15
gatlin
There’s no reason to be going after this girl, whoever she is, but then again, there was probably no reason to be sticking my dick in her either, at least, no good reason.
And it’s all well and good to make excuses about being in a rut and all the scents flying in the air, but none of that matters, not in the end.
Even if I can’t entirely control myself, I’m still the only person responsible for my actions.
She’s naked in the living room scrolling through a phone, her brows knitted together. She looks up to see me. “Oh,” she says. “You.” She lets out a breath. “Gatlin.”
Of course, I’m naked, too, now that I think about it. “Guess I’m old-fashioned, but when a girl I’ve been in the middle of having sex with walks out of the room, seemingly upset, I feel like I should go after her.”
She lets out a little laugh.
“But if you’d rather not talk to me, or see me, or whatever, I absolutely understand that.”
She looks me up and down and then looks at herself, and then looks down at her phone. “Um, everything’s kind of a mess right now, actually.”
“Care to elaborate?” I say.
“My brother’s omega was here, having sex with Ellis.”
“That’s the omega he grew up with,” I say. “The one who he’s obsessed with.”
“He talked to you about her, then?” Hannah says.
“Not often, but yeah,” I say. “And it sounds like the kind of trashfire thing he would do, to be real.”
“Trashfire,” she repeats slowly.
“Maybe that’s not fair,” I say. “He’s, uh, he’s alluring. You probably understand that. It’s easy to feel really obsessed with him.”
Hannah’s smile is faint, sort of wistful. She shakes herself. “Anyway, she’s missing.”
“Who’s missing? The other omega?”
“Her name is Calliope,” says Hannah. “She texted my brother that she was in heat, and he came to find her, and she wasn’t there. So, my brother has been texting me but I’ve been…” She gestures behind her towards Ellis’s nest.
“Oh, wow,” I say. “A missing omega in heat, that’s a disaster. She could have wandered in anywhere and gotten herself into all kinds of trouble.”
“Right,” says Hannah. “At least she’s bitten—”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I say. “She could be bitten again.”
Hannah winces. “Right, which is why my brother is out of his mind.” She licks her lips. “So, Ellis doesn’t want me here anyway. I just need to find some clothes, get dressed and go find my brother and help him look for Calliope.”
I rub my jaw. “Well, I guess so, but I have to admit, I don’t like sending you out there. Will we see you again? Will you come back?”
She meets my gaze. “You don’t have to pretend like that. I don’t need that. We know whatever was happening in there was…” She doesn’t finish.
“Was what?” I say, because I’m going to disagree with what she said.
Something about this dynamic with her and Ellis, it’s not great.
And maybe at this moment, I’m a little biased towards her.
She’s small and soft and round in all the right places, and I still remember the tight grip of her little pink pussy on me, so I’m predisposed to like her, I guess, but I don’t like what she’s saying. I certainly am not pretending.
“Opportunistic, I guess,” she says. “On both of our parts. I also probably did it to get back at him. And you’re only the second person I’ve ever had sex with, and it was nothing like me. I’m not like that—”
“The thick wall of scent in there was probably messing with all of our heads,” I cut in. “Are you saying, now, that you weren’t truly able to consent?”
“No,” she says. “Don’t be like that. You don’t even know me. You don’t have to pretend like you care about me.”
“I don’t not care about you,” I say. “Look, I would like to come with you and help your brother, because an omega in heat on her own is a disaster. But I can’t leave Ellis, and I’m a little torn, because I don’t think he really wants you to leave.”
“If you tell him about Calliope, he’s going to insist on going out looking for her,” Hannah says. “He’s devoted to her.”
“So, you want me to go back in there, lie to my omega, and just let you go without a second thought?”
“I mean, your thoughts are your own business, I guess,” she says. “But yeah, I think I have to go. And you’re Ellis’s alpha, so I think you have to stay.”
“Give me your number, at least,” I say.
She shakes her head at me. “Why? You’re not trying to…?”
“This all seemed unfinished and there’s something here,” I say. “That’s why. I want to talk to you again, that’s why.” Of course, I’m naked. “Here.” I motion for her phone.
She hands it over.
Then I have to make her unlock it, because the screen’s gone off. I send myself a text from her phone so that I have her number. Then I hand it back.
She takes it. “I have clothes upstairs,” she says.
“Right,” I say, and I watch as she leaves the room.
I go back to the nest where Ellis is alone.
“Where the fuck is Kane?” I say as I crawl in.
“Washing his cock,” says Ellis.
