Chapter Twenty-Three – Jess
Five days go by before I realize something’s wrong. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.
What is wrong, you might be wondering? Oh, I’ll tell you.
This house doesn’t have enough pillows. Like, you’d think with how big it is, there would be pillows aplenty, but there isn’t.
My ankle feels fine, and after a lot of reassurance, I finally don’t have the guys breathing down my neck while I go room to room, gathering all the fluffy pillows I could find.
Those stupid decorative ones that are hard as a rock? I don’t bother with those. I don’t want those. Those are as useless as pillows could be. Seriously, what’s the point of them?
I want fluff. I want softness. I want…
It’s as I stand in the middle of my room, surrounded by pillows and blankets and other things I took from various rooms in the house—including stuff from the guys’ rooms—that I realize I’m starting to spiral.
I’m nesting. Shit. So much for possibly not having any pre-heat symptoms, huh? That’s Murphy’s Law coming to smack me across the head and bring me back to reality. I might not be able to smell, but I’m still more than capable of nesting like I’ve never nested before.
And, in a way, I haven’t. Not like this. I’ve never had to prepare a room for what will be the Olympics of sex.
I tore off all the bedding and pillows from the large mattress and spread them out on the floor.
I then layered the sheets and pillows I took from the guys’ rooms on top of that and surrounded the entire thing with pillows from the living room and every other room, minus the hard ones, like I said.
Just because I can’t smell my guys’ scents on the things I took doesn’t mean they don’t still bring me comfort. They do.
It’s a weird thing, realizing I’m nesting and thereby realizing my heat is going to start at any given moment.
I suppose I have been eating more during meals; I’ve taken to shoveling down my food much like the guys do when they eat.
Like animals, seriously. I’ve had some emotional outbursts that made me feel like I was going crazy, but none of the guys said a word about any of it being pre-heat symptoms.
I bet those jerks knew the moment I started to lose it. I bet they talked in secret about how to prepare for this while letting me stay blissfully unaware of my impending heat. The jerks. I can’t believe they didn’t say anything to me.
Not that it would’ve changed anything. My heat is coming regardless.
Asher knocks on the door; I’ve taken to leaving it open. My room is no more off-limits to the guys, not after that little chat we had about becoming a pack after everything’s said and done. He takes a single step into the room, his eyes wide as he surveys the absolute mess that has become of it.
I set my hands on my hips, expecting a critique. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” I look around me, at the blankets and pillows. I don’t think I can see an inch of the actual floor beyond my mess. “Just say it: it’s terrible. It’s horrible. It’s a pathetic attempt at a nest, isn’t it?”
He chooses his words carefully as he steps over the pillows and comes to my side, “I think it looks very… comfortable.”
I pucker my lips and angle my head back. He now stands a good foot in front of me, and instead of focusing on the nest around us, he’s staring squarely at me, like I’m the only thing that matters in this room.
Come on. A nest is super important. If I’m not happy with my nest, then I surely won’t be a happy camper through my heat.
“Comfortable? Comfortable?” The second time I echo the word, I sound a little hysterical. The thing is, I don’t know how to switch it off. I feel almost out of my mind.
“Yes,” he says, bringing his hands to my arms and rubbing me in a gesture that’s probably supposed to calm me down.
“It looks perfect.” His hands move to cup my face, and at first I think it’s so that I don’t keep staring at the room around us, but when he lifts my face and makes me gaze up into his eyes, his calmness fills me, and together we let out a long, slow breath.
Never been one for breathing exercises, but not going to lie, I do feel a bit calmer now. “I don’t know if I can do this,” I whisper, referencing the whole heat thing.
It’s not really fair that nature forces us omegas to go through this. It’s just not fair. All the schooling, all the classes, everything we learn about heats in school; nothing can actually prepare you for the real thing.
Asher still radiates a quiet tranquility that seeps into my bones.
“You can do this. I know you can.” I open my mouth to argue with him, but he goes on, “You have me, Mason, and Rourke here to help you through it—and that thing you brought, if you want it. We’ll do whatever you want us to. We will be your servants.”
I swallow hard. “What if I don’t know what to do?”
“You will.”
“How can you be so sure?” This hesitation, this uncertainty… it’s not me. It’s like someone else is taking the reins and steering. I’m not someone who wavers in the what-ifs. I might linger in the past and how much everything sucked, but I’m not like this.
Asher steps closer, and in doing so my chest leans against his upper stomach. His head bends as he smiles down at me, the warmth flowing through him ebbing into me. “Because you’re you. You got this. And you have us. We’re here for you.”
I whine. The sound slips out of me before I can stop it. An omega’s whine is a deep, innate sound, and it’s meant to elicit a certain type of reaction from an alpha. It’s not the same as whining when you’re complaining about something. It’s a more primal sound, no words necessary.
The moment that whine surfaces, Asher responds in the only way he can: he lowers his face to mine and brings his lips to my mouth, kissing me softly as a low rumble risers in his chest. That rumble is something I feel deep within my soul, in my core, in every part of me. An alpha’s purr.
An alpha’s purr is meant to calm an omega down, and I’ve never been subjected to one before.
It’s… not the worst thing in the world, feeling his chest vibrate as he kisses me and drowns out my whine with his comfort.
It’s enough to make me forget why I even whined in the first place, why I was so worried about the room and the nest.
The nest doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that I have Asher, Rourke, and Mason here with me.
And I don’t have to stay away from them. We’re going to fuck, and it’s going to be amazing.
The kiss lasts for an eternity, and it’s only when Asher’s chest no longer purrs and I’m no longer whining that he tugs his mouth off mine and gives me a deep grin.
