Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
H arper
“Do you mind if we leave now?” Molly whispers into my ear, clinging to my arm because she’s a little unsteady on her feet. Probably on account of all the hot cider she’s been drinking. “I’m seriously close to my heat and all the baby talk has made me soooo clucky and horny. I just want to rip my alphas’ clothes off and–”
I laugh. “Yes, Molly go get …” I lower my voice to the tiniest of whispers, “fucked. I want to be baby buddies.”
She squeals, squeezes my hand, then leans in and kisses me again. “I think you’re going to be okay. Me and Bea only had to stamp out one bit of bitching in the ladies’ lavatories, and I’ve been giving Cindy the evil eye all evening. There’s no way she’s going to cause you any trouble.”
“Thank you, Molly,” I say, hugging her. “You’ve done an amazing job.”
“That’s what friends are for. They’re also for commiserating about sore nipples and sleep deprivation.” I swallow and Molly squeals again. “I’m so excited!”
Molly wobbles away, sandwiched between her three alphas, and a moment later I find myself sandwiched between my own.
“Molly’s leaving?” Wyatt asks.
“Yep.”
“Does that mean we can go too?”
I yawn. “Actually that would be really great. I’m so tired.”
“Good,” Owen says with one of his wicked grins, “because now this relationship is out in the open, it means we can take you home.”
“Weren’t you going to take me home anyway?” I tease. “Or were you going to leave me to hitch-hike back to Rockview?”
“I’m talking about home home, Harper. Our home. Your home. The pack home.”
“Oh,” I say, excitement immediately bubbling in my stomach. “Let me just go and find my mom and let her know I won’t be coming back to her house tonight.”
I spin around and have to force myself not to skip away – I’m that excited, that over-brimming with happiness.
This wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. No big dramas. No public shamings. No ejections from the party. People seem genuinely happy for us. I wonder why I was so worried about this in the first place.
I walk through the haystacks, searching for my mom, ducking into the marquee. There I walk straight into a group of omegas and remember exactly why I was worried. Most of them were at the lake that day. I have most of their numbers in my phone.
Despite the fact that a few weeks ago we were all supposedly great friends, they scowl at me in obvious disgust. Standing right in the middle of them all is Cindy. If the look she is throwing me right now could kill, I’d be dead as a dodo.
“Oh, hi girls,” I say cheerily. I don’t care if they hate me. I’m going home with my alphas to our pack house. Nothing could dampen my mood.
“Did you hear something?” Cindy says. “Is she talking to us?”
I spin my head around deliberately slowly. “Well, obviously yes.”
“What a freaking cheek,” says another girl, one I’m sure texted me at least one hundred times about Daxton. “After what you’ve done?!”
“What I’ve done?”
“She’s such a sneaky back-stabbing little bitch.”
“I am?” I say, I was prepared to be called quite a few things tonight. That was not one of them.
“Oh my God,” Cindy snarls. “Look at her pretending to be all innocent.” She stabs her finger in my direction. She has cute little pumpkins painted over all her nails. “You played us! Pretending to help us with the Stanton Pack when all the time you were plotting to take them for yourself.”
“That … isn’t what happened.”
“You’re the worst kind of girl,” Cindy’s friend says. “And we don’t want to be seen talking with you.”
“Oh-kay,” I say, rolling my eyes, “fine by me.”
Like I said, they are not going to ruin my good mood.
“And maybe you could not come to these events anymore,” Cindy says, “we really don’t want girls like you hanging about.”
“Again, not a problem.”
“Come on,” Cindy says, “something really stinks around here, and I have a suspicion it’s her.”
They barge past me, and just when I’m feeling relieved that hopefully I’ll never have to talk to any of them again, Cindy knocks into my side. Deliberately.
The drink she is carrying – red wine – spills right the way down my thigh and all over my brand new suede boots.
“Oh my gosh, I’m sooo sorry,” she says with an evil grin. “I think they might be ruined.”
The other girls all titter and then they’re strolling away.
