22. Fifteen
Fifteen
Caine
If I had imagined bringing Taryn into our pack apartment before, it would’ve been nothing like the reality now playing out.
The police had come and finally gone. They hadn’t gotten much from Taryn, who wouldn’t leave my arms or speak.
It had taken all my remaining energy to keep my alpha at bay with them, still close to the edge as he was.
Lin and Brooks had relayed as much as they could and given the cops promises that Taryn would go into the station the next day for a better report.
Brea was frantic. The bus line had fallen behind and she was stuck at campus. Lin had left as soon as the officers did to pick her up. Brooks was downstairs in the girls’ apartment, gathering a few necessities because over my dead body were either of them staying in that place.
Only Taryn and I remained in our apartment, huddled together on the brown leather couch.
My mind was at war with my alpha. My mind wanted to relish this time with her, because the moment Brea arrived my role in comforting her would be through.
My alpha raged against the idea of anyone pulling her from my arms. And my mind hit back again, insisting that there was nothing to relish because this wasn’t my omega and never would be and I didn’t even want her to be anyway and thus the ability to hold her or not hold her was moot.
I expected a migraine to appear any moment.
Fuck you, mind.
My hand stroked Taryn’s hair, my other arm tightening around her. My eyes drifted shut as I planted my nose at the crown of her head and took another hit of her scent. I pumped out as much alpha pheromone as I could for her, hoping it would further soothe her omega.
The door swung open behind us without warning. Taryn flinched, and I tensed until I caught three familiar scents.
“Taryn?” Brea called out in a shaky voice.
A high-pitched whine broke from Taryn, and Brea rounded the corner. She spared barely a glance for me as she sat on the couch next to us. “Taryn, baby?”
She’d barely gotten the words out before the omega lunged from my arms to Brea’s. Her own alpha’s. She twined her arms around Brea’s neck, whining and burying her nose against the female alpha the way she had in mine.
I clenched my jaw. I had no right feeling jealous or territorial. Taryn wasn’t my omega. This was what she needed to calm, to feel secure. Her alpha. The one bonded to her, the one she’d chosen. The one she loved. Who loved her.
Brea ran her hands along the omega’s body as though detecting for invisible injuries. Tears streamed down the alpha’s face. She turned her face and kissed the omega’s temple.
Only then did she look up to me. “Thank you,” she whispered. I only nodded. I had yet to see Brea look so shaken, so vulnerable. Fragile, even. For weeks, that had been me. It was a strange reversal.
Clearing my throat, I made to stand. Brooks and Lin could get them situated in the guest room. Or maybe even their room. Either was fine with me, so long as I didn’t have to wrestle with my alpha to pull the omega back into my arms.
But as I shifted forward, a hand reached out toward me. Fingers closed around my wrist. Held on tight.
Taryn’s. Taryn’s hand gripped my arm, even as she kept her other hooked around Brea, her face turned into the woman’s neck. I felt her still-raw fear in that grip, an energy vibrating from her to me.
She wanted me…to stay .
I met Brea’s gaze, a question in mine. A plea.
She pressed her lips together—an emotional response, but not an angry one, I didn’t think—and nodded.
I scooted closer so I could wrap my arms around them both.
I pressed my forehead to the back of the omega’s head, breathed her in.
That beautiful too-faint toffee scent. It mingled with Brea’s notes of vanilla, and my head spun at the combination.
“Breathe easy, omega,” I whispered so softly I could barely hear it. “You’re safe.”
Brea
Night fell over us in the bed, Taryn wrapped firmly in my arms, her face resting on my arm and nestled against my neck. Caine on her other side, still awake like me.
Taryn had been exhausted on the couch, but hadn’t wanted to let go of either of us.
I’d eventually convinced her to stand so we could go to bed, but as Brooks had led us to the guest room, she’d refused to even enter.
Instead, one hand wrapped tightly around each mine and Caine’s wrists, she’d pulled us to the room at the end of the hall.
The room covered in Brooks and Lin’s scents.
Without so much as a glance at either of them, Taryn had pulled me and Caine inside and promptly curled into the center of the bed.
The four of us had exchanged awkward glances before Lin assured us we were all more than welcome to commandeer their room, then pulled his beta into what was supposed to have been our temporary room.