“Your lips are softer than they look.” His hands still cup my face, and though his mouth isn’t on mine, he’s still so close I can feel his hot breath blooming across my skin.
“Oh, yeah?” I whisper. “Have you thought about how soft my lips might be often?” As I ask the question, I lean into him, and I wish so desperately I could smell him and commit his scent to memory.
But I can’t, and I’m always going to be missing that part of us. It sucks.
“Honestly? I noticed your lips the first time we saw each other at the park. You were all bundled up and trying to hide, but those lips have always been calling my name,” he tells me. “I did my best not to stare, but…”
“I think you did well, then. I had no idea.”
He smooths my hair down. The blue has faded with multiple showers, but it’s still a nice color. “I can’t believe we’re here, after all this time. It doesn’t feel real to me. Does it feel real to you yet?”
My lips tingle from our kiss. It takes everything in me to not focus on that lingering tingle and answer his question, “No, and I don’t know if it ever will. Out of all of the possibilities I dreamed up, I never thought this would be one of them—not that I’m complaining. I’m not.”
Just like that, a little talking and a nice, heated kiss, and I’m calm. The fretting Jess is gone. Imagine that.
Asher then says something that catches me off-guard: “I don’t deserve you. Not after what I did ten years ago. I was such a little jerk. I never thought you’d give me a second chance, let alone agree to be… to be mine.”
I never thought that, either. Heck, I didn’t even think he’d respond to my message in the beginning of all this, but I am so damn glad he did.
Having him here, being with him… it’s like coming home after being away for years and years.
He’s both familiar and new at the same time, and I cannot get enough.
“I can’t believe you and Mason agreed to form a pack with Rourke,” I whisper. It’s been days, and yet that knowledge still sits in my mind, refusing to become normalized, and it probably won’t be normal until it actually happens.
“I guess it’s true what they say: when you know, you know.
Besides, I think Mason has been looking for some purpose for a long time, and Rourke?
Maybe we didn’t have the best introduction, but the guy’s pretty level-headed when it comes to an über.
He… he definitely has my respect. I think the four of us will make a good pack. ”
A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “I think we’ll make a good pack, too.”
Asher gives me a gentle kiss on my forehead. “Now, I came up here to ask what you want for dinner. Any special requests?”
“Surprise me,” I say. I’ve found that his cooking is the best when he’s following his heart and not a recipe. I, personally, need step-by-step instructions on how to do things; it’s probably why I’m having such a hard time with these pre-heat symptoms in the first place. The uncertainty kills me.
“Will do.” Asher carefully steps around the pillows scattered on the floor, and once he makes it to the door, he tosses me a look before he disappears down the hall.
I sink to the floor. The layers and layers of blankets beneath me create quite the cushion.
I can’t imagine how much laundry will need to be done once my heat is over.
This room, these blankets, even the pillows; nothing will be untouched.
An omega’s heat is a marathon of sex with heapings of bodily fluids.
Slick and cum will be the names of the game.
Asher was right. It is a comfortable nest. It’s not bad, not bad at all. I don’t know why I was freaking out so much.
I can do this.
I have to do this. Really, I have no other choice.
It’s a funny thing, when you think you have all the time in the world left to prepare.
What’s not so funny is, more often than not, the truth of the matter, and the truth of this matter?
The first pangs of pain in my lower gut start in the middle of the night two days later, when I’m busy tossing and turning on the floor.
I stopped sleeping in the large bed the day I pulled off all the sheets and pillows.
I’m awake, so I’m aware of when it begins, otherwise I might’ve woken up to it the next morning: a low, dull ache in my lower half.
Almost in my stomach, but lower than that.
That ache doesn’t go away with time, like most stomachaches do.
No, it intensifies as time crawls on, to the point where I start to sweat.
Is this it? Has to be. My mouth is dry, and my hands and feet are clammy. Combine that with the pain in my lower half, and there is no other explanation for what’s happening to me.
I don’t want to bother the guys until the morning, until breakfast has been eaten and they have some time to prepare themselves for what’s next, so I call upon all the willpower I can muster up.
Problem is, I don’t have anything to distract myself with. No TV, no phone, no endless scrolling to take my mind and attention off the current churning of my gut. It makes time crawl by at a ridiculously slow pace, and since I have nothing else to focus on, the pain intensifies rather quickly.
It gets to the point where I moan and grunt as I toss and turn, where sweat dots my hairline and I can’t think of anything else other than the alphas in this house and how relief is so close by.
So close, and yet so far.
Shit. I can’t wait until morning. I need them now.
I labor to sit up. Even doing so is like pulling the tendons from my body; unnatural and more difficult than you could ever imagine.
The only way I can get to my feet is by kneeling first, then using both my arms to help push myself up.
As I stand on my own two feet, I sway, and my lower half reminds me that I need some help by shooting pain down my legs.
I thought a silicone alpha knot would help me through this? What a joke I was. How blind. And stupid.
Swaying on my feet a bit, I manage to stumble through the room in the darkness. By the time I reach the door, I’m out of breath and coated in sweat. This shit sucks. I literally can’t think straight.
Rourke. Asher. Mason. Their knots.
It’s all I can think about as I open the door and shuffle down the hall.
It’s like pulling teeth, but somehow I manage to reach someone’s room.
My right hand curls into a fist, and I think about knocking hard enough to wake the sleeping alpha inside, but suddenly all the energy in my body drains out, and I can only open the door before I collapse on the ground.
The door pushes open, and I have to take a moment to simply breathe before I can say the alpha’s name.
This is it. This is the beginning of everything. All of the running, all of the resisting; it culminates here and now. I’m an omega, and I need my alphas.
I open my mouth to say a single name, “Rourke.”