Chapter 19
Just like an alpha couldn’t resist an omega in heat, Thorn found himself responding to the rut, despite his conversation with Aster and all of his plans to end things.
It was a couple of hours before he was able to clear his mind enough from the lust-induced haze to get anything meaningful out. But even though it seemed like he was coming to his senses, that didn’t mean Baal was doing the same.
“How long—” Thorn’s question was interrupted by a particularly brutal thrust that had his head hanging off the edge of the bed as his body slid forward. “Your rut?”
The alpha grabbed onto his hips, holding him steady horizontally across the mattress.
They’d switched positions more times than Thorn could count, the alpha manipulating him however he saw fit between and during rounds.
He’d already knotted at least half a dozen times as well, but it didn’t appear like his stamina was letting up any.
Ruts made alphas aggressive, territorial, and possessive. The fact Baal was a dominant alpha made the symptoms even worse, with him growling and getting rough whenever it so much as appeared as though Thorn might try to get away or want a break.
In the same way omegas couldn’t be blamed for turning into horny, desperate things during their heats, willing to bed just about anyone with a knot, Baal couldn’t be blamed for his actions in the midst of his rut. Especially not on Synastry.
“Days,” Baal surprised him by managing to bite out, a second before his lips latched onto Thorn’s collarbone and sucked. “Taste so sweet. Smell so good. Omega.”
“You’re early,” Thorn accused, not only referring to his rut, but also his arrival in general. “I was expecting you tomorrow.”
He wasn’t ready. Still had things to prepare.
Only a complete moron would try to break up with an alpha in a situation like this though.
He was going to have to wait until the rut was over and Baal had calmed down.
Once the whole house wasn’t flooded with pheromones, and he didn’t feel drunk out of his mind off the alpha and the smell of gingerbread, come, and sweat.
And if a part of Thorn was secretly pleased about that fact? That he was going to get to enjoy the alpha like this one last time?
No one had to know.
“Missed you.” Baal reared back, gazing roaming down Thorn’s chest as he continued to ram his cock in and out of him. “So pretty.” His palm pressed against Thorn’s stomach, fingers tracing the contours of his pectorals. “So masculine. Would a baby be enough to trap you fully?”
Thorn felt like he was doused in a bucket of ice water, going completely still. “What?”
Did the alpha know about the pregnancy scare? Thorn had specifically refused the test at the clinic and purchased an at-home kit with cash in the off chance he was being monitored, so he shouldn’t have been able to find out.
“Do you want children?” Baal asked, and Thorn was honest with them both without hesitation.
“No.” After helping to raise Aster, having already lived a life of care and sacrifice, he did not. He didn’t regret it, not for a moment, but before Baal, having another mouth to feed had meant something else entirely.
The alpha growled, dropping back over him, hand wrapping tightly around Thorn’s neck. He only squeezed for a moment, partially cutting off air supply, but not long enough to cause panic. “Don’t lie.”
“I’m not,” he insisted, holding onto Baal’s wrist, mostly to help himself keep his head lifted. The strain was getting too much. “Alpha, I’m falling.”
Baal scooped him up into his lap, fucking in deep and sending them both tumbling into the abyss of pleasure. He emptied into Thorn, groaning as he clenched around him through his own release, then held his hips down so his knot could form and lock them in place.
Thorn made a sound of protest when the alpha started shifting backward, holding him close as he moved toward the side of the bed.
“Got you,” Baal promised, nipping at his cheek before tucking Thorn’s head beneath his chin.
He stepped onto the ground and stood, the knot jostling inside Thorn, causing him to whimper, but the alpha merely shushed him and sent out a soothing wave of pheromones as he carried Thorn down the hall and into the living room.
“Where are we going?” And why? The alpha gained some clarity whenever he knotted, but that wouldn’t last. As soon as it went down, Baal would be overtaken by his instincts to dominate and breed all over again.
Instead of answering, the alpha paused by the couch, brow furrowing as he searched around for something that he clearly wasn’t seeing.
Thorn had gotten a fire going in the fireplace, and the warmth from it licked against his bare back, the smell of burning cedar and the crackling of wood momentarily lulling him into a false sense of ease.
That and the fact his body was currently being deliciously stretched, cock and come filling him so fully he could feel everything every time Baal so much as shifted, had him completely forgetting about what he’d been up to before the alpha’s untimely arrival.
Until the rumble coming from the alpha’s chest altered from a purr to a dangerous growl, and Thorn lifted his head and followed the direction of his gaze.
To the boxes stacked in the corner where the Yuletide tree had stood almost two months ago.
Thorn held his breath, trying to figure out how much longer he had before the knot went down and he could safely extricate himself from the alpha, the one who was growing more and more vexed with each passing second.
“Omega,” Baal’s teeth flashed.
