Chapter Thirty-Eight – Nic
While the others helped Pax and his team clear the house, I follow my gut to the basement. Darius had Jay in a chokehold the moment he saw him, and no amount of über alpha bullshit on Jay’s part could make it stop. No one tells Darius Alabaster what to do; Jay will learn that very soon.
My heart is in my chest when I throw open the basement door, and when I step into the stairwell that heads down, it’s like I walk into a wall. Yes, a literal wall. The air is so thick with slick, so pungent with the desires of an omega, that it goes right to my dick and hardens it just like that.
But what’s more, it isn’t any omega’s arousal, not some random girl off the street. No, that sweet, strawberry scent can only belong to one omega in particular: ours.
So I race down the stairs, coming into a mostly-empty, wide-open basement, where my girl is chained to the ground, a thick manacle around her ankle. She’s huddled into the corner of the room, but when I make it about ten feet away from her, she tosses a glance over her shoulder, and I see she’s hazy-eyed.
Wait a damn moment. This isn’t… it can’t be. Her scent is so strong, her hormones so overpowering…
She can’t be in heat, can she?
“Mercedes,” I say her name the moment she closes her eyes and turns away from me. I rush to her side, fighting the hard cock in my pants that already threatens to turn into a knot at the mere smell of her. “Mercedes,” I say her name again, touching her arm to show her that I’m real, that I’m truly here.
She lets me pull her into my chest, and I hold onto her tightly, fighting the primal instinct inside to tear off my clothes and fuck her here and now to relieve some of that pain she surely feels.
“We’re here,” I whisper against her head. Her hair is damp with sweat. God knows how long she’s been down here, boiling alive, going through this alone. “It’s okay, I got you.”
The more I think about it, the more wrong it feels. She wasn’t due for her heat. And, even if she was, this came on awfully fast. There were no pre-heat signs: no nesting, no overeating to fill her body with calories, nothing of the sort.
When I hear someone upstairs call for me, I turn my head and shout, “She’s down here!” I return my full attention to Mercedes, running my hand along her hair as I begin to purr for her, comforting her. She responds by nestling in against my bulletproof vest.
Everything that happens next happens fast.
Warren and Darius race down the stairs, followed shortly by Pax. I shout that she’s chained to the floor, that Jay probably has a key. Darius races back upstairs, practically colliding with Pax on the way, to find said key, while Warren hurries over to us.
By the time Warren falls to his knees beside me, his pupils are dilated, as I’m certain mine are. “She’s in heat. How?” The way he talks, he can barely get the words out. He reaches for her, and I let him take her from me, let him pull her onto his lap and have a turn at soothing her. I don’t doubt he’s fighting a hard cock, too. Her scent is so strong.
I pull away from her, standing as I turn to look at Pax, who approaches us with a wrinkled nose. “Fuck,” he says. “That your omega? You didn’t tell me she was in heat. You need to get her home, ASAP. This basement ain’t no place for an omega to have her heat.” My eldest brother, ever the wordsmith, tries to act disgusted by her strong scent, but there’s no mistaking the bulge in his pants.
Every unmatched alpha in this house is going to go crazy when they smell her, but Pax doesn’t let just anyone on his personal team. They won’t act on it, won’t try to take her from us.
Still, better safe than sorry. Shouldn’t flaunt it. Need to get that key and get out of here now.
Darius returns moments later, some blood on his knuckles—if I have to guess, I’d say he roughed up Jay quite a bit while he was upstairs—but he has a small key in his hand, and he rushes to Warren and Mercedes, dropping down to undo the shackle around her ankle. The skin underneath it has been rubbed raw.
Pax has to look away from her and cover his nose with his hand. “Take one of the vans home. I’ll pick it up later, after things have settled. The team and I will handle everyone here. I assume you three will want a word with our ringleader—I’ll make sure to save him for you, but I want the whole story behind this asshole when you can.”
Warren lets Darius pick Mercedes up off his lap, and the look Darius wears is one I’ve never seen before. Yes, the alpha inside him is dying to claim her, to help her body relieve some of that internal pressure, but he’s mainly staring down at her with such adoration, such care, that he hardly looks like himself. No scowling to be seen.
I lead Darius up the stairs, and Warren walks behind him and Mercedes to be the buffer between them and all the other alphas in the house. We pass Jay Kellogg and a crew of lowlife alphas, all who are tied up and lined up, ready to be taken in, as we rush to the front door. I recognize the former; as soon as we knew his name, we looked into him. He’s had some run-ins with law enforcement, and a whole lot of shady dealings with not-so-legal businesses. He’s a hard alpha to find. Guess he thought he’d find us and try to steal our omega.
