Chapter Seventeen #3
“I told you I wanted you,” she said. “I told you both. In the room downstairs where my mother left a memory spell, I told you exactly what I wanted.”
“You’d been through a significant emotional experience and your heat was starting.”
“I was lucid.”
“You were also about to go into the most intense biological event of your life. Context matters.”
She put her hands flat on her knees. The gesture she used when she was composing herself, but I could sense rising anger. Thane pushed off the wall and crouched in front of Aveline.
“You have not met many people,” Thane said, evenly. “You’ve been in this tower your entire life. How can you be certain that we’re—”
“The tower chose you. It let you through, and it has kept everything else out for years.” She pressed two fingers to her sternum.
“And I can feel you. Both of you. In here. Not the full bond—I understand now why it’s incomplete—but the potential.
I know what you are to me. You said that the bond only forms with soulmates. Was that incorrect?”
Thane froze.
“You are my mates,” she said, a hint of hurt in her voice. “Both of you. Unless you don’t want me.”
We were treading on thin ice here. She had been used her entire life, not wanted by anyone except for her power.
She needed to know that we wanted her, not her power.
I knelt in front of her, next to Thane. “Aveline…Omega, I want you as my partner for life, along with Thane. I knew that. I needed you to be sure of us.”
“Then why are we discussing this?”
“Because I don’t want to take advantage of—”
She moved.
In one fluid motion, she turned in the nest, set her hands flat in the furs, and positioned herself on her knees with her back to me. The fur slipped from her shoulders. She looked back over her shoulder with an expression that had shed every last remnant of patience.
“Take advantage—both of you. You’ve been very careful so far. Let’s end this now,” she said. “Bite me, Alpha. Both of you. I choose you both.”
The room was silent.
Thane groaned and glanced at me, waiting for permission.
I looked at her—the line of her spine, the curve of her ass, the absolute certainty in her expression—and every careful argument I’d been constructing dissolved with the raw need of my alpha demanding that I make her mine. Immediately.
I reached out and took her hip.
She exhaled, a small sound of satisfaction, and turned to face forward, her head dropping on a sigh.
My other hand found the curve of her waist, and I pulled her back against me and heard her breath catch.
The heat that had been eased for the past few hours answered the contact immediately, her scent shifting, the sweetness of her rising in the nest. She pressed back, and I tightened my grip to slow her down because I was not rushing this.
“Thane,” I said.
He was already moving, coming around to the front of the nest, and he looked at me once with an expression that had nothing complicated in it anymore. Just want and need, and the warmth he brought to everything she was part of.
He settled in front of her, and her hands went to him immediately, reaching, and he caught her face and kissed her while I pressed my mouth to the back of her neck.
She shivered.
I took my time deciding where I wanted my mark.
Somewhere everyone could see it, know my claim over this omega.
Every alpha had their own ideas, but the traditional spot was where the neck met the shoulder.
My hands moved over her, relearning her body after the brief window of the break, and she pushed back against me, rubbing her ass against my cock with increasing insistence.
“Malric,” she said, breaking from Thane’s mouth.
I slapped her ass with a loud crack and she moaned. “Settle down, Omega. I know what you need.”
She glared at me over her shoulder. “Then get on with it.”
Thane and I laughed. This omega was feisty and I loved it.
I guided her forward slightly, adjusting the angle, and she understood and shifted her weight to her forearms in the furs.
Thane moved with her, kneeling in front of her now.
He buried his fingers in her hair and guided her mouth to his cock.
She sucked him down, slurping over him eagerly, and he made a low groan as she worked him.
I steadied her with my hands on her hips, my cock sliding through her folds, then I slid forward with one thrust, burying myself completely in her heat. She gave a low cry, garbled by Thane’s cock, and arched back to meet me.
I set my hands at her hips and held on and gave us both a moment. She wiggled her hips, tightening her pussy around my cock, and gave a growl. I slapped her ass again.
“I set the rules, Omega, not you.”
But I moved. Slow at first, deliberate, feeling her adjust and settle into it, watching the line of her spine and the small sounds she made and all the signals I’d spent three days learning to read.
She was forward over her forearms, her hair falling around her face.
Thane was in front of her and she was taking her time with him in a way that made him grip the nest wall with one hand and put the other gently in her hair.
“Gods,” he said, his head dropping back. “She’s too fucking good at this.”
His satisfaction surged through our bond. I was ready to feel her alongside him.
I found a rhythm, and she matched it, her body fluid and responsive, the heat making everything more immediate and more consuming than anything I could have imagined.
She was not passive but a willing and active participant, giving as much pleasure while taking what she wanted.
She moved with deliberate participation, adjusting angles, communicating through the language of her body with complete clarity, and I followed her lead as much as she followed mine.
Her sounds changed after a few minutes. Shorter, sharper, and she pushed back against me harder, indicating her orgasm was coming soon.
I pulled her hips flush against me and the sound she made at that went through me like voltage. One hand moved from her hip to the front of her, finding the point of concentration, and she made a fractured sound and Thane’s hand tightened in her hair.
I worked her toward the edge and kept her there, that deliberate space just before her climax.
