Chapter 17 Rory
Rory
Well, this makes things more complicated and a hundred times easier.
I follow the intensifying scent of my omega as she struggles not to react to being this close to this many alphas. The intoxicating sweet scent of her is turning the edges of my temper sharp.
The situation is rapidly becoming tenuous, and my amusement is waning.
The urge to go over and clamp a hand on her nape and assert my ownership of her is getting difficult to suppress.
I’m sure if I tried, she would rake me with her cute kitten claws and set me in my place faster than I could growl, but that doesn’t stop the urges.
The other three alphas, Nathan, Rojer, and Kevin, are watching her, too, and now I’m watching them. Planning all the wonderfully terrifying things I’m going to do to them if they dare touch what is mine. The day is bright, but my world is tinged red with all the blood I want to spill.
“What are you thinking?” Vale asks me.
“That I should have brought my knives.”
Vale rolls his eyes. “Too messy, get creative.”
“Oh, I can get creative. There are pine cones. I can see how many can fit up his-”
“Hey, Rory?”
Her voice startles me. Did she hear anything? No, she’s too far away. I wipe the proverbial sweat off my brow and try to rein in my desire to bound up to her and convince her to let me worship her body until the end of time.
“Yes, Bonnie?” I sing sweetly.
She glares at me for a full ten seconds as if she’s trying to work me out. Ten psychologists couldn’t do it; I don’t think she will be able to.
“Can you help me gather pine cones for the fire tonight?”
Vale bites his lower lip and turns away, his shoulders convulsing. I am stunned; for three long seconds, all I can do is stare at her. She flips her hair over her shoulder and raises her eyebrows. Fuck, she’s so cute.
“It would be my pleasure,” I purr at her. When she walks off, I turn to Vale. “Fate is telling me murder by cone.”
“I’m leaning towards flying lessons,” Vale whispers back. “A nice big cliff with some air time. A boot to the chest, it’s a do or die moment.”
“Check this out.” Cyn walks up to us, holding up a jar with a small spider with huge mandibles inside. It looks pissed off. “Death by excruciating poison?”
“Ooh, I like it. Do it, do it, do it,” I chant.
“You’re so damn scary, Rory, people cross the road to get away from people like you, and when it comes to murder, you are like a little kid, full of joy. It’s so fucking hot,” Vale murmurs and leans in, kissing me hard.
I moan into his mouth, pulling him closer still.
“This is true. But murder is my happy place, and I’m so good at it,” I whine.
“We’re usually good at it; this trip is cursed.” Dakota snaps from beside us.
“Come on, optimism, we have this,” Cyn says.
“Oh, do we?” Dakota asks.
With a lingering grope of Vale’s hard cock, I wander off, grabbing up pine cones as we pass.
Nathan, Rojer, and Kevin are huddled together, whispering.
I don’t like it, especially the way they keep looking over their shoulders at her.
A million options go through my mind. I could stab out their eyes. I could do it with a pine cone.
Hmm. Options. Options.
Bonnie stiffens just slightly, and I know she’s noticed them looking at her. I wonder if she’s scared or feels threatened. Does it make her mad? Does it arouse her? That last thought makes me want to join Vale with flying lessons.
It takes me a minute to pick up pine cones in a path that will lead me to collide with her, but I pretend to be startled.
“Oh, Bonnie, I didn’t know you were there.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Okay, yes, I did. But to be fair, I just want to bathe in the sunlight of your aura.”
She groans and leans down to grab another branch. “Have you and Dakota transplanted bodies?”
“Not at all,” I whisper and lean in, inhaling her scent and feeling my alpha rise too fast, too sharply. “I’ve got another bite I think you’d be interested in checking.”
Her face flames, but her scent turns rich, hot, like fresh out of the oven cookies. My mouth waters, and I groan. Now I’m hard, achingly hard. Just the memory of her fingers on me.
“No!” she snaps, slapping me hard against my chest. “I am not inspecting your cock again.”
Just her saying that word has me wanting to drop to my knees and beg her to say it again.
She’s going to send us all into ruts. How would we contain our rage if we went into a rut?
We would have a one-track mind, similar to a heat, but it happens to alphas.
I will want to mate with my omega to the exclusion of all else.
Further, I will become extremely dangerous to everything that moves, other than my pack and my omega.
And I don’t know what would happen if she said no to me in a rut. I’d probably destroy a massive chunk of her beloved forest. I’d scare her. I’m not exactly sane anymore.
I smother the rise of feeling, shoving it back done and leaning away from her a bit to clear my head.
“Are you all right, Rory?” she says softly.
No, nowhere near okay.
“I’m fantastic,” I purr and lean back in, unable to stay away.
Her eyes catch mine, and we just stare at each other. Her cheeks get pink, and she struggles until she drops her gaze.
“I appreciate you being so helpful out here, for…” she pauses, glancing around to make sure we’re alone, “protecting me.”
