Chapter Forty-Three
Lucian
I feel it snap into place like a gunshot in my chest.
Kai’s knot, locking inside her.
And just like that, my brain short-circuits into rage.exe.
I see red. Not poetic red, but literal red. Blood-in-the-eyes, furniture-smashing, someone’s-about-to-die red.
My pulse is thunder. My jaw is doing its best impression of a hydraulic press. I don’t just feel the bond; I feel it screaming, stretching, warping like someone’s dragging it over broken glass while Kai moans into her cunt like he’s hosting a goddamn spiritual retreat.
I don’t move. Because if I move, I will absolutely kill something. And unfortunately, this house is full of things I’m technically not allowed to kill.
Yet.
Her moans hit next - not hazy with heat, not dimmed by instinct, but clear and sharp, aimed like a dagger straight through the middle of my goddamn restraint.
She's enjoying it. Reveling in it. Coming on his knot like she was made for him, like she isn’t mine first. Mine foremost.
Mine always.
My fist slams into the wall so hard the drywall splits like cheap icing. A crater blooms. Dust falls like confetti.
I don’t even flinch.
Theo’s going to ask if I need a meditation app again.
I stand there, shoulders squared, chest heaving, trying not to commit an actual felony as Kai grunts and groans and fills her with every fucking drop of alpha bravado he owns. It's not jealousy. It's not insecurity. It’s something deeper. Older.
It’s mine , echoing through the hollow of my ribs like a war drum.
It’s instinct pulling me toward her while pride roots me to the spot.
This is what I agreed to. This is what I allowed.
Lucian Vale: proud, composed, borderline sociopathic executive of his own emotions.
Lucian Vale: now reduced to drywall abuse and standing in the hallway like a rejected prom date.
I rake a hand through my hair. No. No, no, no. This isn’t a breakdown. This is a pause. A controlled recalibration.
I’m not pacing. I’m...assessing.
Because I don’t break. I don’t beg.
And I sure as hell don’t lose.
The bond pulses again - hot, slick, filthy - and my whole spine locks up like I’ve taken a bullet to the chest. The electric crack of her pleasure arcs straight through me, so visceral it’s like I’m the one inside her.
Like it’s my knot stretching her open, my cock anchoring her in place.
The omega I bonded is currently giggling her way through an orgasm with another alpha’s cock locked inside her, and I am pacing the floor, covered in drywall dust with blood on my knuckles.
Like a metaphor for male failure.
Fucking Kai . Fucking reckless, grinning, disaster of an alpha .
I should be the one making her scream, not that himbo chaos goblin who thinks leather pants count as a personality. I should rip his throat out. Tear him limb from limb until the house reeks of blood instead of slick.
I punch the wall again. It caves in.
I do not.
*
If my father could see me now, he’d have a stroke.
Lucian Vale: bleeding for an Omega I didn’t even claim first. Sharing her. Dividing her. Participating in what I can only assume is a group therapy project disguised as a pack.
Vale men don’t share. Vale men build dynasties. Vale men pass down bloodlines like trust funds and never - never - risk feelings.
And yet here I am. Feeling.
Unsupervised.
Unclaimed.
Undone.
She should be mine. Singular. Uncomplicated. One alpha, one omega. The kind of bond that ignites cities and burns through contracts. The kind of bond people fear.
Instead, I’m snarling in a hallway while the pack's human Molotov cocktail moans someone else's name through the bond.
I never wanted a pack. Never imagined anything but power and order and one bond so solid it would burn through the world.
But Rhea? She’s burned through everything . She’s scorched the map of my future until there’s nothing left but her.
And I hate it.
I hate that I’m still here. Still standing. Still fucking waiting.
Worse still? I can’t leave. I can’t walk away.
I’ve tried. God, have I tried.
But she’s in my blood now.
Every breath tastes like her. Every instinct claws toward her. Every molecule in me is screaming mine like a threat, like a prayer, like a biological malfunction.
No matter how hard I fight it, no matter how much I bleed for it -
I belong to her.
*
The bond thrums again - vicious , molten, old as bone.
And she reaches.
Even knotted by another Alpha.
Even filled with someone else’s come.
Even after I shoved her away like the world's most emotionally constipated martyr.
She reaches.
A pull that defies biology, hierarchy, every rule I was raised to follow.
Her bond reaches for mine like it knows.
Mine , it says.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
And it fucking breaks me.
Not the jealousy. Not the image of Kai’s smug face buried between her thighs. Not the roaring, caveman need to reclaim what should be mine.
It’s that she still wants me. Still reaches.
Instinctive. Blind. Devastating.
Like her soul forgot it wasn’t supposed to want me anymore.
A seam that’s been stitched shut since I was a boy snaps wide open under the weight of it. The years of training, of discipline, of quiet resentment at the world’s unbending laws - don’t bond outside your pairing, don’t share what’s yours, don’t deviate from the bloodline -
It's gone.
And suddenly, I am not Alpha Vale, heir to a bloodline of dominance and power and generational emotional repression. I am just a man, cracked wide open, realizing too late that the only thing I’ve ever wanted is already tangled in the arms of people I was raised to hate.
To keep her, I have to keep them too.
Ash, with his discipline and deadpan death threats.
Theo, with his steady, unshakable calm.
And Kai - the feral, shirtless, chaos dragon currently eating cookie dough straight from the tub between orgasms.
I want to scream. I want to throw up. I want to walk into that kitchen and throw Kai out a window.
But I won’t.
Because she wants this.
Because I want her.
Because she’s mine.
And if claiming her means learning how to live in a house full of knot-happy, territory-sharing, touchy-feely Alphas, then so be it.
I’ll burn the bloodline down myself. With a smile.
And then I’ll mark her so hard it carves me into her bones.
Forever.