The Alpha’s Promise
By Randy M Schilling · Chapter One sample
Manhattan Warmth
Mac
The car smelled like Melvin. Mac caught the familiar combination of skin and the faint musk of panther the moment they climbed into the cab at JFK. After years together, he could have picked that scent out anywhere. It stayed with him as Manhattan’s evening skyline slid past the window, amber light flashing across water towers and buildings too tall to take in all at once.
Mac leaned back against the seat and let the city happen around him. No one was calling his name. No one needed a decision, a signature, or an Alpha’s attention. The Pack house in Colorado might as well have been on another planet.
Beside him, Melvin was watching the streets with the particular stillness he always got when he was orienting himself, cataloguing landmarks, filing the city back into memory. His posture had shifted about three blocks ago, a subtle straightening Mac caught from the corner of his eye.
“Almost there,” Mac said.
“I know where we are.” Melvin didn’t look away from the window. “I lived here, remember?”
“I remember you visited your sister a lot and pretended that counted as living here.”
Melvin turned his head just enough to give Mac a look that was mostly narrowed eyes. “You’ve been in New York for forty-five minutes and you’re already starting.”
“Starting what?”
“You know what.”
Mac smiled and said nothing. The cab swung left onto a narrower street, past a bodega with fluorescent lights buzzing over fruit crates, past a row of brownstones with stoops lit by the soft glow of windows above. Melvin’s hand rested on his thigh, close enough that Mac could feel the warmth of it through the denim. He didn’t reach for it. He didn’t need to. The nearness was the point.
The cab pulled up in front of a building Melvin clearly recognized. He was already reaching for the door handle before the car fully stopped.
“You’re paying,” Melvin said.
“I always pay.”
“That’s because you’re a gentleman.”
“That’s because you’re cheap.”
Melvin snorted and stepped out onto the curb. Mac handed the driver a folded bill and followed, shouldering his bag as the cab pulled away into the evening traffic. The air outside was cooler than he’d expected, carrying the particular smell of a city that never quite stopped cooking, never quite stopped breathing. It was nothing like Colorado. That was the point.
He caught up to Melvin at the building’s front steps, his hand finding the small of Melvin’s back as he moved past him toward the door. The gesture was automatic, the kind of touch Mac didn’t think about anymore. Melvin didn’t react to it either, which was the same thing as saying he’d expected it.
The stairwell was narrow and warm, the walls painted a color that had probably been cream once and had since given up. Their footsteps echoed in the tight space as they climbed. By the second landing, Mac could smell garlic and something braising, and beneath that, the familiar trace of Jasmine’s apartment, a mix of the incense she burned when she was working and the particular brand of coffee she refused to switch from. Through the door came the sound of a man’s laugh, familiar enough that Melvin glanced back at him with a smile before knocking twice and pushing the door open.
“You’re supposed to let me answer,” Jasmine called from somewhere deeper in the apartment.
“You never lock your door.”
“That’s not the point.”
She emerged from the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel, and the first thing she did was look past Melvin directly at Mac. “You look tired.”
“Hello to you too.”
“I said hello to him,” she said, jerking her thumb at Melvin. “I told you you look tired. Those are different things.”
Jasmine Hayes was shorter than her brother, with the same quick intelligence in her face and none of his interest in hiding what she was thinking. She’d cut her hair shorter since the last time Mac had seen her, and she was wearing a sweater with sleeves too long for her arms, the cuffs pushed up past her wrists. She hugged Melvin first, brief and firm, then turned to Mac and did the same without hesitation.
“Get inside before you let all the heat out,” she said, stepping back to make room. “Mom’s been pretending she isn’t watching the clock for the last half hour.”
“I was watching your oven,” their mother said from behind her. “There’s a difference.”
Melvin dropped his bag beside the door just in time for her to reach him. She put both hands on his face before drawing him down into a hug, and Mac watched his husband’s shoulders loosen as he bent to kiss her cheek. Whatever Melvin had been about to say disappeared into a quiet greeting meant only for her.
Their father came around the end of the counter and waited for his turn, catching Melvin by the shoulder and pulling him close with a firm hand between his shoulder blades.
“Good to see you, son. Flight all right?”
“Fine. He spent most of it pretending he wasn’t asleep.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” Mac said.
Melvin’s father looked past his son’s shoulder. “Of course you weren’t.”
Melvin laughed against him, then stepped aside as his mother reached for Mac. She hugged him with the same unhurried affection she’d given her son, holding on long enough to make it clear that arriving with Melvin didn’t mean he could slip past with a polite hello.
