Chapter 36
Adam’s Heat
Elowen
"Look at me, Adam," I say, cupping his cheek. "Please. Just look at me, beta."
He's trying.
I can see him trying.
His head jerks then finally meets my gaze. His eyes are blown so wide, the brown is nearly swallowed up by black pupils, and what's looking back fills me with pure terror.
“Elle,” he grits out through his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut tight.
“What the fuck is happening?” Cliff demands to know, but all I can do is shake my head.
Adam lets out another awful bellowing noise, and his scent completely shifts.
It happens between one breath and the next.
The familiar sun-warmed cotton that I've grown used to begins to change. It brightens at first, like someone turning up a light in a dark room, and then it sweetens.
Slowly.
Then all at once.
Blooming into something so rich and sweet as it swirls around me. I blink, struggling to understand what I’m smelling.
Omega pheromones?
I go completely still.
Next to me, I hear Cliff's breathing change.
He makes a sound low in his chest, warm and possessive, the specific sound he makes when my scent catches him off guard. My spine straightens automatically in response as I turn and look at him.
Cliff’s dark eyes are focused entirely on me, his nostrils flaring, and the expression on his face is unmistakable. He thinks it's me.
He thinks I'm the source of the pheromones, and the way he's looking at me makes my body flush from the inside out despite everything happening around us.
“Are you…” he trails off, clearly confused. And I don’t blame him. Now isn’t exactly the time for anyone to be turned on.
“No.” I shake my head once.
The confusion in Cliff’s expression shifts, growing sharper as his nostrils flare again, trying to locate the source. His eyes move to Adam on the bed, then back to me, then to Adam again, and I watch the moment it starts making sense to him.
“Cliff,” Adam mewls and his chin quivers.
"Baby?" Cliff takes half a step closer, his voice dropping into something almost tender. “Are you—”
Adam screams.
It tears out of him, raw and savage, bouncing off every wall in the room. I slap my hands over my ears as his body arches off the mattress, his back bowing, his hands fisting in the blankets. Then his scent erupts.
There's no other word for it.
It detonates in the room like something that's been under pressure for decades and has finally, catastrophically given way. Sugary sweet and wild and overwhelming, pouring off Adam’s skin in waves so thick I can taste it on the back of my tongue.
Then the room fills with a low rumbling sound.
Cliff growls low, but it builds fast, a dangerous, rolling noise that I feel in my back teeth. Raff answers it immediately with something just as deep, the two sounds layering together into something that makes every hair on my body stand straight up.
"What—" Perrin shifts on his feet, deep lines settled between his brows. "What's happening?” He reaches out to touch the bedding. “Adam—"
Cliff jerks before Perrin can touch the bed.
It's not a conscious movement. It's pure instinct, his weight lurching forward on an impulse to protect his mate’s nest.
I don't think, I just move.
I push away from the bed fast, clearing the space between Cliff and Adam before two hundred and twenty-five pounds of alpha intensity goes right through me.
Thankfully, Cliff doesn't seem to even register that I've moved.
His eyes are fixed on Adam with a locked, tunnel-vision focus that I recognize from when he first saw me at the Morder.
His whole body is different.
The way he's standing, the way he's breathing, the way his hands have curled loose at his sides, ready. Raff is the same. He’s now standing at the foot of the bed, his weight forward, gray eyes locked on Adam with that same focused attention.
It’s like neither of them is fully in the room anymore.
“Elle?” Perrin looks at me with devastating eyes and I move.
I grab the beta by the arm, and pull him away. He resists for half a second, his body straining toward his brother, but I get both hands on him and haul him backward until we hit the far wall, putting the entire room between us and the bed.
"Stay here," I whisper, keeping my body angled between him and the alphas. "Don't go near the bed. Not yet."
Perrin's chest is heaving. His eyes haven't left Adam. "Why?" His voice comes out so small. "What is happening?"
But before I can answer, Adam screams again, the sound cutting through the room and wrapping around my sternum like a fist. He's bent over in the center of the bed, his knees drawn up, and slick pouring down the backs of his thighs.
Cliff and Raff move at the same time. Cliff tracks around the bed while Raff moves in the other direction. They both go back and forth, not touching the bed, but staying close.
“Sweet boy,” Raff purrs, clearly trying to soothe Adam, and Cliff quickly follows.
