tosses his phone onto the cushion. “I’m never letting that cesspool ruin my life.”
“Bold stance from someone who checks it daily,” I point out.
“Research. I’m studying the enemy.”
I laugh, and it feels good. The apartment feels alive again with Shay taking up space and bitching about things. Soren watches us over his book with that quiet almost-smile he gets when Shay and I get going.
Shay grabs his phone and starts scrolling again, turning the screen toward me. “Look at this one. ‘Alpha, 28, I cook and I clean and I’ll treat you right.’ That’s not a dating profile, that’s a dishwasher ad.”
“Swipe left on the dishwasher.”
“Already did. This one’s holding a fish.”
“Why do they always hold a fish?”
“Because they have nothing else to offer.” Shay scrolls faster. “When are you getting back on this hellscape, by the way? Your meme account is getting stale.”
The question sounds casual, but it hits me right in the chest. “I deleted that months ago.”
“You’re hiding.”
“I’m retired. There’s a difference.”
“Uh huh.” Shay holds his phone out. “Come on. For research. Someone needs to feed the account.”
I look at his screen, then at my phone, face down on the table. The itch is back, sharper now. It’s not about the logo anymore. It’s about the fact that my skin hasn’t been touched by anyone but me for long enough that my body's getting aggressively annoying about it. And it’s about the reason I deleted the app in the first place—one hookup that turned into three months of checking my phone like a pathetic idiot, wondering why someone who’d knotted me against a wall and whispered filthypromises into my neck had vanished like I’d imagined the whole thing.
I grab my phone and download KnotMe before my brain catches up to my hands. “For the meme account,” I say.
“Obviously,” Shay agrees.
“Strictly anthropological.”
“Sure.”
The app loads. I swipe through the setup, muscle memory carrying me through the screens I deleted six months ago. Profile’s still there. Old photos, old bio, everything exactly as I left it before I swore this off. I start swiping. Shay leans in to roast profiles with me, and it’s easy. It’s fun. Two prickly omegas doing what we do best—tearing apart people who will never know we exist.
A gym selfie. Swipe left. A group photo where I can’t tell which one he is. Left. A bio that says “no drama,” which is always code for “I am the drama.” Left. A shirtless mirror pic with a caption about being dominant in the streets and gentle in the sheets. Left, and I screenshot it for the meme account.
Then the next profile slides into view, and my thumb stops.
No face. The photo is of a forearm, angled to show the tattoo work crawling from wrist to elbow. Dark lines, precise shading. A style I’d know anywhere, because I spent an entire night tracing those lines with my fingers while he was inside me. The username is different. The bio is almost empty—just a city and a designation. But the ink is unmistakable.
My stomach bottoms out.
Knox.
He’s on KnotMe. The guy who ghosted me, who slipped out of our hotel room before sunrise, who deleted his profile and vanished. He’s right here, forearm on display like a fucking billboard for the worst mistake of my life. One hookup that shouldn’t have mattered but did, because my stupid omegabiology decided that the alpha who couldn’t even stay until morning was somehow the one worth aching over.
