4. Lincoln
Lincoln
The knock at the door was soft, undecided, perhaps.
Hudson looked up from where he stood beside the desk, phone in one hand, hotel notepad in the other. He’d been writing down clinic numbers, emergency heat protocols, and organizing snacks and drinks, just in case she came.
I’d been pacing, wanting to go to her room. Just to check on her. The knock came again.
My body knew it was Mary before my mind allowed the thought to form.
Her scent pushed under the door, lush and impossible.
Rain, sugared blackberry, hot whiskey, and that wild violet blooming made my teeth ache, and my gums throbbed with the brutal, ancient instinct to put my mouth on the side of her neck and mark her so every alpha in the building knew she was ours.
I didn’t move. Hudson looked at me.
His face was composed, but his scent had slipped. The clean rain was laced now with whiskey and the faintest violet answer to hers.
“She’s here,” he said quietly, “we have to let her set the terms.”
“I know.”
“Lincoln.”
“I know, but if I go into a rut, just knock me out.” My teeth ached down in the roots. “I feel this might be the first time.”
“I might be there with you, and I’ll go out into the corridor or lock myself in the bathroom.”
“She might want us to.”
Hudson didn’t pretend to misunderstand me. “Do we ask her how we approach this?”
The third knock came harder. “Have you both died of old age in there?” Mary called through the door. “Which is very inconvenient timing when I’m suffering in a hallway and only have three dildos to help me and none of them do that thing.”
One corner of Hudson’s mouth lifted. “What thing?” he whispered.
I shrugged as I crossed the room before he could tell me not to rush. I opened the door and stepped back at once, hands visible, shoulders loose, every part of me fighting the need to reach for her. “Still alive.”
Mary stood in the corridor wearing a hotel robe over a black dress, bare legs, damp hair, and wild eyes. One hand clutched her key card, and the other held a black zip pouch under her arm. She glanced at the pouch. “Reinforcements.”
Behind her, dragging along the carpet like the tail of some defeated royal procession, was the blanket from her bed.
She followed my gaze.
“It came with me,” she said.
“Did it?”
“Don’t start. It’s been a complicated night. I have no nest, no nice alpha things…” She swallowed. “Do you know how hard this is?”
“I can understand. Bring in your blanket, though I’m sure it is the same one that is on the beds inside.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If you’re about to be smug, I can go back to my room and die.”
“Get inside.” I held back from calling her a brat.
“Rude.”
“Are you going to be a good girl, Mary? Or do I need to spank you?”
Her eyes widened and the corner of her mouth moved, but a cramp hit before the smile finished. She folded around it, one hand flying to the doorframe. Her scent surged so hard my vision tightened at the edges.
I took one step forward.
Hudson’s voice cut softly behind me. “Mary?”
That stopped me better than a hand would have.
Mary dragged in a breath and lifted her head. Her pupils were blown wide, blue nearly swallowed by black. Sweat shone at her hairline.
“I’m still accepting other names,” she said. “Mary seems to have gone badly for me.”
“Come here,” Hudson said, picking her up and holding her in his arms. The blanket followed her.
I shut the door and engaged the privacy latch, then stopped with my hand still on the metal. The lock felt louder than it should have. Necessary, yes. Protective, yes. Also a line between her and the corridor, and I wanted no line in that room to feel like a trap.
“The door’s locked,” I said. “If you want it unlocked, say so. But I think this is the wiser decision.”
Mary glanced back. For one second, the sharpness left her face. “Locked is good.”
Hudson walked into his bedroom and placed Mary on the bed. “You can leave whenever you want.”
“Can I?”
“Yes.”
She considered him. “You’re very calm.”
“I’m not.” He held her gaze with that controlled steadiness of his, the one people often mistook for coldness until they were close enough to see the effort underneath. “But you need us calm, so we’ll be.”
Mary looked away first. Her gaze landed on the floor beside the bed. Mary stared at Hudson’s tie that lay there.
Then she crossed the room, bent with surprising speed for someone in visible pain, picked the tie, sniffed it and sighed. She looked around, at me, then my sweater, walked toward me and buried her face in it.
“Oh,” she said against the wool.
The sound nearly ruined me.
I stopped breathing as Mary inhaled, then again, eyes closing. Her shoulders lowered by a fraction. The pain stayed in her face, but her jaw came unclenched under the scent of us.
She walked to Hudson next and pressed her nose against his shirt, then had the audacity to glare at us as if we had whatever it was she liked to manipulate her.
I bit the inside of my cheek, hard enough to hurt. If she was reacting like this, did it mean she had a compatible scent to us.
I took off my sweater and gave it to Mary. She took Hudson’s tie and waited as he removed his shirt, then she took them all along with the stolen hotel blanket and she placed them on the bed.
Violet and blackberry tangled in the air.
Hudson looked at me.
She was nesting, and not performing it either. Her omega had made her way to our room after finding our scent, and now she was gathering our things, like we were hers.
I kept my voice gentle. “Mary, why don’t you have something to eat while you prepare your nest?”
She stared at me. Then she laughed. It was breathless and disbelieving, and it shook at the edges. “I don’t need a nest.”
“No?”
“No. I need to fuck this pain away and go home.”
Hudson stared at the nest and smiled, while I rubbed one hand over my beard because if I touched anything else, it might be her.
