Chapter 26
Harper
All three of them turn into human shields, keeping everyone else away from me as they usher me out of the bar. All I can really focus on is one of their hands in mine—Lincoln’s, I think—as Everett and Cash clear the way to the door and then into the parking lot.
The night air is cooler than the air in the bar, but it barely does anything to cool the fire burning across my skin. My mind gets hazier by the second, and trying to think and hold on to those thoughts is like wading through molasses, syrupy and thick.
I’m vaguely aware of someone helping me into the truck, but I definitely lose time between getting buckled in and driving home.
All I know is I’m so damned hot. Everything’s on fire, and being closed in with the Alpha’s scents is just making it worse. Every time I breathe in, I get hit with it all over again, and it makes me whimper with desperation and need.
“Lincoln, call Lainey,” Cash says, his voice tight with control. “Tell her she needs to keep Cora tonight.”
I don’t hear any of the phone call, locked in on the feeling of them touching me as I writhe in the passenger seat. It’s like my body has developed a second heartbeat, need pulsing along and making my head spin.
Their hands are on my arms and my back, and Everett has one hand on my knee, trying to ground me. Everywhere they touch feels like I’ve been branded, like all the heat is racing along my body to concentrate in those spots.
Their voices are deep, rumbling with Alpha authority as they keep talking to me, trying to keep me from losing it completely in this truck.
The desperation just keeps building though. Everything they do to try to ground me just works me up even more, and I can’t help myself. One of my hands slips between my legs right there in the truck.
I hear one of them suck in a breath, but I’m so far past feeling shame now. Not when I finally have something pressing against the aching core of my body, and when my hips are bucking wildly, seeking out more.
It only takes a handful of minutes for me to make myself come like that, just from the pressure, and my scent spikes, which draws an answering reaction from the three of them.
They all groan, arousal shooting through their scents as they watch me whine and whimper and fall apart.
And then—we’re home.
Someone unbuckles me and hauls me out of the truck, and my head lolls to one side as I’m carried into the house and up the stairs to my room.
My instincts are a riot, screaming at me to nest, to prepare a safe place for my heat, and there’s a cold feeling in the back of my mind that it isn’t already done.
As soon as I’m on my feet, I start pulling blankets and pillows from the bed with shaking hands, but it feels wrong. The fabrics don’t smell right, the arrangement isn’t secure enough. Nothing feels safe the way my fucking biology demands.
My blockers were supposed to keep me from going into heat, and I was relying on that, so I’m not prepared for this the way Omegas usually are. I don’t have anything ready. No supplies, no properly scented items.
It’s making everything so much fucking worse, pitching my already volatile emotions into a storm that I don’t know how to weather.
“What do you need?” Cash is asking. He steps toward me, hands out like there’s something he can do. “Harper, can you tell us what will help?”
“I don’t know!” It comes out sharp, half on a wail because my body is in chaos. My instincts are screaming and there’s the burning undercurrent of want want want, but also wrong wrong wrong.
It’s frustrating, and I wouldn’t know what to tell them even if I knew how to make the words come out. All of it gets to be too much, and I feel like a scream is building behind my teeth.
I snatch for another blanket, hoping this one will magically be the right one, but it’s wrong. More wrong than the others, with a slightly rough texture from embroidery along the edges. It grates against my oversensitive skin, and that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back in this situation.
Tears spring into my eyes and start streaming down my face, and there’s a crushing feeling in my chest that feels like a black hole, swallowing everything up.
I start shredding the blanket in my hands, ripping it into tatters without stopping to think better of it. I grab for the closest pillows and throw them across the room because they’re not right. Every fucking second they’re there, being wrong and bad and terrible, it makes everything worse.
I feel overloaded, overwhelmed by hormones I can’t control. My body aches with need and my mind spirals with the vulnerability of heat.
The scream breaks free, ripping out of my throat, and it feels like I’m trying to claw my way out of my body at this point.
I’m distracted from focusing on Everett, Lincoln, and Cash in my spiral, but something about me sobbing in the middle of the chaos must snap them into protective mode. Everett steps in, grabbing my hands before I can do any more damage.
I twist against his hold, but there’s something firm and demanding in it that does help in the moment.
“Cash, Lincoln, get the softest blankets you can find in the house. Nothing with seams or scratchy threads. Bring them here.” He directs them with his quiet authority, and they dash off to do what he said.
