Page 40 of Why Cruise

I stood, realizing for the first time I was surrounded by alphas. They all had their eyes on me. When had the pool deck gotten so crowded? Everyone was in port.

I snatched up my hat, keeping my eyes down, and settled back into the chair. I pulled the binder back into my lap, but the words on the page didn’t register.

Daryl had warned me never to be alone with alphas. All it would take was one bark and they could have me do anything. Anything. He’d prove it to me, too. We’d go to breakfast, and he’d bark at me when my hand was hovering over the muffins. Or he’d press his aura into me when I was choosing jeans instead of a skirt.

“Omegas shouldn’t wear pants. They get in the way of what I want.”

“So,” a familiar voice drawled beside me, “are you going to tell me why you’re pretending to read that book upside down?”

I looked up, pulling my head out of a spiral, to find Ren stretched out casually beside me. I looked back down at the binder on my lap and then back at Ren. I carefully turned the binder the right way around.

“I was hoping if I looked busy enough, they’d take the hint,” I admitted, not sure why I was being so honest. Ren was a complete stranger. And an alpha. And yet… he didn’t make me feel any of those things, the bad things.

“Subtle hints are lost on most alphas. They need baseball bats to get the point.” Something in his tone made me laugh despite everything going on in my head.

I closed the binder, my fingers tracing the edge. “Can I ask you something?”

“Baby girl,” he said, “you can do whatever you want with me.” His voice did things to me, but his eyes were kind.

The question tumbled out before I could stop it. “Do all alphas decide what their omegas have for breakfast?”

Ren didn’t answer right away. His expression didn’t change. His eyes didn’t roam my body like he was looking for a snack.

“Never mind,” I blurted. “It’s stupid.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, his voice soft but firm as he looked out over the pool and the clusters of alphas slinking away. “And no, they don’t. There are people like that, but it has nothing to do with being an alpha.”

“How do you mean?”

“Being an alpha means I have certain biological traits. A knot. An aura. The ability to form pack bonds. And yes, a bark,” he said, stretching his long legs out, weighing his words carefully. “But being controlling? Dictating what someone eats or wears or thinks? That’s not alpha biology. That’s just being an asshole.”

“But alphas are supposed to take care of their omegas.”

“Taking care of someone doesn’t mean controlling them,” he said, his dark eyes holding mine. “It means making sure they have what they need to thrive. To be themselves.”

“Themselves,” I huffed out a bitter laugh. “How is an alpha supposed to know that when I don’t even know that?”

Ren sat up and turned to face me, his elbows resting on his knees as he leaned in. He was quiet for a long while, but there was nothing demanding in his silence. For possibly the most alpha-y alpha male I’d ever met, his presence was… different. No press of aura forcing me to fill the silence, no silent command for my attention.

“I was with my alpha for ten years,” I found myself saying. “More really, if you count the two years we dated before I perfumed at 16.” I twisted the edge of my cover-up between my fingers. “I’m not sure right now what were things I wanted and what were things he wanted. And now he’s… well.” I just shrugged because I’d die before I tell Ren I got dumped because I sucked at heat.

Ren just nodded. He didn’t threaten to tear Daryl apart. He didn’t jump in and give me a long list of to-dos to fix the situation and make me a better omega. He just nodded.

“So what’s the thigh tattoo say?” I asked, trying to change the subject, desperately needing the pressure off me.

He hitched up the leg of his swim shorts, revealing more of the black script curling around his muscled thigh. “‘Redemption.’ It’s a Lunar Rift song title.”

“Lunar Rift? That’s old school.”

Ren clutched his chest in mock offense. “I was sixteen with questionable taste in music only about a decade before you were sixteen, so it’s not old school. It’s classic, baby girl.”

“Ew,” I made an exaggerated gagging sound. “You’re old enough to be my father.”

“Hardly, but you can call me Daddy anytime you want.”

“That’s terrible,” I laughed, feeling my face heat.

Ren stretched out on the lounger, tucking his hands behind his head with a satisfied smirk. “Why don’t you go back to your book? I’ll keep the sharks at bay.”

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