23. Blaze
23
BLAZE
W e stood around the dead mercenaries that the group of us had collected and tossed into a pile in the living room of Hart’s lake house. It was a macabre scene, and I itched to send Seraphina far away from it.
She’d kick my ass so hard if I tried.
“What are you even doing here, Jere?” Sera asked her terrifying father. “You said you were sending Austin’s pack for backup.”
He stared at her for a beat. While it was considered impolite in packs to concern yourself with which Alpha was a child’s biological father, there could be no doubt that Jericho had sired Seraphina. It wasn’t just their fiery red hair, pale skin, and green eyes—though Jericho’s were more forest green, while Sera’s were bright, sparkling emeralds—but they also seemed to share a penchant for blowing shit up and a general distaste for polite society.
“You know I prefer to be nearby when you’re out on a job,” he told her.
She huffed. “I don’t need supervision. Austin and Seth’s presence is overbearing enough.”
“Sere, give us a break,” Seth griped. “We watched our little sister blow a guy’s head off from the roof of a house. It was a lot to take in.”
“Tell me about it,” Loki muttered.
“But we’re all caught up now,” Austin added. He darted an accusing look from Loki to Hawk, then finally to me. “On a few things.”
I shot him my winning smile. Say a fucking word about it, man, I dare you .
“And it was good that your dad showed up when he did, Lamb,” Loki said. “The three of us were a bit outgunned.”
Sera blew out a breath, her shoulders slumping. “I know. I was so scared for you.”
Loki stifled a grin, while Austin and Seth looked at her like she’d sprouted wings and started flying. Jericho’s lip might’ve twitched, but that man was a fucking vault.
Hawk adjusted his glasses and stood up a little straighter. “Sir,” he said to Jericho, “can you tell us who these men are?”
“The Ussuri,” he replied, gesturing at the bodies on the floor. “The navy fatigues and the bear insignia on the collar are a dead giveaway. They are a large private mercenary group in Russia. They’re expensive and exclusive, though it was always a crapshoot as to whether any given member was particularly well-trained.”
“How do you know so much about them?” Sera asked.
I also wanted to know this, as we’d run down the partial image we’d been able to lift from Hart’s front door camera and had gotten nowhere.
“You’re aware I spent time in Eastern European intelligence,” he replied. “We ran into them a few times.”
Sera and her brothers just nodded, like that explained that. I exchanged a look with Loki and Hawk, as we were definitely not aware of that fact. We’d spent not an insubstantial amount of time digging into the Bryce family, and Jericho Bryce barely existed on paper. We weren’t even sure whether he went to college.
“This Families for All Institute that Hart was involved in,” Loki said, “has major backing from a Russian oligarch. A beta, twice divorced, no children. Never involved in any criminal enterprise that our research could find.”
“Until now,” Jericho said wryly.
Loki nodded. “Until now.”
“We knew Hart and this institute had engaged new muscle since the demise of their MC contact,” I said, giving Seraphina a fond look. She grinned, but the smile that usually lit up her whole face seemed forced. I wrestled the urge to pull her into my arms. “But the fact that they’ve brought in a Russian merc group of this caliber confirms our suspicions that they are likely engaged in far more than just creating fertility treatments using our client’s stolen drug.”
Sera shifted uncomfortably on her feet. We really needed to get her home and tucked safely into her nest. It had been a long fucking night.
Jericho surveyed my team. “I know I don’t have to tell you boys to be extra careful here. Once you identify your next target, I would suggest bringing in a lot more bodies from Sentinel.”
His tone was mild, but the hard glint in his eyes said, You three better keep my daughter safe, or I will end your existence .
Noted, sir.
“Agreed,” Loki replied just as mildly, though the tension in his shoulders said he was chafing under Jericho’s challenge. He nodded to where Hart’s briefcase now lay on the sofa nearby. “There are several files in there along with the modified samples of our client’s drug. We’ll huddle up with our local team and see what else we can find out, and then we’ll plan accordingly.”
Jericho jerked his head in a perfunctory nod. “Right. Let’s call it a night, then. Austin and Seth are with me, and the Sentinel team will take Seraphina back to her dorm.” He looked at his daughter, his face softening the slightest amount. “Rest up. Your reprieve won’t last much longer.”
I was expecting the usual defiance from my princess toward her parents, but my stomach sank when she only grimaced. She looked exhausted.
