Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
ARES
I ’m really wishing I hadn’t made up some stupid excuse about an aching back.
First of all, my form is fucking perfect. Muscles don’t get pulled in my workouts.
Second, I’m stuck keeping a fucking seat warm when I could be tearing up a dance floor.
All because Logan can’t decide if he wants to show our Omega off to the crowd or start ripping out eyes because other Alphas have the nerve to look at the pretty piece of meat he put on display.
I’ve never seen him like this, not with Omegas, not with betas, not with anyone. His hormonal little mood swings are really starting to piss me off.
And not just because I don’t get to dance.
Elliot, one of Nikolai’s pack mates, lured Poe away with an offer to see some new gun he just bought. Cillian wandered off to the gods only know what, skulking little bastard. And I, the guy who should really be the life of this damn party, am stuck sitting at a table alone .
Where the fuck is Logan, anyway?
A commotion on the dance floor draws my attention. Offended sounds and gasps of outrage can be heard just before the crowd parts like the sea before an angry god.
Logan’s face is a mask of casual indifference, but the way people scatter tells me everything I need to know about the fury radiating off him.
When he gets closer and I see the hint of a satisfied smirk twisting his lips, I realize it’s the cloud of Alpha pheromones pouring off him that caused the stir. He reeks like he just spent the last week rolling around naked in his own cum-stained sheets.
The hell?
I straighten in my chair as he drops into his seat. “Where is Maya?”
“Had a guard escort her back.” Logan grabs a champagne flute off a nearby tray, then downs it in one swallow. “She said she was tired. Had a headache or something.”
Bullshit. Maya is more reliable than an etiquette manual. No way she would ditch an event like this early with such a lame excuse. If anything, she’d figure out a way to make some grand exit that made it clear the party would be over without her.
It isn’t exactly like her to slink away, especially over something as dumb as a headache.
I’m tempted to call him on it. An unfamiliar urge. Logan is a prince. Leader of our pack, not just by birthright but because of a natural ability to compel others to follow him. An Alpha of my size and strength has his pick of packs. I chose Logan because I knew he was destined for greatness, because I stood a good chance of becoming the right hand of the future king.
Doesn’t mean I don’t notice what a fucking idiot he can be sometimes.
I lean past him to grab my own glass of champagne. That’s when I catch it — the faintest trace of Omega arousal clinging to Logan’s jacket. But it’s almost incidental. Weak enough, I could convince myself it’s something else entirely.
If he and Maya had actually fucked, I would have been able to scent it from across the room.
But I’ve tasted her slick, I remember the way it coated my tongue for days afterward. That isn’t something you just forget.
I abruptly stand, deliberately ignoring Logan’s look of annoyance.
“Where the fuck are you going?” he asks.
“I think that headache is contagious. I’m gonna go take something for it.”
I don’t wait for him to gainsay me as I slip into the crowd. If he commands me to stay, it will force me in to a situation where I either have to choose to comply or refuse.
Better for both of us not to test which way that might go.
Maya’s scent is easy to follow back to the apartment, especially tainted with the sharp tang of distress as it is. A guard stands just outside and I wave him away with an impatient gesture. At least I know she made it back here in one piece. With Logan, you never know how things are going to turn out.
The apartment is silent and nearly pitch black when I enter. Maya didn’t hit a single light switch on her way through, which makes me wonder how desperate she must have been to disappear into the darkness.
There isn’t any sign of her in the dining room or sitting area. Low light from the open curtains chases shadows across the walls as I move through the open space, alert for any sound or movement and finding none.
She has to be here, but where?
I take the stairs to the upper level two at a time, following the faint trail of Maya’s scent. Cherries, champagne and the salt tang of sadness. It leads straight to the upper hallway where all our bedrooms are located, but every door is already closed.
“Maya,” I call, not expecting a response.
I swear I hear her breathing, just the quickest intake of breath, narrowing the choice down to one of the rooms on closest to the stairs.