“She’s right,” she told him as she drew back. “You do look tired. Come in and sit down.”
“I’m beginning to think you all rehearsed this.”
“We didn’t need to,” Melvin said.
His father was already holding out a hand, but when Mac took it, he pulled him straight into a hug. Mac shifted his bag out of the way and returned it, feeling the solid pressure of a palm against his back.
“There he is,” Melvin’s father said. “Come tell me how you’ve been.”
“I’m standing right here,” Melvin said. “Your actual son. The one you raised.”
“I remember. You just told me the flight was fine.” His father took Mac’s bag before he could object and set it beside Melvin’s. “I’d like to hear something else now.”
Jasmine folded the dish towel over her shoulder. “I told you he only comes here to see Mac.”
“Apparently I’m transportation,” Melvin said.
His mother patted his cheek as she passed him on her way back to the kitchen. “Then we’re very grateful you brought him.”
Mac met Melvin’s eyes over his father’s shoulder and didn’t bother hiding his smile. Melvin shook his head, but he was smiling too as he followed his mother.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” Jasmine said. “You’re not allowed to complain about it.”
“Why would I complain?” Mac asked.
“Because my brother complains about everything I cook, and you married him, so I’m assuming you’ve picked up his bad habits.”
“I don’t complain,” Melvin said. “I offer constructive feedback.”
“You told me my jambalaya tasted like regret.”
“That was feedback.”
Their mother turned from the counter to look at him. “You ate three helpings.”
“I was trying to identify the problem.”
Mac left them to it and moved deeper into the apartment with Melvin’s father. It was small in the way New York apartments always were, the living room and kitchen separated by a counter that doubled as a dining table and a workspace and probably a dozen other things Jasmine had decided it could be. Books were stacked on every flat surface, some of them bristling with sticky notes. A laptop sat closed on a shelf beneath the window, displaced by the narrow table someone had pulled out to accommodate all five of them. Two folding chairs stood beside it, and a string of lights across the fire escape cast a warm glow against the glass.
Melvin’s father settled into one end of the couch and gestured for Mac to take the other. He asked how they’d been, then listened as Mac described Melvin’s determination to have everything handled before they left Colorado, including several things Mac was fairly certain could have waited until they got home. His father laughed and glanced toward the kitchen, where his son was apparently having opinions about which plates Jasmine should use. With the conversation drifting easily between them and laughter carrying across the apartment, Mac found himself settling back against the cushions.
“And you?” Melvin’s father asked when he’d finished. “Getting any time to yourself out there?”
“Some.”
The older man gave him a look that suggested he’d heard that answer before and hadn’t believed it then either. “Well, you’re here now. Let somebody else answer the phone for a few days.”
Mac glanced toward the kitchen, where Melvin had been handed something to taste and was considering it with enough seriousness to annoy his sister.
“That’s the plan.”
“Good.” Melvin’s father leaned forward to move a stack of books off the low table, then paused when Jasmine called his name.
“Not that pile. The other one.”
He shifted his hand to the second stack without argument. “I’ve been here an hour, and I still haven’t learned where I’m allowed to put my drink.”
“Don’t touch the stack by the window either,” she told Mac. “It’s structural.”
“I wasn’t going to touch anything.”
“Good. Melvin used to rearrange my books when we were kids. Alphabetical by author. I’d spend a week trying to find things.”
“I was helping,” Melvin said from the kitchen, where he’d already started opening cabinets to find plates.
“You were being insufferable.”
Mac got up to make room as Melvin’s father carried the books to the shelf Jasmine indicated. He leaned against the counter and watched Melvin move through the small kitchen with the ease of someone who knew exactly where everything was. Jasmine handed him a stack of plates without looking at him, and he took them without looking at her, and the whole exchange had the practiced rhythm of two people who’d grown up sharing a kitchen much smaller than this one.
“He does that at home too,” Mac said. “Reorganizes things and calls it helping.”
Melvin shot him a look across the counter. “Whose side are you on?”
“Hers, right now. She made dinner.”
Jasmine grinned and spooned something that smelled incredible onto a serving dish. “I like him more every time you bring him here.”
“You liked him from the beginning,” Melvin said.
“I did. That’s not the point. The point is I keep finding new reasons.”
They crowded around the table, shifting chairs and negotiating space until everyone could sit without blocking the kitchen. Mac took one of the folding chairs, only for Melvin’s father to catch the back of it before he lowered himself.
“That one rocks. Give it here.”
“It’s fine.”