Alpha instincts itched under my skin. Hawk threaded his fingers through mine and gave my hand a sympathetic squeeze. He knew what was irking me, and it irked him too.
Loki strode to the couch and grabbed Hart’s briefcase, then he shook Jericho’s hand. “Thank you for the assist, sir. And for lending us Seraphina. She’s been indispensable to our investigation, and she saved an omega from a horrific fate tonight.”
“It was a group effort,” she mumbled, but an adorable flush hit her cheeks.
I see you, Princesa .
After giving quick hugs to her brothers and father, Seraphina followed us down to our boat. She sat down on one of the bench seats, looking pensive as Loki fired up the engine and started our journey back across the lake.
She barely flinched when, a few minutes later, Hart’s house lit up in a tower of carefully controlled flames.
After we’d gathered our stuff from the rental home we’d borrowed for the evening’s festivities, Sera let me hold her hand as we trekked to our car. I tucked her into the backseat and jumped in beside her before Hawk could beat me to it.
Loki eyed Seraphina in the rearview mirror as he pulled out onto the winding road that would take us to the highway. “Back to the OFS, Lamb?”
She curled up in the corner of the seat and nodded distractedly. “Yes, please.”
Now I was beating back the Alpha urge to demand she come back with us to the townhome we were renting. So we could, what, cuddle and soothe her after such a crazy, violent night? Like that had anywhere good to go.
An hour passed as we made our way back to Ciudad del Sol. The car remained quiet, all of us beat, but Sera’s energy was subdued in a way I’d never encountered in all the times we’d been around her.
Hawk kept glancing over his shoulder at her from the passenger seat, a concerned frown on his pretty face. Loki couldn’t keep his icy gaze off of the rearview, and it was a miracle he’d managed to keep the car on the road the entire drive.
I finally caved to the need to reach across the backseat and grasp her hand. “Princesa, are you okay?”
She wiped her brow with her free hand, and only then did I notice the sheen of sweat there. “I just need to get back to my room, Blaze. Really soon.”
Alarm bells blared in my brain. “Something’s wrong. Tell us what’s wrong, baby. Please.”
Her rum-and-cherries scent punched me, sour with distress. She groaned and curled in on herself, now gripping my hand so hard it almost hurt. “Shit,” she hissed. “Shit, that hurts.”
Loki slammed on the brakes and pulled the car off to the side of the rural highway. “Lamb,” he growled through gritted teeth. “Tell us. Now.”
Hawk unbuckled his seatbelt like he was going to jump back here with us, but I held up a hand to stop him. We couldn’t smother her. She needed some breathing room to talk to us.
“I… um,” she began, shaking her head. “ Fuck . I let Hart get me. I stumbled for a second, and he got me. I’m so sorry.”
“What do you mean, sweet girl?” Hawk asked, his brown eyes anguished behind his glasses. “Hart hurt you?”
“He injected me,” she replied.
I sucked in a startled breath, and Hawk gasped.
“He was going to drag me off to impregnate me. I mean, I have an illegal IUD, but I still should’ve just fucking shot him.”
Loki was going to tear the steering wheel in half if he wasn’t careful. “Lamb, are you saying you’re going into heat?”
She winced, and her perfume slapped us all in the face again. We let out a collective groan. Dizzying, delicious, mouthwatering omega pheromones inviting me to fuck and knot and breed and bond .
My dick was hard, my knot pulsing with the need to inflate, a dizzying mix of pain and pleasure.
“It appears that way, yes,” she replied. “A mini-heat or spike, I guess. I’m sorry, Loki. Please just take me to my room. I’ll go on lockdown, and you won’t have to worry about me. It’ll be over in a few hours.”
I met Loki’s gaze in the rearview mirror. His desperation mirrored my own.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. We’d been firm in our decision, even if we’d slipped up a little here and there. As much as the three of us were drawn to Seraphina—as a beta or as an omega, it didn’t fucking matter— this was not how we’d intended for things to go down.
We had a goal, a mission, and after all the events of this long fucking night, we were getting closer to achieving it.
If we caved to our baser instincts now, it could fuck everything up.
The agony and the ecstasy in Loki’s ethereal gaze told me he’d already cycled through these exact thoughts. I glanced at Hawk and found him watching Sera as she endured the pain of an oncoming, unmet heat with the determination of an Olympic athlete. My heart broke for my packmate, one of the men I loved, as I saw her pain reflected right back in Hawk’s anguished face.
Loki gave me the barest of nods in the mirror.
Fuck it.
