Chapter 3
Chapter three
Ben
David turned some music on his phone and started talking about the band. Maddox wasn’t taking his eyes off his sandwich, and when he finished it, he excused himself to go mend some more fences.
“Stay inside until…uh.” Maddox looked toward the wing we’d had built for Angus. “Until Gramps or Colt can go outside with you.”
David wasn’t in danger since he was mated to Maddox, although Maddox didn’t trust the government even with that assurance, but I was on the run from them.
If someone from the government showed up at the ranch—which they could any time now to harass Maddox and David about Ollie even though it would be a while before anyone could tell if he was an omega or not—I would need an alpha with me to keep them from hauling me away.
I wasn’t even sure anyone could keep them from doing that, but I knew Maddox, Angus, or Colt would put up a hell of a fight for me.
What I didn’t know was why. Maddox would probably do it for David’s sake because David and I were really close, and David would be heartbroken to lose me.
It was because of David that Maddox had gone searching for me when I was missing.
Maybe Angus would defend me for the same reason.
But Colt? I had no idea why he would put himself out there against the government, but, somehow, I was sure that he would.
David was staring at me when I came out of my thoughts.
“What?” I asked.
“I know you could hear what was going on before I turned on the music,” he said.
Shrugging, I went back to eating my sandwich. “Yeah, it was…uh, a little uncomfortable.”
“Because you wish you could join them?” David said, and I choked on my bite of food.
“What?” I sputtered. “No! What the hell, David?”
Sitting back in his seat, David folded his arms over his chest. “You can’t fool me. You want to mate them.”
“Them?” I repeated incredulously. “How could I do that?”
“Three can mate. Bertram and his beta mate were applying for an omega before his beta mate died.”
“That’s an alpha and beta. Angus and Colt are both alphas!”
“Which makes it kind of odd for them to be in a relationship with each other, don’t you think?”
I had thought about that. Who took the dominant role? Did they switch? I couldn’t imagine it at all.
“I don’t want to talk about their sex life,” I said.
“Believe me, neither do I. But the fact remains that you’re in love with them both.”
“Pfft. Am not. What’s love, anyway?”
David smiled and shook his head.
We were cleaning up the mess from lunch when Colt came into the kitchen. We still had the music playing, and David turned off his phone when he saw the alpha enter.
“Hey,” Colt said.
“Hi. How did the exercises go?” David asked.
Colt looked blank for a minute until he realized that David was talking about Angus’ physical therapy. “Oh, they went great. It’s just to keep him limber at this point.”
“Oh?” David inquired innocently. “And is he? Limber?”
Colt’s cheeks got red. “Uh. Yeah. He is. Um, I’m heading home. You two st—”
“Stay in the house until Angus or Maddox is with us, we know,” David said.
I was too busy looking at the large love bite on Colt’s tanned neck to join in the conversation. When Colt left, I fell into a chair. “You’re evil,” I said.
David chuckled. “I couldn’t help it. But, come on. What’s bothering you?”
I sighed heavily. “You’re right,” I said. “I really like both of them.”
Pulling out another chair from the table, David sat down beside me, waiting for me to say more.
“Seeing Colt with Angus’s love bite kind of poked me in the heart. I’m not jealous that I can’t be a part of it.”
“But you can,” David said. “You’re an omega. You can take on several alphas at a time if you want to.”
My eyes grew wide. “I don’t!”
Breaking into laughter, David said, “I know that. But the point is, you could. When you’re in heat, you’ll have no trouble at all.”
That brought up another question. “Why do you suppose I haven’t gone back into heat?”
“Maddox and I were wondering about that the other night. We think you should ask Laura about it. When Maddox comes back in, I’ll have him call her.”
We busied ourselves with some chores, and then I watched David sew. I wasn’t interested in it myself, but sometimes I watched David and Trey make things because I found it interesting. I needed my own hobby, but, so far, I hadn’t figured out what it should be.
When Maddox came in from outside, he went to take a shower and David and I put together a casserole.
“Where’s Gramps?” Maddox asked when he came into the kitchen twenty minutes later wearing navy lounge pants and a t-shirt. The muscles on his arms were impressive, as were his tattoos. I found it pretty funny that shy and introverted David ended up with someone with tatts and piercings.
“He hasn’t come out of his room since he went in with Colt, who left a long time ago.”
Maddox nodded. “I’ll knock and tell him the food’s ready.”
When Maddox returned to the kitchen a few moments later, he said, “Gramps says he isn’t hungry.”
