Chapter 19
NINETEEN
ATLAS
Seventeen Years Ago
“Stop, stop, stop!” Saint said, grabbing me by the shoulders and throwing my back against the wall so I couldn’t kick at the locked door anymore.
I’d hit a growth spurt and was now just as tall as him, but he was still bigger through the shoulders.
“You’re just going to make him mad again.
Why do you always have to complicate things? ”
“I need out of here!” I screamed back, unable to calm down. It made my face hurt even worse—my cheek was already swollen, and the cut above my eye wouldn’t stop bleeding. “It’s too small. I can’t breathe.”
A confused look crossed his face. The oozing gash across the top of his cheek stretched and reopened. “You can’t breathe? Did he get your nose again? It doesn’t look broken.”
I heaved a few deep breaths until I could talk in full sentences. “No. My nose is fine. It’s the door. It feels like I can’t breathe when he locks the door.”
We were in the bedroom we’d shared since we were little, and usually, it was a safe place. Somewhere our father rarely intruded upon. But when he got mad—almost always because of me—he’d lock us both in as punishment.
The start of it, anyway.
And all of a sudden the walls that were usually the only haven I had grew too close and the air too thick. It made me want to crawl out of my skin.
Spotting the roof-access skylight over his shoulder, I pushed him off and gripped the headboard of my twin bed, dragging it away from the wall.
“What are you doing?” he asked, watching me push the bed underneath the small window.
I ignored him and stood up on the bouncy mattress. I still couldn’t reach the latch, even if I jumped. “Put me on your shoulders,” I said. “I’m getting us out of here.”
He sighed but stood on the bed with me and leaned over so I could hop up. “He’s going to kill us for this.”
No, he wouldn’t. A clinically depressed wife—signed off on by all the best doctors, of course—was easy to pass off as a suicide. But his sons, too?
Our father cared way too much about his image to be a kid killer.
“Stand up straighter,” I commanded, swiping at the latch and missing.
“I’d like to see you do this,” he wheezed. “God, what do you eat?”
But he did as I’d asked, and the window swung open wide.
“Now, what?” he asked, clearly annoyed I was still on his shoulders.
Hooking my hands over the windowsill, I heaved myself up and prayed it wouldn’t give out. “Now, we escape.”
“There’s no way you’ll fit.”
“Watch me.”
Somehow, by sheer force of will, I squeezed myself through that tiny skylight before reaching down to offer Saint a hand up and yanking him through, too.
It didn’t matter that the air was hot and thick with summer humidity or that the sun was setting and the bugs were out—I could breathe a million times easier outside of that too-small cage our father had locked us in.
“You’re like an octopus,” my brother said, sweaty from the effort of climbing out.
“What?”
“From the aquarium we used to go to with Mom, remember? They can get in and out of anything. Didn’t one even escape the tank? That’s you.”
An octopus. Huh.
We didn’t say much after that, watching the heat lightning dance on the blue horizon and the bats circle overhead, just emerging from their hiding places.
Our father never found us up there on that roof. And every time I fucked up badly enough to get Saint bruised and bloodied alongside me, I’d remember when he called me an octopus and find a way to get us out.
I always found a way out, all the way up to the day I took that monster’s life with my bare hands and watched the same fear I knew intimately drain from his eyes, until he couldn’t feel anything ever again.
Hello, Atlas.
My heart, shriveled and unused as it was, warmed. A chink in the armor plating I’d fashioned around it crumbled away, leaving me exposed.
Strangely, I didn’t want to put it back, and that had nothing to do with the way Max still pulsed around my knot, hot and slick, or my rut, the suppressants, or any of that.
It was just him, staring at me openly and unguarded. His eyes were the color of molten chocolate. I would happily drown in them.
I squeezed his hand, fingers gripped tightly in his. “Hi,” I replied.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Max only smiled and shimmied further into my embrace.
It’d taken every last ounce of restraint I possessed not to bite him. After thinking I’d lost him to that heat teacher, I went out of my mind with the need to stake my claim. He’d all but begged me for it, too, submitting his throat so freely.
Claim him, my alpha had snarled. Make him ours.
But that wasn’t what this was about. We were supposed to end the bond tying us together, not seal it forever.
Right?
The reasons why seemed so very far away, though. Things like secrets and safety and deserving a life better than always looking over his shoulder were very small compared to the way my name sounded in his mouth.
I stayed inside him until my knot deflated and then pulled out. Listening to the storm pass outside, I caught my breath and pressed soft kisses everywhere I could reach, marveling at how right it was to hold him close.
“That was… good,” Max whispered long minutes later, shy despite what we’d just done.
My mask had slipped back down, covering my face. I resented the way it itched—I wanted to rub my cheek all over him and tease the shyness out of my omega.
“Yeah, it was,” I replied, voice raw.
It was more than good. My DNA rewrote itself around the scent of him. And the way he tasted… fuck. I’d never forget it.
I was forever altered by him.
He smiled and stretched his arms above his head, eyes closed. He looked like he was floating. I’d dreamed of moments like this; of watching him while I lay beside him, instead of far away, across the bay.
All long limbs and smooth, soft skin, I couldn’t help but rub my hand across his belly. I may have just been knot drunk, but I swore it was fuller than it’d been before his heat started.
We did that, my alpha said with pride. We filled him up.
My cock thickened, and saliva pooled in my mouth. The sight of that pouch, ready and waiting just for me, made me want to bite and hold. The feral beast in me envisioned pinning Max in the dirt beneath me while I laid claim to that place no one else had ever been—making it fit me, and only me.