“I know it is. I’ve been sitting in it since before you got here.” He exchanged it for the chair at his own place and sat down before Mac could argue. “There. Now pass me your glass.”
Mac handed it over, accepting the wine and the chair with a quiet thanks. Across the table, Melvin’s mother was adjusting a serving dish to make room for the bread while Jasmine told her she could have just asked someone to move it. Nobody had paid much attention to the exchange, although Melvin’s hand settled briefly on Mac’s thigh as he took the seat beside him.
Jasmine served the food without ceremony, passing plates and telling Melvin to stop hovering over the bowl like she was going to snatch it back. The conversation moved quickly around the table, Jasmine needling her brother about something from their childhood that Mac hadn’t heard before and Melvin firing back with a story that made her point her fork at him in warning. Their parents corrected details when it suited them, usually making the story worse for whichever of their children had started it.
Mac ate and listened, adding just enough to keep Melvin turning that look on him, his eyes narrowing and his mouth going flat for half a second while he decided whether to laugh or retaliate. Years in, Mac still enjoyed provoking both responses.
When Mac reached for the bread, Melvin’s father passed him the basket and asked whether Melvin had always been this particular about taking a vacation or if that was a recent development. Mac glanced at his husband before admitting they’d checked the bags twice before leaving, although he’d made the mistake of assuming the first time counted.
“Twice?” His father smiled at Melvin. “You’ve gotten better. Your mother used to send me out to the car because watching you unpack to make sure you’d packed something drove me crazy.”
“And how often did I forget anything?” Melvin asked.
“I couldn’t tell you. By then I was out in the car.”
Mac laughed, and Melvin looked between them before setting down his fork. “I’m starting to understand why you wanted to sit next to each other.”
His father glanced at Mac. “Am I keeping you from your dinner?”
“Not at all.”
“There you go.”
Melvin turned toward his mother. “Do you see what happens?”
“I see two people having a conversation.” She reached past him for the butter. “You could try it without supervising.”
Jasmine laughed into her wine, and Mac felt Melvin’s knee press against his beneath the table. He left his own there as the conversation moved on, listening to his husband defend himself with very little support from anyone.
A little later, while Jasmine and her mother discussed something a neighbor had done, Melvin’s father leaned close enough for Mac to hear him without raising his voice.
“I’m glad you could both come. It’s good having you at the table again.”
Mac looked up from his plate. The older man was watching him with an easy warmth that left no doubt he meant exactly what he’d said.
“It’s good to be here.”
“We’ll have to make sure it isn’t so long next time.”
Mac nodded, and Melvin’s father gave his shoulder a brief squeeze before asking Jasmine to finish the part of the story he’d missed. Mac stayed turned toward him for a moment, then reached for his glass. Beside him, Melvin was listening to his sister, but his hand found Mac’s knee beneath the table and rested there.
“You’re being quiet,” Jasmine said to Mac, somewhere between the main course and the second glass of wine.
“I’m eating.”
“You’re thinking about something.”
Mac set his fork down carefully, aligning it with the edge of his plate. “I’m always thinking about something.”
“See, that’s not an answer.” She leaned back in her chair and studied him with the same sharp attention she’d aimed at her brother a hundred times tonight. “Melvin gets that look when he’s planning something. You’ve got a version of it too. It’s subtler, but it’s there.”
Melvin looked at Mac, and Mac felt the weight of his husband’s attention shift onto him like a hand settling at the back of his neck. “What are you planning?”
“Nothing.”
“That was too fast,” Jasmine said.
“It was a normal speed.”
“It was definitely too fast,” Melvin said. His voice was dry, but his eyes stayed on Mac, curious rather than suspicious. “What did you do?”
Mac picked up his wine glass and took a slow sip, meeting Melvin’s gaze over the rim. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I’m enjoying dinner.”
Jasmine laughed, low and delighted. “Oh, he’s definitely hiding something. Look at his face. That’s the face of a man who knows something you don’t.”
“I know lots of things he doesn’t,” Mac said.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
Melvin kept watching him, curiosity sharpening the line of his mouth. Mac knew that look. He had seen it across briefing tables, hospital rooms, and their own kitchen. Melvin knew he was hiding something. He just hadn’t decided how hard to push yet.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Mac said, and let his knee press a little harder against Melvin’s under the table.
“We’ll talk about it now.”
“Later.”
Jasmine propped her chin on her hand and looked between them like she was watching a tennis match. “This is better than television.”
“Let the man finish his dinner,” their father said, reaching for the wine bottle.