Fuck him.
Jay’s pupils dilate the moment he smells her, and he tries to stand and come after us, but one of Pax’s team harshly yanks him back down to his knees, letting out a growl that silences the chained-up über alpha.
Jay isn’t the only über around.
All eyes are on us as we race from the house. We go straight to the nearest van. Warren slides into the driver’s seat while I open the van’s back door for Darius and Mercedes. Once they’re safely in, I close the door and go up to the divider that separates the driver’s area to the rest of the van. With one bang of a fist on the metal, Warren knows we’re good to go.
Well, as good as we can be right now, with our omega in heat, a heat she shouldn’t even be having just yet.
I sit near Darius, who cradles her tightly to his chest. She lets out whimpers every now and then, putting voice to her discomfort, and each and every time she does, a muscle in his square jaw tightens.
Her scent is so strong I can hardly think straight, but I manage to say, “This shouldn’t be possible. She’s not due for a heat yet. Do you think—” I have to pause and adjust my dick in my pants; the damn thing is becoming too much to ignore. “—that asshole did something to her? Sped it up somehow? Is that even possible?”
“I don’t know,” he says, glancing down at her. “And we won’t know until she’s out of it. Right now, she needs one thing, and it isn’t questions about what happened.”
“Right,” I say with a terse nod. Every time I breathe, every time I move a muscle, it’s like my cock screams at me: let me out, let me out, I have a job to do, so just let me do it already. It’s annoying. If this is somehow the result of that asshole doing something to her, retribution will need to be swift and severe.
“Since she didn’t make a nest, we’ll have to throw one together quickly. I’ll bring her to my room while you and Warren grab all the pillows and blankets from yours. Maybe some clothes of yours, too.”
Makes sense. Typically an omega’s nest will have traces of each of her alphas, nothing but familiar scents. Being in that basement, so cold and alone, with no comfort all, must have been torture for her. My heart breaks for her—or it would, if most of my blood wasn’t going straight to my dick.
“I’ll tell Warren,” I say, since he can’t hear us in the front. I also text Mom and tell her that the cyber-attack and Mercedes’s kidnapping were related, and that we’re getting her home safe. I make sure to include the fact that we will be unreachable for a while, though I don’t say why—she should know exactly what it means without me having to spell it out.
It’s a long, tense ride to the house. Neither Darius nor I can take our attention off Mercedes. She’s so curled up on his lap, against his chest, that she barely looks like herself. She’s so small, so delicate and fragile. How on earth anyone could take a look at her and want to hurt her, want to abuse her, is beyond me. I guess there are just some shitty people out there, like that Jay Kellogg.
The moment we arrive at the house, Warren parks the van near the front door. Thankfully the window crew is gone; we were due home tomorrow. Darius wanted to make sure everything was cleaned up and back in its rightful place before we brought Mercedes back home with us, but there’s little else we can do right now besides get her in the house and help her with a makeshift nest. Our nest won’t be as comforting to her as one of her own design, but unfortunately our omega is limited thanks to this twist of fate.
Darius carries her upstairs, and I relay the message to Warren as we hurry up after him. Bedding, pillows, clothes; anything that carries our scent deep in the fabrics. Any and everything to Darius’s room.
Warren and I separate in the hall to grab what we can. It’s a mad rush, multiple trips to and from Darius’s bedroom. I yank the comforter off my bed first and grab my pillow for my first trip. My next involves the rest of the sheets on my bed. My third includes my towel from my bathroom, along with some clean clothes of mine—I also toss in a few shirts that have been worn but not yet washed, the ones that aren’t nasty with sweat marks from working out.
Then again, she’d probably like the extra smell right now.
While Warren and I bring all of this to Darius’s room, he works on pulling closed his curtains and making a mound on the floor, right near his bed, where Mercedes waits, curled up on her side. I hear him trying to soothe her as I run to and from, but words aren’t as soothing to an omega in heat as an alpha knot is.
If this was a normal heat, there would’ve been signs beforehand. We could’ve helped her get everything perfect, to just the way she wants it. Her instincts would have taken over and guided her desires. In reality, her first heat has been stolen from her. Thank God we were able to find her in time—I really don’t want to think about what could’ve happened if we didn’t reach her as soon as we did.
Warren brings over his last batch of stuff, and we three alphas do our best to make a nest our omega can have the rest of her heat in. Darius has to pick her up off the bed while I help Warren undo his sheets and add his stuff to the mound on the floor. Layer after layer of comfort, so it ultimately won’t feel like she’s nesting on the floor, but enough to cocoon her away from the world around us, surrounded by fabrics that contain all of our scents.