Which had left just me and Caine, standing in the doorway. Maybe Taryn had sensed the hesitance, because she’d looked at both of us then, uttering her first word in hours.
“Please.”
There’d been no denying her, not from either of us. So I’d settled in front of her, pulled her face against my chest and stroked her hair as Caine had slowly, stiffly arranged himself behind her. On his back, inches away from her.
“Caine,” I’d whispered. “She needs the touch.”
In any other circumstance, I’d have laughed at the stricken, determined furrow of his brow.
In what universe did an alpha need coaxing to settle in close with a willing omega?
But as he’d slid closer, turning on his side to slot nicely around her curled-up form, laughter was far from my mind.
The moment he haltingly laid his arm overtop Taryn, resting his palm on my elbow, Taryn had melted with a little sigh, dropping almost immediately into sleep.
Neither Caine nor I had yet, though. I didn’t know how long we lay there in silence, glancing between my omega and each other.
“I couldn’t feel her,” I whispered, barely loudly enough to be speech at all.
Caine looked to me, eyebrows drawing down in question.
I swallowed. “Usually as I’m coming home, the closer I get, the more I feel her in the bond.
But even as we pulled into the parking lot, and climbed the stairs, and opened the door…
I couldn’t feel her. I still can’t.” I couldn’t have prevented the tear trailing down my cheek if I’d tried.
Which I didn’t. I was too exhausted, too wrung out to. “It’s scaring the shit out of me.”
His hand, still resting on my arm just above my elbow, gave a small squeeze. A tiny gesture of comfort.
“Thank you,” I said again.
Not for saving her. Not for thwarting a would-be murderer or worse. But for being the safe space she needed after. I knew just how thick his protective wall was, and he’d let her through it when it really mattered.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and I knew he heard the words I couldn’t actually say.
Brooks
The guest room was clean but stale. Lin lay curled behind me, both of us breathing softly.
His scent was muted, damp smelling almost, a sure sign of his mental state.
Luckily beta scents were generally less potent, because otherwise my eucalyptus and woody smoke would have had us both choking by now.
“It’s okay to feel upset right now,” Lin murmured behind me.
I turned to face him in bed. The oblique glare of an outside streetlight made his dark hair and eyes glow. “Oh really?” I said with more bitterness than he deserved. “It’s okay to feel upset that someone broke into our building and attacked one of our tenants? An omega we…we…”
His hand smoothed over my neck as he sighed. “It’s okay to be upset,” he said with a patient tone, “that we’re in here and they’re in there.”
Blood rushed to my face. Maybe some small part of me was the teeniest, tiniest bit jealous that in her moment of need, she’d hadn’t wanted me. I tried to tell myself her omega was steering, and that her omega deserved whatever she needed to cope right now.
Still, it stung.
But that wasn’t what made my mouth taste like ash.
Lin didn’t speak again. His hand remained a warm, comforting weight at my neck, his thumb caressing my throat with tenderness I didn’t deserve.
“I…” I swallowed under his grip. “I had a really bad thought earlier.”
“You can tell me,” Lin whispered.
I nodded. I knew I could tell him. And I knew he’d tell me it was okay and I’d done nothing wrong. But the molten lump in my stomach wouldn’t be so easily assuaged.
My shift had been nearly over when Lin burst in earlier. Eyes wide and jaw clenched. In quick order, he’d told me of Caine’s call, and I’d told my boss—not asked—I was leaving.
Fuck, when we’d come up to the women’s apartment…the spoiled stench of blood orange and toffee pouring out through the open door…smears of blood tracked down the lobby’s tile floors…
When we’d found Caine clutching Taryn to his chest, feral and possessive…
“I thought—” I chewed my lip and blinked tears free from my eyes. “I thought Caine hurt them. I thought he hurt Brea to get to Taryn.”
Shame leaked through me like blood from beneath a useless hand unable to staunch the flow.
“And as I thought that, I wanted—I would’ve…”
Lin pulled my face to rest beneath his chin, hands soothing over my bare back as I broke down.
“Fuck,” I breathed through my stifled sobs. “How could I think something like that?”
