7. Kato #2
My eyes pop open. Cas is breathing fast in his little corner, the blanket furled so tightly in his fists I’m afraid he’ll tear it. His dark eyes have gone sky blue again and the tips of his delicate fangs protrude from his small, pink lips.
And we’re both watching him very, very closely, Nate and I. I can hear him swallow behind me. “Cas,” he says, “are you—”
A chorus of howls interrupts him, surprisingly close. I start, whipping my head around, and the other alpha looks just as startled and confused. Our gazes meet and I know what the answer will be, but I ask anyway: “Was there supposed to be a hunt tonight?”
“No.”
Cas comes crawling out from the corner on all fours.
Stalking. Uncanny. Body sinewy as a wolf in full form, his glowering eyes fixated on both of us.
I’m biting the inside of my mouth without realizing, until I taste blood there, cutting myself on my fangs, and I can’t take my eyes off him as he emerges.
My lips part as I scent him and behind me, I know Nathan’s doing the same.
“Cas,” he says, his voice deep and strained.
Cas comes to me first because I’m closest, down on the floor with him, crawling into my lap and rubbing his face against my jaw in appeasement. It takes every single ounce of my fragile control not to touch him, now that he’s suddenly lost all of his.
A switch has been completely flipped—no, that’s not accurate.
It’s a burst dam, a broken floodgate, all that desperate need bleeding over us in a hot, smothering tide.
We’re about to fucking drown in it. I’m not in rut but it feels like he’s dredging it up to the surface anyway, just with the sheer force of his heat alone.
And Jesus, if that’s somehow the case, it’s all fucking over.
There’s not a force on earth that could stop me from tying him if I somehow went into rut right now.
He slides against my body and my arms come up and around him of their own accord.
He’s straddling my legs, and his slick—hot, sticky, and wet—makes contact with my crotch.
I stifle a groan as he rubs his face briskly against mine like a cat, keening my name softly against my ear, and Jesus, I’m gonna fuckin’ come in my pants if he keeps it up.
My cock’s swelling up again in response, suffocating in my jeans.
I almost start to unzip and then stop myself. Dangerous.
Oh yeah, the old Cas—the one with all the sense and the mystery—is gone. There’s none of that at home. There’s just the vacuous, hungry look in those bright, wolf-blue eyes.
“Cas,” I try. “No. Stop. You can’t.” Supposedly. Allegedly. So I’ve been told. But my god, I want to breed him. I want—no, need—to finish what we started.
But I can’t. I can’t.
“Please,” he whispers, “Kato, please. I need you.”
Oh god, he’s killing me. My fingers dig into his flanks. “Cas, no. You just finished telling us you can’t. Remember?”
“No,” he whines, tongue rasping my ear, and I shudder. “One of you has to fuck me.”
So over my shoulder he leans, reaching for Nathan instead.
Trying to appeal to him too, find someone willing to fuck him to death, I guess.
He’s shit out of luck, though, because he’s butting up against the very king of control.
I half-turn, the omega in my arms, to see Nathan refusing to give an inch, even as Cas’s palm skims his knee.
Oh, it’s painful though. That much is obvious.
There’s a muscle twitching in his bearded jaw and his eyes are dark green, fangs bulging from his mouth.
He pushes the omega’s reaching hands away and stands, striding across the room—and great, now I’m all a-fucking-lone down here with the dead-horny omega who can’t be bred, who is somehow making me feel like I’m about to go into rut any second.
“This is insane,” he says hoarsely.
That’s rich coming from him when he’s safe by the door and Cas is busy trying to shove his hole in my face. I grab his hips and force him back down into my lap, which isn’t much of an improvement because he redirects that energy into grinding on me instead. I think I’m going to die. “Nate—”
“I’m thinking,” he snaps.
“I don’t think I can hold out.” And fuck him if he thinks I’m a bitch for saying so.
No pity from that quarter, though. He gives me a look with those glowering wolf eyes and turns away. “You have to.”
Well. I know that.
Abruptly I stand, spilling Cas onto the floor. Without missing a beat he’s on his knees reaching for me, and I have to step away from him. There’s nothing more in the world I want than to shuck the rest of my clothes and join him down there, but I can’t because he will die.
I leave him there, a mewling, slick mess, and make my way to Nate’s side.