Then he catches my face in his hand again, making me look at him. “I know your instincts are going haywire right now,” he says, his voice pitched low and soothing. “But I need you to tell me what you need. I’ll make sure you have it, but you have to tell me.”
I drag in a breath, trying to force my overheated brain to function. “S-scent,” I manage to sob out. “Your scent. Whatever you have, I just—I need it. Please.”
He nods, leaving me alone for a minute as he gathers things that have their scents on them. Cash and Lincoln come back with blankets from the couch and their beds, and those help immediately. They smell warm and like the men, and together we rebuild my nest.
Their combined scents are soaked into the fabrics, and I’ve been here for long enough that my Omega instincts associate those scents with safety.
Their shirts and jackets line the edges of the nest, the softer blankets and pillows taking up the middle, and it’s like a balm has been soothed over my ragged nerves.
Some of that frantic energy eases up, but the burning need just roars in to take its place. It was being held at bay by the panic, but now it demands my full attention, the heat in my core climbing higher and higher.
Being surrounded by the scents of the three Alphas just makes it worse, and I barely manage to choke back a moan of need.
I know the three of them can smell my arousal. The scent of my heat is calling to every Alpha instinct they have, but they’re maintaining a careful distance now.
“Do you have anything that can… help?” Lincoln asks. His eyes dart around the room, and I realize he’s searching out if I have a hidden stash of toys.
“Or we could run out and get you something,” Cash offers. “Anything that will get you through this. Some privacy, at least if you want to uh. Take care of yourself.”
His fingers are curled into tight fists, and there’s a tension coiled in his body as he looks at me. The other two are holding themselves the same way, like they’re physically and mentally keeping themselves in check.
It hits me that they’re fighting their own desires, trying to be respectful when my body is screaming for their touch.
I’ve been holding myself back from them for a while now too, but with my heat bearing down on me, I can’t resist the pull toward them anymore. I don’t want to.
“Don’t leave me,” I gasp out. “Please. I want—I need you to help me.”
“Just tell us what we can do,” Everett says. “If there’s anything you already have or if we can—”
“No.” It sounds desperate even to my own ears. “I need you. Please. I want it to be you who fucks me through my heat and no one else. I don’t want toys or my fingers. I want you. All of you.”
The three of them exchange a look at that, full of unspoken communication. If I was more in my right mind, maybe I would try to figure out what they’re saying to each other, but right now, I can’t make my brain focus on anything other than the need pitching to a boil under my skin.
“Harper,” Cash begins, his voice soft. “You don’t want—”
“I do!” I say forcefully, cutting him off. “I want it. I need you. Please.”
Lincoln takes a stab at reasoning with me, stepping closer before seeming to think better of it. “You’re vulnerable right now. And not thinking clearly. But you don’t trust Alphas, remember? Because of your old pack.”
Everett nods. “We don’t want to do anything you don’t want us to do. We don’t want to hurt you the way they did.”
On any other day, this might have made sense.
This might have been enough to get me to think clearly and realize that they’re just trying to respect my boundaries and keep me from regretting this and possibly hating them in the morning.
I would understand on any other day. I might have even been grateful for them looking out for me like this.
But right now, all I can hear is the rejection in it. All I know is they’re telling me they’re not going to do this, not going to help with the ache that’s building inside me, threatening to burn me up if I don’t get someone to help me soon.
And that feels like despair. I feel my desperation climbing, reaching a level that makes it even harder to think or feel anything else.
“No,” I moan, shaking my head hard. “No, no, please. Please. I’ll do anything you want, I just need you so bad.
Please. I need you to fill me up right now.
I’m so empty. Don’t you understand?” I look at each of them in turn.
“I’m so, so empty, and I need your cocks inside me. I need it so bad it hurts.”
Tears spring into my eyes, and it’s not really being dramatic at this point. The emptiness gnaws at me with no way for me to ignore it. If the three of them say no, if they walk away and leave me to suffer through this alone, I don’t know what I’ll do.
There’s no way I can handle this on my own. No way I can scratch the itch and soothe the fire with just my hands and a couple of toys. I’m going to lose my mind here, and there’s no telling how that will end.
The silence seems to stretch on for much longer than it probably does, but the fear that they’re going to say no and not help me makes it each second last ten times as long.
Then finally Everett steps forward.