“It’s just me. The others are still at the gala.”
A faint shuffling sound comes from my left. I wait for almost an entire minute for the sound to come again, but the hallway remains silent.
In other circumstances, I’d be all for an extended game of hide and seek. Right now, I just need to make sure she isn’t floating in blood-tinted bathwater or wrapping a bedsheet around her neck.
On impulse, I try the middle door while thinking to myself there is no fucking way.
The handle doesn’t budge. Locked.
A choked sob comes from inside, followed by rustling fabric.
“Maya?” I keep my voice low, gentle. “You want to come out and talk about it?”
Silence answers me. Then another quiet sniffle.
“Can you at least let me know you’re okay in there?”
More silence.
“I could break the door down.” I lean against the frame, making the wood groan from my weight. “But you might get hurt, so I really don’t want to do that.”
I hear a sharply in-drawn breath. She obviously didn’t care for the implied threat, but still says nothing.
Even through the closed door, I smell the reek of Logan’s spend. I’m already imagining what must have gone down between them. Letting my imagination run away from me is a very bad idea right now. I need to see the true aftermath for myself.
So I try a different tactic.
“This is actually my room, so I am going to need it back at some point,” I drawl. The floor creaks as she shifts her weight, closer to the door than I thought. I really want to know how she is taking the realization that she chose my den to hide in. “It’s a little rude to make me sleep on the couch when I’m not even the one who messed up.”
A choking laugh finally breaks through the quiet. “It smelled the best in here.”
The lock clicks and the door creaks open. Maya is sitting on the floor in the dark, but there is enough light I can see that her makeup is streaked with tears. Queen Midale’s dress is wrinkled possibly beyond repair, the crystals in her hair askew.
“Sorry.” She makes a point of looking behind her while surreptitiously wiping at her eyes. “The whole place just smells like... Alphas. But yours was the most...comforting? I don’t know.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I’ve been called many things, but comforting isn’t usually one of them.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll just go back to the harem. That’s probably where I should have gone.” Maya pushes herself up from the floor, unsteady on her feet. She offers me a watery smile that makes me angry at all over again, though not at her. “But Logan told me, specifically, to come back here…not that he used his Alpha voice or anything. You know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m going now.”
Maya is rambling. Maya never rambles. She might be the most self-possessed person I’ve ever met. She didn’t so much as trip over a single word while presenting herself to the king in the dead queen’s dress.
“Hold on a second there.” I snag her around the waist before she can race past me, releasing her immediately when she flinches away. “You don’t have to rush off. I’m sure whatever new stunt Logan pulled requires some decompression time. Stay.”
I maneuver past her into the room, careful to keep my hands to myself. The leather armchair in the corner creaks as I settle into it, pose deliberately casual. My den is sparse — just the chair, a massive bed, and weights stacked to one side. Nothing hangs on the wall aside from a paper calendar I use to schedule my workouts because the damn tablets always lose my data. I prefer an environment without unnecessary distractions.
Maya hovers in the doorway, fingers twisting in the ruined silk of her gown. Logan’s scent clings to the fabric and her skin, wouldn’t surprise me if that asshole cleaned off his dick with her hair. His scent mixes with the sour cherry notes of distress rolling off her in waves. The combination makes my jaw clench.
She is supposed to belong to all of us. At least, for as long as we have her. That was the deal.
Logan is the one who made the unilateral decision that fucking her isn’t allowed. And now he’s doing the Alpha equivalent of pissing on a favorite tree to mark his territory. Logan may be prince, he may be pack Alpha, but we share everything. Always have.
I force my shoulders to relax, keeping my voice light. “You can come in or not. Your choice.”
Her eyes dart to the bed, then back to me. Smart girl, realizing I deliberately chose the armchair to give her more space.