The low continuous rumble moves through the room like something warm and physical, and I feel it settle over me. While the purr isn’t directed at me, my body responds to it anyway, and I’m so thankful.
I pull in a slow breath, finally able to steady my hands.
“I don’t know what’s going on.” Perrin pulls his phone out of his pocket, his thumb already moving across the screen. "But I'm calling an ambulance."
I grab the phone out of his hand.
"Hey—" He reaches for it.
"Adam’s an omega," I whisper harshly.
Perrin goes completely still, staring at me. "What?"
"He's transitioning," I say. "Right now. That's what's happening."
"No." Perrin shakes his head. "That's not possible. Adam is a beta. He's always been a beta. You can't—" He gestures toward the bed, toward his brother writhing in the blankets. "Omegas don't transition at twenty-six years old, Elowen."
"I was twenty-seven," I say a little too forcefully.
Perrin's mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
He looks at me, then at Adam, then back at me, and whatever argument he had lined up seems to disappear completely.
Something moves across Perrin's face that I don't have a clear word for. It's not just shock, though that's part of it. It's bigger than that. Like watching someone's understanding of the world shift in real time, the ground moving under their feet while they're still standing on it.
Slowly, Perrin’s eyes go very wide and very still, his mouth slightly open, and for a moment he looks so young and so lost that it makes my chest ache.
"Omega," Cliff says softly, and my head snaps toward him on instinct. But Cliff is looking directly at Adam. "Let me in, mate." He pushes down his gym shorts, freeing his rock-hard cock.
The sight of my alpha’s bare, perfect body sends a bolt of heat straight through me that tightens my nipples against my shirt.
Our bond lights up as my clit begins to pulse, dark and primal and overwhelming, and the combination of wild sensations makes slick gather between my thighs before I've drawn my next breath.
Cliff’s eyes flicker to me, then back to Adam. "Let us tend to you.”
Adam lets out a low and sharp growl that stops Cliff dead in his tracks. "No!" he barks. "Don't touch my nest!"
Cliff goes still.
On the other side of the bed, Raff takes half a step closer, and Adam's hand shoots out with a speed that’s almost shocking, swiping through the air in Raff's direction. The blankets fall away with the movement, and I get a clear view of Adam's cock.
It’s red and swollen and so clearly painful that my stomach clenches at the sight of it. A thick string of precum drips from the tip, landing softly on the blankets beneath him as he swipes out at Raff again.
I can't help but stare, wondering if this is what I look like when I’m in heat.
So completely out of control.
So painfully aroused that it hurts to breathe.
Adam pants and grunts as he moves another pillow, then his whole body goes rigid again, every muscle seizing at once. His spine curves inward, and the sound that comes out of him makes my heart beat so fast I have to press my hand flat against my chest.
I know exactly what that feels like.
The hollow, vicious, all-consuming emptiness of a heat.
The cramps that feel like your guts are being crushed. The desperate, primal need for contact and pressure and the specific scent of an alpha, any alpha, please, fuck me, fix me, mate me, right now!
My hands shake as Cliff and Raff’s scents double, filling my lungs. I close my eyes, trying to breathe through it.
"Omega," Raff purrs louder and my gaze snaps to him. "Let us take the pain away." He takes off his shirt and sweats, revealing his lean, tattooed body.
Adam's head lifts at the sound of Raff's voice.
His black eyes move over the alpha with a slow, glassy focus that breaks my heart a little.
“Come on, baby.” Raff grips his own thick cock and starts stroking himself with long, teasing strokes. His eyes never leave Adam's as he works his length, showing the omega exactly what he could have, what both alphas want to give him.
A bead of precum forms at the tip, and Raff spreads it with his thumb, his breath hitching slightly as he continues to stroke himself.
"Please, Adam," Cliff says from the other side of the bed, his voice so low and steady it's almost part of the purr. "Let us in. No one else. Just your mates.”
Adam lets out a desperate whine as his eyes move from Raff to Cliff and back again, tracking them both with that unfocused, fever-bright attention.
Another cramp rolls through him, and he drops his head, a guttural sound pressing out from between his clenched teeth, shuddering with the effort of riding it out.
Then it passes and Adam lifts his head again, and looks at Cliff then Raff, and says, "Come."
The word is barely out of Adam's mouth before both alphas are moving, their muscular bodies crawling onto the bed from opposite sides.
Adam is smaller than both of them, and as they surround him, I'm struck by how delicate he looks between them. Like prey caught between two predators.