Chapter Six
Julius
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They don't do anything for the rest of the morning except sit there with her in his lap, her legs twined around his waist and her face pressed into his neck, breathing in his scent where it's strongest.
He tries hard not to think about fucking her again, despite the fact that every inch of her lush naked body is pressed up against him. It won't help her feel safer if he pops another fucking boner against her after she's almost been killed and raped god knows how many times in the last day.
But fuck, she has the body of a goddess.
Everything about her screams at his alpha instincts to fuck her and breed her.
Her body has curves in all the right places.
Her tits look like they'd overflow in his hands, perfect for burying his face into as he fucks her sweet little pussy until she screams for him again.
Her hips have the perfect amount of flesh for him to grip while he takes her from behind, and he can only imagine how that ass would look bouncing while she rides a cock.
Fuck. Think about something else, Julius. Anything else. Dead kittens. Naked grandma. The green slime in the bottom of a birdbath in a public park.
He thinks his cock gets the message. Leave the sweet omega in peace. Don't upset her with another erection. She is finally smelling like something other than terror and he doesn't want her scent to sour again because he couldn't control his own fucking dick.
When he notices the time on the clock on the wall, he rumbles a little and smoothes a hand over her flank.
"We should get to lunch," he says, forcing his voice as soft as he can make it, not wanting to startle her after the long peaceful silence they've settled into.
"They take roll call. They'll notice if we're not there. "
She nods against him but does not move to get up.
"Will it help for me to dress you?"
He's never done the omega thing before. He didn't have omega sisters like Tenor or Luke, and their pack sure as fuck had never dated an omega before. They were jarheads. They'd met in basic training when they'd all enlisted at eighteen and had been inseparable since.
The most serious relationship any of them had had outside of each other were a few of the beta girls they had kept around for more than a night when they were on their shore leaves, but even then, none of them ever lasted longer than that week.
Omegas were... complicated. There was too much opportunity for hormone fuckery to make things more serious than it was supposed to be. Too much of a chance of one of them losing their heads and making a mistake like biting them.
But he'd had the same sex ed courses as any other piece of shit with a high school education, and he knows what his instincts were telling him. And they were telling him that this omega needed to be taken care of.
They were touchy-feely little things, he knew. He had been on the receiving end of enough of Luke and Tenor's sisters' need for full body contact snuggles to know that. And from the sounds of it, Eden hadn't had nearly enough of that kind of care that omegas needed.
"Give me your arm," he murmurs. "Good girl," he says when she holds it out to him and he slides it into the sleeve. "Now the other one."
He stands her up and balances her hand on his shoulder as he guides each delicate foot into the leg of her jumpsuit and then zips it up to the top. He pops the collar so none of the alpha filth outside this room even think about her sweet neck.
He dresses himself quickly in his own suit and catches her watching him out of the corner of her eye. He looked good. He knew that. He flexes a little as he gets dressed and she looks away with a blush on her cheeks. Fucking cute.
He takes a cursory sniff of himself before gathering her to leave. Fuck, they both reeked of sex. But at least it wasn't the heady scent of an omega's heat spike. A whiff of that in the halls would likely cause a genuine fucking blood bath.
Fuck, they'd have to get her a knife to protect herself in case something happens to one of them and they can't protect her.
Maybe them smelling like sex is a good thing, he thinks. It'll cement his claim, so the rest of the alphas will know she belongs to them.
"Come on," he says. "Stay close."
This time, she plasters herself to his side under his arm, her head down and not even looking at where she was going, just like she had walked with Tenor.
Her body language screams that she wants to disappear into his body, not wanting to catch the eye of any of the prisoners they pass in the hallways.
She just trusts him implicitly to guide her to where they're going and keep her safe, and fuck if that doesn't send a surge of dominant pleasure through him.
She doesn't have any other choice, asshole, he corrects himself. Either she'll decide to trust them all the way, or not at all. There's no other way to survive in here.
At least the stench of her fear is a little less intense than it was, which was nice. He didn't dig rotted pomegranates.