I eyed Thane, and he pulled out—his cock hard and shiny—so I could lift her, her thighs spread around mine, her back to my front.
Thane lay on the furs and found her clit with his tongue, and she shrieked, her body going wild.
“Don’t—I need—”
“I know what you need.” I pressed my mouth to the back of her neck, moving forward toward her shoulder. “Be my mate, Aveline.”
“Yes, Malric. I want to be yours,” she said, the words a plea. “Please. Both of you. I want this—”
The spot was there, beneath my mouth, and she tilted her head to the side to expose it. I bared my teeth and the canine that had been aching for a few days, though I hadn’t realized why, throbbed and demanded that I complete the bond.
I bit her, the coppery taste of blood filling my mouth, and we both orgasmed, the force of it and the bond seeming to come from somewhere deep inside, hollowing me out.
Her cry fractured through the nest, and the bond surged into being with a force that moved through every layer of me—not the careful thread I’d been managing from a distance but the real thing, immediate and complete and nothing like what I’d spent ten years being afraid of.
She was everywhere inside me, her presence suddenly occupying a space I hadn’t known was empty, her fear and her want and her amazing self-landing in my chest like something clicking into place.
I licked the wound, our biology already sealing it shut.
My knot swelled, locking me inside of her, her orgasm rolling through her endlessly, the little quakes milking my cock constantly.
I settled on my side, pulling her to me, soothing her as she sobbed through the aftermath.
Her trembling was subsiding into aftershocks.
Thane’s hand was in her hair and his eyes were on me, dark and certain.
I don’t know how long we lay there, but finally my knot loosened and I pulled out, a river of cum and her slick following me. She opened her eyes and turned to me, her eyes wide with wonder.
“I feel you. In here.” She rubbed her chest, her face still in a daze.
After a few moments, she reached for Thane. “It’s not complete. I need you, too.”
He cupped her cheek tenderly, but I could see the strain in the tight jaw, the lines around his eyes. I could feel his need through our bond, though he was restraining himself.
I pulled back from Aveline and she reached for him.
They kissed, a mating of tongues and heat, seemingly content to spend time reacquainting themselves with each other.
I contented myself with watching, letting them have this moment together.
After a few minutes, Aveline turned restless, and Thane settled over her.
He notched himself at her entrance and pushed inside, slowly, keeping his eyes on her the entire time.
As he advanced, her cries shifted, and I experienced Thane’s feelings—love, awe, and being overcome—via our existing connection.
This bond now seemed to be expanding, encompassing all of us.
He met my eyes. He leaned forward, and his hand found her shoulder. He turned his head and pressed his mouth to the other side. The sound she made around me was unintelligible and complete.
Then he bit and the bond snapped into place for all three of us, simultaneously, the full impact of it settling like a key turning in a lock.
I felt Thane, Aveline, and myself refracted through both of them, and the sensation was so enormous and so intense that I gripped the furs to absorb the sensation.
She pulled back from me and turned her head. She looked at Thane and then at me, her eyes bright and entirely clear despite everything, and said nothing.
She didn’t need to. I was able to sense her feelings completely.
Thane looked at me and I sensed what he needed. I moved behind him and reached between him and Aveline, gathering her slick to cover my cock. I covered my fingers then reached between his thighs, circling his entrance.
“Relax. You know how this goes.”
His head dropped to Aveline’s forehead and a low moan escaped as I worked him open, added a second, then a third finger, stretching him to take me.
I withdrew my fingers and positioned myself at his entrance.
The head of my cock pressed against him, and I paused, giving him a moment to adjust, to breathe.
“Ready?” I asked, my voice low and strained.
I didn’t wait for a response. I pushed inside in one steady thrust, sending him forward into Aveline.
Both of them cried out at the motion. I pulled back and thrust in again, harder this time, fucking both him and Aveline, setting the bond between the three of us in place.
We all came with loud cries and collapsed into the nest together.
Thane and I shifted to the sides with her between us.
Thane settled at her back and I was at her front, the heavy fur pulled up against the cooled air of the tower room.
The heat had broken.
Not in a wave, not in the way the earlier cycles had broken. Simply resolved. Her body had what it needed and had stopped demanding it. The nest was quiet.
I kissed her temple, sensing her warmth, exhaustion, and presence through our connection, while Thane replicated the gesture at the nape of her neck.
“That was something. I feel you both now,” she said, after a while.
“Yes,” I said.
“I told you I was sure.”
“You did.”
A pause.
“You could have mentioned the bite days ago,” she said.
Thane, behind her, made the sound he made when he was laughing and trying not to.
“I’m aware,” I said.
She settled against me, her hand finding mine in the furs and threading her fingers through. Her breathing slowed, a diminishing warmth, as she succumbed to sleep in the bond, her peace achieved with the receding fever.
I stayed awake a while longer.
The bond connected them both—Aveline slept soundly and Thane gradually followed her into slumber.
Yet, this was what I had been afraid of.
I understood now that being afraid of it had been the most expensive mistake of my life, and that I had still arrived here, and that was enough. Tomorrow was soon enough to deal with the consequences.
I closed my eyes.