32. Erain
CHAPTER 32
Erain
I woke up outside Piper’s room, with my eyes gritty and raw, to see Teddy rutting the ground in his sleep.
He was making low growling noises that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise in unease, his hips jerking violently back and forth.
“We have to tell Piper,” I hissed, shaking Rook awake. “If she doesn’t accept us as her mates soon, he’ll keep uncontrollably rutting, and go fucking feral.”
“No,” Rook said firmly. “She has to make a free and open choice. I don’t want to guilt her into it. But I agree that this is a dangerous situation. We need to bind ourselves with silver ropes so we can’t break free and accidentally hurt or bite her before she’s ready.”
I nodded my agreement.
Piper could not know unless she wanted to seek us out.
Teddy opened his eyes in a flash of lucidity.
“Don’t tell Piper,” he moaned. “Don’t. . . want her to worry or feel bad.”
“Right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Rook and I gripped Teddy by each arm, and started dragging him quickly across the palace lawns.
It was agony going further away from Piper, and with my enhanced Alpha senses I could feel her turn over in her bed, engulfed by the wave of scent and desire that washed over me.
My skin broke out in a sweat and I had to grit my teeth to force my feet to move.
Rook’s jaw looked like it could crack walnuts.
My cock was hard as a rock and it started throbbing now, as her scent poured into every inch of me.
Then I was humping the fucking air, mindlessly rutting, and I couldn’t even stop myself.
Piper
I still put one foot in front of the other to force myself away from her, even though every primal instinct in my wolf brain wanted to go back and tear her door off the hinges.
I cried out as I came, rutting into my own pants and spilling pulse after pulse of cum down my own legs.
“Hurry,” was all Rook said. “I know where silver rope is and you can clean up in there.”
His Head Alpha scent was even stronger to me.
He stank like fear and panic.
He must be afraid we wouldn’t make it, that we would turn back.
We would not fail.
We entered the Palace, Rook guiding us down hallways that blurred together until we were in a spacious First Aid room.
Once there, he threw some towels at me.
“Clean the two of you up. I’ll get the ropes.”
There would always be silver ropes. You never knew when an Alpha might go feral and it was best to be prepared.
“Hurry,” I said urgently.
Teddy was tied up easily enough with me holding him down and Rook tying the ropes around him.
His eyes frightened me. There was drool leaking from both sides of his mouth and he whimpered at the feel of the silver singing through his clothes and on his bare skin.
“Poor bastard,” I said. “What happens now?”
“Eventually the silver will put us in a deep sleep. And we’ll stay there until Piper wants to release us.”
“What if she never does?” I asked.
“Then I guess we’ll sleep forever,” Rook said.
I nodded. “Better that than hurting Piper.”
Rook and I started to prepare the heavy ropes for ourselves.
He kept flicking his eyes to the window, out there where we could see down the lawns to Piper’s room.
“It’s hard to imagine never seeing her again,” Rook said haltingly. “Never getting another chance to explain and apologize. Beg for forgiveness.”
“We have to do this,” I said sternly, beginning to wind the rope around one of my feet. “We can’t risk rutting or going feral around her.”
“Just once,” said Rook, breathing heavily. “I just need to see her one more time.”
Then he suddenly bolted from the room.
“Piper!” he cried out, his eyes wild. “I’m coming, my darling!”
Gritting my teeth, I kicked the rope from my ankle.
Damn, my skin was already stinging. This was going to hurt like a bitch.
“Rook, stop!” I yelled, but I wasn’t First Alpha, and he ignored me completely.
I sprinted after him.
Rook was two inches taller and outweighed me by probably 65 pounds, but I sprung for him anyway, grabbing him around the waist so we collapsed in an ungainly heap on the floor.
“Get back in the room!” I gritted out at him, as I attempted to force my massive Head Alpha back into First Aid.
He did not want to go, and he attempted to shove me off, but I stuck to him, gripping him as tightly as I could, repeating over and over again,
“ It’s not safe it’s not safe it’s not safe it’s not safe it’s not safe .”
Finally, my shouted words seemed to be getting through to him, and he sagged in my arms, reluctantly staggering to his feet so I could help drag him down the hallway.
I saw a few palace staff watching, quiet but wary, not interfering, and it stung knowing we should have been whooping it up this entire wedding season, taking Piper to all the new Alpha-Omega matches.
But instead we had fucked up.
Once we got back in the room, Rook and I tied ourselves up in silence.
The ropes were designed in such a way that all we had to do was begin the process and the knots would automatically tie in our hands, binding the entire protective device together.
Teddy’s eyes were still yellow-bright, his hips still thrusting jerkily in the air with his rut, even as he whimpered in pain.
The brutal punishment of the silver ropes immediately overwhelmed my pain receptors, each nerve alive to the searing agony, my wolf straining to find some way to alleviate it.
But there was no way.
I burned from my head to my feet, each inch of my body on fire with the silver, and I couldn’t help shaking uncontrollably, my teeth rapidly beginning to chatter in my head.
The pain would eventually knock me out, and as the raw agony spread throughout my body, making even my fingertips curl, I thought only:
Piper
I love you