Fuck it all.
We would not let Seraphina suffer when she didn’t have to.
Not after everything she’d done—for us, for her best friend, for two scared omega teenagers hiding in a hotel room.
For countless others who may have come after Paige.
I threw my seatbelt off and dove for her. She let out a little mewling whine as I unbuckled her and pulled her into my lap, her pheromones so potent in the car now that it was a wonder Loki was able to function enough to maneuver the car back onto the road.
“Princesa,” I rasped, pressing kisses to her neck, her jaw, her ear, her hair. “We can’t let you do this alone. Please let us help you. I can’t bear the thought of you suffering through an unmet heat, even a short one, because of that fucking prick.”
She moaned in my arms, arching her neck for me. I nibbled on her dewy skin, just a tiny nip of my teeth, and the spike of mind-melting omega lust that lanced me through the dick sparked a feral growl in my chest.
“She’s soaking my lap,” I told the others.
“That’s good, Little Flame,” Hawk purred. “Blaze loves having you all over him.”
“So perfect, Lamb,” Loki managed to growl through his clenched jaw. “Are you going to let us take care of you?”
She gasped as I ran my tongue up the side of her neck. So fucking sweet. “I… I just don’t want?—”
I grasped her face in my hands and made sure those glassy green eyes were on mine. “We don’t want that, either, Princesa. We won’t let this get out of hand.”
She swallowed nervously.
Our princess was never nervous. I hated this.
But fuck, did I also love it.
She finally nodded. “Okay. Yes. Need you, Blaze.”
I shifted us, laying her gently across the backseat. It was dark, with only the stars and the headlights of the occasional passing car lending us any light, but Sera’s pale skin practically glowed under my hands. I liked how we looked together, her alabaster skin against my tawny brown.
I was drunk on cherries and rum. The pull to let go and lose myself in her was a brutal riptide.
“Take it fucking slow, Blaze,” Loki barked.
I tore Sera’s shorts down her legs and tossed them at his head. “Fuck off. I’m in control.”
Sera gasped and arched her back.
Hawk watched us over his shoulder with hooded eyes. “You sure are.”
“These are tiny little panties, Princesa.” I ran a finger over the flimsy purple lace between her thighs. “Tiny soaked panties. Did you wear these to the party earlier for those courting Alpha fuckers?”
She gasped again as I tore them from her body and handed them to Hawk. “No. Fuck no. I wore them for me .”
There she was. Seraphina Bryce was a fighter, and she wouldn’t be cowed even by this bullshit heat forced on her by an insane narcissist who I wished I could raise from the dead and murder again with my bare hands.
I took a moment to stare at her perfect pussy. The image had been burned in my brain from our first night together, and it was just as I remembered, only this time, dripping with sweet omega slick.
The talk we’d hear thrown around by bonded Alphas didn’t come close to capturing the fucking majesty of holding an omega in your hands while her body screamed for your cock.
I slid a finger inside. “Fuck, baby. So wet. So tight.”
“More, Blaze,” she moaned.
I gave her two fingers, pumping them gently. My inner Alpha shouted at me. Fuck, knot, rut, breed.
Bite .
No , I told it. Not here. Not now.
“We’re almost to our place,” Loki announced. “Make her come, Blaze. It should give her at least some temporary relief, then we can get her inside and make her more comfortable.”
“Blaze, please,” she whined, and I was gone.
I ducked down and wrapped my lips around her clit. I groaned as the sweet cherries hit my lips, and she dug her fingers into my hair.
Heaven. Pure fucking heaven .
I thrust the two fingers I had inside her faster as I lashed her clit relentlessly with my tongue.
She screamed.
“Yes, Little Flame,” Hawk said, gruff and demanding. “Give it to us, sweet girl.”
Her muscles clenched around my fingers, her grip on my hair tightening to the point of pain. I groaned against her soaking pussy as she came, the slick gushing as I lapped it up like a fucking cat with a bowl of milk.
“Fuck, Princesa. I’m never washing my face again.”
She sighed, sounding content. “Shit, that was good.”
Something inside me unclenched. She wasn’t in pain.
For now.
I buried my head in her belly, basking in my accomplishment as she played with my hair. Loki pulled the car into our rental house’s garage and shut off the engine.
“Get her inside,” he barked, and then he turned to spear Sera with the look of a prehistoric predator. Our frost giant was about to snap, and I fucking loved it. “We’re not finished with you yet, Lamb.”