“Kit—” he began to say, but I surged up the massive body I was plastered against, my alpha’s body, and then hovered over him. His size, his gentleness, the low rumble of his voice, it ticked all the primal boxes I had going right now. So I dropped my head down, but his hand went to my face, cupping my jaw, stopping me from getting any closer. “Kit, you’ve only just started to feel better.”
“You’re not going to make my girl beg.” Tris’ voice was sharp as a whip crack. “You can’t listen to the whine in her voice and refuse her, not after what she’s been feeling. I felt it too, every damn bit of it, just like I feel her now. Each day her family wakes up, looking for ways to break her, and sometimes they get what they want, but not for long. Not my girl, not my Kit.”
I felt the drag of his fangs along my neck, making me shiver.
“That’s why they come at her so damn hard, because she’s fucking resilient. Inside her…” His hand skated over my collarbone, then shoved rudely down the front of my dress. “It’s locked up tight, with walls and armaments and traps and ballista, all there to keep the unworthy out. But if you get through?” His breath rasped in my ear, and I wondered if it was only me that heard the slightest of whines. “You find heaven. She loves with everything she has. I thought I knew how much, and then she fucking made me hers.”
Len watched us with soft, watchful eyes. He wanted to move, to surge in and comfort us, like he always had. We’d let him into our playroom for his cock, but he’d brought so much more. As I felt Tristan’s hand over my heart, as I watched Len stare at it, tears pricked my eyes.
“Now I know what an unworthy fuck I am, because it’s so much more, Lennox Rafferty. So much more. Come here.”
I heard Tristan’s tears in his voice, but his tone never wavered. His command was absolute, not even needing a bark to force compliance, and Len, he obeyed.
“Touch her,” he ordered. “Touch her like you know how fucking precious she is. Worship her, Len, because she’s done with pain now and fuck knows she deserves pleasure.”
“Is that right, omega?” Len asked, echoes of that first night coming back. “I need to hear your words.”
In some ways, this was even more painful, even though the press of his body and Tris’ was pure heaven. I’d built my life and my sense of self around loving Tristan, so to realise I was starting to feel something for someone else? Somehow, that hurt. It was as if there were an actual battle being waged in my heart, and by the look of Len, he’d known all along. Alphas were always predators, tracking their prey silently, leaving you not realising until their teeth were in your throat. My chest heaved at the thought of that, at his unending gaze, at the glint of his fangs in the small gap between his lips, his breath whistling slightly.
“Yes, Len,” I replied. “I need you, alpha. I’ll always fucking need you.”
“This is the way it needs to be, love,” Tristan said, whispering in my ear, winding himself tighter around me, even as his hand pulled back, ceding ground to Len. The alpha, he reached out, grazing his knuckles down my sternum, as if demanding physical access to my heart. “You’ve always trusted me. I’ve always told you what to do to get what you need from those other alphas. Now I need to tell you what to get from him.”
“Tristan…” Len growled.
“You don’t understand us,” Tristan shot back. “You don’t love like we do. You’re open and sweet and rational and us?” He tipped my head back, hand collaring my throat, thumbing my pulse there. “We don’t let anything like good sense get in our way, do we, love?”
I shook my head, because he was Tristan, because he said weird things but they always turned out to be true, because he was my whole heart and yet also just a part of this.
“You did this for me,” Tristan said. “Don’t think I don’t know that. You made me yours, rather than one of them. You grabbed every damn person you could and welded us together, for me.”
“Always, Tristan.” I stared at him long after the point of discomfort, but I couldn’t look away. “Always you.”
“And now, always them, love. We’re on a path. People are trying to control where we go on it and how fast we go.” He shook his head, his eyes blazing green, so green. “But we are not good little omegas that do as they’re told. We are so much fucking more. Kiss the alpha, Kit. Kiss Len in all the ways I know you want to and need to. You gave me everything last night.”
He stilled, his eyes shining way too bright, then a single tear escaped, trailing down his cheek before his jaw tightened and he blinked it away.
“But that just makes me want the same for you, Kit. Have it all, everything you need, everything those fuckers are gonna try and stop you from taking, as if telling you, commanding you, barking at you, is enough to quell the fire that’s inside you. You need an alpha.”
“I need you,” I shot back.
“You need me as well,” he said. “I can fucking feel it now, everything that’s possible. I’m gonna work out where I fit, what I am, and I’ll do that with you by my side, but there’s also what we need. We need Len.”
And with that, we both turned to face down the object of our affections.
“Fucking hell,” Len cursed, sitting up on the bed, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “I never s
tood a chance with you two, did I? I wondered at it. When we were together, when you took my knot, it felt like a fucking promise to me. I didn’t dare say anything, too worried I’d scare you off.” He shook his head slowly. “Creepy stalker alpha, mooning after you after one fuck.”
“Well, we are pretty special,” Tris replied in a smug tone.
“You fucking are, you little bastard. Both of you. Come here, omegas.”
The first time, he’d come to us, so I guessed it was fitting that we would uncoil and crawl towards the monolith that was our alpha. Just as tightly as Tris and I wound ourselves around each other, we sought and fitted ourselves to Len.
At first, those massive arms just went around us, holding us tight, breathing us in, probably a confusing mashup of both our scents, but as his breaths grew slower, more measured, I got the feeling it wasn’t so bad.
“I can’t let you go.” Len’s words were muffled by us, his nose in my neck, then Tris’. “I don’t think I can ever let you go, not after this, not once all this shit—”