5. Emile
EMILE
I hated these events, but part of packing up with the third alpha child of a billionaire was playing my part of a dutiful packmate.
As was not screaming with rage and frustration when his parents introduced us to yet another eligible omega—the fourth tonight, or was it the fifth?
They all blurred together into a parade of nervous smiles and overwhelming scents.
“So nice to meet you,” he said.
I’d already forgotten his name, lost somewhere between the champagne fountain and Cordelia’s pointed introduction. Fuck. Conor’s mother was determined to make us an advantageous omega match, no matter how much we insisted we didn’t want one, not one that wasn’t Lark, in any case.
“Kane, the pleasure is mine,” Conor said, bowing over the omega’s hand.
Kane’s eyes were wide and a little bit wild, as if he weren’t quite used to the opulence around us.
“Kane presented late,” his Omega Institute handler said. “So he’s just learning what’s expected of an omega.”
I eyed the young man with more interest as he examined Conor and me. “Would you like to dance?” I asked him, offering my hand.
Kane flushed prettily, rose blossoming over his pale cheeks, making his blue eyes brighter. He was a cute little cherub, but didn’t hold a candle to the omega Conor and I were waiting for, planning for, aching for.
I swept Kane into my hands, sniffing discretely. The Institute had suppressed his scent, but the delicate rain was still distasteful to me. I’d found a scent match, and she was the only one I wanted.
“Is this where we make awkward small talk?” he asked me as we whirled around the room. Lark would never. She’d just try to murder me, which was infinitely more refreshing.
“Exactly that. You only recently presented?” I said, doing my polite duty.
“A few months ago,” he said. “I thought I was a beta—my family is poor, and my parents’ pack is all betas except for one.”
When I didn’t comment on the unlikelihood of that, he grinned. “Thanks for being polite about it, but it’s easier if I explain everything up front. The doctors think my bio dad is an unexpressed omega.”
“How are you adjusting?” I asked him. Goddess, he looked so fucking young, and the Omega Institute was out here trying to find him a match already.
“It’s wild! But …” he trailed off. “The Omega Institute is paying my family a lot of money. They’ll get reimbursed when a pack selects me as their omega, and—”
I frowned. “You’re not selecting your own pack?”
He looked at me flatly, and suddenly looked much older. “Have you ever been homeless?”
“No.” The word felt obscene in my mouth, here in a ballroom where a single bottle of bubbly cost more than most families made in a month.
“Then don’t judge me for making the best financial decision for my family. The Omega Institute is going to hold an auction with pre-vetted packs. As long as they smell okay to me, they’ll be able to participate.”
My heart broke for this young man, but he was right. It was his financial decision.
“It’ll be a mutual bond,” he continued. “That way I have the right to an equal share of their assets, no matter how shitty they are. I’ll be able to take care of my family.”
“You’re a brave man,” I murmured as we continued to turn around the dance floor.
“Am I?” he asked. “I live in luxury now, dancing with the packmate of a billionaire, hoping he’ll take an interest in me before the auction, all because I’m omega.”
I couldn’t stop my sad smile. “I hope you find your pack,” I murmured.
“Not you?”
I shook my head. “No. But you should dance with Conor anyway. If he shows interest in you, other packs will notice.”
Kane nodded, and I led him back to Conor in time for the next dance.
With a subtle shake of my head, I confirmed my lack of interest, not that it had ever been in doubt, but pushed the young man into Conor’s arms anyway. “You’ll like him,” I murmured. “And I hope he finds the right pack.”
We’d played this game before. Conor nodded sharply, then proceeded to flirt with Kane through the entire dance.
“Looks like Conor likes him,” his mother said, her alpha scent stronger than it should have been, unless she was about to go into rut. “Charming boy. Pretty enough, I suppose. But he doesn’t bring any advantages to your pack. Or ours.”
Cordelia Whitmore ran her pack, and their empire, with an iron fist. Conor’s siblings had all made advantageous matches, and it irritated her that he’d packed up with me, a human rights lawyer who defended omegas from abusive alphas, who didn’t hesitate to go up against the most cutthroat packs in the nation.
She hated even more that Conor refused to take his place in one of the pack’s many businesses. Still, she loved her son, even if she hated his choices, which is why I told her the truth.
“He’s not the omega for us.”
Cordelia smiled, showing all her teeth, letting her alpha-ness roll over me, even though she knew by now that it wouldn’t intimidate me.
Before I knew it, another omega was in my arms, this one a woman with long brown hair that reminded me of Lark’s, and the same unhinged willingness to commit violence in her eyes.
“Lark would like you to stop interfering with her research,” the omega said.
“And you are?”
“My name’s Wren. I can see why she’s a mess over you,” she murmured. “Both of you.”
“Oh?” Lark was a mess over us? My heart pounded, hope flickering in my chest.
“Don’t fish for compliments,” the woman said as I spun her around the room, her lips tilting up into a smile that didn’t meet her eyes.
“Where is she?”
“Safe,” Wren said. “She’d be safer if you idiots would leave her the fuck alone.”
“Is that what she wants?”
Wren shrugged. “I’m just the messenger.”
When the dance ended, she slipped out of my arms, and no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find her again.
By the time the evening ended, Conor and I had danced with a handful of omegas, each one more hopeful than the last, none of whom were Lark.
We sat in silence in the car, the ghosts of a dozen omega perfumes clinging to our clothes.
“I fucking hate this,” Conor muttered the moment we returned to our penthouse apartment. “Hate pretending to be interested. Hate that none of them smell right. Hate that I keep looking for her in rooms where she’d never fucking be.” His voice cracked. “I fucking miss her.”
