43. Sterling
STERLING
S unlight streams across the rumpled bed, golden and warm. I blink slowly, trying to surface from the softest, deepest sleep I think I’ve ever had. The first thing I register is the heat—not uncomfortable, just there—thick and steady and anchoring me to the mattress.
I shift a little and realize why.
Cass.
His big body is wrapped completely around me, his heavy arm thrown across my waist, pinning me close. His bare chest is a furnace against my back, and his legs are tangled up with mine. I can feel every inch of him, hard muscle and strength and safety.
I breathe him in and almost sob from the way it settles the last jagged edges of my heart.
On my other side, Quinn is tucked close too, his arm draped over both me and Cass, as if even in sleep, he couldn’t bear not to be touching me.
And on the other side of Cass—JP.
I catch the scent of his skin, that licorice and spice, unmistakable and addictive, even from across Cass’s broad chest.
Then there’s the little weight pressing against me between me and Quinn—Blake.
His tiny body curled into mine like a comma, his hand still clutching mine even in sleep.
A helpless little sound escapes me.
I’m drenched in them. Drowned in their scents, their bodies, their bond.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like , some part of me whispers. This is what you were made for.
My heart aches so badly I can hardly breathe.
Cass stirs behind me, his nose nudging into my hair.
“Mornin’, songbird,” he rumbles, his voice still rough with sleep. I press back into him just a little, tucking myself closer, and decide that absolutely nothing—not my full bladder, not my responsibilities, not even the wild, tumbling thoughts in my head—is worth moving right now.
I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Hours must pass, because when I wake again, it’s dark outside.
The room is lit only by the soft golden light from a lamp on the nightstand.
Blake’s gone now and so are the others—I feel the loss immediately, but then the door creaks open and a soft knock sounds.
It’s Quinn.
He carries a plate of food in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, looking like some ridiculously handsome domestic fantasy. His eyes go warm when he sees me awake.
“Hey, beautiful girl,” he says, voice low and soft. “Thought you might be hungry.”
My stomach growls at the mere sight of the food and I blush, laughing a little.
Quinn sets the water on the nightstand and hands me the plate of food, crouching next to the bed.
I sit up slowly, pulling the covers tighter around myself.
“Where’s Blake?” I ask.
“With his grandma for a few nights,” Quinn says, smoothing a hand over my messy hair. “Wanted you to rest without worrying about tiny feet climbing all over you.” He grins, and my heart does a slow, helpless tumble.
“And…the others?” I whisper, my voice still rough with sleep.
“They’re at the police station.” Quinn’s jaw tightens, the easy warmth in his expression hardening.
“Dealing with Graves. He’s in custody, Sterling.
Cass caught him red-handed last night at the docks…
trying to burn the North Star. There were witnesses.
A lot of them. Cass said he’d never seen so many people practically chomping at the bit to put someone in jail. ”
I clutch the blanket up higher around me, pressing it to my chin.
“What…what happens now?”
Quinn must catch the fear in my scent because he climbs onto the bed without hesitation, settling into the nest of blankets and pillows next to me.
“Nothing’s gonna touch you, beautiful,” he murmurs. “Not ever again.”
Before I can respond, the front door slams and heavy footsteps pound up the stairs.
Seconds later, JP and Cass barrel into the room, full of energy, their eyes scanning me like they’re making sure I’m still where they left me.
Cass glares at Quinn, mock-wounded. “You couldn’t wait for us to get home before stealing our girl?”
“She was hungry.” Quinn shrugs innocently, but he tightens his arms around me possessively anyway.
They pile onto the bed around me, and for a moment it’s chaos—elbows, laughter, teasing jabs—but it settles quickly into a kind of warmth I didn’t know existed outside of dreams. Cass sits propped on the headboard on my other side and JP lies across the foot of the bed on his belly, his head resting on his elbows.
Cass’s big hand covers mine where it rests against my thigh. His thumb strokes slow, soothing circles over my knuckles. He leans in, voice suddenly serious.
