Chapter 18 Bites and Bonds
Bites and Bonds
Aurora
Honey stares at me from the pit. She’s shocked. She’s worried I’m mad at her. Upset and guilty. She gave the pepper spray to one of the guards she liked, and he tossed it in, only for the little canister to be completely forgotten in the melee. Locke stopped the fight.
Locke stopped the fight and agreed to forsake his pack and bond me.
He wasn’t the one to bite the omega, and if nothing has changed, he’s only got a silver bond with a non-pack lead, Kol. He could forsake his bond. It would be torturous, but he could.
Locke is long gone, off with Mads and my father, and yet Honey and I still stare at each other across the fighting hall.
He stopped the fight, and they made some grand announcements I couldn’t hear over the roaring of my ears, and then they left.
My eyes dart to the cage, and the canister can’t even be seen. Who knows where it ended up?
Locke tapped out. He agreed to the bond.
He gave in.
It’s not because he wants you!
He just didn’t want to be eaten by a tiger.
My heart is beating so hard in my chest, and yet my blood isn’t even moving. My fingers go cold.
This wasn’t the plan.
“Aurora,” Carmen says from behind me. “You gotta run, girl. Get out of here. Go. Now.”
I close my mouth which had been hanging open for so long that it’s left my tongue dry.
I shake my head before I even know why. I can’t run. I’ve already tried that. And now I have one less bunny and all the evidence in the world that he’d find me.
And clearly, based on how tonight is going, he’s always smarter than me.
I meet Carmen’s eyes. She’s so serious, and she believes in her decision for me. But I don’t.
“We’ll protect you,” she pleads. “This time.”
I shudder.
This time.
I walk past her and this time, when I head back to my room, I have no more fear. Because I’ve run out of choices.
My dress had been laid out on my bed since earlier.
I take a shower, washing off Honey’s body glitter and my own.
I clean my face and moisturize. I brush my teeth of all the sparkling wine and Mads’s blood.
I put on a pair of simple pink panties and don’t wear a bra.
It feels like I’m donning robes a young woman might have worn before her arranged marriage hundreds of years ago.
Did she have people who would do this for her?
Help her into her bridal clothes, whisper secrets in her ear?
I brush my hair straight, slip on some ballet flats, and head to my father’s smoking lounge.
Carmen stands outside and attempts to plead with me again.
Tara, Sauvignon, and Lucy are with her. All their faces in anguish.
They don’t want me to go through with this, and yet I’ve tried. I fucking tried. What more can I do?
I ignore them and enter to meet my fate.
Locke
Legs’s dark presence overtakes me. He radiates evil.
Joyous evil.
It’s his smell. Roasted barley and hops.
He’s been rancid since I’ve known him, and it’s to the point he smells like a brewery that houses rank cheeses and gummy bitters.
I sniff out of my nose when I’m near him, trying to get it out of my hair.
I can’t breathe through my mouth with the ball gag. I’m forced to smell him here.
He leads us through the compound to his personal home and into the cigar room, where we go right back into the cage he made for me all those years ago.
The smells. The lighting. The air pressure. Everything here makes my brain immediately remember all the terror I’ve experienced in this cage through the years. There’s no escape. Ever.
He locks me in here, keeping the gag in my mouth. Mads is forgotten. Like, he gives no virtue to a loose beta.
I collapse against the bars and sit in a mess on the ground.
I can’t believe this is happening.
And Cadi is undeniably in heat. I can feel it across my skin and in my fingers and toes.
The flush of my own skin and my overwhelming desire to get to her is strong. But my omega is ok. And she has her two alphas with her.
I close my eyes and breathe through it, drool dripping down the red ball pushed into my mouth. Across the room, I hear the jackass ask, “So are you two together? Did your omega allow that?”
Legs pours himself some green colored alcohol. He chuckles to himself like he told a joke.
“We’re together,” Mads lies.
A fantasy of us actually together runs through my head. The two of us holding hands. Lying next to each other in bed. Me, sitting on his lap while watching a movie. Cadi, also in his lap. I’m stroking her thigh, and his hand is in my hair…something that will never happen now.
“Was he with her first?” Legs asks Mads.
“You seem interested in our nest arrangements,” Mads answers like a pro. “Is that because you’re interested in our omega? She wouldn’t like you. You’re not her type.”
God, I don’t know what’s given Mads all this bravado, but I am in love with it.
I would never dream of giving O’Bannon a hard time.
“Her type?”
“Think about it, Cadi liked Kol first, and what was Kol’s best asset? Come on, guess. But I think you know.” Mads leans on his cane and gives Legs the most shit-eating grin. And when Legs gives him a look, unamused and clearly not understanding, Mads clacks his teeth.
Oh my god.
Kol and his sharp alpha teeth. That is what he’s saying. And Leg’s has no teeth.
Well, we’re dead.
“How crazy was that when Kol just grabbed Locke and bit him like that? How did you feel? I can’t imagine the jealousy.”
Legs drops the crystal glass and grabs Mads by the throat, squeezing tight. At this exact moment, Aurora comes strutting into the room.
“Oh, Dad, please don’t manhandle my new beta. I just got him.”
Legs throws Mads onto the ground and spits on him. Mads lets out a very cute grunt on his impact with the plush rugs beneath him.
“He’s got a mouth on him.”
Aurora is wearing a black dress, different from the one earlier.
This one is cotton, stretchy, and reaches her ankles.
Her hair is brushed out, and she looks different.
