49. Max
Max
I’m watching Sophie when she comes back to me. Her lashes flutter first, then the small furrow appears between her brows as she tries to orient herself.
We’re in the omega room. We brought her home after Pack Hayes finally left—after twenty minutes of me standing between her and three Sentinel operatives with my teeth bared, after Ethan calmly explained exactly what was happening until Griffin finally backed down.
Finn carried her out of the basement without a word.
Ethan stands at the window, the pale light catching the tension in his jaw. Finn is on the other side of the bed, one knee on the mattress, close enough to reach her the second she needs him.
Her eyes find mine first.
“Max.” Her voice is rough with sleep and heat, barely a whisper.
“I’m here.” I lean forward, bringing my face closer to hers. “We’re all here.”
She blinks slowly. Her hand moves across the sheets, and Ethan is beside her almost immediately, crossing from the window to take it. Finn reaches for her other hand.
“What happened?”
“You fainted.” I keep my voice even. “Griffin and his team found us in the basement.”
“I remember.” Her eyes sharpen a little. “Where are Lucy and Fabian now?”
“Griffin’s team is tracking them,” Ethan says. “They won’t get far.”
“And the samples?”
“Ethan got the temperature controls back online,” Finn says. “The thermal buffer held. Equinox is safe.”
Sophie takes that in.
And then, for once, she lets it be enough.
She simply lies there and breathes, and some of the tension she carries so naturally begins to ease from her shoulders.
Then the heat takes her again.
It happens fast—one second she’s lying still, her eyes clear, and the next her whole body locks and she whimpers.
Her fingers twist into the sheets, and the flush that had faded while she was unconscious comes rushing back up her throat and into her cheeks.
Her scent floods the room—rain and crushed rose petals, so suddenly and so intensely.
I can taste her at the back of my tongue. I can feel the pull of her low in my body, deep enough to make every muscle tighten.
“The heat,” she breathes. “It’s—” she stops. Her head drops back slightly, her throat exposed, and I can see the rapid flutter of her pulse just below her jaw. “It’s so much. I can’t—”
The rut hits all three of us at the same time.
I feel it lock into place at the base of my skull, something ancient and instinctive taking hold before thought can catch up. My vision narrows. Every cell in my body orients toward the omega in distress on the bed in front of me.
Mate. Protect. Claim.
Ethan is already pulling his shirt over his head. Finn follows, and I’m moving too—shirt, jeans, boxers, everything gone in seconds. Three alphas, naked, surrounding our omega, and the rightness of it settles into the room like gravity.
Her gaze moves over our bodies, her pupils widening as her scent deepens around us. Rain and crushed rose petals, richer now. Her nostrils flare and a moan escapes her that is pure omega. Her slick—I can smell it, thick and sweet, soaking through her underwear—floods the room alongside her scent.
“We’re here,” I say. “Your alphas are here, little one.”
“We’ve got you,” Finn murmurs, climbing onto the bed beside her, his hand finding her face, stroking her cheek. “We’ve got you, sweetheart. Let us take care of you.”
“I’m so hot,” she gasps, pushing the blanket away.
She reaches behind her for the clasp of her bra and Ethan’s hands are there immediately, unhooking it for her.
Finn slides her underwear down her legs.
She’s bare now, her skin flushed and burning, her body trembling, and the three of us surround her—touching, stroking, our hands moving over her in slow, soothing patterns.
Finn’s palm on her stomach. Ethan’s fingers in her hair. My hand on her thigh, grounding her.
“Breathe, little one,” I murmur. “Breathe. We’re not going anywhere.”
“It hurts,” she whimpers, and the sound of it—an omega in heat, in pain, needing her pack—makes something feral tear through all three of us. “It hurts, Max, please—”
“I know.” I press my nose against her throat and inhale her scent and the rut roars through me so hard my hands shake. “I know it hurts. We’re going to make it stop. We’re going to take care of you.”
She reaches for me, both hands gripping my arms, pulling me closer, and her body arches toward mine with desperation.
Finn settles on her left, his mouth finding her breast, his hand sliding down to circle her clit.
She moans, her hips lifting off the bed.
Ethan moves to her right, his lips at her throat, his fingers tracing down her stomach and into the slick heat between her thighs.
She’s soaked—I can hear it when he pushes two fingers into her.
I kneel between her knees and look at her—my omega, flushed and trembling and reaching for me.
“Tell us what you want, Sophie,” I say.
“You,” she gasps. “Please. I need you.”
I pull her toward me by the hips. She gasps as her back slides across the sheets, and I kiss her hard, one hand gripping her jaw. She moans against my mouth, and the feel of her tongue against mine pulls a growl from my chest.
“Please, Max,” she whimpers. “I need your cock. I need your knot. I can’t take it anymore—”
“You’re ours, Sophie.” My voice barely sounds like mine anymore, stripped down to instinct.
“And we’re yours. Every fucking part of us.
” I tilt her chin up until she’s looking at me.
“We’re going to fill you until you can’t remember what it felt like to be empty.
And when we mark you, everyone will know who you belong to.
” My grip tightens slightly. “Just like we belong to you.”
