THE ALPHA I REJECTED IS MY ROOMMATE

NOVA

Her hand went up before she decided to move it.

Flat against his face, palm over his eyes, and then her body followed the momentum, and she was against his chest. Wet skin on warm skin. The towel was still in her other hand, both fists locked around it, knuckles aching from how hard she was holding on.

Caden didn't move.

Not a flinch, not a step back, not a single thing. He just went still under her hand, the way something goes still when it's paying very close attention.

His chest was hot. She'd expected that after a run, but felt it was different. She was cold from the shower, still dripping, her hair flat against her neck, and everywhere she touched him, the heat came through, and her body moved toward it without asking her first.

Don't, she thought.

Her wolf didn't think anything. Her wolf had stopped being verbal about it and gone somewhere quiet and specific and was just pressing itself toward him one slow inch at a time, like it thought she wouldn't notice.

She noticed.

"Don't look," she said. Her voice was wrong. Too high, too thin, nothing like the voice she'd been using for the last two days. "Just. Keep them closed."

He said nothing.

His hands were at his sides. She could feel the exact effort it was taking him to keep them there, something held back in how his arms sat, tension she could read through his chest.

Water dripped from her hair onto his collarbone. She watched it run down and away and told herself to step back but didn't.

"Ash."

Low. Her false name in his mouth sounded different up close. Like he was testing the weight of it.

"I know you're not moving your hand."

"I know that."

"You're also not moving."

"I know that too."

His chest rose. Fell. That slow, careful breathing of someone managing themselves. She could feel his heartbeat under her palm where it rested against his face, or maybe that was her own pulse; she genuinely couldn't tell anymore.

The steam from the shower still hung in the air around them. The bathroom was small on a normal day. Right now, it was about the size of her own heartbeat.

"Tell me to go," he said.

She said nothing.

"Ash. Tell me to go, and I'll go."

Her forehead dropped. She didn't mean to let it happen; it just did, gravity making the decision her brain kept refusing to make, and it came to rest against his collarbone, and she felt him pull in one sharp breath and hold it.

Neither of them moved for a long moment.

Then his hands came up.

Slow. So slow she could have stopped it at any point. Both hands settled at her waist over the towel, barely in contact, the kind of touch that was asking a question instead of taking something.

She didn't stop it.

The shaking got worse. She felt it in her own hands, against his face, against his chest – her whole body doing something she couldn't control and didn't know how to name.

This is how it ends, some part of her said. Day two. You made it to day two at least.

Her wolf pressed forward so hard her ribs ached with it.

******************************************************************************************

CADEN

Her forehead was against his chest, and he couldn't see anything, and both of those facts were doing something to him he hadn't been prepared for.

He'd had his hands at his sides. He'd kept them there on purpose, deliberately, because she was afraid and shaking and the last thing he wanted was to be one more thing she couldn't manage. But staying still had its own cost, and he was paying it with every breath.

When his hands moved, he felt her go rigid.

He kept them where they were. Just that. Just the lightest contact at her waist, feeling the terry cloth under his palms and, underneath it, the shape of her, and his wolf went so still it was almost silence.

He knew that stillness.

He'd felt it once in his life before, standing in his father's council room at nineteen years old, when the old alpha looked at him and said, 'You're ready,' and something in him had just known it was true. That specific, total certainty. No argument, no question.

His wolf felt that now.

About her.

About whatever she was hiding under the mask and the past days of careful deflection, whatever she was that didn't match what she'd told him, whoever she actually was that his hands and his nose and some part of him that predated thinking had been trying to tell him since the first day in the courtyard.

He kept his eyes closed.

She hadn't asked him to anymore, but he kept them closed because she needed him to, and that fact alone was doing something to the inside of his chest that he was going to need to think about later when she wasn't pressed against him, shaking.

"Ash," he said. Quiet. Just her name.

Her fingers curled slightly against his face. That cold hand is going warm now where it touched him.

He turned his head, just slightly, just enough that his jaw brushed her knuckles.

Felt her breath catch against his chest.

Heard the small sound she swallowed before it could get out.

His hands tightened at her waist. Not pulling. Just there. Just present. Saying something he didn't have words for yet and wasn't sure he was supposed to say.

The steam thinned around them.

Her heartbeat was going fast against his chest, faster than the shaking, faster than her breathing, and it matched something in him that had no business matching anything.

He turned his face a little more.

His lips were close to her knuckles now. Not touching. Just close, just that, and he felt her whole body register it, felt the small shiver move through her that she tried to stop and couldn't.

"Who are you?" he said against her hand.

Just asking. Quietly. Like he already knew the answer and was giving her the chance to say it first.

She didn't say anything.

Her forehead pressed harder against his chest.

One of her hands was still flat over his eyes. The other had found the hem of his shorts without either of them appearing to decide that was happening, her fingers curled against the fabric there, holding on.

He stood in the dark behind her palm and felt her against him and thought about the training ground and the dorm room and the courtyard on day one and every moment in between where something had been slightly wrong in a way that was starting to feel entirely right.

"You can tell me," he said.

Nothing.

Just her breath and her heartbeat and her cold wet hair against his chin and both her hands on him now, one over his eyes and one at his shirt, and neither of them are going anywhere.

"Okay," he said.

He meant it. Okay. Whatever this was, whatever she was, wherever this was going.

His thumbs moved slightly at her waist. Just that. Just a small back and forth against the towel, barely any movement at all.

She made a sound.

Tiny. Swallowed almost instantly. But he heard it.

His wolf slammed forward.

He held it back by sheer force and stood there breathing carefully and waited for her to decide what happened next.