37. Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Leah
A sharp cramp tears through me, and I double over, air knifing out of my lungs. Agony collapses the world to this single, shrieking point. I clutch my belly as though I can claw out the pain with my nails. A keening sound too guttural to be human sounds around us.
It’s me.
I’m making that sound.
Mira's hair streams behind her, that same fierce determination that kept us alive in Haven blazing in her eyes. "Leah!" Her voice carries through the marble, hoarse with two years of hoping.
Emma is right beside her, tears already streaming, moving with the same frantic urgency I remember from our darkest days. When one of us was hurt, we all felt it.
“Stay back.” Somehow, I scream out the words.
Fire eats through muscle, and heat crawls up my spine in a sudden electric rush that floods my body. A black hole forms in my abdomen, the empty space calling to be filled by an Alpha knot.
No. Please, no .
My heat can’t be starting again. Not now, not with everyone staring at me. But the waves of cramping are brutal, my body tearing itself apart. Every cell liquefies into pure need, and it doesn’t care that this is the worst possible place for it to happen.
I’ll kill the only friends I have. My sisters in everything but blood.
My twisting insides might kill me, but I can’t let this happen to them. I won’t.
My knees buckle and I go down. I expect to meet the cold, marble floor but Jax catches me, arms snaking around my waist and hauling me against his chest before I hit the ground. His touch is both mercy and torture, stoking the fever already licking my veins.
My Alphas close around me, a living wall of scent and muscle. Panic claws up my throat, tangled with the heat-drenched ache that makes me shake. I try to breathe, but I’m drowning in their scents, in everything that is them and me, and the danger affecting us all.
"Leah, what do you mean, you’ll kill them? How? Kitten. Look at me. Leah." Ronan’s voice cracks over me.
I force my head up, vision blurring. My slick charges the air with pungent Omega pheromones.
Emma and Mira’s Alphas bracket them, their faces etched in horror.
But even as their mates hold them back, I see the girls I knew in Haven fighting to break free.
Mira's hands are clamped over her mouth, tears streaking down her cheeks, but her eyes blaze with that familiar fury.
Not at me, never at me, but at whatever's hurting me.
Emma grips Mira's arm, both of them shaking, and I catch the moment recognition hits them.
Emma's medical training shows in her face as she pieces together my symptoms. Mira's lips move in what looks like a curse, probably the same colorful language that used to make the guards blush.
I want nothing more than to touch them again. My sisters, my chosen family, but there’s no way in the world I’d do that to them.
"Please, I can’t. I can’t be near them." Another cramp seizes me, and I collapse into Jax’s hold. My hips roll into empty air, everything inside me saturated in arousal. "Take me away. Anywhere else. Please, I can’t be here…"
Jax’s arms steel around me, and Gabriel kneels, blocking my view of the others, voice gentle and urgent as the world shudders under the intensity of my scent. "Sweetheart, this is the safest place we can be. Everywhere else is compromised."
They don’t understand. They don’t know. I want to scream, want to tear at my own skin, want to run until I’m dust on the wind because if I don’t, I might kill every Omega inside this building.
The heat is burning me alive. It’s different. Wrong. This is jagged and consuming. A wildfire, not a fever. Slick gushes out of me, soaking my thighs, pooling under me on the flawless marble, marking me as a target for any unbonded Alpha close by.
Gabriel cups my face with his palms and groans. A thick bulge forms against my hip where Jax has me crushed to his body. Ronan’s eyes are glassy with desire and hunger.
"Stop. Listen!" I suck in a shaking breath, fighting for control over my body. I must get this out before my tongue is too thick to talk. "Infected…Mortalis Strain." I groan, circling around a cramp that makes me want to hurl. "Don’t let…them close…"
Ronan’s dilated eyes widen with the same horror reeling through me. For a heartbeat, everything is silent but for the stutter-beat of my own chest. Then Ronan’s command ruptures the stillness. "Everyone out! Get away from her! Now! Move ! "
Chaos erupts. I barely register the clatter of shoes on marble, urgent shouts writhing through the foyer. Alpha voices snarl and roar, ordering their Omegas and Betas back, away.
Emma's voice cuts through it all. "We're not leaving her!"
Mira's response is immediate. "Like hell we're abandoning Leah!"
But their Alphas are already moving them, forced to choose between proximity and poison.
I try to scream how sorry I am, but my heat shoves everything else out, squeezing my throat and melting the world.
Emma and Mira are hustled backward by their mates, their faces twisted in shocked misery as they're forced to leave me behind.
"We'll find another way," Emma calls out, her voice breaking. "We won't leave you alone, Leah!"
Mira fights against her Alphas’ hold one more time. "You hear me? We're not going anywhere.” Their voices fade as distance forces safety, but I catch Mira's final shout. "You survived worse than this, you stubborn bitch! Don't you dare give up now!"
Tears streak down my cheeks, smearing everyone’s faces into bands of color, ache, and desperate need. My stomach knots, sharp and sickening. I retch, doubling over as a cramp seizes my belly, hands digging in for an anchor.
Gods, this so much worse than any heat I’ve had before. Arousal is a tidal wave, splitting me open. My perfume rises like a living thing. I can’t think, can’t even summon fear anymore. I’m nothing but urgent, frantic craving spilling out of me.
Something is wrong. Something is horribly, fatally wrong.