Once Mercedes is set down in the nest, she turns her head and inhales deeply, and the sigh that flows from her informs us we did a good job with the time we were given. Which is none, for the record. I’d like to see any other pack of alphas pull this off—then again, any other pack of alphas might not have saved their omega in time.
“What do you want us to do?” Darius asks her, smoothing her hair away from her face. “We’re here for you, Mercedes. We’ll do whatever you want us to.” I’m surprised at how normal he sounds; now that we’re here, at home, with our omega in a nest, my voice is gone. All I can do is stare at her and wait with bated breath until she tells us what she wants from us.
She makes a face, scrunching up her nose and puckering her mouth before rasping out, “I need out of these clothes. Please.”
Mercedes only has to say it once. Darius helps her out of her clothing, piece by piece, and she’s nothing more than a ragdoll in extreme discomfort the entire time. Much of her clothing had already been ripped, probably by her own hand while she was writhing around in that basement, by herself.
Right when I think my dick can’t get any harder, Darius slides her soaked panties down her legs, and the scent of her slick fills the air even more. Potent, alluring, dangerous. Such a sweet, enticing scent that talks directly to the steel rod between my legs. My cock bulges against my pants, practically busting through the zipper.
Her temperature’s high. Every inch of her smooth skin is a pinkish color, feverish. Her nipples are already fierce points, her inner thighs coated in her slick. Her body is ready to take an alpha’s knot.
I glance at Darius, asking him a wordless question. If they’re scent matches, he has every right to take her first, but with his blessing, I’d be more than glad to do so. Besides, I don’t know how much longer I can ignore the tingling in the tip of my cock.
Darius knows exactly what I want, because he gives me a curt nod before crooning to Mercedes, “Nic is going to help you first, okay? He’s going to make you feel better, fuck you nice and long, and you’re going to be a good omega and come all over him.” As he tells this to her, she nods deliriously, as if it’s an order—and in a way, it is—and while she nods, I hurriedly shed everything.
The vest. The gun still in its holster. The clothes underneath. My shoes and socks. And, finally, my belt and pants and the boxers underneath. Once I’m free of all clothing, I crawl over Mercedes, who lays there, waiting, panting, totally desperate for the relief only an alpha knot will bring her.
She’s out of her mind. I hate that this isn’t right, that it’s so unnatural, but I’ll do my part in helping her through it—we all will. It’s what we’re here for. Why we’re a pack. I know packs of single alphas and their omegas are a thing, but with the stories I’ve heard about heats, I don’t know how a single alpha could do it.
Omegas should nest and feast the few days before, stock up on calories before they lose their minds to the heat. Alphas should take care of their out-of-their-mind omegas; fucking, cleaning up, breaking to eat and maybe shower thanks to the generous heapings of slick and cum that accompany heats. It’s a job. Most alphas take off work to be with their omegas during their heat, and if they don’t, it’s just cruel.
Mercedes pupils are so blown her eyes are all black as she gazes up at me, her brown, kinky hair a sweaty mess around her head. She lets out a single whine, and the sound is enough for me. I don’t wait a second more: I position my length between her legs and push inside her, filling her up to the brink with one thrust of my hips.
Fuck. She really is wet. Wetter than ever. The slick adds to the sensation, making my cock tingly inside her. I arch my back as I start to pump in and out of her core. Smelling her during the whole drive home, fighting with my cock this whole time; it all makes it impossible to push off the knot. The base of my cock swells almost immediately, and I stretch her pussy good while jerking into her.
She mewls underneath me, writhing as I pump into her. She grabs hold of me, practically clawing her nails down my sides, but I don’t mind. She can do whatever she wants to me if it helps make her feel better. “Mhmm,” she whimpers, begging for me and my knot. “You feel so good, Nic.”
It’s as if I’m not in total control over myself. I’m pretty sure I nod in agreement with her—though I’m more of the mind that she feels good—but I can’t say for sure. It’s like her delirium transfers itself over to me, and I become nothing more than a slave to my instincts… and right now I’m just an animal claiming its mate.
Sometime during the knotting, Warren and Darius shed their clothes. They lounge around us, fully nude, their hard cocks on display. Warren’s hand goes straight for his length, his fist pumping up and down as he watches me claim our omega. Darius doesn’t, but I can see his knuckles turning white as he holds them at his sides. Somehow, someway, the man is holding back. Maybe he’s saving his first shot of cum for her pussy.
