Chapter 10
Miraya
Irealised my standards for men were a little too low when Prodigy driving us to a bookshop made me swoon. This was the sweetest thing a non-blood-relative had ever done for me, and it made me weak.
You’ll leave the clubhouse as soon as the heat’s passed, and then you’ll never see him again. There’s no point starting anything with him.
The hormones insisted I could spend my heat with him and Tybalt.
They’d both made their interest clear, which was dangerous to both my hormones and my sense.
Not only did they smell amazing to my omega and make her literally preen with satisfaction at all their care, their touches, their insistent attention, but…
they made me laugh. And when I laughed, the acid burn of rejection didn’t hurt as much.
Plus, there were those muscles I’d felt under Prodigy’s tight T-shirt, the impression of them burned into my palms. I swallowed, my mouth annoyingly full of saliva.
My stomach cramped, but I ignored it like I’d ignored all the other cramps.
I knew my underwear was drenched in slick, but at least it wasn’t a torrent of it like there’d be in the middle of my heat. I still had a day left.
I clung to that day like a life raft as Prodigy’s hands found my waist and helped me off the bike.
I bit the inside of my lip, fighting the natural fluttering of my eyelids as they wanted to close.
His touch felt so good on my waist, his hands broad and possessive and soothingly warm without being too hot.
“Okay?” he asked, because I’d been too silent, fighting back a wave of need and desire so strong that I nearly buckled under it. I forced a nod, wavering towards him when his hands left my waist.
“Talk to me,” he urged gently. “Tell me what you need.”
You, knot deep inside me.
No. Bad hormones. Bad.
“I’m fine,” I rasped, shaking my head like that would clear out the fog of lust. I sucked fresh air into my lungs, the crispness of it working a little.
His green-hazel eyes were steady on me, not judging, not pressuring, just… calm. Concerned. “More contact? Less?”
“I’m fine,” I bit out, pushing dark curls back from my face. “I don’t have any money, so it was pointless bringing me to a bookshop.”
Prodigy scoffed. “As if I’d bring a woman to a bookshop and expect her to buy her own books.”
I gave him a wary glance. “If this is a ploy to guilt me into having sex with you, I’d like to remind you of the knife in my pocket.”
“I would very much like to hunt down whoever made you so distrustful of alphas, and use that knife to stab them in the eyeball.”
I blinked. “And here I thought Tybalt was the violent one.”
“Come on.” He brushed his hand over the small of my back, there and gone in a moment. “It’s going to rain, we’d better get inside.”
I stayed right where I was when he took a step towards the small, charming bookshop.
Its front was in need of a repaint, and forest-green paint flaked off the door in places, but the arrangement of books and orange autumn leaves displayed in the window was appealing.
It looked warm, and charmingly old, like a warren of secrets and hidden treasures.
“Why?” I asked. A part of me screamed to just follow him inside, let him spoil me if that’s what he wanted. But I’d been cynical and distrusting for too long to let someone in so easily.
Prodigy sighed, the sound a little… sad. “It fulfils a part of me I usually ignore,” he admitted, both hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, his shoulders a little hunched. “The natural urge to care and provide for an omega. I usually ignore it, but this week it’s been… insistent.”
I digested that, and found it a little easier to accept his kindness since he was getting something out of it, too. “Why don’t you provide for Tybalt?”
“I do, in our own way, but he’s—well, you’ve met him.”
“A dick?”
“I was going to say resistant to softness, but sure, let’s go with that.
” He smiled a little, not entirely looking at me, soft drizzle catching his hair and turning it frizzy.
It was satisfying to see that one flaw in his physical perfection, even if it was less satisfying to realise my own hair suffered the same fate.
“And he’s not a dick. Well, he is, but he’s also a good person.
He feels strongly, and loves intensely, and once he decides to keep someone—as a friend or otherwise—he doesn’t let go. ”
“Ignoring that,” I murmured, crossing the pavement towards the bookshop and pulling open the door. Tybalt was not keeping me. Even if the burning void inside me softened and soothed and… the pain eased just a little.