This heat is sharp-edged and consuming. As though it’s a parasitic consciousness that wants to tear me apart and I think—I know —it’s going to kill me. Acid burns through veins, searing out everything but want and emptiness and the frantic, choking hunger for my mates.
I claw for relief, but when I bury my nose against the throat of whoever’s carrying me, I’m hit with the delicious, grounding thunder of mate scent. Ronan . A groan tears out of me, and I jam my nose, sucking in his essence with greedy, frantic breaths.
"Alpha, touch me. Fuck me. Please." My words dissolve into a moan of longing as another wave of slick gushes out. My core aches, hungry and empty and bruised for anything to fill me before I shatter into pieces no one will ever be able to put back.
Air stirs hot and cold around my sweaty hair as I writhe, held in strong arms. I’m aware, distantly, of the elevator: the sterile brightness, the shudder of descent, my moans echoing off the walls.
Every breath, every second, the hunger climbs higher, sharper.
This is so much worse than anything I’ve experienced.
My hands fist at Ronan’s shirt, at Jax’s sleeve, wherever I can find purchase. My voice is shredded, pleading.
"Need you. Need all of you. Please, Alpha, please, I’ll die, I’ll die, I swear…
" Each word is a desperate, broken cry. I can’t stop.
I don’t want to stop. I need them. Cocks and knots and hands and teeth and every part of them, or the world will end, will go dark and cold and I’ll vanish right here, burning alive.
Their purrs vibrate around me, the sound becoming a physical thing that sinks inside me. The trembling in my muscles syncs with it; the panic swirling just beneath my skin quells, just a little, just enough to breathe.
"You’re safe, Sunshine. We’ve got you. Just breathe, that’s it… Let us take care of you, sweet girl. No one’s going to hurt you. You’re with us. We’re right here." Jax. Mate.
Soft words murmur around me, soft tones spinning with touches just as gentle.
And I fall, fall, fall. I’m aware of movement, other voices that aren’t my Alphas.
My fingers form claws, and I hiss at the sounds that don’t belong.
I’m held down and we step into a light-filled, blurry room that stabs icepicks through my brain.
I scream and then there’s a sudden commotion and Alpha barks and then blessedly, darkness.
“Breathe me in, Omega.” A large hand pulls my face to his skin. Citrus erupts around me, and my body ignites. I’m nothing but raw hunger, pain, and arousal blazing through everything I thought I was. A whimper escapes me, and I claw at the clothes covering the warm body I need .
I’m crying with want. The hurt spirals through me until I’m shaking so hard my bones could crack. I barely know who I am, all slick and fever and agony, but then two big, rough hands cup my face and an Alpha barks, the sound cutting through everything.
"Omega, look at me."
His command yanks my eyes open. My vision fills with Ronan’s face. His hair is a mussed mess and sweat slicks his temples. Stark lines fan from his eyes, and his pupils are huge pools of black.
The haze pulls back just enough for my brain to clock the room around us.
White walls, clinical and blank. A massive bed is shoved against the wall, and a curtain of thick plastic divides the room.
Blankets and pillows are strewn across the floor, but that’s all right because the sight of them makes my skin crawl.
Ronan’s purr vibrates into my bones. "Eyes back on me, Omega." He waits for my attention to track back to him. "I’m sorry I had to use my bark on you, but I need you here with me. Focus on me just for a second, Kitten, because I want your consent."
He doesn’t have to ask twice. I want to be with him. I want to drink in his honesty until the world falls away. But more than that, I need to see him. I want to see him. There is no command about it when it’s the same thing I want.
He brushes this thumb along my cheek. "Adrian’s bringing better nesting options, Sweetheart. Things you’ll be comfortable with, but…we need you to let us give you everything we can do to help you."
Ronan’s scent envelops me. Honest. Grounded.
Protective. I lean to where his essence is the most potent and lick the sweat off his throat.
It’s fucking delicious and the moan that wrenches from him goes straight to my clit where I’m hugging his body like a koala.
There is no doubt in my mind. He will never take anything from me I’m not willing to offer.
His eyes bore into mine, and there is nothing in them but devotion.
Care. Longing so deep it aches right into my marrow .
"The only way we can get you through this is to tend to you the way nature made us. That means you’ll want our cocks, knots, every touch we can give you." Ronan’s smile is both hopeful and hurting. "Will that be okay? Can we help you like that?"
I fall into the depths of Gabriel’s liquid gold eyes, clouded by worry but so achingly gentle. He cups my cheek, his purr threading his voice when he speaks. "You set the pace, Sweetheart. This goes your way. You say the word, and we’re yours."
Jax takes my hand and kisses my knuckles. His dark eyes glitter and he’s holding himself back because that’s who he is. My Alpha. My mate. My everything. "You say stop, we stop. You say more, we give you everything."
I understand the truth of what they’re telling me. Deeper than my anguish and fear is the knowledge that they’ll never do anything that isn’t for me, with me. Not to take. Not to control. Not to use. Just love. The truth shines absolute and unbreakable.
The Omega in me whispers loud and clear and I don’t try to shove her back down. I don’t try to ignore. I don’t close the door on her.
Want Alphas.
Want mates .
Yes. I agree .
"I want everything you can give me." I fist Ronan’s shirt, dragging him toward me as I burn for everything they are and everything they promise, and every part of me screams yes, yes, yes .