Chapter 38
Rennick
Before I reach the front of my house, I’m already shifting back.
My wolf is still wired, still pacing just beneath my skin, but he doesn’t fight me.
He relinquishes control of our shared existence without protest because he understands he can’t be the one to help her through this. It has to be me. My touch. My body.
I stumble up the stone steps, my bare feet slipping on the remaining patches of half-melted ice, and shove the front door open hard enough that it slams into the wall. I leave it hanging like this, yawning open behind me, cold air pouring in. I don’t waste time closing it.
A single step over the threshold is all it takes.
Her scent slams into me, overpowering in its sweetness, strong enough to steal my balance.
Her need hangs in the air, winding straight through my instincts and settling low in my gut.
I’m hard in seconds, my cock aching with a force that borders on painful.
It’s the unmistakable pull of an omega in heat. No, not just any omega. Mine.
I know I’ll never smell something as good as this.
Biting back a sound, I tear across the entryway, the stairs blurring beneath my feet as I take them two at a time.
I hit the top step and skid to a halt when I find Seren in front of my bedroom door, pacing like a sentry.
Relief breaks across her features at the sight of me, but it doesn’t erase the fear underneath it.
She looks hollowed out, strung too tight, and I don’t have to ask—I just know she’s been standing guard here since the heat began, listening to Noa suffer through the first brutal wave alone.
Unable to do anything but lend her silent support from here, two sets of doors separating them.
Even if Seren had something that could help, Noa’s rising omega nature would never tolerate another unmated omega crossing into what is, for all intents and purposes, our den.
The risk of Seren leaving her scent behind, of accidentally contaminating Noa’s new territory in an way, is something Seren is smart enough not to gamble with.
“Finally. Took you long enough,” she exhales, her pale blue gaze careful as it skims only my bare upper half. Then it catches on the blood caked along my right side where Randolf’s bite is still knitting itself together. She goes rigid. “Are we under attack?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her, because it’s the only answer I have.
I don’t know if more exiled pack members are lurking in the shadows of this territory, or if others have found a way to confuse Amara’s magic and slip past the wards.
And I can’t be the one to investigate further.
“Check in with Canaan. He’s in charge while I’m with Noa. ”
And we’re still not sure how long it will last. Average heats run two to five days, spaced out every other month. But this heat is expected to defy all the norms. Nearly eight years of suppressed heats are expected to break free all at once. A fucking super heat. An awful name, but an accurate one.
Seren absorbs that silently, then her gaze drifts to the closed door of my room.
She tilts her pale head toward it. “Go on,” she orders, not bothering to soften the command despite the fact that she’s an omega addressing a very dominant alpha.
“She needs you. We’ll take care of everything else, you just focus on Noa. ”
I step past her, fingers wrapping around the doorknob, when her voice stops me again. It’s softer now. Terrified.
“Please take care of her.” She doesn’t say the rest. She doesn’t have to. Please don’t let my friend die.
All I can respond with is a gruff sound. Half grunt, half huff. Not bothering to speak my response aloud either, hoping at this point Noa’s best friend understands the lengths I’m willing to go for my mate—that I’d sooner die myself than let anything happen to Noa.
I step through the door and close them quickly behind me, turning the lock.
The air inside is so saturated with her scent it feels almost viscous, thick enough to fight my lungs. The sweetness cloying, but the closer I get to the nest, the more the bitter edge of her distress bleeds through it. Pain. Need. Fear.
And beneath it all are the sounds she’s making.
Moans that fracture halfway into whimpers.
Small, gasping breaths torn from her as wave after wave of unsatisfied need crashes through her body.
Each noise torn from her without consent, pulled loose by a body that’s asking for more than it can withstand on its own.
Every sound is a reminder that she’s been in this alone for too long.
My feet take me toward the closed closet door and my eyes snag on the large, decorative mirror leaning against the wall.
My skin is streaked with blood and dirt.
Both things I swore I’d never intentionally track into the pristine nest she’s taken so much tender care to build, but right now, clean sheets don’t matter. She does.
