16. Erain
CHAPTER 16
Erain
H er scent grows stronger the closer we get to the Enclave, until by the time Rook throws the Jeep into park I’m fucking hyperventilating with how fast I’m trying to suck in her scent.
We hit the ground exactly at the moment I hear the clang of the gates.
The gates are high, strong, and sharp, deliberately designed for Omegas to be able to keep out the much stronger Alphas, hard jagged bars lined with silver, which is the only substance able to check us. Even one touch of silver burns our skin.
“Piper!” Teddy cried as our Omega walks away into the darkness of the Enclave. “Wait! It’s us!”
I’m struck with a wave of her scent as she turns around. Up close, it’s even more magnetic and compelling. I can’t stop my mouth from filling with drool. I wipe it off with the back of my hand and more takes its place, my incisors lengthening, drool streaming down my face.
My Alpha senses are sharpened, her scent tearing away the arrogance I had looked at her with before.
I know deep and shamefully and furiously inside me that this is my mate, the Omega who belongs to me.
“I can see it’s you,” Piper said.
But she doesn’t make a move toward the gates.
With my Alpha senses opened up now, I can recognize that there’s a unique timber to her voice, low and throaty, rich and decadent.
I can’t stop swallowing, trying to practice my apology. But the words aren’t coming out.
The way Piper holds her head up as high as a queen, even as I shamefully remember how boorishly we behaved. I’ve always been raised to be a conscious of my position and confident in who I am because of my family. But Piper’s confidence is backed by no family.
She’s out here in this Enclave in the forest and afraid of nothing and nobody.
Rook is at the gate, standing as close as he can without touching the bars. “Piper, we are here to beg for forgiveness,” he said, his voice low and rumbly. “What happened was my fault. I take all the responsibility, and I want to humbly ask you for another chance. Please open the gate for us.”
She flicked her eyes from Rook to Teddy to me, and as I felt her gaze hit me I began to tremble almost uncontrollably, my whole body shaking like a leaf.
“Another chance?” she repeated incredulously. “I saw you three assholes. I know what you did. You can turn right around and go back to your little girlfriends, because I’m not interested.”
“Please,” I croaked, my voice cracking, and she looked over at me like she couldn’t believe I had spoken. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes were so blue. I had never properly looked at them before, a deep startling blue with a green ring around her pupils.
I stepped closer to the gate, feeling the bars vibrating with the silver, smelling the singe and burn, but unable to stop myself.
“Save your breath, Erain. I won’t believe anything you say.”
My throat was dry and raspy even as drool streamed down my face, pooling on my collar.
“I am so sorry, Piper,” Rook said again, his chest heaving. “I take full responsibility for what I did and for what they did, too. I was a colossal asshole and what we did was disgusting and wrong. You don’t have to forgive us now, but please, open the gates and let us in so we can take you back to the Palace. I promise we will do everything we can to make this right.”
Piper walked a few steps closer, now she was so close that I was only inches away from being able to touch her.
Even though it burned, I pressed myself into the silver-coated bars of the gate, feeling the sting and hiss of the metal on my skin.
It was a white-hot pain, but a few inches closer and I could touch her.
Just a few inches. . .
My whole body craved that touch, needed her proximity.
“I’m so sorry, Piper,” Teddy echoed. “It didn’t mean anything. I’ll never do it again.”
My lips and throat were so parched and dry from wanting her that I could only croak out, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Please, let us protect you,” Rook added.
My god, I had never seen him apologize like this. Never. Not even when he was firmly and totally in the wrong.
“Nah, I don’t think I will,” Piper said dismissively, and I had to fight the urge to howl in dismay, drive down my ancestral Alpha instincts that wanted to hurl themselves painfully against the bars over and over until they broke to get to my Omega.
“You boys have just gotten your pickles tickled by my scent, and I couldn’t give less of a shit. This is just pure biology, nothing more. You don’t really care about me.”
I pressed harder into the bars, horrified to realize I was extending my hands toward her in supplication.
“Please,” I said, and my ears were ringing so hard with need that I didn’t know if I was whispering or roaring. “Please, I’m so sorry.”
“Piper, scenting you is the way of Alphas and Omegas,” Rook said. “It means we have claimed you and you are ours.”
“Well, it is also the way for an Omega to have this Enclave to protect herself against feral Alphas, and the way Erain’s dick is pressed between the bars looks pretty feral to me.”
Rook looked over furiously, and I could feel my cheeks flush in embarrassment.
“We are not feral. Your scent is—doing things to us.”
With my eyes glued to Piper’s face, I saw her pink lips curve up. Something Rook had said had pleased her, but a shiver went through me as her cold eyes flicked by me again.
“I smell Beta,” Teddy interrupted. “Is someone in there with you?”
“Beta?” Piper says scornfully. “You smell Alpha . I’ve got my Head Alpha back here.”
“ I am your Head Alpha,” Rook growled, and I can hear the possessive note clawing through his usual cold, precise tones.
