I deserved a damn medal for staying silent through this, because when I came, it felt like a sudden explosion of golden light, each separate mote a small burst of pleasure, each one fusing with the other, growing and growing until I started to feel like it was never going to stop. Then Fen yanked me close as my legs gave out, my cunt pulsing, pulsing frantically, trying to clamp down on what was missing inside me.
“Here’s some new pieces to try,” a voice said, the shop assistant thrusting her hand through the curtain to pass us a cluster of garments. Fen took them and hung them up, pressing a kiss to my forehead before pulling away.
“I’ll leave Riley to try them on and see if they fit better,” he told her.
I didn’t want that at all, something pathetically needy forcing me to reach for his hand. He squeezed it, then let me go, ducking out of the change room.
So fifteen minutes later,I ended up walking out the proud owner of a brand-new set of bras. Some were Cs. I couldn’t seem to let that go, but most were like the one I was wearing now—a simple number in a stiff beige Lycra. The wired cups seemed to both stretch around me and hold me still and supported as we walked swiftly back to the car, but it was a size D… I waited like a good little girl right up until we were inside the cab of the car before I turned to him.
“What the actual fuck was that?” I asked.
“I thought we had more time,” he said, raking his hands through his hair. “Ryan and I had some concerns when you said your bra wasn’t really fitting properly.”
“That’s what the meaningful look was? That I might have bigger tits that all of sudden were super sensitive? Like little fucking clits. I like breast play as much as anyone, but it’sneverdone that to me before.”
And with that, he fucking grinned, looking so damn pleased with himself.
“This is not something to be smiling about.”
He turned in his seat then and regarded me steadily.
“No, it’s something to celebrate. Alpha pheromones, baby—that’s what this is about. Your body must have been on board with the idea of taking us as mates before you finally admitted it to yourself, because you’ve been responding to them.” He swallowed then, as if aware of the potential shitstorm he was about to unleash. “It’s probably because your latent omega genes are switching on.”
He was right to be worried, because right now, I just fucking stared. I stared and stared at the man whose very presence was changing my body against my will, my hands going defensively to my chest.
My nipples were still sensitive, but not as much as before, which raised my next question.
“What’s happened to me?” I asked through gritted teeth. “What did you do?”
“You’re going through what an omega does before his or her heat. Your body… We call it ripening. If we were a mated pack, we’d have you holed up on our territory, tending to you day and night. You’ve got some time before…we’ll need to tend you again.”
“What does ripening mean? And what do you mean by tending?”
“In an omega, it’s when their body starts to make the changes required for mating. If you had been born an omega, we might have chosen each other but you wouldn’t ripen for a few years. We would have been able to have sex, but no knotting would take place. The omega always chooses when they’re ready. In female omegas, it’s when she’s ready to have children, and while male omegas are the same, his mates have to find a surrogate.”
Fen actually looked abashed for the first time since I’d known him, his gaze dropping and returning to me over and over, a red stain across his cheekbones showing me how he felt about this.
“And tending?”
He let out a sigh at that, his hands forming fists. “We create this change in an omega’s body, so it’s our responsibility to help our mate through it.” He saw my eyes widen, then reached out and took my hand. “It won’t hurt you, not unless…”
“Not unless what?” I asked sharply, the hysterical edge in my voice apparent. “Not unless what, Fen?”
“Not unless you resist our attempts to soothe you through this. What’s happening to you, it’s designed to bring us closer, allow bonding to happen. We’ll stroke your breasts, play with your nipples, sensitise them over and over again and drown you in as many orgasms as you can take.” His eyes were purest silver now, his wolf looking out at me, making clear what would happen if I tried to fight that. “But if you keep us at arm’s length?”
He shook his head then, as if to displace the beast and bring back the man, but he wasn’t successful.
“It’ll hurt you, Riley. Nature’s a fucking bitch that way, but it will.”
And didn’t I know it? All our beta preoccupations with equality and considerate, respectful relationships were an entirely human construct. But the animal world? It was brutal.
Cute little dolphins regularly drowned their female counterparts during mating season. So did ducks and geese. A male lion killed all of the cubs in a pride he took over to trigger the lionesses’ mating cycle. Female praying mantises bit off the heads of their mates and some spiders famously consumed their much tinier male mates after the deed was done. Male honeybees got to mate once, because the process ripped off their dicks and forced them to explode inside the queen, and then there were the chimpanzees.
Waging a war of terror on females for years leading up to mating, they often hit, bit and charged the females, sometimes wounding them, creating an atmosphere of intimidation that helped ensure the female’s submission when it came time to mate.
“How long do we have?” I asked, not specifying for what, but he knew.
“Until you need me to tend to you again? At least a few hours. That’ll get shorter the further along things go, until—”