“Move in with us, songbird,” he says, eyes burning into mine. “Make this your home.”
My heart stutters so hard I’m afraid it might actually stop.I’ve never had my Omega want something so much as this pack.
I feel the heat rising between my legs, slick already pooling embarrassingly fast. My Omega hums, the instinctive craving for pack, for belonging, for bond, turning every nerve ending molten.
Quinn’s eyes darken as he takes the plate of food from me and sets it aside, his full attention snapping back to me.
“Come here, love,” he says, his voice dropping to that deep, commanding tone that makes my toes curl.
I move into his arms without hesitation and kiss him—soft, tentative, a question pressed to his lips.
He answers with a low growl and a slow, claiming swipe of his tongue, and I’m lost. Lost to the feeling of him, the solid, grounding heat of him wrapping around me.
Then suddenly, there are hands everywhere and clothes falling off—Cass tugs my shirt over my head, Quinn’s mouth trailing hot kisses up the side of my neck as I straddle him, JP’s big hands running up my back and sides, sending shivers skittering across my skin.
It’s overwhelming and perfect, the space between us tightening until it’s all I can breathe.
I am vaguely aware of the Alphas shedding their clothes because hands never seem to leave my skin and Quinn’s lips don’t stop kissing me.
One thought drowns out everything else—louder, fiercer than the rest. I want them. Forever. Real. Whole.
Before we can get any farther, I pull back, panting, my heart pounding so hard it hurts.
I need to say it. I need them to know what I want before we cross that invisible line—before we make this everything it’s meant to be.
“Wait—” I whisper, heart hammering. They all still instantly, like I have a direct line to their every nerve.
“I…I want you to bond with me.” I look at each of them, so they know this isn’t a decision being born out of anything other than my desire to be with them and them alone. “I want your bites. All of you. I can’t…I can’t imagine my life without you.”
The raw emotion that explodes in the room almost knocks me over. Three huge bodies tense around me.
“You sure, beautiful girl?” Quinn whispers. Cass cups my face, his thumbs brushing my cheeks.
“Say it again, little bird,” he rumbles.
“I want you,” I whisper. “I want to be yours. All the way.”
Cass growls low in his chest and abruptly hauls me away from Quinn and pulls me fully onto his lap, his hands strong and sure as he positions me just right, lifting me to straddle him.
His cock, thick and hard, rubs against my entrance.
I’m already soaked.
Cass groans low, a broken sound, as he slides his hands up and cups my breasts, his thumbs stroking over my sensitive nipples until I gasp and arch into him.
“God, little bird,” he pants, his breath hot against my neck. “You’re so fuckin’ perfect.”
I grind my slick drenched pussy against him, desperate, frantic to feel his heat against mine.
Cass doesn’t make me beg—pushing his cock against my slit. He’s big. Thick. The head of his cock dragging through my slick folds, teasing us both.
“Cass,” I whimper, rocking my hips, chasing the sensation. “Please…”
His eyes find mine, and the world narrows to a single, suspended heartbeat.
Hunger.
Heat.
Need.
Just him and me.
Alpha and Omega.
Two halves of something that has always been inevitable.
“You ready for me, baby?” His voice is low, rough—strained like he’s holding back a storm.
I can only nod. Words are gone. Breath is gone.
Cass growls, deep and possessive, his hands tightening on my hips as he guides me down onto him—slow, deliberate—until there’s nothing between us at all.
The stretch burns—but it’s a good burn. A perfect burn.
I cry out, nails digging into his shoulders as he fills me, inch by slow inch, until he’s seated deep, his knot thick and heavy at the base, not yet swollen but already throbbing in anticipation.
“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he grits out, jaw clenched. “So good. My pretty little Omega.”
My head falls back, a moan tearing from my throat. I feel possessed. Owned. Worshiped.
Cass sets a slow, grinding rhythm, lifting me and pulling me back down onto him, letting me feel every thick inch of his cock sliding inside me.
“Look at her,” JP growls from where he’s sitting back, leaning against his elbow on the bed, stroking himself slowly, his eyes glazed with hunger. “Fuck, she was made for us.”
