Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
AVA
Time lost all meaning in the heat.
I drifted in and out of awareness, my world reduced to sensation—hands on my skin, mouths on my body, the endless cycle of need and relief and need again.
They rotated through me like tides, each Alpha taking his turn, filling me, knotting me, then caring for me in the spaces between.
It should have blurred together. It didn't. Each of them was distinct, unmistakable, their touches and rhythms as unique as their scents.
There was something else. Something that cut through the haze of pleasure with sharp, deliberate pain.
They kept biting me.
Not just once, not the single claiming bite that was supposed to last a lifetime from my first heat. Again and again, every time one of them knotted inside me, their teeth found the mark on my neck, my shoulder, reopening wounds that had barely begun to heal.
"Why?" I gasped the third time Mason's teeth sank into my throat, his knot swelling inside me, his cock pulsing as he spilled. The pain was bright and sharp, mixing with pleasure until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. "Why do you keep—"
"Because you need to remember," Mason growled against my bleeding skin, his tongue lapping at the wound he'd made. "Every time you feel this mark throb, you'll remember who you belong to. Who's inside you. Who owns this body."
"Claiming bites don't need to be renewed," I whimpered, even as my walls clenched around his knot, even as another small orgasm rippled through me from the combination of pain and pressure. "Once is enough. That's how it works—"
"Once is enough when an Omega accepts her place," Ethan said from somewhere nearby, his clinical voice cutting through the haze. "You haven't accepted anything, Ava. You've been forced to surrender by biology. That's not the same thing."
Mason pulled back to look at me, his honey-brown eyes dark with possession, my blood on his lips. "Every bite is a reminder. Every scar we leave is a lesson. By the time this heat is over, you won't be able to forget who you belong to even if you wanted to."
I should have been horrified. Should have fought, screamed, rejected this fresh violation. Instead, I tilted my head back, baring my throat, offering him the unmarked skin on the other side.
"Again," I heard myself whisper. "Please, Alpha. Again."
The smile that crossed Mason's face was dark and satisfied. "Good girl." His teeth sank in, and I shattered. Between the claiming, between the knotting, there were softer moments. Moments that confused me more than the biting ever could.
Mason fed me by hand, slices of apple, pieces of cheese, sips of water held to my lips. His touch was gentle, patient, nothing like the man who'd just bitten me hard enough to draw blood.
"You need to eat," Mason murmured, pressing another piece of fruit to my mouth. "Keep your strength up."
"Why do you care?" I asked, my voice hoarse from screaming. "You just—you keep hurting me—"
"I keep claiming you," Mason corrected, his thumb brushing across my lower lip, catching a drop of juice. "There's a difference. The bites hurt, yes. But they also feel good, don't they?" His eyes searched mine, knowing. "The pain and pleasure together. Your body craves it now."
I couldn't deny it. Every time teeth sank into my flesh, my orgasm intensified, my body responding to the claiming with devastating arousal. They'd conditioned me to it—or maybe it was just Omega biology, the deep-seated need to be marked, owned, possessed.
"Eat," Mason said again, softer this time. "Let me take care of you."
I ate. Caleb was the gentlest, despite his size.
He brushed my hair while I rested between rounds, his massive fingers working through the tangles with impossible patience. The sensation was soothing, grounding, pulling me back from the edge of heat-madness.
"You're so tangled," Caleb rumbled, his deep voice soft. "You thrash around a lot when you sleep."
"I don't sleep," I muttered. "I pass out. There's a difference."
A low chuckle vibrated through his chest. "Fair enough." He worked in silence for a while, his hands gentle on my scalp, the rhythmic strokes of the brush almost hypnotic. I found myself relaxing against him, my eyes drifting closed, the ever-present burn of heat settling to a manageable simmer.
"Can I ask you something?" I heard myself say.
"Anything."
"Your scars." I felt him tense slightly behind me, but he didn't stop brushing. "You said before that I looked at them like they didn't matter. But you never told me how you got them."
