Chapter 20 Isaac
Isaac
Is it Christmas?
The scent of cold winter winds is fresh in Isaac’s nose, but he’s warm.
He floats somewhere between memory and sensation, anchored only by the familiar weight of Elias’s fingers threaded through his own.
Their hands rest atop something solid—unyielding muscle, he thinks, but the thought drifts away before he can catch it.
Eyes closed, he turns his mind back over his day and can only get as far as riding the bus and promising to make his friend Di a bag, the thoughts dissolving like snow.
“Nix, you can’t go in there.” A strange man’s exasperated voice is nearby.
“I’m just going to have a few words.”
“No. This is my job, and I’m all right. You didn’t need to come down.”
The scent of burnt vanilla cookies makes Isaac’s nose sting. He wants to open his eyes, but his brain is sluggish, and they feel stuck together.
Maybe he’s at his parents’ house for the holiday, and they have visitors. But that makes no sense. Elias and Isaac’s mother do not get along, and Elias has said he’d rather sleep naked on a bed of broken glass than sleep in Isaac’s prison for a single moment.
His brain helpfully supplies the memory that Isaac hasn’t seen his parents in three years. They do go to the Durands’, though. Isaac likes his in-laws. Funny and smart, and chaotic, the house was always full of Silas’s crew from the garage. Eye candy and a great meal.
“Finn. You nearly lost an eye. If you hadn’t been wearing glasses—” The deep voice sounds angry, and it sets the hair on the back of Isaac’s neck on edge.
The anger is enough for Isaac to open his eyes in time to see the blue hospital curtain waver. It stops and is followed by an indignant squawk.
Curtain? It takes a millisecond for Isaac to recall why he’s in the hospital. Soon after, he looks up to see Connall O’Daire awake, watching him with his navy-blue eyes, laser-focused on Isaac’s.
The gentle-toned voice—Finn, sounds annoyed. “Absolutely not. Does Jay know you’re here? Gideon?”
“Who do you think drove me? Your wrist is broken in two places. All I need is a few words with this…this…person and then I’ll go.
” A beat of silence stretches—then, sharp and escalating: “Hey. No. Unhand me, you…you…” There’s a slam and the sound of a large door whispering open.
The voices fade away, and the door finally clicks closed.
“Isaac?” Connall’s voice is gravelly, the deep baritone sliding like a caress across Isaac’s every nerve.
Every moment from Quest detonates behind Isaac’s eyelids—raw, blinding agony radiates from his chest, splintering through his limbs until he’s curling in on himself. Arms locked tight, knees drawn up, his world shrinks to a single, shuddering heartbeat.
His alpha hadn’t wanted him, and he remembers every painful second.
Knowing he wasn’t enough because he was too much, Elias’s betrayal, the overwhelming pain of a bond he’d tried to forge, fragmented into the smallest parts and shoved deep into the gaping wound of his fractured soul.
He can’t help the high-pitched wail that slips past his clenched jaw and pursed lips.
“Izzy?” Elias’s voice, full of sleep, is followed by a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Open your eyes, baby. Look, I brought Alpha back, see?”
Isaac can’t look at Connall O’Daire—can’t bear to see his rejection up close, and no sooner had the words crossed his mind than he is retching and vomiting on himself and the bed. Black spots appear in his vision as he gags again and again.
“Isaac, stop.” His alpha’s voice is gentle but firm, and even though it’s not Alpha Voice, it’s enough to have Isaac’s wolf stop its mad panic.
“I’ll get help,” Elias says, slipping from the bed.
“No!” Isaac can’t allow his mate to leave. He remembers waking to find Elias had gone. The rage had been all-encompassing. Fueled by the pain of rejection and the loss of his future pack, Isaac had lived only in that rage-filled place.
“I’ll go.” Connall sits up.
In the next blink, Isaac has the alpha on his back with his shirt ripped wide.
He wants to sink his teeth into his chest, or better yet, his neck, marking him and bonding them together so Alpha could never leave again.
He leans forward, but some last, lucid part of him recoils from taking the bond by force.
Instead of piercing that winter-fresh skin, he sinks his teeth into his own forearm.
It appeases his wolf for a second, but when their bond doesn’t snap into place, the pain intensifies beyond unbearable.
He does it again and again until Elias is yelling for help.
He knows he can’t take the bond without Alpha’s consent, and this is the only way Isaac can appease his wolf.
When Isaac goes back for a fourth bite, his arm is ripped away. Connall pulls Isaac in, presenting his muscled pec with a quiet, “Bite.”
Again, there’s no compulsion, but Isaac’s wolf cannot resist. It’s as if his omega had only been waiting for this man to tell him what to do.