Melvin turned to him. “You’re only saying that because it’s Mac.”
“I’m saying it because your sister cooked, and some of us would like to eat while it’s warm.” He topped off Mac’s glass, then held the bottle toward his son. “You can interrogate your husband over dessert.”
Mac let the silence stretch for a moment longer, then set his glass down. “We have one more stop before we head back to Colorado.”
Melvin’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of stop?”
“The kind that involves getting in a car and driving somewhere.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting tonight.”
Jasmine made a sound of pure satisfaction. “I knew it. I knew you were planning something.” She pointed at Mac with her fork. “You’re not going to tell us, are you.”
“No.”
“Not even a hint?”
Mac smiled and reached for his glass. Across the table, Melvin’s mother looked at her son with unmistakable amusement.
“You might enjoy being surprised.”
“I might enjoy knowing where I’m going.”
“You always did.”
Melvin studied Mac for a long moment. Mac watched the calculations move behind his eyes, the quick sorting of possibilities, the decision to let it go for now. When Melvin finally looked away, reaching for his own glass, there was something in the set of his jaw that Mac recognized. He would revisit the question later, when they didn’t have an audience, and Mac was perfectly comfortable with that.
They cleared the table together, passing plates toward the kitchen while Jasmine directed traffic from beside the dishwasher. Her mother put the remaining bread away, and her father dried the serving dish Jasmine insisted wouldn’t fit in the machine. Melvin wiped down the counter while Mac stacked the leftover containers, occasionally moving aside to let someone squeeze past him. The string lights on the fire escape flickered once, then steadied. Outside, the city hummed on without them, distant sirens and the rumble of a train somewhere underground.
There was coffee afterward and a cake Melvin’s mother had brought, which Jasmine accused her of hiding until everyone had eaten too much to appreciate it. Her father cut himself a slice and said he was willing to make the effort. They stayed at the table longer than anyone intended, the plates gradually emptied and the coffee cooling while the conversation wandered.
By the time their parents began gathering their coats, Mac had stopped noticing the traffic outside. He stood to help Melvin’s father into his jacket while Melvin’s mother hugged her son near the door.
“Call before you leave tomorrow,” she told him. “Even if this one still won’t tell you where you’re going.”
“I’ll call.”
She turned to Mac and drew him down to kiss his cheek. “Enjoy yourselves. And get some rest.”
“We will.”
Melvin’s father hugged his son, murmured something that made Melvin laugh, then reached for Mac. This time Mac stepped into it without the brief hesitation of arriving with a bag still over his shoulder.
“Take care of yourself too,” the older man said quietly, his hand firm against Mac’s back.
Mac nodded as they drew apart. “I will.”
Jasmine went out onto the landing with them, still arguing with her mother about who was keeping the rest of the cake. Melvin watched them go before closing the door most of the way and turning back toward the kitchen.
“You should call him more often,” he said, picking up two abandoned coffee cups. “He’d like hearing from you.”
“I usually talk to him when you call.”
“I know, but you’re allowed to call him without me.” Melvin handed him one of the cups, his expression softening. “He asks about you every time, even when I called him the day before. Sometimes I think I should just give you the phone and go do something else.”
Mac smiled down at the cup before looking back at him. “I’ll call him when we get home.”
Melvin brushed a hand across his back as they moved toward the sink. “He’d like that.”
By the time Jasmine returned, Melvin had found a spot she’d missed on the counter and was looking for the dish towel.
Mac caught his wrist as he reached past him. His fingers circled the warm skin, thumb brushing once over the pulse point before he let go. Melvin didn’t pause, didn’t look at him, but the corner of his mouth twitched.
“You’re going to tell me eventually,” Melvin said, quiet enough that Jasmine couldn’t hear over the running water.
“Eventually,” Mac agreed.
“And you’re going to be insufferable until then.”
“Probably.”
Melvin shook his head, but the twitch at the corner of his mouth had turned into something closer to a smile. He pulled the dish towel from Mac’s reach and went back to wiping the counter, and Mac stood there for a moment longer, feeling the warmth of the apartment and the wine and the easy certainty of being exactly where he was supposed to be.
The cabin reservation was folded in his wallet, a slip of paper he’d printed weeks ago and carried across the country. Tomorrow they would drive north, away from the city and into the trees, back to the place where everything had started. Melvin didn’t know yet. He’d figure it out somewhere on the highway, when the roads got narrow and the towns got smaller and the shape of the trip became impossible to ignore.
Mac was looking forward to watching it happen.
End of Chapter One · Coming November 11, 2026