I need to say something too, remind her that I am her Alpha, too.
But I’m too busy trying to keep the most embarrassing pleas and whimpers from spilling from my lips.
My cock is uncontrollably hard in my pants.
I urge it silently to go fucking down, but it will not. Her scent is too intoxicating to me.
I adjusted uncomfortably.
“I don’t think so,” Piper said. “You see, my Head Alpha would never go fuck another woman on our wedding night.”
Rook’s whole body bows at this, like he’s been sucker-punched in the gut.
“As soon as it is morning,” Rook gritted out, “someone will be along to unlock the doors. You cannot escape from us. We just want to protect you.”
“Morning is several hours from now,” Piper said, and I notice Rook had nothing to say to that.
“I will enjoy the time with my Head Alpha for as long as I please. You three brutes have a good night. Ta-ta.”
“Aw, come on, Piper,” Teddy said and if it wasn’t so painful to see our fated mate walking away, it would be almost comical to see this big man trying to squeeze himself through these tiny gaps in the fence.
Just then, a Beta emerged from the Enclave and stretched, and Piper turned and walked back to him, each roll of her hips sending a wave of desperate longing through me.
Her body was tall and lean and strong, with the perfect amount of curves, and how did I never notice before that it was the ideal shape for a fated mate? I was amazed at my own stupidity.
“Please!” I cried again, choking from under the drool that’s started up like a geyser in my mouth.
“Don’t do this,” Rook warned, trying to infuse an Alpha bark into his voice but it has no fucking effect on her.
The Beta lights up a cigarette, the spark a bright orange in the darkness, then hands it to her as she comes up beside him.
“Don’t smoke that, Piper!” Teddy begged beside me. “It’s not good for you.”
She only flipped us off over her head, then deliberately takes the cigarette from his fingers.
Who the fuck even is this Beta? I want to kill him.
They talked together for a moment quietly as I strained my Alpha senses to hear, then he bent down and kissed her.
Pain like I’ve never felt in my life rips through my body, the searing gut-wrenching agony of seeing my fated mate kissing another man.
I can’t handle it—it’s tearing out my guts and ripping through me like claws.
Clutching the fence even as it burns my fingers, I attempt to keep myself upright.
I want to look away, but I can’t.
This guy looks like a real jabroni, but he’s over there with a hand on my Omega’s back, my Omega curving into him.
“How can she do that? Can’t she feel our connection?” Teddy wailed. He’s clutching the bars so hard his tendons look like they’re about to pop.
“She hasn’t gone into heat yet,” Rook said.
He hasn’t fallen to his knees, but his jaw looks like it could crack walnuts.
“When she goes into heat, she won’t be able to kiss anyone else.”
“Well, how the fuck do we get her into heat?” I snarled.
I’d never imagined this kind of pain could exist.
My hands are gripping the bars just to distract myself from the absolute soul-crushing agony of watching her get kissed.
My organs literally feel like they’re getting torn from my body. Every fucking feral primal instinct in me is snapping and snarling and tearing at the bars, because my primitive reptile brain knows that smell, knows this is my Omega.
She’s instantly become the most important person in the world to me, the person I would unhesitatingly throw myself in front of a bus for, and she’s kissing some Beta in front of me.
“How dare she! How dare she!” I hissed between my teeth. “That she would dare deny our mate bond!”
“Well, we did, didn’t we,” Rook said.
Fuck
Our First Alpha was breathing heavily, and his face looked dead-white.
“She’s not going to roll over and just take it.”
He looked like fucking death, but I knew Rook. And that note in his voice was goddamn admiration.
Rook has always respected one thing and one thing only.
Power.
And Piper is the only person I’ve ever seen stand up to him like this.
He bared his teeth in a snarl. “But that Beta is going to be one sorry fucker once I get someone to open these gates.”
Teddy shook the bars, interrupting. “Piper, where are you going? Piper!”
“We’re going inside,” she called back to us. “So don’t be little perverts and mind your business.”
Oh, god, even that rich, throaty uncaring voice sends unwilling heat and lust pounding through my body.
I am pissed as hell at her, but goddamn, do I want her so badly.
I watch with a groan as she heads inside, the moonlight shifting to reveal her T-shirt riding up, showing us the long lines of her back.
I know from my school lessons that inside the sturdy building there’s a few well-stocked rooms, food, drink, and basic necessities, to keep Betas and Omegas safe in case there are feral Alphas outside the walls.
My eyes glued on the building, I settle in for a long night.
In the morning, there’ll be a guard around to check. But I’ll have to survive without her until then.
But suddenly in one room of the Enclave I see the shadows move, projected enormously big against the white curtains of the open window.
For a moment, I don’t realize what they’re doing and then it hits me like a fucking semi-truck.
Piper and this Beta jackass are heading to the bed , and I feel another raw surge of pain through my body as I see the Beta reach his puny arms down and pull Piper’s T-shirt over her long, sensual body, her nipples looking tight and taut.