“I...” She takes a hesitant step forward, then another. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
I shrug, tamping down the urge to launch myself at her and replace Logan’s scent with my own. “Maybe you just needed somewhere safe to fall apart for a minute.”
The truth of that statement seems to hit her hard than she expects. Her shoulders slump as she sinks down to sit on the edge of my bed, careful to keep some distance between us. “Yeah.”
I breathe through my mouth, trying to ignore how wrong it feels to have her here marked by another Alpha’s touch when I’ve barely been allowed the smallest taste of her. But this isn’t about me or my instincts. This is about Maya needing someone to just be present while she processes whatever the hell Logan did to shake her up this badly .
So I stay in my chair, and I wait.
“Tell me what happened.”
When she does, I have to resist the urge to pick up my chair and throw it across the room. Fucking Logan. It would be great if he could figure out whether he even wants an Omega instead of torturing all of us with this indecisiveness.
“I don’t know why he acts like this,” she laments with a sigh. “Maybe it’s me.”
“It’s not,” I say, loudly enough to make her jump. “Logan has been like this for a while. In fact, you’ve already lasted longer than any of us expected. “
“Why am I even here, then?”
I raise my eyebrows, expression chiding. “You tell me.”
She looks away, seeming pensive, but doesn’t reply.
Just because I’ve let myself get distracted from the still burning question of what triggered her emergence from the woodwork doesn’t mean I stopped wanting an answer altogether.
Then I realize something.
“Wait, Logan didn’t even make you come?”
Maya looks up, startled at the sudden aggression in my tone. “No.”
I’m on my feet before I can stop myself, stalking toward her with predatory intent. Maya’s pupils dilate, but she doesn’t shrink away as I tower over her.
“You should leave if you don’t want to be touched.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. “Because if you stay, I’m going to do to you exactly what Logan should have.”
Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, the fruit-sweet scent of her arousal cutting through Logan’s territorial marking. She ever so lightly shifts her weight back toward the center of the bed.
Good enough for me.
Maya instinctively lies back as I crawl onto the bed and over her, my knees planted on either side of her thighs and fists planted near her shoulders to cage her body with mine.
She stares up at me with wide and unblinking eyes, twin seas of blackberry deep enough to drown in. The slightest tremor quakes over her slight form, so small I might have missed it if I wasn’t watching her so closely.
“Poor baby, all wound up,” I purr. “No wonder you were crying alone in the dark. You need one of your Alphas to take care of you.”
Her chest rises and falls with rapid breaths, but she remains still beneath me. The crystals in her hair catch the dim light as she tilts her chin up to meet my gaze.
I wait another beat, giving her time to choose. She can bolt for the door if that’s what she wants to do. Her tongue swipes across her bottom lip again, and she stays exactly where she is.
I cup her cheek in my palm and take her lips in a gentle kiss. She responds immediately, kissing me back in a way that is both artless and endearing. Her arms wrap around my neck like she’s gripping a life preserver. I’m the one who has to keep the tempo slow, maintaining a chaste brush of our lips when she tries to shove her tongue down my throat.
Fuck, Logan is an idiot. He always leads with anger and threats, when even the saddest offering of kindness has this poor girl eating out of the palm of your palm .
I whisper the question into her mouth. “Why didn’t you finish yourself off on your own?”
I already know the answer, but I really want to hear her say it.
“Not allowed,” she gasps, arching her hips as I trace light kisses down the curve of her jaw. “S’against the rules.”
“Such a good, obedient little Omega.” My knee shifts between her thighs as I grip her hips, urging her to grind against me. “Lucky for you, good girls get what they deserve.”
I swallow her gasps of pleasure as she bucks against the hard plane of my thigh.
If I hadn’t already believed the claims of virginity, her reaction now would be enough to convince me. She still kisses like she’s doing it for the very first time, just a little desperate and too eager to please. Her movements unerringly follow mine, slowing or speeding up when I do, looking to me for direction.
I’ve never put any stock in the virtues of innocence, but maybe I should revise that opinion.