“I can explain.” He could lie, he meant. There was no way he was telling him he’d been packing up his things and planning on kicking him out. “Spring cleaning? I wanted to reorganize everything.”
That was believable, right?
Apparently not, because the alpha roared and then slammed Thorn up against the wall, knocking the wind out of him. He caught his wrists and forced Thorn’s arms up over his head, pinning them there, and then rolled his hips, pushing the knot in even deeper as though to remind him of its existence.
Like Thorn could possibly forget while it was literally splitting him open.
“Mine,” Baal glared at him, fire snapping in his icy blue gaze. The possessiveness was unmistakable, his pheromones rushing around them, engulfing Thorn as if to smother him.
“Alpha.” He didn’t know what he was trying to say, what he wanted to beg for.
The fear was there, of course, because a pissed-off alpha was a scary one, made even more so when that alpha also happened to be White Frost, but…
There was also something else. A spark of something forbidden and irregular, given his current predicament.
There was relief.
Relief that maybe this wasn’t about pride, and perhaps there was a slight chance Aster had been right, and the alpha actually wanted to keep him.
“Mine,” he repeated, more gruffly, as though daring Thorn to disagree. His knot subsided and he pulled out, dropping Thorn onto his feet. But he didn’t let him stand there for long, capturing him by the nape and shoving him forward.
Thorn landed before the fireplace on his hands and knees, the hardwood stinging as he made contact. He tried to lift himself, readying to flee, but the alpha was too fast.
Baal pressed his head down with one hand, the other lifting his waist and angling his ass for penetration. His cock drove into him forcefully, the suddenness causing Thorn to gasp and flail. “Should have listened to Levi.”
“What does that mean?” Thorn cried out as that thick cock bumped against his prostate, his dick squirting a load of creamy white over the floor as another orgasm rocked through him.
He was momentarily blinded by the burst of electricity skittering down his nerve endings, and when he finally blinked the world back into focus, he was completely flattened over the ground, the alpha still fucking like a demon between his quaking thighs.
“Can’t leave.” Baal was using his entire body to cover as much of Thorn as possible, his weight not crushing, but very much felt.
“I wasn’t.” He’d been planning on making the alpha leave instead.
Of course Baal had picked up on that. His fingers dragged through Thorn’s hair and then tightened to the point of pain, forcing his head at an angle that exposed the side of his neck and his nape.
“I’ll ask forgiveness after,” the alpha promised cryptically, breathing against his ear.
“For what?” He tried to shift beneath him, but it was no use, and all that earned him was another pull that had his scalp stinging. “Alpha, please.”
“Wanted you for forever,” he started to ramble, the tempo of his thrusts increasing frantically the more he spoke, and it was impossible to tell if he was talking to Thorn or himself.
“Waited. Was good. Tried to make it easier for you. Better. I didn’t want to be another version of your father, forcing you into things before you were ready. ”
“I don’t—” He sobbed when Baal’s balls slapped hard against his ass, and he felt the tip of his cock enter his deepest places.
Baal was going to come again. Going to breed him and plug him up so the chances of it taking were better.
Good Light. What if it worked this time?
Since he wasn’t in heat, the odds should be lessened, however, a dominant alpha in rut was different from a regular one. It could happen.
Tears poured from his eyes, and he clawed at the wood, nails digging into the grooves of the floorboards. “No, alpha, don’t. I don’t want it.”
Baal misunderstood, which was fair considering Thorn hadn’t been very clear. “Don’t want me?”
“That’s not—” He didn’t give Thorn the opportunity to try again.
“You were mine from the start,” Baal declared. “Mine for years.”
Wait…what?
Years?
Hadn’t they met at the White Hunt?
“You’ll be taken care of,” the alpha continued, in that same unbalanced tone. “You’ll want for nothing. But you will be mine.” He held Thorn’s head in place. “You’ll be mine alone. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Hate me if you must, but do it by my side.”
Thorn wasn’t given any time to process those words or what they could possibly mean.
The alpha came suddenly, stuffing his knot into Thorn’s abused hole in a show of impatience, and then he attacked.
His teeth found the delicate spot right above where his neck met his shoulder and clamped down.
Thorn screamed and came again, the agony from having his flesh torn quickly abating as alpha pheromones seeped into him, and the high of his orgasm brought him to that perfect place between pleasure and pain.
It took him a while to process what had happened, to realize what the alpha had just done.
Baal’s teeth were still embedded when it was safe for him to move inside Thorn again. He fucked him, slow and deep this time, hitting against Thorn’s womb with each inward stroke, purring when Thorn started panting and moaning beneath him.
Soothing and praising his omega.
Because that’s what Thorn was now, well and truly.
With that single bite, Baal had claimed him as his own.
Not as a kept omega.
But as a mate.