She’s been without me for too long, weathering the first brutal waves of her heat on her own. Something that is dangerous for her to try and bear by herself.
I send up a wordless prayer that she’ll forgive me for soiling her nest and step into the closet.
The sight waiting there empties my lungs.
Because of the warm string lights Noa meticulously strung across the space, I’m able to make out every detail laid before me.
My mate lays curled into a tight ball, completely naked, atop the layers of soft fabrics, stolen clothes, and cushions. Her flushed, pale skin gleams with sweat and the strands of her dark hair stick to her damp temples.
She hears me enter. Her unfocused eyes try to track me, but I can’t be sure she’s truly seeing anything at all—not with the way her body trembles with need while simultaneously fighting to stay conscious. She’s too overwhelmed by sensations her fragile body can’t keep up with.
Even with everything else happening, it’s the sight of her fingers thrust between her clenched thighs that undoes me.
She’s trying to press them into her swollen, aching pussy, desperate to quiet the hollow ache that can drive an omega to the brink of madness.
Her hips grind against her touch, searching for fullness she won’t find that way. Not with her fingers. Not with mine.
She needs a knot.
My knot.
And then she needs my bite.
In that order.
I close the door behind me and move toward her.
On my way there, I snag a dress shirt that didn’t match the criteria for her nest off a hanger.
It’s expensive. I don’t give a shit. I use it to wipe away the blood and grime from my skin as best I can without soap and water, scrubbing until only faint traces remain.
When I reach the edge of the nest, I toss the ruined shirt aside.
I don’t ask permission to enter this time. She’s beyond being able to give it.
“I’m here, sweet Noa,” I murmur, hoping the sound of my voice reaches her even if the meaning doesn’t. “I’m going to make it better, baby. I promise.”
I drop to my knees in the nest and move fast. My hands close around her ankles and I draw her toward me, rolling her onto her back and straightening her bent legs.
She whimpers immediately, delicate features tightening as the small relief she’d found in being curled in on herself is stolen from her.
Murmuring low, the sounds soothing, I try to halt the panic starting to rise in her.
Then my fingers close around her wrist that’s still working frantically between her thighs.
The moment I pull it free, the abrupt loss of the stretch her fingers provided has her snapping.
A sound I’ve never heard from my gentle mate tears from her throat, vicious and feral, all wolf.
She jerks her wrist free from my loose grip and strikes, nails dragging across my bare chest, heat flaring where skin breaks.
The copper tang of my blood joins the heavy scent of her slick.
“Feisty thing,” I breathe, approval threaded into my voice. My wolf, who still presses close to the surface, also approves of her violent outburst. Even if it was directed at me.
She snarls again, striking blindly, but this time I’m ready. I catch her hand and settle myself between her spread thighs.
“Let’s see how much fight you’ve got when I give you what you crave—my cock buried in you.”
The answer is not much.
In one smooth thrust, I plunge deep into her swollen cunt, half-swollen knot and all. She cries out at the intrusion, but not in pain. In pure, unfiltered ecstasy.
She comes the moment I’m fully seated, her body clenching and shaking around my dick as I stay still, buried as deep into her as I can get. She’s been hovering on the brink for so long, chasing a release she couldn’t achieve on her own, that all it took was being stretched by my length to set her.
She’s still trembling, riding the aftershocks, when pull out, leaving only my weeping crown buried, and then sink into her again. I find a steady rhythm, one that has another climax building in her before the first has even finished waning.
Omegas are built for back-to-back orgasms and knots during their heat—both things the only source of relief she’ll get until this is over.
I lift the hand I still hold captive, fingers wrapped around her wrist, and bring it to my mouth. I lick and suck her fingers clean, savoring every trace of her sweet slick that I can find.
She blinks up at me, those beautiful eyes clearer and more present than they were when I first stepped into this closet.
I know it’s costing her energy she doesn’t have to spare to stay with me and fight through the haze of her heat, but selfish relief rises in my veins when I realize she’s truly here. At least for this stolen moment.
“Ren…” She whimpers my name, the name only she uses. Which makes it that much more special to hear.