The brush stilled. For a long moment, I thought he wouldn't answer.
"I was sixteen," Caleb finally said, his voice rough. "There was an attack. A rival family trying to take what was ours. David was the target." His hand resumed its gentle motion through my hair. "I got between the attacker and the door. Took a knife meant for someone else."
"You almost died," I whispered, understanding dawning.
"Almost. Mason found me in time. Ethan stitched me up." The brush moved in long, soothing strokes. "The scars healed ugly. Most people flinch when they see them. But you..." His voice softened. "You were twelve years old, and you just looked at me and asked if they still hurt."
Tears pricked at my eyes. I remembered that moment—remembered the massive, scarred teenager who had seemed so terrifying to everyone else. I hadn't understood why people feared him. He'd always been gentle with me.
"Do they?" I asked, my voice small. "Still hurt?"
"Sometimes." His lips pressed against my hair. "But it's worth it. The scars mean I protected my pack. And now I get to protect you." Before I could respond, the heat surged again, and I was turning in his arms, reaching for him, the tender moment dissolving into need.
He caught me, held me, laid me back against the pillows with infinite care. Then he bit me, his teeth sinking into his mark on my shoulder, and I came screaming his name.
Leo made me laugh. Even in the depths of heat, even with his cock buried inside me, his knot swelling at my entrance, he couldn't help himself. He kept up a running commentary that was so ridiculous, so perfectly Leo, that I found myself giggling even as I moaned.
"You know," Leo said conversationally, his hips rolling in a lazy rhythm, "I always wondered what it would be like to fuck someone who was actively trying to kill me. Turns out, it's pretty great."
"I'm not—" I gasped as he hit a particularly good spot. "I'm not trying to kill you."
"Not right now, no. But give it a few days." He grinned down at me, gray eyes dancing. "Post-heat clarity is going to be a bitch, Red. You're going to wake up and remember all the filthy things you begged me for, and you're going to want to murder me."
"I didn't beg—"
"'Please, Leo, I need your knot,'" he quoted in a high-pitched voice that sounded nothing like me. "'Please fill me up, I need to come on your knot—'"
"I hate you," I groaned, but I was laughing, actually laughing, even as my body climbed toward another peak.
"No, you don't." His expression softened, something genuine flickering beneath the teasing.
"You want to hate me. There's a difference.
" He leaned down, his forehead pressing against mine.
"I know the difference, Ava. I spent a long time wanting to hate the world before I realized I was just scared of loving it. "
The unexpected vulnerability stole my breath. "Leo—"
"You still want to read my poetry?" he asked, cutting off whatever I'd been about to say. His voice was softer now, the teasing edge gone. "You said you did. Before. During..."
"The denial," I finished for him. "I remember."
Something flickered in his gray eyes—surprise, maybe, that I'd held onto that moment through everything that followed. "You remembered."
"I remember everything you said." The admission slipped out before I could stop it.
"All of you. Everything you told me. I remember.
" Leo stared at me for a long moment, something raw and unguarded in his expression.
Then his hips snapped forward, driving deep, and his knot popped past my entrance, locking us together.
"Then remember this too," Leo growled, his teeth finding his mark on my neck, biting down as he spilled inside me.
"You're mine, Ava. My Red. My chaos. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life proving I deserve you.
" I came with his name on my lips and his teeth in my throat, and for once, I didn't try to pretend it was just the heat.
Ethan was clinical even in intimacy. But I was starting to realize that was its own form of care.
He monitored my temperature, my hydration, and my heart rate.
He adjusted the room's thermostat when I got too hot, added blankets when I shivered.
He kept water by the bed and made sure I drank between rounds, his green eyes sharp behind his glasses as he watched for any signs of distress.
"Your vitals are elevated but stable," Ethan informed me, pressing two fingers to my pulse point. "The heat should begin to taper within the next twelve to eighteen hours."
"You're checking my vitals," I said flatly, "while I'm lying in a pool of cum with four bite marks bleeding on my neck."