“Slow down, Private,” Prodigy called as I rushed into the shop, eager for a distraction.
He closed the door with care and caught up to me.
He did everything with that, I noticed—care.
He was careful and considerate and damned observant.
I doubt there was anything that happened in the Knights’ compound that Prodigy didn’t know about.
Barclay. I wasn’t sure what to make of him telling me his non-biker name.
It seemed significant. And he’d brought me to a bookshop, and told me he would cover the price of what I bought.
And he gave me a knife, and hadn’t crossed any boundaries other than the ones my scent and body language were screaming at him to cross.
I sighed. “It’s Miraya. My name.”
“Miraya,” he repeated, slowly, savouring the feel of it on his tongue. Fuck, I shouldn’t have been thinking about his tongue. Gods damn these hormones. “Well, come on, ray of light, there’s a whole bookshop at your disposal. What are you buying first?”
I gave him a healthy dose of side-eye at the name, but there was no denying the flurry of butterflies in my stomach. I liked it a lot. I liked warrior, too. Liked the men who called me those names a little too much.
I bit back a sigh. This wouldn’t end well, but the dreamer in me resurrected from the dead to point out that couples met in strange circumstances every day. Just because we had such a crappy start, it didn’t mean we couldn’t build something real.
Not that we were a couple. A throuple, more like.
“What are you thinking about?” Prodigy asked, startling me.
“Nothing,” I replied far too quickly, aiming blindly for a row of bookshelves and pretending to read their spines. I moved on quickly when I realised they were cookbooks. For the sake of all humanity, I’d leave cooking to the experts.
“Good afternoon,” a warm, alpha’s voice wrapped around me when we emerged from the first row of stacks to find tables displaying new releases and bestsellers, and a woman in a dress patterned with ladybirds and ferns sitting behind a counter.
Her smile pushed a pair of stylish red glasses up her cheeks. “Let me know if you need any help.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, mentally giving the middle finger to my designation when the woman’s attention made my skin itch and burn, the heat crawling through me.
I jumped when Prodigy’s hand wrapped the nape of my neck, his thumb stroking my skin once, twice, unravelling all the snarling tension in me. I sighed and gave him a stern look, but he was canvassing the bookshop, his gaze sweeping over the different sections.
“Where first?” he asked.
“Over there,” I replied, pointing at a hanging sign that listed fantasy, sci-fi, and adventure books.
He didn’t let go of me the whole time we crossed the shop, his touch allowing me to draw more air into my lungs, inhaling the scent of paper and ink and escapism like it would purge the heat from my system.
“Get anything you want,” he said when I began browsing the shelves, pulling books out to peruse their blurbs. “I mean it, Miraya. Anything you want.”
I batted him off. I was hardly going to buy the entire store; I’d find the one I wanted most and get that. And later, when I was able to go home, I’d pay him back.
But whenever I put a book back on the shelf, he plucked it up. Started a pile in his arms. He did that three times before I put my hands on my hips and turned to scowl at him.
“What?” he asked, perfectly innocent. “I like the cover.”
“Sure. And the other two?”
“Great titles.”
“Prodigy,” I huffed.
He smirked. “Miraya.”
Now, I was glaring, my eyes narrowed. “Barclay.”
He smiled so wide that it took over his whole face, setting his hazel eyes glittering, making him look so much younger. Like a whole different person. “Yes, dear?”
I jabbed him in the side, and fought back a swoon when I met solid, unyielding muscle. “Put them back.”
“Or what? What are you gonna do, ray of light?”
“That’s the least accurate name in the history of nicknames,” I retorted, eyeing the three books in his arms. I guessed I could get all of them, if he was insisting…
“It’s the most accurate,” he argued, a little bite to his voice that made my blood spark and come alive.
I lifted my gaze to find his expression a little soft, a little stern.
“You burst into our lives like sunlight, and you’ve lit a fire in Tyb that I’ve never seen before.
And without getting sentimental, because you might stab me in the kidney—”
“Good instinct.”
“—my morning was going to be a dull, depressing stretch of paperwork, security checks, and phone calls. You’ve made the whole day brighter in just a few hours.”