A hand—Quinn’s—trails up my spine, threading into my hair and tipping my head back so he can claim my mouth in a searing, possessive kiss. I whimper into it, every nerve in my body a live wire.
Cass shifts beneath me, the angle changing, and suddenly he’s grinding up against that spot inside me that makes me see stars.
I cry out, the first orgasm crashing over me in a blinding, wet rush, clenching tight around him.
Cass groans, his hips jerking faster and faster, the sounds of my wetness raw and real in the room.
“Ready for my knot, songbird? I can’t wait anymore,” he rasps, voice breaking.
“Yes—yes,” I sob, needing it, needing him, needing everything.
With a snarl, Cass snaps his hips up hard, and I feel his swollen knot slip past my entrance and into the little pocket my pussy has that was made for an Alpha, for them.
His knot is heavy and hot and thick. I clench around him, locking him inside me.
The pressure, the fullness, it’s too much and perfect all at once.
I sob against his throat, body shaking almost there, desperate for this pleasure to spike and release me…
Then—his teeth.
Sharp and sure, he bites down where my neck meets my shoulder. Not cruel but breaking the skin—claiming. Marking. And he groans from a place so deep inside him I can feel it. Without hesitation, I bend down and bite him back in the same spot, a mirror to his bond mark.
I come again, harder than before, the world shattering around me at the same time his release fills me.
I feel it—the bond—slam into place between us. A golden, molten thread that weaves from my heart to his, anchoring us together forever.
Cass holds me through it, murmuring broken, tender things into my hair, his arms tight around me like he’ll never let me go.
“Mine,” he growls softly.
“Always,” I whisper back.
It takes no time at all before the euphoric feeling of what we just did turns into need again as Quinn comes up behind me and starts kissing up and down my spine.
I’m still shaking when Quinn pulls me up into his arms, still locked on Cass’s knot.
He hauls me flush against his front, his chest a wall of heat and strength, and one of his hands slides down to circle my clit.
I cry out, the sensation too much, too good—I’m so sensitive right now, so raw and open.
The slow, thick feel of Cass’s knot deflating inside me makes my pussy clench, desperate for more.
Quinn just keeps those slow, lazy circles going, his touch maddening, teasing. Occasionally he pinches my clit just enough to make me jerk, and then he soothes me, nibbling gently at the shell of my ear.
It’s not until Cass finally eases out of me, his knot slipping free with a wet pop, that I collapse back into Quinn’s arms, boneless and trembling.
“You’re not done with us yet, beautiful girl.” There’s a wicked glint in Quinn’s pale blue eyes. “Not even close.”
My body is spent, limp—and still craving more.
I whimper when Quinn lifts me effortlessly from Cass’s body and lays me down on the bed between them all, on all fours.
His hand is firm on my back, roughly running up and down my spine, making me shudder.
Then he pushes between my shoulder blades and growls low, “Present for me, Omega.”
My Omega shivers at the pure dominance in his voice, and I happily arch my back, pushing my swollen, dripping pussy up into the air for him.
JP is there too, kneeling beside Quinn, his cock jutting out so hard it looks painful. Drops of precum bead at his tip, and God, he’s so beautiful it makes me ache.
The way his muscles bunch under all that ink, the way his rough hands look fisting his cock as he watches Quinn touch me—every ounce of it is for me.
I whimper again when Quinn spreads me wider with big, sure hands, and runs his fingers through my slick folds like he’s savoring the feel of me.
I groan and push back into his fingers. Quinn leans down, his mouth brushing my ear.
“You ready to be ours, little Omega?” he whispers.
I nod, dazed, boneless, drunk on the bond between me and Cass already blooming in my blood.
And then Quinn is lining up his cock, thick and slick with precum, dragging through my folds. He holds my gaze, his hand cupping my jaw tenderly, almost reverently.
“No going back, beautiful,” he says roughly.
“I don’t want to,” I whisper. “Take me. Claim me.”
And God, do they ever.