“We’re going to get her back,” I promised. “We’ve got a target she can’t resist. And that woman today—”
“She said Lark was a mess over us,” Conor said, scrubbing his hair. “Fuck! She’s our fucking mate!”
“Now we have to convince her of that,” I answered drily, even if I was as much of a wreck over Lark as he was.
Conor dragged me through our bedroom and into our massive bathroom, one we’d built assuming that one day, we’d pack up with an omega.
Desperate, he tore my clothes off me, buttons scattering on the marble floor.
“I hate the smell of those other omegas,” he snarled, his fingers digging hard enough into my back to bruise.
“Hate the smell on you, hate the smell on me, hate that she might smell it on us.” His pupils were blown wide with the same manic edge he had right before a kill.
Fuck, he was unraveling.
“Stop,” I said, cupping his chin and forcing him to meet my eyes. “We’re going to catch her, we’re going to claim her, and we’re going to keep her.”
Conor took a deep breath, the wildness in his eyes fading.
“I haven’t killed in a month, since she left,” he said quietly.
His hands shook, from restraint or need, I couldn’t tell.
“And I know it’s because you don’t want to do it without her.
But I can feel it crawling under my skin—the itch, the need to hunt, to hurt—” He cut himself off, jaw clenched. “It’s getting harder.”
“I know.” I opened my arms to him, and pulled him into a deep hug. “Soon. I promise.” I tugged on his hair, and he opened his mouth to mine, a wild and frantic kiss that revealed how close to the edge he was.
Instead of giving into the urge to make this as rough as he wanted, I gentled the kiss, stroking his tongue with mine, caressing his shoulders, admiring the way his muscles moved as I replaced bloodlust with the simple, beautiful lust between packmates.
“Emile,” he moaned against my lips when I slid my hand down his chest to wrap around his cock.
I stepped away to turn on the water to the shower, and he followed, dropping kisses on my shoulders and my neck as we waited for steam to billow out.
Gently, he guided me into the shower, then washed my shoulders and my back, then massaged conditioner into my short, curly hair.
When I turned to him, his eyes were softer. “I love you,” he said. “Regardless of what happens with Lark.” His voice dropped lower, almost too quiet to hear over the water. “Even if we never get her back. Even if this obsession—” He stopped and swallowed hard. “I need you to know that.”
I soaped up my hands so I could give him the same care and attention he gave me, washing away the evening, the other omegas, the fear that we’d built our entire world around chasing a woman who might never want to be caught.
“I’m so fucked up,” Conor muttered as he ran his fingers down my sides.
“Nah, no more than I am,” I said, scratching his scalp as I massaged shampoo into the red strands.
“Wrong. What kind of alpha would rather be out killing than drinking champagne and covered in the scent of omegas?” he murmured against my shoulder.
“Same though,” I agreed. “I suppose we’re both deeply fucked up in that way.” I turned around, facing him, and dragged my lips along his jaw. “I love you. No matter what happens, you’ll always be enough for me.”
With each stroke of our hands over each other’s skin, we reaffirmed our love and our bond. And when Conor’s teeth gently scraped against the bondmark he’d left on my throat, I moaned.
Fuck, I wanted this man. He stared into my eyes for a long moment, before nuzzling his nose against mine. “You’re so fucking handsome,” he murmured against my cheek. “I can’t wait to take your cock, for you to fill me.”
No longer willing to wait, I yanked him out of the shower, which was exactly what he’d intended, the fucker.
I slapped him on the ass, hard, and he looked over his shoulder and grinned.
“Gonna have to move faster than that if you want to ruin me.”
And goddess, I did.
I stalked him into the bedroom, where he sprawled out on our bed, gorgeous, his pale, freckled skin glowing in the moonlight, each muscle begging for my touch.
I straddled him on the bed and did just that, working my way down from his delectable collarbone, over his hard abs, down his pelvis, then to his perfect, hard cock.
“Emile,” he groaned when I took him into my mouth. “You’re so good to me.”
He continued the litany of praise as I sucked, taking him deeper and deeper, until he couldn’t hold his hips still any longer, and thrust off the bed to meet me.
I pulled off of him, and he swore. “You’re such a fucking tease.”
When I reached into the bedside table for lube, he grinned and flipped over onto his stomach, rising onto his hands and knees and looking over his shoulder at me. “Fuck yes.”
Goddess, I loved this man.
“Emile,” he finally begged. “I need you.”
“I need you too,” I promised him, gently working my fingers in and out of his ass. When I finally pressed against him, he shoved back, taking me far faster than I intended.
“Fuck, you fill me so well,” he grunted into the pillows. “Such a perfect fucking alpha, taking me so damn good, fucking me so hard.”
I spanked him, and he moaned.
“Yes, goddess, please.”
“No goddess here,” I murmured. “Just me.”
“Fuck the goddess then, you’re all I need,” he said.
I relished the way our bodies fit together as I fucked him, like two pieces of a puzzle. “Touch yourself,” I murmured, and he lowered his shoulders so he could reach one hand back to stroke his cock.
“So good,” he gasped.
“I’m going to—”
We both came at the same time. I filled his ass as he spilled onto our sheets.
I pulled out and collapsed beside him. Immediately, he propped his face up on his hand, blue eyes searching mine.
“I mean it when I say you’re perfect, you know.” He traced my jawline with his thumb. “The way you see me—the violence, the need, all of it—and don’t flinch. That’s everything to me.”
I caught his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. “I love you too. Even when you’re falling apart. Especially when you’re falling apart.”
Relief and love flooded the bond, and underpinning it all, a faint thrum of violence waiting to be unleashed. Soon, we’d hunt together again. All three of us.
If Lark would have us.