“Is he sick?” I asked, worried.
“No, I don’t think so. He said to put his in the refrigerator and he’ll heat it up later.”
The three of us sat down to eat.
“Maddox,” David said. “Ben and I were talking, and we wondered if you’d call Dr. Turner and ask her what she thinks about Ben’s heats not having started up again since he ran out of the suppressants.”
“Sure,” Maddox said, glancing at me with a smile. “I’ll call her after we eat.”
While we ate, we talked about the garden and the horses, and David told some stories about the cute things the chickens were doing that morning. When the dinner dishes were cleared and washed, we went into the living room and Maddox put in a call to Laura Turner.
“Hello, Maddox,” she said when she answered. “I hope this is a social call and no one is sick.”
Laura lived in Hudson City, where Carter and Jackson lived, but she was the closest thing to an expert on omegas that they had, and she had helped during both Jackson’s and David’s childbirths.
“No one is sick; I just have a few questions, if you have the time,” Maddox said. “I’m sitting here with David and Ben, and I have you on speaker phone.”
“Okay, I have time. What are your questions?”
“A few months ago, I spoke with you about what we could do when Ben ran out of the heat suppressants you gave him.”
“Right. We talked about secluding him in a room for the course of the heat. Perhaps getting him some toys to take the edge off. How is that working?”
Maddox met my gaze. “Well, the thing is, Ben hasn’t had a heat yet.”
“He hasn’t?” Laura sounded surprised. “Not even a mild one?”
“No.”
She was silent a moment. “By my calculations, he should have had two by now. Maybe three.”
“We thought that maybe his body was adjusting to being off the suppressants. But nothing’s happened,” Maddox said.
“That’s…odd. I really would like to examine him. I need to give David and Trey check-ups to make sure they’re back to normal after childbirth, anyway. I’ll book a flight this weekend. Is it all right if I stay with you?”
“Of course. We have plenty of room, especially now that we’ve built-on.”
“Excellent. I’ll see you all then.”
When he disconnected, I said in a small voice, “Sounds like something’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing bad,” Maddox said.
“In fact,” David put in, “you could think of it as a good thing that you haven’t had to suffer through your heats.”
“I guess. But what if I’m infertile? I would like to have kids someday, if I can find an alpha mate.”
“What’s this about finding an alpha mate?” Angus’s voice rang through the room, startling me. “I better not see an alpha sniffing around you.”
Alarmed at this outburst, I could only stare.
“Gramps, Ben was talking about someday having children. He’d need an alpha for that.”
Angus pointed at Maddox. “You let me worry about that!”
Angus’s words in that tone of voice was making me slick between the cheeks of my ass. Gods, how embarrassing.
“I think I’m going to go to bed now,” I said, getting up and leaving the room as quickly as I could.
In bed with my door closed, I fondled my erect cock. Omegas’ cocks were small and rarely got stiff, but I’d found that both Angus and Colt could make mine that way, usually when they went all alpha on someone like Angus just did.
He was going alpha because of you, my inner voice said.
That thought brought more tang oozing out of my ass, and I used it to slick up my cock. A half-dozen strokes, and I came—hard—in my hand.
After wiping my palm on a tissue from a box beside my bed, I lay there thinking.
What would it be like to have Angus take me?
Put his long, thick alpha cock inside me and thrust until it thickened and locked us together?
A hot flush spread up my chest. Gods, I wanted that.
Actually, I wanted two alpha cocks inside me: Angus’s and Colt’s.
To my dismay, my cock perked up again and I had to rub another one out.
It wasn’t my heat. If that came on, I’d be going feral and begging for it.
This was plain arousal, something I wasn’t used to.
And something that was embarrassing when I didn’t have an alpha to claim me.
Gleesa, the beta lady who took in me, David, and Jackson for years while we were hiding from the government, used to lock me and David in a room when we went into heat.
Jackson had been lucky; his physician mother had connections that provided him with heat suppressants the entire time he lived with us, so he’d never had to feel the shame we’d gone through.
I knew if she’d been able to, she would have gotten them for Jackson and me, too, but they were difficult to come by.
I was lucky that Laura Turner could get me enough to last me ten months at the ranch.
Since the day I ran out, I’d been holding my breath, knowing the time was coming when I would have to leave or cause havoc in the household.
I was afraid to hear what Laura would say when she examined me. Was I defective in some way? Why had I stopped having heats? If I was defective, no alpha would want me, and I’d have to hide forever.