Chapter 39 Summer
SUMMER
The hollow ache between my legs kept returning. I wanted friction. The crowd of bodies. Everything was fogged with want. Time passed not in minutes and hours but in the ebb and flow of lucidity and oblivion.
I knew I was being demanding but I couldn’t stop. Fucking one of them and reaching for another. Stretched and filled twice over yet begging for a third in my mouth.
I thought it would never end.
But the moments of relief stretched longer. I began to feel hungry and thirsty again.
My two alphas and my beta were wonderful and attentive. They kissed and touched me in all the right ways. Telling me they were here for me. Over and over and over.
But their scents told a different story. At first they matched, sweet scents with sweet words. And then they didn’t. Bitter. Acrid. Sour. My heightened instincts honed in on the subtle change and screamed.
I knew my heat broke before they did. Sharpness ebbed back into my consciousness, and the relentless pulsing desire slowly subsided.
My eyeballs twitched beneath closed lids.
Morning sun. Sticky. Mercer’s scent was streaked across my breasts and belly where I had begged for it hours earlier.
His light puttering exhale fanned against my back.
The foreign sensation of stubble on Jae’s jaw itched my forehead.
Lucien’s long fingers curled possessively around my inner thigh.
They were talking.
I kept my breathing even and listened.
“Look, you know I’m the last person to be arguing that scent matches can be toxic,” Mercer’s voice was even but I could hear his struggle to make sense of what he was saying. “But I’m a beta. I’m not meant to be affected as much.”
“So you’re saying you feel don’t feel any instinctual pull?” Lucien asked skeptically. “Zero desire to take care of her? Zero sense of responsibility over her because she’s an omega?”
“Well…no.”
The pit of dread grew to a chasm.
“My head, it’s so…” Jae’s uncharacteristic seriousness was terrifying. “I’m so high off heat pheromones I can’t tell if anything I’m feeling is real.”
“See? This is exactly what I mean.”
The rise of my chest faltered from the sob I was working so hard to smother.
They didn’t notice.
Mercer sighed. “Look, we should still talk properly. After all this.”
“Of course. This is the worst time to be trying to figure out what we want.” Lucien’s every word cast a darker shadow over my hope. “Scent compatibility feels like magic. So much so it can justify anything. Even decisions that hurt people.” I felt Lucien roll over, shutting us out.
Was that really what they thought of me? Reduced to my body and my designation? Guess it was my own fault really, only wanting something physical with them.
Now I was the fool, left wondering why they didn’t want something more.
I held on tighter, even though it felt futile. Every fingerprint became a tattoo on my skin, my hopes sat in a casket, and I wondered how I was supposed to go on without them after this.