He’s staring toward the front of the house with the intense focus of, again, a sheepdog, and I open my mouth to ask before I think better of it.
I tilt my head and listen too. Howling, yes, chorus layering on chorus, but it’s not a hunting song.
It’s rut.
Those throaty, frenzied yowls, like caterwauls, can be mistaken for nothing else. But it’s not just one wolf; it’s a whole fucking lot of them. As we stand there listening they get closer, louder, until I can faintly hear the footfalls of heavy paws loping at top speed. Toward us.
I go very, very still. “Nate,” I say, “why is half the pack in rut right now?”
His gaze meets mine. “It’s Cas.”
“That’s not possible.” I deny it automatically, on principle, even though I feel the tug so acutely.
Not even just a metaphor, either, because Cas has crawled across the living room to sit at our feet.
His face is pressed against Nathan’s thigh; he peers up at me coquettishly, his pink lower lip between his teeth.
“One omega cannot send a whole pack into rut.”
The alpha’s freckled hand brushes the top of Cas’s head, and he leans into the touch, practically purring. Nate leans past him to grab the discarded sweater, jamming his head through the hole, and the omega squawks with startled indignation. “You need to take him and go,” Nate says.
“Go where?”
“The cabin.”
“The fuck shed?”
“Kato, I’m not playing around with you.” He jerks his chin at me, pushing Cas in my direction. “Take my car and go there. I’ll try to fend them off.”
“What do you mean fend them off?” I ask as I follow him into the living room, Cas in tow. “They’re horny! Can’t we just—”
The first wolf slams against the window, taking us both by surprise. I actually cry out. We take several steps back, me dragging Cas along as one feral, tawny wolf stares us down with eyes so crazed he practically looks rabid.
No, not us—Cas. They only have eyes for Cas.
The wolf’s claws shriek and scrape against the glass before he looses another awful howl, and then a second wolf joins him. They’re snarling, smearing saliva and dirt across the scratched windowpane.
“Holy fuck,” I breathe.
And Cas…Cas is trying to get to them. I have to keep a death grip on his wrist to stop him going to the window and letting them in. He seems to be reaching a state where he doesn’t actually care who gets him through this heat, as long as someone does.
Nathan grabs his keys off the hook. “Let’s go,” he says. “Now.”
But before we can take a step toward the back door, a third wolf plunges through another window, shattering it entirely.
He lies in a pile of broken, bloody glass, momentarily stunned, and that’s enough to convince me that we do, in fact, need to get the fuck out of here.
I throw Cas over my shoulder—he weighs practically nothing—and follow Nathan as he bolts for the door.
The omega cries out in dismay as we drag him away from potential mates, his fingers digging into my already clawed-up back.
“No,” I say. “You are not fucking them. You’ll die, remember?” And fuck if it’s at the hands of someone like Graham.
He grinds himself into my shoulder in response. Wet cock, wet hole, wet everything. Christ alive, I wish I wasn’t so aware of him. “Please,” he whines weakly.
Nate’s already got the SUV unlocked, and with only a minor struggle do I manage to get Cas into the backseat. I slam the door shut and Nate shoves his car keys into my hand. “You’ll find everything you need at the cabin,” he tells me. “For Cas’s heat. Get him through it no matter what, okay?”
“Nate, wait.” I grab his arm. “What about you?”
He meets my gaze for a second. “Keep him alive. I’ll do what I can. I’ll meet you there.”
We’re out of time—there are more wolves barreling around the side of the house. As he turns to face them down, I scramble into the driver’s seat and jam the key into the ignition. It rumbles to life, catching another wolf at the edge of its headlights as I gun it down the drive.
My gaze flicks to the rearview mirror. In the red glow of the taillights, I see Nate surrounded on all sides by wolves.
My throat constricts in terror for him.
And then there’s a flash of grey fur in the headlights.
Even Cas, in his state, screams, his hands flying to the back of my seat, but there’s not enough time—to react, to do anything.
One minute there’s a wolf staring me down in the middle of the driveway; the next he’s gone up and over the hood of the Land Rover, cracking the windshield and leaving a smear of dark blood.
“Oh!” Cas cries out.
There’s a series of thuds as the wolf tumbles over the roof. Whipping my head around, I see their body collapse into the dust. I don’t even slow down to see who it is.
Or if they’re alive.