He hitches his chin at Tenor when he sees him waiting for them outside the mess hall.
"Not a fucking word," he mutters to him before his pack brother can say anything when he catches their scent. He can see Tenor's nostrils flare and his eyes bug when he takes in the unmistakable smell of omega slick and alpha cum that must be coming off them in droves.
Thankfully, the asshole listens and doesn't say anything until they're seated at the table.
When he does speak, his voice is carefully casual.
"Got you some food at the commissary," he says to Eden, pulling a can of barbecue baked beans out of his pocket.
"This was all they had. Sorry, we'll do better tomorrow. "
She finally peels her head out of Julius' armpit enough to look over at Tenor when he speaks to her, her eyes flicking between the can in his hand and his face. For one awful moment, Julius thinks she's going to cry, but thank fuck she doesn't.
"Thanks," she says hoarsely instead. Her voice is soft, like what he imagines an angel would sound like, totally out of place in the deafening din of the mess hall.
"There's too much sodium in it but at least it's better than this shit," he mutters in response, popping the top of the can and offering it to her with a spoon.
She eats it without complaint, without even one frown on her face. What a fucking sweetheart.
"So," Tenor starts after a few minutes of silence when he finishes shovelling his food into his mouth. "You guys going to tell me—"
"Later, asshole," Julius mutters again, flashing him a glare and pointedly looking around at the other inmates around them. "It's not the time."
He sees Eden turn the most beautiful shade of rosy pink, her cheeks and chest heating with an embarrassed blush at the implication. He wants to see how far down her blush goes, wants to see if it's the same shade as her nipples.
Fuck! It's not the time for that, asshole!
Stop thinking about the little omega and her perfect little pussy and her– FUCK.
And now his cock was hard fucking again.
He didn't think it was ever going to be soft again after this.
And there was no way she was going to miss that in the prison jumpsuit. Fuck.
They stop by the laundry on the way from lunch.
It's easy enough to grease some more hands and steal a few blankets for the workshop so she can make herself a nest. He's finds himself formulating a plan in the back of head.
He doesn't know when, but at some point, he has decided she is his. And he protects what's his.
He files away the things he knows about omegas. They need touch. They need sex. They need to feel safe. To keep her heat spikes away, they would need to make sure they were meeting those needs. It was the only way she had a chance of getting through this alive.
But without her suppressants, she was a ticking time bomb.
It was only a matter of time until her full heat presented.
No matter how much they soothed and touched and purred for her, they were just buying borrowed time.
They had to get her out of here, get her into a women's prison where she could serve her time safely.
He finds himself shuffling through the contacts he knows in his head who may be willing to help.
Any lawyer worth their salt would see this case as an egregious miscarriage of justice.
Even if she had killed a cop in cold blood, no omega, no woman, should have been placed in here.
And if it was a cop, the pig probably deserved it, anyway. All cops are bad.
It doesn't surprise him though. Not with the corrupt fucking system they lived under. Probably the same rotten corruption that got his pack tossed in this place too, after they they had killed some human trafficking scum while they were working as a protection detail making some extra cash.
He looks down at the little thing under his arm.
Anytime they were outside of their cell or the workshop, she always seemed to prefer to wedge herself into their armpits.
He thinks she'd climb inside his ribcage if he let her, from the way she grips herself to him so tightly.
And who could blame her? The way the prisoners look at her barely has him restraining a growl as he maneuvers them through the halls with one arm full of blankets, the other full of omega.
He sets her up in a quiet corner of the metal shop for the afternoon and gets to work mending some old furnace parts. It keeps his hands busy and he tries not to look at her, although he can feel her eyes following him.
He can't help the way he puffs out his chest and shoulders at her gaze. It's stupid, stereotypical alpha shit, but he can't stop himself.
At dinner, they feed her a peanut butter sandwich using two of the pieces of the shit stale bread they serve and then both of them pile all their soggy steamed vegetables onto her plate.
She tries to protest, but with one look from him she shuts her mouth quick.
She's his to take care of, and he will take care of her.
He leaves her with Tenor in the cell after dinner to make a phone call.