Chapter Thirty-Four
Rhea
L ucian is still inside me.
Knot and all.
And let me just say: there is nothing - and I mean nothing - in the omega pamphlets about what to do when you’re post-orgasm, emotionally raw, and currently skewered like a marshmallow on the world’s grumpiest alpha.
I can feel the knot - thick and swollen, still pulsing faintly. It's not uncomfortable anymore. It’s... solid. Heavy. Like a door that’s been locked behind me with an audible click.
And yeah. I let him.
No, wait - I begged him.
Honestly, if I had the energy to be mortified right now, I might be. But I’m also riding the kind of post-bond high that makes you forget your middle name and what year it is, so.
Lucian shifts behind me, still attached, still broody. He hasn’t said much since the knot locked in; just breathing like someone who deeply regrets having feelings.
“How long does this last?” I ask, hoarse. “I feel like a stuffed donut.”
“Twenty minutes,” he says, monotone.
“Twenty?”
“Or an hour.”
I blink. “An hour?!”
Pause.
“Unless you start begging again,” he mutters.
“Oh my god.” I groan into the pillow. “Do you have an off switch, or is the arrogance just hardwired into your DNA?”
“You bonded me,” he says flatly. “You’re stuck with it now.”
“Terrifying.”
He doesn’t reply, but the bond between us - new, raw, annoyingly warm - sort of thrums. Not hot. Not sharp. Just… there . Like the emotional version of someone putting their feet on your couch without asking.
And still, it feels good. Dangerous, maybe, but real.
Like it’s learning me. Like I’m learning him.
And the quiet roar of something self-loathing and sharp presses like a bruise behind my ribs.
I shift a little, trying to get comfortable without dislodging what is, frankly, a medical hazard inside me. Lucian makes a low noise like I’m personally offending him with my anatomy.
“What’s that?” I whisper. “That weird tension in the bond?”
He exhales through his nose, which I decide is Lucian-speak for I’m emotionally constipated but too dignified to admit it.
“You’re angry,” I guess.
“I’m not.”
“You so are.”
Pause.
“Not at you,” he concedes. “At me.”
I turn my head to look at him. “Because I didn’t wait for you?”
“Because I knew I wasn’t going to stop wanting you,” he says, “but I still pretended I could.”
Oh.
Yeah, okay. That one hits.
“You’re not mad that I bonded them,” I murmur. “You’re mad that I needed anyone at all.”
His jaw ticks, hard enough that I feel it in the bond. “This estate was designed to keep omegas safe. Every Vale property has been. Long before I was born. Built like fortresses, disguised as homes. Walls thicker than most vaults. Surveillance in every shadow. A dozen escape protocols coded into the foundation.”
I blink. “Romantic.”
He ignores that. “It was meant to protect what’s precious. That’s the legacy - that’s the point . And I still watched you give yourself away in what feels like every room.”
“I didn’t give myself away,” I say. “I survived. I burned. I chose .”
He exhales like that word physically pains him.
“I don’t belong to this house,” I continue. “And I don’t belong to your legacy. I belong to myself.”
“And now?” he asks, voice quiet but sharp. “Do you still feel like you do?”
I close my eyes. “Now... I think I’m figuring out what it means to belong with someone. Not to them.”
Another pause stretches. The air between us hums with the bond, still new, still raw. Still real.
“I don’t even live here,” he mutters suddenly.
“What?”
“I live in the city. In my penthouse. You think I want to spend my nights in this creaky ancestral bunker surrounded by whispering portraits and guilt-coded floorboards?”
“Wait - you commuted to reject me ?” I stare at the ceiling. “You’re the worst romantic lead I’ve ever met.”
“And yet,” he murmurs, smug, “you begged.”
I groan and try to shift again - awkwardly, because hello, still knotted - but Lucian adjusts with me, arm sliding under my head, hand curling around my waist like it’s a reflex.
Like I’m already his, and we’re both just catching up to it.
I go quiet for a moment, feeling the bond hum between us - low, steady, warm as embers.
“I keep thinking,” I say softly, “what happens when the OMB finds out.”
“I wouldn't be surprised if they already know. You disappeared from a high-profile gala with four alphas, all of whom are... let’s say... not especially subtle.”
“Looking at you, or Kai?”
He snorts - actually snorts - and it startles a laugh out of me.
“They’ll spin it however they want. That your bonds were reckless. That your heat was unstable. That we endangered you -”
“I mean,” I mutter, “technically not wrong.”