I peer down at my damp boots. Yep, definitely ruined. I’m stuck between wanting to chase after Cindy and yank her into a headlock and bursting into tears – these boots are the first real gift I’ve had from my pack and that little bitch just consigned them to the trash.
I blame the pregnancy hormones. I’ve become really darn dramatic.
But then I catch a whiff of my pack’s scent.
“Harper? You okay?” Owen says, strolling to my side.
I shake away the bad feelings. What do I care what a few snotty girls think? I have the pack, not them.
“Yep, just fine,” I say.
“What happened to your boots?” Wyatt asks.
“A little accident. I’m sure they can be salvaged. Can we go?”
“Definitely,” Daxton growls. “Home. Now.”
The drive back to Pack Stanton’s house should take forty-five minutes but Daxton makes the taxi driver drive so slowly it takes us nearly double that and I’m asleep, curled up beside my alphas, before we’re home.
The car coming to a halt rouses me and I feel someone unbuckle my belt, lift me from the car and carry me inside. I snuggle into Wyatt’s embrace.
“Are we home?” I ask him.
He kisses my forehead. “Yes, sweetheart, you’re home now.”
He carries me up the stairs and back into the pack’s master bedroom. I haven’t been here since that heat we shared. Now, it feels like I never left.
The three alphas are right. This feels like home. My home.
I realize as Wyatt lays me down on the bed and gently removes my boots that it’s been a long time since anywhere has felt like home. Ethan’s home has always felt like just that: Ethan’s house – not mine. The various dorms I stayed in at college always felt temporary, and the apartment in Paris belonged to Laurent.
This place belongs to my alphas and I belong to them.
I mean, obviously there will need to be some changes. This place has been occupied for over half a year by three men with no female influence. The giant TV that takes up most of the wall in the lounge will have to shrink, there needs to be a hell of a lot more cushions, candles and flowers, and the pile of old sneakers and muddy boots by the front door will have to go.
I roll up as Wyatt attempts to remove my socks and find the other two alphas waiting patiently by the end of the bed.
“I was trying not to wake you,” Wyatt says.
“It’s okay, that nap in the car has helped. I’m not tired anymore.”
“Really because you were snoring away,” Owen says.
I snatch my sock from Wyatt’s hand and fling it at Owen’s head. “I do not snore.”
“You do,” he says.
“And dribble,” Wyatt says, wiping at a drool stain on his shoulder.
“And it’s adorable,” Daxton adds.
“It’s probably a pregnancy thing,” I mutter with a sulk. “I’m sure I don’t usually snore or drool.”
“So you’re not tired anymore?” Owen says, flopping down beside me on the bed with mischief in his eyes.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “So, can we talk about redecorating?”
“Redecorating what?” Wyatt asks, sitting down on the end of the bed.
“This house.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Daxton asks.
“Nothing … a few things.”
“It needs a proper nest,” Owen says. I nod eagerly in agreement.
My own pack nest. I can’t wait to get started on that.
“And a nursery,” Wyatt says.
I nod again. A nursery? I can picture it in my head now and I don’t know which one I want to start first.
“You know what I want to decorate?” Daxton says, and his voice is so low and dominant, my gaze can’t help but be dragged back to his face. He’s staring at me with darkness in his eyes, feet planted firmly on the floor, jaw hardening.
“No,” I whisper, my heart beginning to race.
“Your throat with our claiming bites.”
I whimper and immediately slick all over the bed.
Wyatt growls, his eyes darkening too, and Owen mutters a string of curse words so blue they’d have even the most hardy of sailors blushing.
“Do you want that, Harp?” Daxton says, stalking towards the bed, his eyes never leaving mine.
I shiver, the mattress shaking beneath me.
“Yes,” I breathe, “yes, I want that so much.”
“You sure you want this now?” Wyatt asks. “You don’t want to wait?”
I shake my head. “I’m done with waiting.”
“Then take your clothes off, Omega, because I’m going to fuck you and claim you. And make you ours.”
Daxton’s always had a dirty mouth and I really really love it.