Her dress rides up, revealing bare pussy. I don’t ask where her underwear went. Knowing Logan, he is probably back at the gala waving them around like a flag.
She sits halfway up to watch where my hands linger on her thighs.
“You got so close, didn’t you, baby? And he still wouldn’t do anything about it.” I bite back a laugh at her frantic nod. This girl. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’re going to get you there now. In fact, why don’t you show me what you would have done if it wasn’t against the rules.”
My hand touches hers, and she instinctively grips it like a lifeline. Chuckling, I maneuver her fingers between her spread thighs until she cups her own swollen and drenched cunt.
With a gasp, she throws her head back so suddenly I have to pull back so she doesn’t break my nose.
“Fuck, you really were desperate for it.”
I guide her hand to move, but she quickly takes over for me, slick squelching between her fingers. Her thumb presses against the hardened nub of her clit and I follow with my own, increasing the grinding pressure.
She might be trying to speak, but all I hear are desperate gasps and barely audible moans, her mouth moving in shapes that don’t particularly resemble words.
I lick the faint bruises on her shoulder that are in the shape of Logan’s fingers because I can’t help myself. She might smell like him, but by the time I’m done, the only thing she’ll taste like is me.
“There aren’t any rules here, Omega. Not when you’re with me. You can do whatever you want. That includes coming harder than you ever have before on your own fingers.”
My tongue traces the fragile pulse at the bend of her neck, feeling it throb. Her mating gland is small, invisible to the naked eye, but I can trace the edges of it with my tongue. The concentrated scent of her pulses just beneath the skin. I can practically taste it. God, can I taste it.
There isn’t much more of this temptation I can take before any sense of control goes out the window. If we don’t end this soon, I won’t be he held responsible for my actions. I need her to come all over our hands.
My palm grinds against her fingers with bruising force. Maya comes with a loud cry, eyes rolling in the back of her head, hard enough that I’m pretty sure she passes out for a few seconds.
She blinks owlishly up at me as she comes back down, a sleepwalker slowly returning to reality from their dream-like state. When I gently release the pressure of my hand on her, she lets out a soft whining sound. A pool of slick forms beneath her arching hips and I resist the urge to lick it up like a dog.
I could fuck her right now, and she’d probably thank me for it. Part of me wants to say damn Logan and damn the consequences of defying him because I know she’d be worth the inevitable pain of his punishment. He may not have decided whether he wants to keep her long-term, but that shouldn’t matter. Knotting her a few times for fun and bonding with her are not the same thing.
But, I’m still not going to do it.
Not because of Logan, and definitely not because of some newfound moral compass.
No. When I finally fuck Maya for real, it’s going to be because she begged for it, not because Logan messed with her head first.
“One of these days, I’m going to stop being such a gentleman.”
Gentle snores are the only response I get because she is already passed out.
I stare down at Maya’s sleeping form, curled up on my bed like she belongs there. Her chest rises and falls in the steady rhythm of deep sleep, face so peaceful that she almost looks young enough to make me uncomfortable. Her dress spills around her bared thighs, so she looks like nothing less than a temple offering.
A better man would be more concerned with worship.
But all I want to do is defile.
My instincts scream at me to join her, to wrap myself around her smaller frame and breathe in the calming scent of a satisfied Omega. But that would be dangerous territory. Sharing a bed is too close to bonded behavior, too intimate for what this arrangement is supposed to be.
Still, I can’t bring myself to have her taken back to the harem. Until she wakes up, I can allow myself to enjoy the novelty of having a satisfied Omega in my bed, one who feels secure enough to drift off to sleep in my den.
I leave quietly before I’m tempted to do something stupid like crawl into that bed with her.
The gala is still in full swing, though I’m not surprised to find Logan sitting alone at our table and nursing a half-empty glass. Judging from his red-rimmed eyes, that drink isn’t his first, second, or even third.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he demands.
