19. Teddy
CHAPTER 19
Teddy
R ook’s eyes meet mine in the mirror and I know what he’s asking me to do.
Rook is not very good with emotion, and Erain is kind of a haughty jackass until you get to know him, so that leaves me as the charming one. Now that we’re all calmed down, he wants me to soothe Piper’s feelings, we’ll all apologize, and she’ll see that we mean it this time. We want her as our Omega.
So I scoot forward in my chair until I’m next to her and I take a deep breath of her scent.
God, she smells fucking delicious. My mouth is already watering. I can’t remember anything like this before, this hunger and craving for a woman.
I wipe the drool from my face before I embarrass myself, and I shift so the hard cock in my pants isn’t digging into the back of her seat. All it takes is a tiny wisp, a merest breath of her scent, and I’m hard as a rock.
“Piper, your scent is so beautiful,” I began.
“It is,” she agreed, looking out the window as we rolled past the outskirts of town.
This wasn’t a promising start, but I pressed on.
“You’re the best thing I’ve ever smelled in my life.”
“I bet,” she said.
I wasn’t exactly sure where to go from here. Ideally at this point she would have been blushing and smiling at my compliments.
That’s what always happened with the Betas I had complimented. There was no effort required. I began to feel a creeping dread.
“This—what has happened, was regrettable,” I said earnestly, smiling as wide as I could in her direction, the dimples popping out in my cheeks. “I am so sorry. It will never happen again, and I—we, of course, would like to start fresh.”
I could hear Erain wheezing beside me, the breath rattling out of his lungs.
But Piper barely looked at me as she pulled out a nail file from her purse and held out her hand with its long, fluorescent pink nails in front of her.
“I’m sure you would,” she said. “Because you’re thinking with your gross little knots now, you revolting perverts. I’m not interested.”
I felt an intake of breath in the car.
“It’s not just our knots,” Rook said. “We want to know you and cherish you in all the ways an Omega should be cherished.”
“Ha,” Piper said. “If you want to cherish someone, Rook, go find Beatrice. I’m sure she would love to be cherished with your penis. I’m not interested.”
“What do you mean?” I asked anxiously, feeling my normally deep Alpha voice crack.
“I mean I reject this mate bond,” Piper said off-handedly. “You were all right. It was a mistake. You must’ve all had the flu at the same time. What a comical misunderstanding. Now drop me off at the nearest hotel and move along. We’ll go our separate ways. Best of luck finding your future mate.”
I can see Rook’s hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are white.
“ We are your fated mates,” he ground out. “It is undeniable. Your scent, Piper, it—does things to me I’ve never felt before.”
“Me too,” I hastened to say, and I could hear Erain agreeing eagerly beside me.
“As soon as I scented your perfume, it changed my whole outlook on life.”
“Very moving,” Piper said dryly, kicking her shoes off and stretching her long legs up on the dashboard. “But you can save it for your next Omega.”
The sound of vigorous filing fills the Jeep.
“There will never be another Omega for us,” Rook said, and his voice sounded like death. “You are it, Piper. Our every cell is oriented toward you, our entire bodies are designed to protect you and give you pleasure. It’s all our Alphas want.”
“That sounds uncomfortable,” Piper retorted. “And fake.”
She dragged her muddy toes all along the window, from the very top to the bottom, and Rook said nothing, even though he was notoriously finicky with his car.
“Piper please,” Erain begged from beside me. “ Please . You can do anything to me. Drag your toes down my face.”
Stunned, I elbowed him sharply.
His naked desperation was not helping and was going to turn her off.
But he wasn’t done.
“Drag your nails down my face. Please. You have to forgive me. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was an asshole.”
“Drag my nails down your face? I don’t fucking think so. You suck, Erain.”
He moaned and my stomach felt so sick and stressed it was cramping.
I started feeling pretty nakedly desperate myself.
“Please,” he said again.
“Was that or was that not you fucking another woman on our wedding night?” she demanded.
“It was a mistake,” he cried.
Holy hell, I had never seen Erain like this, but I couldn’t even razz him over this when I was feeling out of my mind with worry.
Erain moved closer behind Piper, and I knew he was trying to take an inconspicuous sniff of her, but he wasn’t very inconspicuous at this particular moment.
“Down, boy!” she said sharply, turning suddenly with a perfume bottle and squirting it behind her.
It hit us right between the eyes, the cloying, awful scent trying to drown out Piper’s fresh citrus and cream, and I yowled in distress, wiping my face as the tears streamed down my cheeks.
“Stop sniffing at me as if I was a cake,” she snapped. “If I want you to smell me I’ll tell you.”
Erain moaned. “I can’t stop,” he begged, clutching at the back of her seat. “It’s addicting—your scent, please, I can’t get enough of it. It’s driving me mad.”
“Teddy, get a hold of him!” Rook ordered, and I put an arm around Erain’s chest and wrestled him back into his seat.
“Forgive me,” he begged again, and I could see by the way Piper’s lip curled up that this wasn’t helping and she was not in a forgiving mood.
By the time we got back to the Capitol, I was a fucking nervous wreck, my stomach cramping so bad from nerves that I was afraid I was going to throw up in the back of Rook’s Jeep.
“We want to make your quarters comfortable,” Rook said, enunciating each word carefully like he was having trouble speaking. “We want you to have the best nest an Omega ever had. What can we do to make that happen?”