“Well.” I might have worked up the nerve to tell him he’d done the same for me, and the pain was easier to handle when he touched me, but a stranger’s voice cut into our little daydream.
“You smell incredible,” a rich, male voice commented. Alpha. Not growling or barking, but unfamiliar, and that was enough to raise my hackles.
I whipped around to glare at the blonde, tanned man watching me through wire-frame glasses.
He was around my age, hot I guessed, and he had a bookish charm that might have interested me if my whole world wasn’t currently consumed by Tybalt and Prodigy and my impending heat.
(And my mate, but I fought hard not to think about him right now.)
Blonde Guy leaned closer, his nostrils flaring, and I knew what he smelled.
An omega dangerously close to her heat. A scent practically begging for an alpha’s knot.
It was probably a biological response on his part, and he wasn’t being a total creep, but now he was in my personal space and huffing down my scent like I was a Yankee fucking Candle.
I reached into my borrowed jacket to whip out my knife and threaten him, but a low, forceful growl ripped through the air, not loud or showy but potent.
The growl of a confident alpha, who knew he could absolutely destroy this other guy.
A growl of simmering rage, protectiveness, and the promise of instant death if the other alpha didn’t back off. Which to his credit he did immediately.
I would have clapped at the impressive show, but I was too busy swooning against the bookcase, my heartbeat fast, my breathing rapid, and my temperature wild.
Prodigy kept his eyes on Blonde Guy until he disappeared into another aisle, watching for a long second to make sure he’d really gone, before he turned back to me.
I knew my face was hot, my skin red, pupils probably dilated.
There was no hiding my heat now. But knowing Prodigy, he knew about it the whole time. Maybe he knew before I did.
“He induced a heat,” I told him, my voice scratchy. “I think he crushed up pills in the smoothies he fed me. Explains why they were so vile. Also, they were green.”
“A kale-induced crime, I’m sure,” Prodigy replied, so normally that I wilted even more. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, even if my stomach twisted and twisted and twisted some more. “I’ll need Giant to run a blood test, just to make sure that bastard didn’t do anything more damaging.”
I scowled. The check-up had been bad enough. “What about what I need?” I.e. to be left the fuck alone. Also, as many books as I could physically get my hands on, plus pain relief, and… and I needed him to touch me again.
“I told you, ray of light. Whatever you need, tell me and it’s yours.”
I groaned, leaning back against the bookshelf, not caring that the spines dug into my spine. I let my eyes fall shut. “You asked if I need more or less touch.”
“I did,” he agreed in such a calm, even tone that it soothed me.
“More,” I confessed in a whisper. “But I think it might—make it worse.” The heat.
“Sweetheart, there’s no making it better or worse when it’s this close.”
I choked back a groan when he pulled me against him, the books wedged awkwardly between us but the brush of his body a relief so profound I melted.
“I’ll pay you back for the books,” I said, because… I don’t know. I needed to say something.
“You’ll do no such thing.”
“But—”
“Miraya, don’t insult me. Let me spoil you.”
I sighed, the hug and his words lulling me into a near-drugged state. I’d never had all my omega needs met before, and it was dangerous how good it felt. A kiss feathered over my temple, and then he stepped back.
“Now,” he said in a steely voice, “you’re going to pick out ten more books, and then I’m going to drive us home, and we’ll figure out what you need for your heat. Okay?”
“Ten is excessive.”
“Ten is the bare minimum,” he disagreed, and dipped his head to kiss me.
I sighed, grasping the lapels of his jacket to keep him close, greedy for the taste of him.
Every brush of his lips over mine cleansed the memory of kisses that had been forced on me.
It might have just been the cloud of hormones, but he tasted like sweet coffee and brownies, and I could easily become addicted.
I was completely dazed when he turned me towards the shelf again and encouraged me to get everything I wanted.
Everything I wanted. A very dangerous suggestion, because what I wanted was him and Tybalt. Sweet and spicy, cool and fiery. But I didn’t just want them for my heat. I wanted them for keeps.