Chapter 99
Chapter Ninety-Nine
~Rhen~
"You're not hopping in with them?" I ask her, retrieving a towel from the cupboard under the sink.
"My scent overwhelmed him," she says, and I look at Leon worriedly. He has been off since he arrived home, and if Raidon is in there with him, something must have gone down for her to be sitting at the sink looking upset.
"I don't get why he doesn't just feed off me," Harlow mumbles. He could, werewolves have more blood than humans, but still Leon would rather not risk it.
"Because he has gone cold turkey. He will struggle to stop," I tell her, shucking her under the chin before unbuttoning my shirt.
Raidon hops out so I can take his place, and I don't miss how she licks her lips or the scent of her arousal as she watches him grab a towel, securing it around his waist.
"Don't look at me like that. You know I want you," he says to her.
Her hormones have been all over the place lately, and she even attacked Leon while he was asleep the other night. Yet none of us are willing to touch her, afraid of hurting her, or worse, afraid of her trying to mark us. We know it will be upsetting for her when she realizes she can't.
Leon can't touch her at the moment. Sex and bloodlust go hand in hand, and without Thane, he doesn't trust himself.
Raidon is worried about hurting her, and I don't want to have the awkward conversation that her mark won't stick until she accepts Thane.
We know she wants to mark us. We can tell by the way she scents us, her instincts to claim us growing stronger the longer she is around us.
She wants us to be hers as much as she is ours.
However, none of us want her to feel pressured into marking Thane just so she can mark us.
I can see our lack of contact is starting to bother her, though. Harlow growls, slipping off the counter and walking out. Raidon sighs, watching after her.
"She wants to mark us," I tell them.
"Yeah, and I won't be the one to break it to her that it won't work unless she marks Thane first," Raidon tells me.
"Well, they seemed to be getting along today," I tell him, unbuttoning my pants and slipping them off.
Stepping into the shower, though, I wonder how much longer we can avoid that conversation.
She will have to mark him if she wants to mark us, and I can tell she isn't anywhere near there yet with Thane.
I step under the shower's spray when the mind-link opens up, and Thane's angry voice slips into my head.
'Is there a reason Low looks upset?' he asks, and I sigh as Raidon answers him.
Fuck! Looks like that conversation will be happening sooner rather than later, I think to myself, knowing that it won't play out well.
Everyone knows that in Alpha Packs, the most dominant Alpha is the head.
One thing they don't teach in the schools though, and that most Alpha Packs don't advertise, is that to mark any member of the pack, you must first mark the Alpha.
Just like Thane had to mark her before any of us could, she needs to mark him before she can mark any of us.
It’s the same with severing the bond. The Alpha is the key, and that makes it the greatest weakness of all Alpha Packs.
If the Alpha dies, all of our bonds break, which often causes the people themselves to break.
It is a form of control no one wants to talk about.
All of us are linked to Thane. He hurts, we hurt, he breaks, we all break.
His word is law, and his life is our life.
Broken bonds don't last without the Alpha.
If something happened to one of us, we would survive it as long as we have our Alpha, but if something happened to Thane, it would kill all of us—not physically, but you just don't survive that sort of pain.
We all submitted to him, gave him his power in a sense, and made him the strongest, although he already was the strongest of us.
If something happened to him, we would never gain that power back, because it dies with him.
Without him, we would be regular werewolves, despite our DNA.
And Harlow is an Omega. Once she marks Thane, if he dies, she will die with him, and that is something none of us are ready to tell her.
Once she marks him, there is no way out for her.
Only Thane would be able to break their bond, and we all know he will never let her go.
She has to come to the decision by herself, without our influence, just as we all had to come to that decision ourselves.
Harlow isn't completely helpless, however. Once the bond has been completed, Thane will always choose and protect her over all of us. Our lives depend on him and his will depend on hers. If she breaks, Thane breaks. If she dies, Thane will die too. Without her, his instincts will go crazy, and so will he. It’s what happened to Thane's fathers after Hana died, which is why they ended up killing themselves.
It is also why most Alpha Packs chose rotation wolves. Omegas have always been seen as weak, and marking one would give rival packs an easy target. A pack is only as strong as its weakest link. She will become ours, and she will be the biggest weapon our enemies can use against us.
'Where is she?' I hear Raidon ask Thane as I rinse my hair out.
'The living room. I will check her in a minute,' Thane answers him.
Opening my eyes, I find Leon staring at the door. "What's wrong?" I ask him
"She thinks I rejected her."
"She is hormonal," I tell him.
"Yeah, but you should have seen the look on her face," he says, rinsing the soap off and stepping out.
"She'll be fine; Thane will speak with her," I tell him.
"Yeah, well, hopefully she gets them in check before dinner," Raidon says, and I had completely forgotten. Fuck!
"Why by dinner time?" Leon asks as I shut the water off.
"Mom and Dad are coming over for dinner," Raidon says.
"Fuck! Maybe Thane should have let her cook," Leon says, and Raidon shoots a look at him.
"She wants to apologize."
"Yeah, but if she upsets Harlow, I won’t hold my tongue. I love Mom, but I love Harlow more," Leon warns him. Great, that's all we need: a ravenous hybrid, a hormonal pregnant Omega, a raging Thane, and in-laws.
Yep, this will be the dinner from hell.