I roll up onto my knees and, with my eyes fixed on my alphas, thread each button of my cardigan slowly through its hole, watching the pulses in their throats race. I let the garment fall open, then slide it down my arms and reach my top over my head.
My jeans have already grown too tight around the middle and I’m wearing a pair of pants with a very forgiving waist. I slip these off and then I’m kneeling before them in only my underwear, my slightly rounded belly proudly on display.
“Fuck, look how good she looks,” Owen mutters. “And she’s only just gotten started. Imagine how good she’ll look with a belly full of our child.”
“So damn good,” Wyatt murmurs.
“I said undress,” Daxton says to me, ignoring the others. His eyes are locked on me, all his focus too. It’s clear what he wants. He’s determined to get it.
I reach around my back, unhook my bra and let it fall onto the bed.
“Such perfect tits. Can’t wait to see them full of milk, Omega,” Owen purrs beside me.
I hook my fingers into the waistband of my panties and glide them down my thighs.
Daxton growls, resting a knee on the bed and leaning towards me. He pushes me down flat onto the mattress and with one hand whips my panties away. Then he’s spreading open my thighs and swimming his fingers through my folds.
“You’re all wet for me, sweetheart. Just like you always are.”
“Always,” I say.
He reaches over his shoulder, grabs the collar of his shirt and yanks it over his head. Then he unbuckles his belt, unzips his fly and lets his pants fall to the floor, kicking them away.
I can see his erection through the material of his boxers and it makes me whimper.
When was the last time he had me? Not so long ago. Yet it feels like an eternity. My pussy throbs and my clit aches. I want him inside me so badly I think I’d be prepared to beg.
He yanks away his boxers and then he’s climbing up onto the bed between my legs. He rests his hands either side of my body and gazes straight down into my face. He’s always had heart-stopping eyes – dark and bottomless. Eyes you can sink right into and never emerge. They shine now like star-lit skies – full of wonder and excitement and love.
“You ready, sweetheart?” he whispers, leaning down to kiss the sensitive spot beneath my ear. The pulse in my throat quivers with anticipation. He’s going to claim me. My alpha is going to bite me. Right here. Right here like I’ve always dreamed of.
“I’m ready,” I murmur and he strokes his hands up the tender skin of my inner thigh, through my wet folds and then he’s thrusting his cock inside me in one easy movement.
Together, we groan, and I clasp him tight to my body like I never want him to go. His hot, muscular body writhes and works against me and beneath my palms I feel every one of his muscles flexing and straining. He’s giving me all his strength and all his power. All of him.
“So good,” he mutters, “you’ve always felt so good.”
We move together on the mattress, him thrusting deep inside me, me moving my hips to welcome him deeper, further inside me. And in this moment I feel so close to him. Like those ten years apart never happened. Like we’ve always been here like this, together. Never parted.
“This is forever,” I whisper.
“Yes, forever,” he whispers back.
The pressure builds inside me, like water pressing against a dam, and when it bursts, I close my eyes and call out his name.
In the next moment he’s coming, warm liquid flooding my pussy, his knot stretching my entrance and his mouth at my neck again, kissing and kissing and kissing, harder and harder and harder, and then the pinch of teeth.
My neck!
I gasp and his teeth cut through my skin and sink deep into my flesh.
The sensation is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Sharp pain darting through my shoulder and up my neck, mixed with the delicious ecstasy of another orgasm. I buck and jolt beneath him, and he holds me still, with his arms, with his enormous weight, with his knot and with his teeth. I feel him suck at my neck, hear him swallow down my blood and then something more. In my belly.
Not the baby, something else.
The bond between us slotting into place, locking us together for the rest of our lifetime. A promise that can never be undone, that can never be broken. That means we’ll be together forever. Just like we promised each other.
I open my eyes and look up into his, full of wonderment, love and affection.
I can’t believe we nearly lost this chance. That we nearly lost this.
“I love you, Dax,” I tell him.
He smiles at me. “I love you too.”