14. Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
Raece
A nger rippled through me. But it was more than mere anger. It was remorse. Guilt.
And, yeah, jealousy.
I felt the moment Dean and Mateo had tended to our omega. She’d specifically requested only the two of them. She hadn’t wanted me in the room. She’d looked directly at Doran and shook her head when Dean asked whether she wanted any of us in the nest with her.
All he’d said was he found her in the kitchen late at night and given her a bottle of ibuprofen, as though the small pain killers would put a dent in the pain from her cycle.
As I paced the living room, a constant growl rattling from my chest, Wren’s presence exploded among the bonds, stealing my breath for a moment. I knew Winter and Doran felt it, too, as they both tensed and shared a look.
She’d allowed Mateo to knot her. The bond was complete. There was no legal way the Center could take her from our pack now.
But I’d wanted to be the one to complete that fucking bond. I was pack lead, for fuck’s sake.
I’d also forced my mark on her. So yeah…I’d fucked myself on this one. I couldn’t blame her.
Winter and Doran whispered on the couch, Winter’s voice growing louder and angrier until they interrupted my own inner whining.
“The fuck is your problem?”
“He was a dick to her,” Winter said, glaring directly at his lover.
“Who?”
“Doran was a dick to Wren. That night in the kitchen,” Winter said, shrugging away from the beta when Doran reached for him as though to make amends.
Turning to my packmate, I crossed my arms and glared. “You were a dick how? Did you touch her?”
“What? No, I didn’t fucking touch her,” Doran said, looking at me as though I’d said either the most ridiculous or most appalling thing ever.
“What did you do?”
“I, uh,” he started, then cleared his throat. “I said she should do her job and let you knock her up. She could have caused us a lot of trouble and cost us money in fees if you hadn’t marked her. We signed a contract to do everything in our power to impregnate her but she’s refusing to allow any of you in her room.”
“Well, you sure as fuck didn’t help win her over, asshole.”
The fact she’d shook her head while looking directly at Doran made more sense now. She saw him as the enemy. And he’d made her feel as though we only wanted her in the pack for what was between her legs.
Yeah, I wanted to feel her wrapped around my cock. But other than the mark that I’d forced on her in one of the weakest moments of my life, none of us would ever expect anything from her. We could go on as we had enjoying each other or random betas from clubs.
Son of a bitch. How the hell could I smooth all this over? I could grovel and apologize for my own mistake, but it would be Doran’s responsibility to make it up to her for his big fucking mouth. She needed to know that wasn’t why we’d wanted an omega, that we didn’t expect her to spread her legs every time we asked, that we didn’t expect her to carry a single child if she had no desire to become a mother.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a father. It had never been one of those things I’d put much thought into, not something I’d planned for when I was young.
Not that Wren wouldn’t be stunning with a round belly and swollen tits. Or that I wouldn’t spoil the shit out of any child we might have.
Well, fuck. If anyone was going to impregnate her, apparently it would be Mateo since he was the only alpha she’d allowed in her nest. Not that it was guaranteed she’d get pregnant the first heat we shared with her. Hell, there was never a guarantee to anything in life.
“We should check on her,” Winter said, pushing to his feet and yanking his arm away when Doran reached for him. “Not you. When she’s done, you’re going to do what it takes to get her to forgive you.”
Shit. I couldn’t help but wonder if Doran would need to grovel with Winter, too. Because the alpha looked less than pleased that Doran had been such a cocksucker to our new and obviously nervous omega.
We should check on her. But there was no guarantee she would let either of us in the room.
Winter led the way up the stairs and I couldn’t help but notice my legs suddenly felt as though they’d been filled with lead as I trudged up the one flight and down the hall to the omega wing.
Pheromones flooded the hallway, causing my dick to stiffen painfully behind my pants. Palming the bulge, I followed Winter into the room then into the nest.
“Shhh,” Dean said softly.
Wren was draped over Mateo’s giant body, a blanket covering them. And both were sound asleep.
“How long has she been asleep?” I whispered.
“Not long enough. The next wave will wake her up soon. We got her to eat some. And she accepted Mateo’s knot.” A smile quirked up Dean’s lips and it wasn’t lost on me the beta was buck naked, too.
Had he enjoyed the omega’s body, as well? Or had he simply not bothered getting dressed after he’d rushed her into the cold shower when he’d found her almost comatose?
There were sex toys spread along the cushioned floor of the nest. The room smelled heavily of banana cream pie, spring rain, and fallen leaves.
It smelled like pack. Her scent melded perfectly with the others and a sense of home settled in my chest.
I’d hurt her. I’d not only hurt her emotionally by using my bark to force her into compliance, but I’d hurt her when I sank my teeth into her shoulder before our bodies were connected. This tiny omega had been forced into this life against her will and I fucked it up within the first week she was with us.
Doran had a lot of groveling to do. But so did I. And it was more than simply buying her comfort items like the blankets and pajamas I’d ordered her. I needed to prove to her she could trust us, that she could trust me. Not just with her safety, but with her body, with her heart and mind.
We might never become a classic love story, but we could at least become friends. We could share our lives together and be happy.
First, I had to figure out how the fuck to make her trust me, how to prove to her I wasn’t a bad guy.
But wasn’t I? Hadn’t I been the one to demand the pack add an omega?
We’d purchased her. We’d paid the Center for files on omegas, chosen the one who we felt would be right for us, then paid an exorbitant amount of money for the right to bond her, to claim her, to make her ours.
And then I did what I promised we would never do and forced my bite on her.
How the hell could I earn her trust after something like that? How could I convince her I wasn’t a bad guy, that I marked her to protect her, to keep the Center from dragging her away because we didn’t hold up our end up the contract?
“You should go before she wakes,” Dean said with a grin that made me want to cross the room and throat punch him.
Asshole knew she didn’t want me in there. And he was rubbing in the fact she had only wanted him and Mateo.
Dean had been the one to find her clinging to consciousness, had been the one to carry her into the shower to bring down her fever. And now, he was the one threading his fingers gently through her red curls as she slept on top of Mateo. The blanket was covering them both, but I could tell by her position her legs were on either side of his hips, meaning he was still buried deep in her wet heat.
“Dick,” I muttered as I stepped back, bumping into Winter who stood just inside the door.
I waited until Winter was out of the way before pulling the door shut behind me. There had to be a way to earn her trust, even after what I’d done. There had to be a way to put her at ease with the rest of the pack, to help her feel as though the house was her home, that we were her family.
But I had a feeling it was going to take a lot longer than the week since the ceremony. Patience had never been my strongest virtue, but I would need plenty of it along with a plan.
The moment Dean and Mateo were able to leave Wren’s nest, we needed to have a pack meeting. We all needed to be on board; we all needed to be on the same team.
And that included Doran’s jealous ass.
He and Winter wouldn’t simply fall apart because we’d added an omega to the pack. Hell, the beta might find he liked her if he gave her more than the few minutes he’d taken to make her feel like a fucking breeder.
Yep. We would need a plan. We would need patience.
But for the next few days, Winter and I would need a shit load of control to avoid bursting through the nest door to sate our alphas’ needs to rut our omega while her perfume filled every crack and crevice of the house.