She shrugged as we pulled up to the Palace.
“Even though it’s late,” I said eagerly as the guards waved us in, their eyes widening at the damage to Rook’s Jeep, “tomorrow I can take you shopping to get anything you need for your nest.”
Piper ignored me again, her face frowning as she looked at the Palace.
“Is something wrong with the Palace?” Rook asked. “Do you want us to buy a house elsewhere?”
Rook has always insisted that we need to live in the Palace for his political career, so this was shocking.
“Buy yourself a house elsewhere,” Piper said, opening the door. “Be sure to make it big enough for all the women you’ll need to bone.”
“I have no interest in other women,” I called out to her as we followed our Omega hastily inside. And it’s shockingly true. What I want is to sleep next to Piper, scent her delicious body all night long, find out what she loves.
I know I can fuck her better than that stupid Beta. But right now all I feel is incredibly jealous of him.
Even though I’m used to women, used to fucking them and giving them pleasure, I can’t stop the way my cock hardens at the sight of my Omega walking in front of me, her confident, seductive stride, the way her long legs move, the way her slim waist curves out into perfectly-shaped hips and ass.
When I see some of the Palace staff staring open-mouthed at me, I look down and hastily put my hands over my crotch.
I’m sporting a full fucking boner, my heavy cock bobbing along totally to attention.
Piper doesn’t even look back.
Her rooms are luckily clean and fresh after the staff has been in, and she enters them still without another backwards glance.
I looked around anxiously. Big sitting room, large kitchen, big dining area, two bathrooms, the most expensive furniture and furnishings, a luxury view of downtown. But is it enough?
“Is your nest comfortable?” I asked eagerly. “Are your quarters to your liking?”
She shrugged.
“Because you can have any other room you want,” I said, and I didn’t even recognize the unfamiliar tone in my voice, the desperation breaking through like magma flowing from a crack.
“They’re comfortable enough to live there while I find new Alphas,” she shrugged.
“New Alphas?” I cried, feeling sweat break out on my neck and begin to trickle down my back.
“You cannot break the mating bond now,” Rook said harshly, crossing his arms over his chest. “It is permanent and life-long.”
“We’ll see,” Piper said with unconcern, stretching the long elegant lines of her arms above her head. “I bet I’ll be able to break it once I find some Alphas who will be loyal,”
“ We will be loyal!” I said, wanting so badly to touch her, but I know that wouldn’t be appreciated. “We screwed up but we will be loyal.”
Piper scoffed. “All you care about is knotting me. You don’t really give a shit about me.”
“That’s not true,” Rook said, his voice low and gravelly. “We fucked up but we want a chance to make it better. It’s my fault as First Alpha for not facilitating our bonding properly. Let’s just agree to start getting to know each other now.”
“No,” Piper said, and her eyes were on Erain. “I fucking dare you to say you care about me as a person and like my personality.”
And goddamn Erain who is supposed to be so intellectual and good with words, stumbled over everything and said, “It was just a culture shock at first. You know, how you were dressed and stuff. We want you now!”
I saw Piper’s face harden.
“Fuck you, Erain.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Shit, I’m sorry, Piper. No, please, don’t go away.”
His face twisted with pain and he grabbed at her arm.
“Why shouldn’t I go away?”
“It—hurts when you go. It gives me pain to be away from my fated mate. I know you are now. I don’t care what you’re wearing.”
Idiot
Apparently he thought he really ate with that. Her lips twisted contemptuously.
“It hurts, does it? Good. I hope it hurts you like a bitch when I tell you I’m going to do everything I can to break this mate bond.”
She kicked out, sideways, landing a sharp blow on his shins, then she went inside her apartment and slammed the door on us.
“Fucking moron,” I hissed at him, gripping the back of his ruined tux. “Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one?”
“She can’t break the mate bond,” Rook said, although I didn’t know if he was trying to convince us or himself.
“What would happen if she did?” I asked.
“A lifetime of pain,” Rook said bleakly. “Alphas are miserable without their fated mates. An Alpha Pack without their scented Omega is doomed to life alone, in a perpetual mindless rut or just fucking feral.”
I stare at the slammed door, even now my nostrils dilating to try to grasp her scent.
Even letting Piper go into her own quarters is painful, because there’s a door between us, and I can feel her anger all along my skin like a physical pain.
The broken mate bond aches against my body, throbs like a wound.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do now?” Erain asked.
And if I wasn’t in so much pain, hell, it would be highly amusing to see the finicky and arrogant Erain covered in mud and filth, with his clothes practically hanging off his body in shreds.
“There’s one damn option,” I said. “We have to fight like hell for her.”
“How?” Erain groaned, tearing at his long hair. “She hates us.”
“She doesn’t believe us,” Rook said bleakly. “And I don’t blame her. At this point why wouldn’t she believe we’re just thinking with our knots?”
And I can’t believe I have been assuming they were the brains of this operation.
“We have to start at the beginning,” I said. “What we should have done a long time ago.”
They stared at me.
“We have to try to curb our urge to rut and act normal instead. We have to get to know her,” I said impatiently. “She’s our mate. We need to find out what she likes and doesn’t like, and what kind of mates she was hoping for. Because I’m going to do my fucking best to make sure I’m the kind of Alpha she wants.”