I pick up my pace, moving my hips against her faster, and I’m greeted with the sight of Mercedes starting to unravel. Her eyelids snap shut, and she cries out as her core clamps down around my knot, her pussy milking me for everything I’m worth. It’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen, and an appreciative rumble leaves my chest as I croon over her. Her body produces more slick, letting my knot slide a little deeper inside her.
Right when the pressure inside of me grows to unimaginable heights, Warren scoots closer to Mercedes’s face and says, “I’m about to cum, Red. Where do you want it?” His eyes rake over her naked body as we lurch together. “Your stomach? Your beautiful tits? Or maybe…” Through the thick scent of her heat and slick filling the air, his mischievous nature shines through, and he smirks hard when he says, “Your mouth?”
Mercedes cracks open her eyes and turns her head to look up at Warren. She parts her lips, panting out, “Mouth.”
I moan. Watching her take his load in her mouth is going to be beyond sexy. It’s a damn good thing I’m already close to coming myself, otherwise that whole thing would push me over the edge.
Warren becomes even more eager, and he gets into position while she turns her head and opens her mouth wide to accept his cum. His hand works harder at his length, and he has to lean over her face from the side to get to a good angle to fit his cock into her mouth. She moans when her mouth is full of cock, which then causes Warren to echo the sound with a manlier version, and I watch as he lets loose a spray of cum directly into that sweet mouth of hers.
And, damn it all to hell, she gobbles it up like his cum is the only nourishment she needs.
I can’t hold mine in any longer. I rocket forward, a low moan escaping my throat as my balls tense and my cock twitches inside of her. As I orgasm, I fill her core with copious amounts of cum, and by the time I’m once again in control of myself, I’m breathing harder than I’ve ever breathed in my life.
Mercedes squirms under me, and since I’m still attached to her thanks to the knot, I decide to use the time wisely: I sit up between her stretched thighs and rub a thumb along the side of her clit. I circle that swollen nub of flesh before pinching it between two fingers, and the reaction on her part is damn near immediate.
“Does that feel good?” Darius asks her, his voice haggard and low, like a growl in and of itself. “Do you like it when Nic plays with you like that?” All she can do is nod, and he orders the third alpha in the room: “Warren, put your mouth to good use.”
Smirking like he’s just been given the best orders of his life, Warren salutes our pack leader and says, “As you wish, boss.” And then he lowers his mouth right to the nearest nipple on her chest, pulling it into his mouth and instantly making her moan.
“Lower,” Darius instructs, and Warren doesn’t put up a fight. His mouth sinks lower, abandoning the nipple in search of other prey.
Past her stomach, Warren’s mouth roams over the smooth, sweat-lined skin on her body. He smacks my thumb off her clit before latching his mouth onto her nub. With my knot still swollen, still locking me and Mercedes together… let’s just say he’s lucky I don’t care about personal space right now. No, right now the only thing that matters is making our omega feel amazing.
Mercedes starts to tremble beneath me, and her core clenches around my cock and my knot while Warren’s mouth ravages her clit. Darius reaches over and toys with her nipples, giving her a triple sensation while she orgasms and blesses my cock with enough slick that I’m finally able to pull out of her when said orgasm subsides.
Warren is right there to take my place. Seriously, the moment I fall backward onto my ass, he trades places with me, licking his lips as he positions his cock at her entrance. With how hard his cock is, you’d think he didn’t just come not too long ago inside her mouth.
Then again, you’d think the same thing with mine. It doesn’t take a fortune teller to know our cocks will be permanently hard until her heat is over and her perfume isn’t so potent.
Warren’s body bears down upon hers, and as his cock slides into her pussy, his back trembles and he mutters a low, “Fucking hell. I’ll never get over how good you feel, Red. It’s like this pussy of yours was made to take my cock.”
Trust me, I know the feeling.
I lay down in the spot Warren occupied previously, and I watch lazily as he takes his turn in fucking her. The more knots she gets, the more cum fills that body, the more orgasms she has; all of it helps. At least now she’s no longer in pain. The only thing Mercedes feels is pleasure, and that’s how it should always be.
She should never, ever experience a heat alone. I know some omegas are forced to, but I can’t imagine how difficult it is for them. Regardless, Mercedes is our omega and we are going to take care of her for the rest of our lives.
Oh, yes. She has to know that she can’t leave us now. Losing her would crack my heart in two, damage me and this pack in a way that we could never be whole again. Our bond is irrevocable. She might not have our bites on her neck yet, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s ours in every way.
Warren’s all rough movements and hard thrusts, and he pulls out more moans from her as he takes her. I lay there for a while, watching until my cock calls for a hand again, and then I jerk off while imagining I’m still between her legs. When she sees my hand going up and down over my length, she turns her head toward me, much like she did to Warren before, and parts those luscious lips of hers, clearly eager to taste me.