I smirk. “Putting a sleepy kitten to bed.”
His nostrils flare. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning that if you’re going to piss all over our Omega like a dog, you could at least get her off afterwards. Otherwise, you’re just asking for another Alpha to do the job for you.”
He laughs, absolutely no humor in the sound. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I raise an eyebrow. “So it wasn’t you that put her in a chokehold and came all over her?”
Logan downs the rest of his drink and gestures to a nearby servant for another. “She’s mine. I’ll do what I want with her.”
“She’s ours, you mean. We are a pack.”
His drink arrives and Logan snatches it off the tray with enough force to spill half of it on the back of his hand. “Maya isn’t pack.”
“That might be news to her, considering you have a mating contract.”
He scoffs. “Contracts can be broken.”
I’d suspected it from the beginning, but hearing him say it out loud strikes me in a way I don’t expect it to. He has no intention of mating Maya for real, much less bonding her with a claiming bite, not now or after every single question about her past is answered.
Keeping an Omega like a pretty fuck doll in a glass cabinet might be the biggest waste of something valuable that I can imagine.
Maya is a good Omega, as close to being perfect as any of them I’ve ever encountered. If he doesn’t want her, then what the fuck are we even trying to accomplish here?
I think back to the vision of her curled up in my bed, her scent mingling gently with mine on the sheets. My body’s reaction to that is visceral and impossible to ignore.
“Then it won’t bother you if I claim her?”
Glass cracks in Logan’s fist. “You wouldn’t dare.”
I cross massive arms over my chest, highlighting the size difference between us. “Doesn’t seem like it should matter, since you don’t seem to want her, anyway.”
He slams to his feet, glaring down at me in a posture full of Alpha aggression. “You’re really going to let her come between us, just because she has a cunt that can take a knot? After years of being packed up?”
I could challenge him, right here and right now. I’m bigger and better trained. Having the entire court as an audience would legitimize any claim I might make as the victor.
But Logan isn’t our Alpha because he can win a fight. He’s our pack Alpha because we want him to be, because following his lead has been the best thing for us until now.
So I fight the overwhelming impulse to knock his teeth down his throat.
“Tell me the real reason you don’t want her,” I pitch my voice lower because this conversation is only between us. “I’m not an idiot. I know there has to be something you aren’t telling me. Just let me in so we can settle this. Otherwise, I don’t think either of us wantto go where this fight will take us.”
We stare at each other for a protracted moment. I can practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he weighs the implied threat in my words against whatever bullshit he wants to sell me.
Logan finally looks away with a sound of annoyance. “There doesn’t have to be a fucking secret.”
“That isn’t a no,” I point out.
His jaw clenches. “Look at what’s happening right now. That fucking girl is already tearing us apart, and no one has even fucked her yet. She refuses to submit to me like she should, so I correct the behavior. Then she has you running after her to make it all better and undermine my efforts. This is just what Omegas do. Cause confusion. Sow chaos. Make us turn on each other. ”
I mull that over. His words ring with truth, as if he believes it, but I still can’t fight the impression there is something deeper hiding underneath. “You think she played me?”
“I think you should enjoy her while you can, because there won’t be a Pack Logan anymore if we keep her around too long.” Logan pushes back from the table, only slightly unsteady on his feet from the likely half gallon of hard liquor he consumed tonight. “Now, I’m going to bed before you make me answer that challenge I see on your damn face.”
I watch him go, sitting with the inherent conflict between his words and my memories of Maya’s eager submission to me. This is all supposed to be about power: getting it and staying strong enough to keep it. If Maya threatens what we’re trying to achieve, then she has to go.
But that if hangs over all of this like the blade of guillotine.
Because if we get rid of the most perfect Omega that I’ve ever met without a damn good reason, I won’t look at Logan in the same way again.
He insists that keeping her isn’t good for our pack.
I say it’s time we put that little theory to the test.