“Oh,” I say. It’s probably not necessary if Ellis is slicking there, because his anatomy shuts anything off, turning his asshole into an omega sex hole and nothing else. But it’s not a good idea to go ass to mouth, ever, so that’s just responsible of him. I survey Ellis. “You’ve been crying.”
Ellis sighs, shaking his head.
I eye him. “I’m sorry I fucked your girlfriend.”
“Yeah, she’s probably not my girlfriend anymore,” he says. “Maybe she never was.” He shivers a little.
Instinctually, I wrap my arms around him, pulling him up against my body as I begin to carefully stroke his skin. “Omega, can you accept alphaing from me right now, or are you too angry with me?”
“I’m not angry,” says Ellis, sagging into me. “I just wish I wasn’t in heat right now. I feel like everything’s impossible right now.”
Everything is always impossible with Ellis, that’s the thing. Poor guy. He’s a walking tragedy, it feels like. Things get out of hand around him.
“Knot me?” he says, shivering against my skin. “Knot me, please, alpha?”
“I can absolutely do that,” I assure him.
At that point, Kane comes in with a pill bottle and a glass of water.
“Oh, fuck, thank you,” says Ellis, taking them from him.
“His suppressants,” says Kane. “He says a double dose might cut the heat off.”
“Is it safe?” I say, as Ellis shakes four pills out into his hand.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” says Ellis, swallowing the pills with water. “Can I have your cock now, Gatlin?”
Obviously, he can have my cock. Obviously, he gets it whenever he wants it.
hannah
“Where the fuck have you been?” Andrew says as I walk across a Walmart parking lot to where he’s standing, right next to Calliope’s car.
He looks haggard and stressed, and I can tell he’s not really thinking clearly either.
He’s probably in a rut triggered by his omega’s heat, since that is how it tends to work for bonded pairs. “I have been texting you for hours.”
“Hey,” I say, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“God, you smell like him, and you smell like… alpha?” Andrew shakes his head at me. “You smell… what the fuck, Hannah, why do you smell like that?”
“Have you called Mom?” I say.
He rubs his forehead, furrowing his brow. “Uh, no.”
“Have you texted anyone besides me and Callie?”
“Well, I haven’t texted Callie,” he says, pointing into her car, because her phone is sitting out, right there, on the passenger seat. “No point in texting her when I traced her location to this exact place, and she wasn’t here.”
“Right,” I say. “Well, I’m going to text Mom, then.”
He runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know why I didn’t think to do that.
I went into the Walmart, but it… everything was too overwhelming.
The lights were too bright and all of the different scents and I got lost—seriously, lost—in Walmart.
I don’t know how long I was in there, and I just kept thinking that if she went in there, the same thing would have happened to her, and that I had to stay in there and keep looking—”
“Andrew, you’re in a rut,” I say. “You’re overly sensitive—”
“I mean, that’s why the lights were so bright. I’m not an idiot.”
I pat his shoulder, composing a text to my mother, explaining the situation.
My mother texts back right away. Where are you?
I send her our location. I squeeze Andrew’s shoulder.
“Okay, so Mom’s coming, and that’s going to help.
” I look around. “Callie, um, she probably went somewhere where there’s a bar or something.
” I point to the strip mall connected to the Walmart.
“That Mexican restaurant over there has one, right?”
“Why would she go to a bar?”
“Somewhere to be around people, to dance, she might have… I don’t know.”
“You think she went somewhere to get fucked,” says Andrew stonily.
“Well, she already fucked Ellis today,” I say, annoyed.
“What?” says Andrew. “Then why do you smell like you scrubbed your whole body with his scent?”
“Because he went into heat, too!”
“Fuck,” says Andrew. “They always do this to each other, tripping each other’s heat like that. I don’t even know why. But if she’s fucking someone else right now, she could get pregnant.”
“Let’s go check the Mexican place,” I say.
He groans, rolling his head on his shoulders. “I don’t want to walk right now. Everything’s too much, Hannah.”
“You are the whiniest alpha I know,” I tell him.
“It hurts, because my omega is in heat, and I can’t get to her,” he says through clenched teeth.
“Well, let’s go find her,” I say, and I drag him across the parking lot while he gasps and winces and makes all kinds of dramatic noises.
We’re just getting into the Mexican restaurant when I see my mother’s car pulling up outside. She and my dad park haphazardly—mostly in a parking space—and then come running over to us.
“That was quick,” I say.
My mother sniffs me, and then her eyes get very wide, and I hold up a hand and am like, “One crisis at a time, Mom, but once we find Callie, I do need a Plan B.”
My mother’s jaw swings open.
My father clears his throat.