"Precisely because you're in that condition," Ethan replied, unruffled. "Heat places enormous strain on an Omega's body. Without proper care, complications can arise. I won't let that happen to you."
Something in my chest twisted. "You really do care, don't you? It's not just... clinical interest." Ethan's hand stilled on my wrist. His green eyes met mine, and for once, the analytical distance was gone.
"I've spent my entire life being told I don't feel things the way others do," Ethan said quietly.
"That I'm too cold. Too detached. That I analyze when I should feel.
" His thumb stroked across my pulse. "But I feel you, Ava.
Every heartbeat. Every breath. Every sound you make.
I feel all of it, even if I don't express it the way the others do. "
"Ethan—"
"I love you," he said simply, as if stating a fact. "I've loved you since I calculated the probability of finding an Omega who could match all four of us, and realized the odds were astronomically low. You shouldn't exist. But you do. And you're ours."
He didn't give me time to respond. Just shifted between my thighs, pressed inside me with that devastating precision, and took me apart piece by piece while reciting my own biological responses like poetry.
When he bit me—his teeth precisely on his mark, the pressure exactly calibrated—I came so hard I blacked out.
On the third day, Mason played piano.
I hadn't known there was a piano in the cabin. But there it was, tucked in a corner of the living room, a beautiful upright that gleamed in the afternoon light. Mason sat at the bench, shirtless, his golden hair disheveled, his back to me as his fingers moved over the keys.
The music was soft. A lullaby, I realized.
Something haunting and sad and beautiful.
I stood in the doorway, wrapped in a blanket that smelled like all of them, watching him play.
The heat had finally begun to recede, leaving me wrung out and hollow, every muscle aching, every bite mark throbbing in time with my pulse.
"You play," I said stupidly.
Mason's fingers never faltered. "My mother taught me. Before she died." I didn't know what to say to that, so I just stood there, listening, letting the music wash over me. It was the most peaceful I'd felt since they'd taken me.
"Come here," Mason said softly, still playing. "Sit with me." I crossed the room on unsteady legs and sank onto the bench beside him. His arm came around me, pulling me against his side, his fingers still dancing over the keys with one hand.
"She used to play this for me when I couldn't sleep," Mason murmured. "I was a terrible sleeper as a child. Nightmares. She'd sit at the piano and play until I calmed down."
"It's beautiful," I whispered.
"So are you." He pressed a kiss to my temple.
"Even now. Especially now. Exhausted and covered in our marks and still so fucking beautiful I can barely stand it.
" Tears spilled down my cheeks. I didn't know why I was crying—didn't know if it was exhaustion or hormones or something deeper, something I wasn't ready to name.
"I don't know who I am anymore," I confessed, my voice breaking.
"I don't know what's real. What I feel because you made me feel it, what I feel because it's true.
I'm so confused, Mason. I'm so tired of being confused.
" The music stopped. Mason turned to face me, cupping my face in his hands, his honey-brown eyes soft with something that looked terrifyingly like love.
"You're Ava," he said simply. "You're fierce and stubborn and brave.
You're ours, yes—but that doesn't erase who you were before.
It adds to it." His thumbs brushed away my tears.
"We didn't take you to break you, Avalon.
We took you because you were already perfect, and we couldn't stand to watch you suffer alone anymore. "
"I wasn't suffering—"
"You were dying," Mason corrected gently. "The suppressants were killing you. Slowly, quietly, but killing you all the same. We took you because it was the only way to save your life. And yes, we wanted you—god, we wanted you—but that wasn't the only reason."
I stared at him, searching for the lie, the manipulation. I found only sincerity.
"Play for me again," I whispered. "Please."
Mason smiled, soft, genuine, nothing like the possessive Alpha who had bitten me bloody just hours before, and turned back to the keys.
He played until I fell asleep against his shoulder, the lullaby following me down into dreams. When I woke again, I was in the nest, surrounded by my Alphas, the heat finally, finally quiet.
For one brief, terrifying moment, I didn't want to be anywhere else.