Sealed : The Alpha King's Return

CH 5 The Anchor

Morning came the way it always did in that apartment — Marcus loud and cheerful about it, Alfred quiet and unconvinced.

"You had the dream again," Marcus said. Not a question. He said it while pouring coffee into two mismatched mugs, casual as weather, because eleven years of friendship had taught him exactly how much weight Alfred could carry in conversation before six a.m.

"It wasn't a big deal."

"Sure." Marcus slid a mug across the counter. "That's why you look like you went twelve rounds with your own skull. And lost."

Alfred wrapped both hands around the coffee and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that wouldn't sound insane out loud. That he dreamed, every few nights, of the exact moment his life had been quietly, deliberately dimmed by a woman whose face he could still describe in more detail than his own mother's. That the dream never felt like imagination. That it felt, every time, like memory finally finding its way home.

Marcus didn't push. He never did, not really. He just made sure Alfred knew the door was open, then let him decide whether to walk through it.

They'd built an entire life on that arrangement. Marcus talked enough for both of them, filled silences that would otherwise have swallowed Alfred whole, made jokes at exactly the moments Alfred needed something to laugh at instead of think about. In exchange, Alfred did what he'd always done: stood between Marcus and whatever trouble came looking, in the ring and out of it. The way Marcus had once stood between him and a bigger kid over a bunk assignment neither of them even remembered anymore.

It wasn't family, not the way the word was supposed to mean. But it was the only version of the word that had ever actually held.

"Security shift tonight," Marcus said, checking his phone with the gravitas of a man announcing the lottery numbers. "That building downtown. The one with the ridiculous lobby you keep pretending not to be impressed by."

"I'm not impressed by it."

"You absolutely are." Marcus pointed at him with a spoon. "You get this face every time. Like this." He squinted, jutted his chin out, and did a terrible impression of Alfred trying to look bored while staring at the marble floors. "Like you're doing math about how many years of guard shifts it'd take to afford the lobby plant."

Alfred snorted despite himself. "I do not make that face."

"You do. You also do it at the coffee machines. And the elevators. And that one receptionist with the perfect hair."

"I am going to throw this mug at you."

"You won't." Marcus grinned, completely unbothered. "Because I'm the only person who makes you coffee that doesn't taste like regret. And because deep down, you love that I see you."

Alfred rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched. That was as close to a smile as Marcus was getting before noon, and they both knew it.

They finished breakfast in the kind of comfortable quiet that only existed between people who'd run out of things they needed to prove to each other years ago. Outside, the city was waking up around them the way it always did — indifferent, enormous, entirely unaware that anything unusual walked its streets.

Marcus leaned back, kicking his feet up on the chair opposite. "You know what we should do after shift? Get a terrible takeout. Sit on the roof. Pretend we're rich and judge everyone."

"Marcus."

"What? A man can dream. Besides, someone has to be the anchor."

Alfred looked up at that. Marcus wasn't looking at him now. He was staring at the chipped paint on the ceiling like it was a masterpiece.

Anchor. That was what Marcus had called himself years ago, half-joking, after Alfred had a nightmare and almost tore their old dorm room apart."Someone's gotta keep you tied to the ground, big guy."

Alfred didn't say it out loud. He just bumped Marcus's foot with his own under the table.

Marcus grinned without looking down.

Alfred didn't know, that morning, that unusual was about to become an understatement.

He only knew that the cold, watching feeling from the night before hadn't fully faded.