“Yes,” she breathes. “Yes, please, Max. I can’t—I need—”
I reach between us. She’s so wet that when I press the head of my cock against her entrance, I slide through her slick, the blunt heat of me brushing her clit, and she cries out.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes find mine. Green, heat-blown, and so, so desperate.
And beneath all of it, trust.
The same trust I saw the first time I was inside her. The same woman looking back at me with the same steady certainty that I will never hurt her.
I push forward.
Her body opens for me with a hunger that steals my breath—her pussy pulling me in, hot and clenching around me as I sink deeper. A broken sound of relief leaves her when I bottom out, and a rough groan tears out of me at the same time.
Yes. More. Mine.
“There she is,” Finn murmurs. “Our omega. You can let go, sweetheart. We’ve got you.”
“You’re safe, sweet girl,” Ethan says softly. “Let your alphas take care of you now.”
I start to move and something in me breaks loose.
The rut surges through me, stripping everything down to instinct.
The last of my restraint gives way beneath the need to give her everything she’s asking for, and I’m pounding into her hard enough to shake the bed.
My mouth is on hers, then on her jaw, on her neck, kissing her everywhere I can reach, and she’s moaning so loud the sound fills the entire room.
I grip her ass in both hands and pull her into every thrust, rutting into her, and the slick sound of our bodies meeting is obscene and primal and perfect.
She wraps her arms around my neck and holds on. Her legs lock around my waist, her heels pressing into my lower back, pulling me deeper. I bury my face in her neck and breathe her in—rain and crushed rose petals, so close to the source that it fills my skull and erases everything that isn’t her.
“Max,” she says.
Just my name.
I pull back enough to see her face, and something inside me comes undone.
Her green eyes are wet and wide and completely unguarded, every wall she has ever kept between us gone. I cup her face with one hand and thrust into her with a force that makes her cry out, and I swallow the sound with my mouth.
“My omega,” I growl against her lips. “Mine.”
“Yours,” she whispers. “Max, I’m yours.”
I’m rutting into her now, deep and relentless, one hand gripping her hip as she arches into me and meets every stroke. Her nails rake down my back, the sting sharpening everything, and her moans climb higher.
And somewhere beneath all of it, I feel the bond beginning to form between us. A tether taking hold somewhere inside my chest, pulling toward something answering in hers.
“I love you,” I say, and my voice breaks around the words. “I love you, Sophie. I have loved you for—”
“I know,” she whispers. Her hands find my face, holding me, her thumbs on my cheekbones, her eyes on mine. “I know, Max. I love you too.”
I hold her gaze. Our breathing tangles together. I can feel her pulse everywhere, from the flutter in her throat to the way her body grips my cock. My pulse matches hers, beat for beat, both of them racing toward the same inevitable thing.
“Mark me,” she whispers.
She tilts her head, keeping her eyes on mine as she turns and bares the long line of her throat. Her pulse beats fast beneath the skin.
The world narrows to her.
To the scent of rain and rose petals and the heat of her around me and the trust she’s giving me after a decade of making herself impossible to reach, choosing now to let me all the way in.
I lower my head.
She comes the moment my mouth touches her throat, her whole body tightening around me. And I follow her, thrusting deep and holding there as the knot begins to swell. She gasps at the stretch, opening for me, and I can feel the bond waiting at the edge of us.
Then I bite down.
A broken cry tears out of her. I feel the bond lock into place—warmth flooding through me from the mark outward, spreading through my chest and into my blood. Like a door opening onto a room I didn’t know was mine. Like every wall I’ve ever built being understood instead of torn down.
And beneath all of it—her.
Her scent weaves into mine with the permanence of something being written.
Rain and crushed rose petals winding through warm bourbon and dark chocolate until I can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.
I feel her through the bond like a second heartbeat—her heat, her relief, the enormous wave of emotion she’s riding and the love in it.
The love.
I lift my head.
My mark on her throat, small and permanent.
She’s crying quietly, tears slipping into her hair, and there’s a look on her face I’ve never seen before. Wonder, yes, but also the look of someone who has survived a very long time without this and is only now realizing she has it.
She turns her head and looks at me.
“I love you,” she whispers. The words leave her like a first breath, fragile and certain at once. “I love you, Max.”
They land in my chest like light.
“I love you, little one,” I say. “I love you more than you’ll ever know.”
We’re still locked together, my knot holding us in place, her heat pulsing warm around me, our scents wound into one. Finn’s hand finds the back of her head, his lips pressing to her temple. Ethan covers her hand with his, turns it over, kisses her palm.
Nobody speaks.
The bond settles deeper, rooting itself into something beyond words or confirmation—steady as the river, solid as the foundations of this house, permanent and patient.
I wrap both arms around her.
I have spent my life rebuilding things. Tearing down what was rotten and building something better in its place, with my will and a stubborn refusal to let my father’s legacy be the final word. I have built a company and a life I could be proud of.
I have never built anything like this.
I have never built anything that built me back.
Sophie breathes against my chest, slow and even now, the heat finally easing for the moment. The three of us stay close around her, the first permanent thread of our pack settling into place.
I look down at her and understand, with a certainty I feel in every part of me, that none of it was wasted.
Every choice that brought me here mattered.
Every one of them led to this.