He growls under his breath. “They don’t care about your safety. They care about control. And what you’ve done - what we’ve done - undermines everything they’ve built their doctrine on.”
“Because I picked all of you.”
“Because you weren’t picked for someone else.”
That lands heavy.
“But they can’t act yet,” he adds. “You’re mid-bond. Unmarked, you were vulnerable. But now? Any move they make on you is a move on four bonded alphas. There are laws. Even the OMB has to pretend to care about those.”
I sigh. “Great. So I’ve got a heat-bonded, emotionally repressed power play on one side of me and impending government sanctions on the other.”
“You’re doing fine.”
I glance up at him. “You’re still inside me.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”
Still: it’s not solved. Not even close. I’ve got three other bonds still settling, a government agency likely compiling a file on my every exhale, and an alpha literally embedded in my body like a smug biological USB drive.
“You know I didn’t ask for this, right?” I say, my voice low.
“No,” he says. “But you didn’t not want it either.”
“I never wanted a pack,” I admit. “But… maybe that’s because I never knew it was something I could want.”
“Right,” he breathes. “I thought it was bullshit, too.”
“I never wanted an Alpha, either. Not until I found the right one.”
His eyes flick to mine.
“And?”
I don’t blink. “I might have found them.”
The silence returns. Not cold this time, just… tentative. Like neither of us knows the next move.
I shift again, a little awkward with the knot still pulsing inside me.
“ God - is this seriously going to last an hour?”
“If you keep talking,” he says flatly, “yes.”
I roll my eyes. “Charming.”
And for a flicker of a second - something like amusement ripples between us.
Wry. Dry.
Maybe even fond.
“You feel it too, don’t you?” I murmur. “The bond?”
He doesn’t speak, but it hums between us anyway.
Yes .
I close my eyes.
For now, it’s enough. Not easy. Not settled. Not perfect.
But enough.
*
I wake up feeling like I’ve been hit by a very large, very determined truck. Possibly driven by a smug alpha.
Or four.
Everything aches. My thighs, my hips, my lower back - my soul feels like it did squats it wasn't emotionally prepared for. Even my eyebrows hurt. I don’t know how that’s anatomically possible, but here we are.
I shift slightly and immediately regret it. There's slick everywhere. I’m sore in places I didn’t know had nerve endings, since Lucian’s knot apparently decided my cervix needed to be humbled.
And the shirt I’m wearing - definitely his, by the way - is clinging to me like it's got abandonment issues.
My brain does a slow, hungover scroll through the previous twenty-four hours.
The bonds. The sex. The growling. The knots.
The fact that I willingly became a one-woman alpha buffet.
Oh god .
I feel them. All four of them. Heavy in my chest, twined down my spine like living wire, pulsing under my skin.
Like gravity - multiplied .
I asked for this. I chose this.
But now that I have it?
Shit . It’s a lot .
I sit up too fast, immediately triggering some kind of full-body alarm system. My spine screams, my legs wobble, and my everything goes nope .
The room tilts. My stomach flips. My scent probably smells like panic and bad decisions marinated in four different alpha pheromones.
And beneath it all, a buzz. A hum .
A growing sense of pressure I can’t explain, only feel.
I need air. I need space. I need… something.
The blanket twists around my legs as I shove it off. I swing my feet to the floor, grimacing at the way my muscles scream in protest.
I try to stand. I try to breathe.
I try not to cry.
“Okay. Okay. You’re fine,” I mutter. “You’re just... biologically wrecked and emotionally compromised. No big deal.”
Cue my internal monologue having a mental breakdown in four-part harmony.
I’m not falling apart. I’m not .
But I am spiraling.
The door hisses open.
“Rhea.”
Ash. Of course it’s Ash. He’s the only one who can enter a room like a nuclear bomb and a crisis counselor with biceps.
I immediately try to act normal, which means I wobble, miss my footing, and do the world’s slowest, least graceful attempt at crumpling onto the floor.
He catches me before I hit anything.
“I’m okay,” I lie.
“You’re literally vibrating,” he says, steadying me like he’s been expecting this exact meltdown. “You’ve had four full bonds in less than a day, haven’t eaten, haven’t slept, and from what I can feel through the bond? Your hormones are throwing an actual rave.”
He’s not wrong.
My body is a crime scene, and the murder weapon was definitely my own libido.
“Do I look like I regret it?” I ask, trying to muster some dignity.
He eyes me. “You look like you tried to out-stubborn four alphas and lost to your own endocrine system.”