“All right,” I said. “That’s clear.”
“Thank you.”
“We still need to talk first.”
“That sounds inefficient. Time is not on my side.”
“Boundaries need to be made.”
She narrowed her eyes, her chest rising and falling. Sweat glistened on her forehead. “You’re going to be honorable, aren’t you?”
“Painfully.”
She wiped the back of her hand over her brow. “I was afraid of that. Okay, get it out of the way.”
Hudson moved to the minibar and took out a bottle of water. “You’re in pre-heat, possibly the first stage of heat. You’re in pain. Before anything physical happens, we need to know what you want and what you don’t want.”
Mary’s chin lifted. “I want the pain gone.”
“That isn’t specific enough.”
“It feels bloody specific from where I’m standing.”
“Do you want us to touch you?” I asked.
Her eyes snapped to mine. “If I wanted to remain untouched I would have stayed in my room with my three battery operated friends.”
I tried to remain calm. Not for her. For me. “Do you want Hudson and me to touch you?”
“Yes,” she said, then muttered, “obviously.”
Hudson turned back from the minibar and handed her the bottle. “Both of us?”
Her throat moved. “Yes.”
“Together?” I asked.
Color climbed higher in her face. “That may have been heavily implied by the three-dildo announcement, yes.”
“Mary.”
She looked at me properly then.
I kept my hands at my sides. “Say it.”
Her breath trembled. “I want you both to help me through my heat. I want sex. I want knots if my body will stop trying to murder me long enough to enjoy them. And I want you to touch me like this heat is your last.”
Hudson came closer, slow enough that she could tell him to stop. “And if you change your mind?”
“I’ll say stop.”
“And we’ll stop,” he said.
“Even if I’m naked?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you’re inside me and a fraction away from knotting me?”
My hands curled.
Hudson’s jaw moved, but his voice stayed level. “Yes. If you say stop, if you freeze, if you panic, if you no longer want us, we stop.”
Mary looked from him to me. “That’s irritatingly attractive.”
“Is it?”
Her mouth softened for half a heartbeat. Then another cramp doubled her over.
I crossed the distance this time, but I didn’t grab her. I crouched in front of her, close enough to help, not close enough to trap.
“Can I touch you?”
She nodded, breath caught between her teeth.
“I need your words, omega.”
Her eyes met mine. She didn’t argue. “Yes. Please alphas. Just please touch me.”
I put one hand on her hip and the other at the back of her ribs. The heat of her through the robe nearly took my knees out. She shook under my palms, small tremors running through her body as the cramp gripped hard.
“Breathe with me,” I said.
“I hate that advice.”
“Everyone does.”
“Yet, everyone says it.”
“It’s annoying, but assume the advice is correct.” She gave me a roll of her eyes as I breathed in slowly, making it obvious enough for her to follow. Hudson moved behind her, not touching, just there. His scent settled around us, rain cut through the violet storm.
Mary inhaled. Her body softened by a degree.
“Good girl,” I murmured.
Her eyes flicked to mine as she made a sound that was half protest, half need. And I wanted my teeth in her neck so badly I tasted blood where I’d bitten my cheek.
Not tonight. I’d never claim an omega unless she chose us with a clear head, a steady voice, and no heat dragging through her veins like a hook. I wouldn’t take a mark from pain.
Hudson stepped beside us. “She needs water and sugar before anything else.”
Mary’s shoulder dropped. “I need orgasms.”
“You also need water and sugar,” he said. “Drink up.”
“How tedious to always be correct.”
Hudson walked away. “It has burdened me for years.”
I helped her upright as she took a swig of the water. She swayed toward me, and I let her, keeping my hold careful. “Nest or sofa?”
“I didn’t agree to nesting.”
“Of course not. I meant to say bed.”
“Then, whichever one allows this appalling conversation to end the fastest.”
“Bed, it is.”
She took two steps toward the bed, looked at the garments already on there, then glanced at the cushions on the chair by the window and rushed to get them. “This isn’t me nest building. They’re needed for comfort.”
Hudson nodded solemnly. “Of course.”
“I like soft things, that’s all.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Exactly. So this isn’t nesting.”
Two hours later, Mary was on the bed in the middle of a structure that involved three pillows, two cushions, all the clothes we wore yesterday, shirts, my sweater, our robes, two hotel towels, and the spare blanket she bought with her.
She was also hissing at us to stop touching her nest.
“Your elbow,” she snapped.
I froze with my elbow six inches from a pillow. “My elbow is in the air.”
“If you fall it will touch my nest.”
“I thought it was a bed.” I smiled at this impossible, fever-bright omega who had spent the last two hours rearranging everything we owned while insisting she wasn’t nesting.
She breathed through her nose as she glared at me.
“Brat.” I pressed my fist to my mouth and turned away.
Hudson stood at the foot of the bed with a tray of room-service sandwiches, muffins, water bottles, and orange juice. He was wearing a pair of loose pajama bottoms, nothing on top, and Mary was staring at his chest.
“You need to eat. And I have more pain medication for you.”
The first hour was pain management. We had called reception for extra blankets, more water, juice, food, and a medical kit.
The staff had sent everything up with impressive speed.
I had held Mary through three cramps, each worse than the last, while she cursed into my shoulder and accused her uterus of organized crime.
Throughout it all there had been nesting denial.