If that’s what the lady wants, it’s what the lady shall receive.
I move my midsection closer to her head. My thought is to wait until I’m almost ready to erupt before aiming for that mouth, but Mercedes whimpers and says, “In my mouth, now.” There’s no force behind the command, but I’m helpless to resist. Besides, if our omega wants my cock in her mouth, who am I to deny her?
I have to mimic the position Warren took to get my cock in that sweet mouth of hers, but once her lips wrap around the tip of my cock, the very moment I feel her tongue flick across the tip and swipe at the precum oozing from me, I moan. She can’t do much thanks to the angle of her head, so I wrap a hand around the back of her head to help keep her steady while Warren continues to fuck her.
“Look at our omega,” Darius murmurs. “Taking two alphas at once. Do you like that, Mercedes? Do you like being stuffed full of alpha cock?”
With a mouth full of it and a pussy tight around Warren’s knot, all she can do is moan her response. Moan and suck harder on my dick like she’s sucking on a piece of candy. It’s the hottest sound I’ve ever heard in my life.
I’m much gentler with her mouth than Warren is with her pussy, mostly because rough just isn’t my style, but also because I don’t want to overwhelm her. Natural or no, this is her first heat, and I don’t want to break any part of her. Her body might want things that aren’t physically possible, like a knot in her throat.
My dick is ready to knot again, but I hold it at bay while I’m inside her mouth. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but choking her with a knot is the last thing I want. I’m close; I just need to make it a little longer.
And, of course, right when I think that thought, her hand roams, finding my balls, and the very moment she massages them between her fingers, I lose it.
I rock my hips forward as a new wave of cum shoots from the tip of my dick, straight into her mouth, onto that eager tongue. She laps me up like my cum is the only food she needs and contains all the nutrients to fuel her body during her heat.
Hey, it might not be the same as a pre-heat binge, but it’s better than nothing.
I pull out of her mouth the moment I’m emptied of cum so she can focus on the way Warren savagely thrusts into her pussy. He holds onto her outer thighs, having lifted her legs up and leaning them against his chest while he pile-drives into her, hitting deep.
Mercedes loses it again, and I know exactly how it feels when she comes, the way her inner walls tighten around the cock inside her, how her pussy seems to pull the knot deeper, a sign her body wants more alpha cum. She arches her back as she cries out, her moan of bliss followed shortly by Warren himself.
He grunts as he jerks into her, short, erratic thrusts. “Fuck,” he murmurs, and after a few seconds, a sloppy smile tugs at his mouth. A true, genuine smile, not a smirk. It’s an expression I’ve never seen on him before, but here and now, it suits him. He releases his hold on her thighs, letting her legs fall, and he seems completely at peace inside her, the alpha he used to be one of distant memory, the scars on his back the only sign of what he went through when he was a child.
He turns that grin toward me, and I grin right back and say, “I bet Darius is dying to have her. Maybe you should fuck her again and make him wait even longer—” The growl that leaves our pack leader’s chest right then is enough of an indication: he’s a patient alpha, but he refuses to wait forever.
“Don’t worry,” Warren muses, stretching and rolling his hips—and since he’s still inside Mercedes, the action makes her moan, the knot hitting something inside her that makes her melt. “As soon as this knot fades, she’s all yours, alpha.”
Darius reaches for her face, taking her chin between his fingers and forcing her to roll her head the other way and look up at him through her haze-filled eyes. “I hope you’re not overflowing with cum just yet, omega. I still need to add mine into the mix, and then you’ll have a piece of each of us inside of you.”
She sets a hand atop his wrist, and the way she gazes up at him… well, it makes me wonder just how deep the heat is, how much of what she does is fueled by the primal urges written into her DNA, or if, somewhere along the way, she fell for us just as we fell for her.
Love. I’d be lying if I say I’m not the most romantic of the three of us. Love was always on the table for me when it came to our omega, but that said, I had no idea it would hit this soon, this fast—or this hard.
Because, yeah, I do love Mercedes. I can’t imagine a life without her. She’s become everything to me in such a short time, and I know the feelings inside of me will only grow. I might not be able to speak for them, but Warren and Darius must feel the same.
I want to tell her. I want to confess my love for her, but she might not fully remember it, and by God, when I tell this woman that I love her, I want her to be completely cognizant and aware of her surroundings. I want her to be in control of herself and her body, so I’ll wait. It’ll be difficult, but I’ll wait.I’ll wait for as long as I have to.
Pack Alabaster and their omega now have all the time in the world.