“No pressure,” I said with a snort, but we all grew serious.
Marcus might have avoided a court appearance, but he faced down a jury of his peers and I was the last one.
“I get why you did it,” I said. “I hate it, but I can see the logic. Everything Rhys and Bren said is true—decisions made without the pack alienate it. You’re so fucking smart, get your head around that. If you pull this shit again and don’t let us face an external enemy together, you’ll lose every single one of us. You’ve burned through the goodwill of every single one of us. You’ve burned…” I remembered my pain as I hunkered down in my room, Rhys’ when we discovered him battered and bruised. “You’ve burned us. We’ll live with those scars every day, no matter the outcome, and you deemed them necessary without our consent.”
It felt like this was the first time he’d really faced the consequences of what he’d done. Everyone else he manipulated or twisted to get past, but he couldn’t with us, not without killing the thing he loved, which gave me confidence.
“I don’t know where I fit in here. I still don’t understand why you’d go to so much effort to bring me into the fold. Why not Jean or one of the million other omegas?”
“I’ll tell you—” Marcus stopped himself, smiled, and then shook his head. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than one day, telling the story of how you came to us. That’s all I want, love—the chance to talk it all out and then move forward into the future.”
“You’re on shaky ground, you have to know that. On some level, you’ve abused us, just as surely as Benson did.” I watched him flinch and held myself back, not going to him, not yet. “But for my own peace of mind, I have to think you can be better than this, because I love you, Marcus.” That was when my voice broke, my heart swelled, and I took a step towards him, while he surged forward to close that gap. He held me tight, rocking my body against his as the tears came. “I love all of you, and I’ll only be hurting myself by holding out on you.”
We had a long way to go. This wasn’t the next phase in a stable relationship, just the first step, but as each guy peeled off the car, clustering around me, I let out a soul deep sigh as every one of them held me close. No matter how or why we’d gotten here, deep in my heart, I felt this was where I was supposed to be.
Chapter 42
I was coming into heat.
We headed back to Apothecary, to Marcus’ fortress, I realised, back to the room that they’d abandoned as everything fell to shit to try and remake something. But as I stood there, I felt the sweat pricking at my brow, coating my hand as I tried to wipe it all away.
“Omega?” Rhys asked, looking me over slowly, a picture of alpha male satisfaction.
“I think I’m…I…I’m coming into heat.”
Well, I had everyone’s attention right then. My
mates were shoved to the side so the alphas could come out to play, and they were hungry.
“And what do you need from us, omega?” Bren asked, moving closer, but not enough to touch.
“I…”
“Whatever we have is yours. You know that.” Orion’s voice was gently chiding. “You just need to ask.”
“I figured this might happen,” Marcus purred, but that earned him some dark looks from his mates.
“Yeah, well, you can sit this one out until you’ve told Cyn her story,” Bren said, then smiled toothily. “You need to earn your position by her side.”
“Yeah?” Rebellious Marcus was back in the house, his shit-eating grin spreading before he looked down at me. “That what you want, Cyn? I’ll tell you the story of you and me while my mates please you?”
I nodded on automatic, the two things equally desired yet also competing inside my head, but the alphas, they moved in close, stroking their hands lightly down my arms or my back.
“How do you want this, Cyn?” Bren said with a growl, the alpha in him rising. “Any way you want it, we’ll give it to you. You just have to ask.”
“All of you,” I ground out, feeling hot, so hot, my hands going to my shirt to pull it off.
“Well done, Cyn,” Marcus said. “Having all of them focus their energies on you is a singular pleasure. Take all of them, everything they’ve got.”
His eyes glittered as he considered just how that’d go, and then he settled back in a chair as the guys moved to strip off the clothes that were sticking to me, followed by their own. I was swept up into Orion’s arms, his eyes boring into mine for a second before he smiled and deposited me on the bed, settling my head in his lap, the other two taking up position on either side of me. Then they just started to stroke me, every inch of my body, dragging my awareness with it, but it wasn’t how I needed. Marcus watched me shift restlessly, trying to force their hands closer to where I ached, and smiled.
“The first time I actually saw you was what determined the trajectory of our relationship. I’d been lurking around the backyards of the houses in your neighbourhood like a creeper, identifying which ones had daughters that were omegas, which narrowed the field dramatically. It took several days, but one time I was tramping through the trees, and there you were, sprawled out on the thick bough of the tree outside your window, book in hand, long hair moving in the breeze…” Marcus frowned. “That’s when I understood what omegas were.
“You were just a girl reading, but as I stood there, I saw it. You were too young for me to be creeping on, so my plans to steer you towards my mates and clinch the deal died as I watched you read. The unselfconsciousness, the peace and tranquillity and…a little sadness. I’d never felt protective before.
“Suddenly, I saw omegas for exactly what they were—precious things that could so easily be eaten up by the jaws of the world, without the prerequisite strengths to protect themselves. It took everything I had to walk away, leave you be, not come snooping around your house, because if I could, someone else could. Any one of the alpha fucks I’d run into at school or camp or once we were running with the gangs could’ve found you.”
A hand slid up one of my thighs, another doing the same on the other side, both men chuckling when I spread them open, but their palms slid back down to my ankles to the sounds of my growls.