Less makeup? I don’t know. She goes up to Legs and kisses him on the cheek.
He has to bend at the waist, and she meets him on her toes.
Thoughts swirl around about Aurora, and I question more things I thought I knew about her. She set up for the fight to be with Maximus, knowing my secret. It was just as upsetting to her as it was to me that he discovered it.
Aurora is not on her father’s side.
“You look better,” Legs says to Aurora, who preens under his eye. Gross. “Alright. Into the kennel, my Little Bear.”
It’s when she turns to me that I see the fear in her eyes.
It’s quick, and she snuffs it out. I climb to my feet, and Mads climbs into a plush leather couch nearby.
He holds the other end of his leash himself.
His pain is intolerable. How he isn’t screaming I don’t know.
I beg him silently to massage his leg to lessen the pain we both feel.
He ignores me and ignores his pain.
Aurora steps into the cage, and Legs locks us in.
Her scent fills the space. Lime. And a pine smell. Almost like gin but without the alcohol.
Sweet gin and tonic with lime.
Wow, that’s a nice smell. I resist the urge to put my nose in the crook of her neck and fill my body up with it.
Cadi smells like lilacs on a summer day. And Ro smells like sitting under those lilacs, drinking a lime soda water.
Mads is there too, with his buttery croissant smell. Cadi. Ro. Mads.
Kol and Oscar.
All of us.
Cadi in the summer. Kol in the fall. Oscar in the winter. Ro in the spring. There are not enough seasons for all of us.
Am I delirious? Am I losing my mind? The alpha in me has slipped into the driver’s seat of my body, and he pulls Ro into us.
Into me. She resists at first. She’s stiff and nervous.
Like a gift I’ve stolen, I press my nose into the crook of her neck and smell her.
I need her scent everywhere. I want to be covered in Aurora.
My pheromones perfume into the space around us, asking her to trust me and be calm.
I growl against her skin. The growl is from my chest and throat, and it shakes the both of us.
I know why she’s here. She’s here for my bite. My mark. My bond. The alpha in me has had plenty of time to think about her and this moment. And yet it feels entirely like a surprise.
She’s softening. I press her lower back, and she molds into me. I’m bent over her. Shadowing her lithe omega form.
This is our nature.
I feel like the first alpha, and she’s the first omega.
Her head tilts, exposing her neck to me. I coast my teeth across her soft, unmarred skin. She moans and goes weak at her knees. I hold her up.
Legs taps his boot against the bars.
“Mark her, alpha. Mark her and claim her. We’ve waited long enough.”
I bare my teeth at him. Going against everything in me, I say, “I’m not bonding your daughter, Legs. Get over it.”
A sickening smile reveals his unsettling veneers. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a long-barreled gun. A Colt Python. It’s a custom job. Brass with an oak handle. It’s hideous and gouache, like its owner.
Legs casually walks up behind Mads, sitting on the leather two-seater, and presses the gun into his temple.
“Should we make it easier for you to forsake all your other bonds…”
Before Legs can finish his threat, Aurora jolts in my arms and yells, in the most uncharacteristic manner, “No!”
Legs’s mouth falls open, but he recovers.
“No, Daddy, please. He’s mine.”
I’ve never heard her this…desperate and scared.
Legs raises an eyebrow. His cold, breathy voice says, “Well, then, Locke better bond you. I’m no longer waiting.”
She looks like she wants to say something to him, but she turns to me with wet eyes. My hand is already on her cheek. Poor omega. She presses into my palm.
I never would have thought I’d touch her like this.
“Please, Locke,” she whispers. “I’ll make it right. Don’t worry. I’ll be good. I won’t be…”
She can’t finish her sentence.
I don’t know what she means, but her “please” eats into my brain. She’s appealing to my alpha nature so intensely that I’m no longer in control. I want to give her Mads. And I want to give her the claim she needs.
Her scent is making me wild.
I can’t think. There’s only one choice. I give in.
I give in to my alpha side.
I spin her around, pull the strap on her dress down, sweep her hair to the side, and sink my teeth into her shoulder blade. She folds over my arm.
No wonder Kol is crazy about biting.
This is everything.
Oxytocin pulses out to every single part of me. It’s so intense I can feel myself pushing it out to my pack. Mads cries out. I can only imagine that despite the distance, the rest of my pack feels something.
I felt it when Oscar and Kol bit Cadi.
They’ll feel it when I bite into another omega.
Two fucking omegas. This is bad. This is very, very bad.
Cadi will deny me. She’ll reject me. She’ll put me in a cage as punishment.
I carefully extract my teeth and gaze at the mark. It’s so beautiful. I’ve never marked anyone before. I didn’t realize the sense of utter fulfillment that can come from it. I lick the edges, cleaning her blood up. She shivers in my arms.
Oh, little Aurora.
Her emotions peek out like the sun through the clouds.
She’s a little scared. A little nervous. But overall, she is full of light. She warms me up. If Cadi calmed me down, Ro does the opposite. I feel compelled. I feel motivated. I feel like I just had a great night’s sleep and nothing is weighing me down.
There’s nothing in my way.
I’m an alpha with two omegas. Two alphas who love me. And a beta who defended with me his words, his fists, and his actions. I have no more reason to be afraid.
I’m not afraid.
She’s mine.
Aurora is mine.
Mads is mine.
I’m purring for Aurora, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps I’m assuring her that everything is going to be okay. She said she’d make it right, but everything is exactly as it should be now.
All that’s left is to kill Legs O’Bannon and burn his legacy to the ground.