“Easily,” Lin said immediately. “We had no details. We had no clue what we were walking into. Your mind trying to fit the pieces together isn’t a sin.”
“But me being ready to kill my own packmate is.”
Caine had been working so hard, for weeks, and my mind immediately assumed he’d been the aggressor.
More than a month of following through on therapy—with someone he knew, no less—and we could see the changes, the efforts.
He was more patient, less apt to snark and snap at us.
When Lin and I were both home, more often than not he joined us in the kitchen or on the couch.
The first time he’d said goodnight unprompted as we headed to bed had been like witnessing a triple rainbow—mythical and so fucking beautiful.
Yet when I’d seen him in the Maddox apartment, I hadn’t thought saved Taryn. I’d thought hurt Taryn.
I was lower than low. I was subterranean. I could burrow a hole through the entire damn earth and fall into space on the other side, and that still wasn’t how low I was.
Lin pressed his lips to my forehead. “But you didn’t. And you wouldn’t have.”
“That’s the thing,” I choked out. I pulled back to look him in the eye. “I think…if someone hurt her, hurt either of them…” I swallowed. “I would kill for them, Lin.”
He nodded. “And I’d kill for you. I’d kill for Caine. I’d kill for them.” He kissed my lips. “That’s love, B.”
Falling in love was all butterflies and pickup lines until someone threatened to do your love harm. Then it was cold, unapologetic vengeance at whatever cost.
I much preferred the flirting and sexing.
“You did nothing wrong,” Lin murmured against my lips before kissing me again. I leaned into his warmth, willing my heart to take in his words. “And we’re gonna figure this out.”
His hand wrapped around my cock, and I jolted at the touch. “And keep them safe?” I asked.
He began a torturous, slow slide of his hand, his breath moist against my lips. “And keep them safe.”
Faces pressed together, I drew a shaky breath and let out a shaky exhale as Lin kept his pace agonizingly slow.
Our faces rested against each other, the moisture of his breath against my lips intoxicating.
The moment his grip expanded to hold both our cocks together, my eyes rolled back.
He frotted us at the same glacial pace, his choppy breaths racing to catch mine.
“You’re good, B,” his whispered as he rolled me to my back, him straddling one of my legs. His touch never ceased, but never sped. The heat of his cock disappeared, but he kept hold of mine as he lowered himself down the bed.
“A good beta.”
With his free hand, he pushed gently against the tender part of my inner thigh, imploring me to open myself for him. Little nibbles of my stomach and groin made my whole damn body twitch.
“A good mate.”
Steady was the grip that made me see stars as Lin spat enough to lube up my hole. As he dropped his face and rimmed me with a light touch that had sweat beading on my chest.
“A good doctor.”
I willed myself to unclench, to relax as he probed gently with a finger, alternating between licking my hole and leaving erotic open-mouthed kisses along my thighs.
His finger breached me the same moment he took one of my balls into his mouth, and the moan that left me was almost fucking embarrassing.
“A good man.”
His fingers worked me slowly, patiently, until I was writhing and panting beneath him, fingers in his hair, desperately pulling him up toward me so he could kiss me, take me.
Lin’s eyes were like glass as he crawled up my body, lips swollen and moist, cheeks red.
His hair hung over his temples and in front of his eyes as he gripped the back of my head and kissed me.
My hands clutched at him, a haze surrounding me as he lined up his cock with my ass and worked his way inside me.
My chest was a furnace, the heat inside so wild and intense that the outside of me burned with it. Flames licked down through my belly and into my cock. I held onto Lin’s face, keeping it pressed to mine, for dear life as he reached between us to stroke me. To tend to me, as my alpha always did.
“You’re so goddamn good, Brooks,” he panted against my lips, his hand and his thrusts speeding up. “Best fucking thing in my life.”
“Alpha,” I moaned against him as he hit my prostate once, twice, perfectly again and again.
“Say it,” he growled, growing faster still.
“Good,” I breathed. I was so close. So damn close.
“Again.”
“I’m good.” My eyes were rolling back, the pressure there foreshadowing the pressure building in my lower half as I approached the ending.
“My good beta,” Lin moaned just before his movements became erratic. “Oh, love…”
Then there were no more words. Only his familiar grip tearing me to pieces, and his familiar strength holding them all in place.