“Rude,” I mutter, collapsing into his broad chest.
Ash just scoops me up and walks us back to the bed like he’s moving a very annoyed, very sweaty princess.
“Where’s the water?” I ask, because my mouth tastes like slick and shame.
He hands me a bottle from the nightstand without hesitation. Because of course Ash planned for this. He probably has snacks, electrolytes, and a post-orgasm debriefing kit stashed under the mattress.
I drink. I breathe.
I try not to dissolve into a puddle of regret and residual knot-throbbing.
“Thanks,” I whisper when my throat doesn’t feel like it’s been sandpapered by bad decisions. “Also sorry. For, you know. Melting into a puddle of hormonal soup.”
“You don’t apologize for melting,” Ash says calmly. “You hydrate, you regroup, and you admit that four-bonding yourself in one day might be a touch ambitious.”
I snort. “In hindsight, yeah. Not my finest logistical planning. I should’ve stuck to brunch.”
He doesn’t smile, not fully, but I see it - a twitch at the corner of his mouth. The quiet approval of someone who’s seen too much and still finds the comedy in catastrophe.
He settles beside me on the bed, solid and warm, radiating that slow, grounding calm that’s somehow more comforting than anything anyone’s said to me in days.
I stare at the ceiling. Let myself breathe.
And then, without warning, it slips out.
“Do you think the OMB knows?”
Ash stills. Not visibly, not obviously, but the shift is there. I feel it. The way his energy sharpens through the bond, like someone just cocked a loaded gun inside him.
“What?”
I hesitate. “I just… someone’s going to notice. I mean, an unregistered omega disguides as a beta disappears from a public gala, bonds four alphas, and shows up days later looking like she’s been through a very enthusiastic exorcism -”
He cuts me off, voice low. “Rhea.”
“I’m serious. This isn’t just about scent trails and fake IDs. This is the kind of thing the OMB salivates over. They could spin it as instability, as a security risk, as -”
“They won’t,” he says, voice steady, but I feel the tension behind it. “We’re monitoring chatter. Until they make a move, we don't react - there's no need. Beside, Lucian’s already scrubbed everything. You’re buried under enough encryption to hide a war crime. Lexi’s running distraction and told the rep at the gala that you had a panic attack and went off-grid for a mental health retreat. You’re off-grid, and if they do come sniffing - they’ll have to get through me first.”
“Nice,” I mutter. “Nothing says ‘ I’m not feral ’ like a nervous breakdown in a cave full of horny alphas.”
He doesn't say anything, and my chest tightens - not with fear this time, but something else. Something warmer.
“You really think that’s enough?” I ask, quieter now.
He turns to face me, brows low.
“I think if you keep this all to yourself, if you bottle it up and try to outthink a system designed to control you, then they win. You survived without us. You fought on your own. But you’re not on your own anymore. We’re not letting them take you.” Ash’s lips twitch. “Try to let it be our problem now, not just yours.”
My throat tightens. “I didn’t think I was scared,” I murmur.
He nods. “You didn’t want to be. That’s not the same thing.”
The room’s quiet, but it’s not cold. It feels like something settling. Rebalancing.
I can feel him through the bond now - more than just a presence.
It’s like I’m learning him by instinct: the shape of his patience, the edge of his protectiveness, the calm that wraps itself around my panic like a shield.
“You felt that?” I ask.
His voice is softer now. “Yeah. Felt the shift.”
“So this is how it works?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just reaches out, fingers brushing mine, slow and solid.
“It’s how we work,” he says.
And suddenly, I’m not spiraling. I’m not falling.
I’m here . With him. With all of them. And the weight in my chest feels… shared .
I slump back against the pillows again. “Okay,” I exhale. “But if anyone from the OMB shows up, I’m hiding behind you and pretending to be a houseplant.”
Ash’s lips twitch. “Fine. But I’m charging you for emotional labor.”
“Rude.”
“Reasonable.”
I close my eyes, just for a second, and this time when I breathe, it doesn’t feel like a war.
“And you're not... You’re not mad ?” I ask.
“Why would I be?”
“For... all of it. For how fast it happened. For wanting you. For wanting them too.”
His fingers brush the back of my hand. “You didn’t take anything that wasn’t offered. You didn’t force a bond. You didn’t run. You chose .”
And somehow, that makes it easier to breathe again.
I don’t smile. I don’t cry.
But I stop fighting myself long enough to rest.
And for now, that’s enough.