I’d be chuffed if it was her being embarrassed or shy, but this is pure frustration and irritation, and it gets me hotter than any cute, coy look could. But she’s just managed to shove the feral urge to slide into a rut back. I’m not dancing on the knife's edge anymore.
“Stop doing that!”
“Doing what?” I murmur huskily.
“Staring at me like…” She bites her lip and glares past me.
“Like I want to fuck you for hours and hours, or like I want to leave my mark all over your skin, or like I want to be inside you in every way that’s possible?”
Her eyes get really wide, her nostrils flare, and she takes an unconscious step towards me before she comes to herself and bolts past me.
I turn, watching her catch up to Kevin.
I would cheerfully just end him right now if I thought I could get away with it.
“DON’T MOVE!” Bonnie shouts.
I glance at Cyn, who is watching her with his mouth open in surprise.
She carefully moves over to Kevin and leans down, picking up a stick as long as her forearm.
To my complete, frustrated astonishment, with a quick move, she flicks the spider into the woods.
Foiling yet another assassination attempt.
Is this even possible?
I study her as she checks them over, explaining the danger of the spider. I don’t even care about its life cycle; what I care about is that the alpha who should now be writhing in pain, dying very painfully, is gifted yet another chance at life.
How is this even happening?
“She’s magic,” I say in pure admiration.
“Don’t be obtuse, Rory. She’s an omega, nothing more, nothing less. She’s just hyper vigilant and observant as fuck.” Vale cracks his knuckles and glowers.
“She knows,” I whisper.
“She can’t know. No one ever knows,” Vale protests.
I turn to look at Vale, just to make sure he believes his own words. He doesn’t, and he’s as frustrated by this turn of events as we are, but the doubt is there in his eyes.
He tracks our omega’s movements with a frown.
“She cannot know it’s us. It's not possible,” Cyn says, but he’s uncertain.
“She doesn’t. It's just coincidence,” Vale murmurs, but he still doesn’t sound convinced.
We walk for another four hours before she calls it, and we set up camp. I’m cooking tonight, but I can’t risk poisoning them without poisoning the others, too, so I resist my murderous temptation while it gets harder and harder to resist Bonnie and her spikey temper.
The presence of the alphas is grating, the betas are a mild annoyance, but it’s all getting worse. Every small smile she gives them, the way her shoulders stay tight, and the caution in her eyes.
My omega is being threatened, and I want to annihilate everything to take it away from her.
“Don’t burn the food, Rory.”
I glare at her back but swear quickly when I stir the food, and it catches down the bottom.
She comes over and looks in the pot. “It’s okay. It’s not ruined. Just a bit of flavouring.” I stare at the side of her face, willing her to look at me, but she doesn’t. My temper spikes, but I control it, hiding it as she moves about the camp.
The wild mushrooms and pine nuts she collected have made a risotto that smells strangely good. But I’m not hungry for food.
“Are you okay, you know, since everything happened today?” That’s it, a perfectly regular conversation. Do not tell her you want to tie her, spread eagle, to the forest floor and eat her out until she can’t scream anymore.
“What? Them finding out I’m an omega? Oh, it’s nothing.”
She says it’s nothing, but there’s a thread of vulnerability in her voice. Something that could be anger and a glint of determination in her eyes.
Who is this omega, and where was she when we met her the first time? If this omega had been there, I’m not sure that everything would have gone down the same way. I know it wouldn’t have.
“It’s not nothing. He outed you and made you unsafe. It was wrong,” I purr, feeling the need to go and correct those wrongs with the sharp side of my knife.
She shrugs, but I can tell she’s uncomfortable. “Does it really matter? Perhaps they had a right to know.”
“They did not need to know. Your being an omega changes exactly nothing about your skills and expertise.”
She gasps, and when I look up, her eyes are wide, and she looks wounded. “Do you really believe that?”
Death. Death to everyone who made her feel like this. And I’m going to kick my own ass for an eternity. Or until she no longer gets that god-awful hurt look in her eyes when someone compliments her.
Damn it! What the fuck did we do?
“Bonnie, you are born to this life, and everyone can see it. You are capable and talented, and despite all the near disasters, you are killing it,” I purr in my most soothing tone.
Vale says I scare people, but I don’t scare her.
She leans closer to me, her eyes completely focused on mine. I don’t dare look away.
“So you think I can do this?”
I shift so I’m standing beside her and bump her shoulder with mine, hating the contact, wishing I dared to hug her properly. “I know you can do this.”
Our gazes clash, hold; I count the heartbeats. She’s going to be ours; I’m not walking away from her this time. Bonnie is forever.
She looks away, letting out a tiny sound that I hope is positive.
But me, I’m reeling because everything in me is changing.
I need her; I want her. It’s imperative that I know what she looks like first thing after she rolls out of bed and the last moment before she sleeps.
I want to crawl inside her dreams, unravel her thought process, learn her hopes, conquer her fears.
Bonnie Sanderson has stolen possession of my broken mind completely.
And I don’t care at all.
I’m hers.