“Done,” came another voice, deeper and more authoritative, and right now, it felt like a hand on my shoulder, like fingers stroking through my hair. It held me in place and kept me sweet, sated. “We’re gonna need to coordinate sleeping schedules and eating. Tending is always hard. A heat is harder.”
“Being apart from her—that was the hardest part. All of this? Sign me the fuck up, because I am on board.”
I smiled slightly then, that passion, that certainty all I needed before I dropped off to sleep.
Chapter 34
I dreamed of a wolf with reddish brown fur.
Initially, it was a calm dream, a prosaic one, like a wildlife cinematographer had left their B reel running in my head. I watched her nose the ground, snuffling at the scents there, hit somehow by blasts of dirt, grass, flowers. She jerked her head up then, snorting to dislodge the dirt before trotting on, over the grassy scrublands. She was an interloper here, yet she made her way through the bushes and the few trees like it was her place to call home.
Until she heard them.
With all the vigilance of a predator—or was that prey?—her head jerked up when she heard the first howl, faint, distant, just a slight noise carried on the wind, but she picked it up immediately. Her nose was thrust into the air, sniffing the breeze to detect who or what that was, and what she found had her turning tail. Her feet engaged as quickly as she worked it out, trotting, then loping, then running with the long, earth eating gait of a wolf, but rather than put more distance between her and them, it seemed to bring them closer.
Their howls grew louder, more of them now, and if she strained, she could hear their paws thudding the ground along with her own. She didn’t. Any effort she had to spare was directed at her legs, her haunches, powering the dense muscles to keep them striding forward.
But no matter what she did, no matter how hard she ran, they caught up to her. She could hear so much more now—the rapid rasp of their pants, their claws raking the soil, and most of all, their hunger. How did that sound? It was the harsh whines that escaped their chest, the faintest sounds of jaws being opened, ready to bite. It was the whip of the wind, working against her and with them, bringing her to ground.
She knew what was coming, what she needed, what was supposed to be, but she also knew she couldn’t just lie down and take it. She had to run, and they had to prove themselves worthy of catching her.
My view shifted abruptly as I emerged, standing in front of all of them, watching the she-wolf run towards me, seeing the pack slaver behind her, one I knew all too well. I’d seen these wolves before, picking their way across a darkened carpark, walking on up to me, but they weren’t making their way towards anyone right now. They were hunting something down.
I was frozen, unable to move when she leapt. She treated them to a brief glimpse over her shoulder at the pack as they closed in on her, as she made one last jump to try and keep out of their jaws. My eyes flicked open as I jolted awake the moment her body hit mine.
“Hey, baby,”Colt said, looking down at me, reaching up to stroke the side of my face as I blinked. “You sleep well?”
I couldn’t answer him immediately, my brain struggling to come online. Part of me was still there, with those wolves. Part of him was there too. But my eyes closed for a second, just feeling his caress, my lips falling open as something shifted inside me.
“Are you getting needy again, Riley?”
The sweetness was fading out of Colt’s voice, replaced by something harder, more insistent. His fingers buried themselves in my hair, grabbing a hold as he searched my face for an answer, but that wasn’t where it was to be found. I reached up, taking a handful of his hair too, using it to pull his lips down on mine, something he gave me all too gladly, covering my body with his in moments, grinding me down into the softness as I kissed him with everything I had.
“Not yet,” I panted out finally, and his head jerked back, his eyes quizzical until he worked out I’d belatedly answered his question. “Soon.” I slid a finger down his bare chest, loving the fact he only had a pair of grey track pants on right now. “I’ll need you soon.”
“Whatever you need, you know that,” he said, grabbing my free hand and kissing the back of it before pressing it against his chest. “Now, come and eat while you can.”
I stumbledout into the main house and saw the sun was setting now, and spread out on the table was an apt metaphor for whatever the hell was going on in this house.
There was food everywhere. Cakes, chocolate, soft drink, and chips, but in amongst that was actual food. Thai, Mexican, all the many choices Candy had recommended for them on that first day. I looked up, and they all watched me, Haze and Fen nursing beers, but they all noted where I sat, at the very end of the table.
“So, this is how it works?” I asked, reaching out and trailing a finger through a bowl of whipped cream garnished with chocolate shavings, then licking the sweet glob off the end. “You feed me whatever I want, fuck me in anyway I’ll accept, until what?”
“You’ve got it wrong,” Fen said, leaning forward, depositing the bottle on the table with a clunk, his muscular arms and bare chest on display as he rested his elbows on the tabletop. “We give you what you want, all of it. Every damn thought, dream, or impulse—it’s happening. You’re changing, and that’s likely to be harder for you than someone who revealed as an omega.” He watched me shift restlessly at that. “But that just means we need to treat you sweeter, ease you through this.”
I snorted at that, my mouth falling open as I studied the lot of them. Like, academically, I kinda knew this was the way it worked between alphas and omegas, because why else were the bastards so damn smug, but…?Not me, not for me. That pulsed inside me like a heartbeat, which just made Fen smile.
“For you,” he insisted, his grin widening. “All for you. Everything we dreamed of and everything you did. Now…”
He moved around the table, pulling me out of my seat and replacing himself in it, then drew me down on his lap, treating himself to a brief nuzzle to my neck before he pulled the nearest dish forward. His arm tightened around me when I went to move, and this time, adult Riley was all too aware of the way he was responding to me. He was thick and hard in his pants, but he didn’t let me focus on that.
“Have something to eat. Have several somethings, because, love, I would very much like to hand feed you morsels of everything here, but you’re not ready for that. Eat, or I’ll have to help you do that.”
So here I was, right back where I’d started—unable to sit on a seat by myself, unable to dictate my own feeding schedule. But y’know what? Part of me fucking loved it, and I was kind of sick of denying that. Fen’s hand rubbed up and down my spine as I began to eat, a sigh going out across the table when I did. I picked my way through a disgusting mix of foods, some kind of hunger burning inside me, building with every stroke of his hand, until I couldn’t eat a thing more.
Fen straightened up as I licked my fingers clean, a little savage now.
“Are you ready now for us to tell you how things will go?” he asked. “You promise that you won’t run?”