His fangs sink into the heavy muscle, his jaw working as hot blood coats his lips. It’s not a bond, but the taste of his alpha helps. He moves over to Alpha’s other pec and bites again. Not as deep, but still satisfying when his mate groans above him and his big hand flexes under Isaac’s hair.
“That’s it, omega. You’re okay. I’m not going anywhere.”
Isaac bites over and over, careful to avoid the sacred spots that would forge a bond. Every instinct screams to claim, but it’s the sight of his own marks—bright and raw on Alpha’s skin—that soothes the restless ache inside him.
Only then does he sit back on Alpha’s hips, wiping blood and vomit from his chin. Darkness pools in Connall’s eyes, lips split by the sharp white of his own fangs. The pulse in his neck throbs in time with the cock pressed up beneath Isaac’s ass.
He needs that to fill him up, too. His hole clenches hard at the thought, and between that thought and the next, Isaac has Connall’s pants undone and his beautiful cock in his hands.
Long and thick, its head is a perfect shade of angry purple. “Need this, Alpha.”
Connall is still, frozen and unmoving. His cock twitches, and Isaac pumps twice, using the copious precome to slick the way.
“Hey! Can we get some help in here?” Elias is yelling. The piercing sound hurts his wolf’s ears.
“No, mine. I need him, Eli. Need you both. Please.”
Connall groans. “Isaac.” Whether it is an admonishment or a plea, Isaac can’t tell. But his hips buck up, and his claws are still shredding the mattress on either side of Isaac’s knees.
“You bonded him without—”
“Didn’t.” But oh, how he wanted to.
The curtain peels back, revealing a tall, striking doctor in scrubs. He has a brace around his right forearm and a healing gash from his eyebrow to his cheekbone. This must be the injured person who the deep voice was angry with.
That’s the doctor, Isaac’s brain helpfully supplies.
Isaac doesn’t like that his Alpha’s cock is out where this man can see it, so he growls in warning.
“Isaac, I’m Dr. Merritt. You can’t do that here. Don’t you want to go home to your nest?”
His nest does sound good. It smells like Elias and him, and he could make sure Alpha smelled like them, too.
“Nest.”
“Yes, your nest. But you have to let Mr. O’Daire up, and I think your beta looks frightened.” He nods toward Elias, who is gripping Connall’s hand in his, a sad frown on his face.
“Mine.”
“Yes, your beta and your Alpha, but you’re probably not feeling very well, and it’s making it hard to think, right? Let me help you.”
It is hard to think, and now that his wolf isn’t trying to fuck his Alpha and complete their bond, Isaac can smell sweet vanilla. This doctor has an omega, too. Maybe he knows what he’s talking about. Every other doctor he’s seen hasn’t known shit.
Of course, at the time, he had been pretending to be a beta, so maybe that’s on him. It’s been a while.
“I can give you some medication that will help. If you let me, I’ll get you some clothes and then we can talk.”
Isaac doesn’t want clothes. He wants Alpha and Elias naked. Elias looks hopeful, though, so without looking at Alpha, he gives the smallest nod. He can wait until he gets his mates safe in his nest.
“Okay.”
“Thank fuck,” Elias whispers. But he doesn’t move away.
“Okay, I’ll be right back with scrubs and the medication, then we can talk. Are you okay, Mr. O’Daire?”
The question draws Isaac back to his Alpha, lying still under him. He still has his big cock in both hands. He hadn’t known it, but he’d been jerking him slowly the whole time he’d been talking with Dr. Merritt.
His Alpha’s cock is painfully hard, his knot fully expanded.
“Good,” Alpha says. “I’m good.”
“See you soon.”
“Baby, you have to let him go.” Elias touches his wrist.
Letting his alpha’s cock go is the very last thing he wants. He wants to jerk it until he shouts Isaac’s name, as hot, wet come soaks Isaac’s groin. He wants to lick it off his hands and kiss it into Elias’s mouth, before they clean him together—with their tongues.
“Want to make you come.”
Alpha’s eyes flash red, then blue, then back again. He’s frozen. Possibly with indecision.
“Please, Alpha. If you want it, let me give it to you.”
Seconds turn to minutes, and miraculously, Alpha nods.
“If you want to—please.”
“Can Eli help?”
Another nod, and Elias doesn’t wait to be asked; he places two hands around the base of Alpha’s cock, tight around his knot.
Isaac begins a brutal pace with only copious amounts of precome slicking his way.
Gathering saliva in his mouth, he drops the hot fluid from his tongue onto the head, eyes flashing up to hold Alpha’s pure red gaze without blinking.
He wants to drop his mouth over the head, beg him to fill him up the only way he can in this sterile room with Dr. Merritt minutes away. But he can’t.
Instead, he mutters, “Come, Alpha.”