Fuck, when he fully ripened I bet I’d be able to see the way I moved inside him, bulging his soft heat belly. I couldn’t wait.
There were other changes, too. His eyes were bright, cheeks flushed pink from sex. All over, he seemed to glow, almost like the edges of him blurred. It made me want to growl at boats that passed by, just so they’d know the fragrance of the beautiful omega in my arms wasn’t theirs to enjoy.
He was mine.
Mine to hold.
Mine to cherish.
Mine to breed.
Suddenly, his eyes flew wide open, scent souring in panic.
“Oh, God! I’m not on birth control!” He covered his mouth in horror, as if recalling the way he’d begged and pleaded for me to fill him with my cum.
“I’m not ready,” he said, babbling. “I’m not even sure I want kids! How could I have been so stupid—”
“Shh,” I cooed, running a hand up and down his back to soothe him. I couldn’t stand the scent of his stress. “It’s okay. I’m on the shot. No babies for us right now.”
Right now? Right now? Where the hell did that come from?
My alpha rumbled. Someday, he huffed.
Yeah. Ignoring that.
Thankfully, Max didn’t seem to catch it, and relaxed. “Thank God. That’s the last thing we need to add to this mess.”
“My rut doctor’s had me on it for a while. Just in case.”
He buried his face in my sweatshirt. “Did you mean what you said? Since we met, you haven’t been with anyone else?”
I almost laughed. The idea that there would be anyone else for me was ludicrous, but my omega was a jealous thing, and clearly still needed assurance.
My alpha loved it, puffing up to strut around in pride.
“Yes, sweetheart,” I said, nuzzling him. “There’s only you.”
And because I couldn’t get the image of that heat doctor holding his hand out of my head—yes, I’d followed him there and watched through the window, and yes, it was one of my lowest moments—I couldn’t help but ask, “What about you? Any other suitors lining up to take my place?”
I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. I watched him way too much to have missed a relationship, or even a casual fling. But I still needed to hear it.
Max shook his head. “No. There’s no one. You’re—you’re the first person I’ve been in heat with. Every other time, I managed on my own.”
Fire roared in my veins. I’d suspected as much after what he said the other night, but having it confirmed…
“So, you’ve never taken a knot until mine?” I asked, heat pooling at the base of my spine.
“No.”
Good. It was primal and toxic and so alpha I should’ve been ashamed, but I couldn’t help feeling satisfied that I was the first person to stretch him, to make a home inside him.
We’ll be the only one, my alpha grumbled.
“You’d better not make it a thing, though,” Max said, feigning indignation.
I knew it was fake because he hooked a leg around my hip to grind his cock into my thigh. The scent of another heat wave, rich and sweet, perfumed our cocoon of warmth. Was it really so easy to rile up my jealous little omega?
I filed that information away for later.
“Don’t get all possessive and weird,” he continued, breathy and wanton.
I gripped his waist to help him reach the friction he sought. My cock already ached to be back inside him, but I hadn’t focused nearly enough on his pleasure the first time, and that had to be remedied.
“You sure you don’t want me to be possessive?” I asked, dragging my teeth down his neck through the mask. “That little omega in you seems to love it. You’re quite a needy thing.”
He harumphed and continued shifting his hips in tiny circles, moaning and whimpering.
Heady rut descended over me, urging me to fill and take and provide. He was mine to keep satisfied, after all.
“Fine,” I said, flexing my thigh to give him a harder surface to rub up against. “I won’t make a thing of it.
But that means you shouldn’t make a big deal out of the fact that I’ve never been in rut before, either.
” Reaching around, I gripped his ass. “Never spent a heat with another omega or knotted anyone besides you.”
He blinked up at me, gaze heat-heavy and soft. “Wait. Never?”
I shook my head and slid one finger into his slick hole, pushing my cum back inside. “Never. Not until you, sweet boy.”
He gasped and gripped my shoulders for leverage. “How is that p-possible, when you’re so…” his hips stuttered, caught between the pleasure of my thigh and fingers.
I raised an eyebrow. “Approachable? Yeah, I’m fighting partners off left and right.”
He snorted, quickly followed by a protest when I pulled out my finger. That, too, was short-lived once I slid down the bed until my face hovered over his erect cock. It fit perfectly in my hand, with a pretty, dusky pink tip that wept for attention.
“Well?” I asked, hooking the mask over my nose again to mouth at the base. “How are you doing with not making it weird?”
His laughter was drowned out only by the sound of his moans when I swallowed him down.
Neither of us spoke very much after that.
I spent long minutes lavishing attention on his cock with my mouth and tongue, inhaling his scent straight from the source.
I made him come like that once, and then again, alternating between drinking his fresh omega slick and cum while I milked his prostate with my fingers.
When the scent of his heat intensified to the point of driving me insane, I crawled up his body and thrust inside in one push. Tears ran down his cheeks, and I licked them off, one by one.
I was unprepared for him to taste of joy so acute I almost wept alongside him. It nearly made me blow my load on the first thrust. “Are you happy? Do I make you happy?”
I wasn’t sure why I asked that. It was an odd question in the middle of a heat wave, but I had to know. I needed to hear him say it. My words were broken and stuttered by our bodies moving against each other and by what this had become.
Not just a heat wave, or going through the motions to satiate a never-ending rut, or an unclaimed bond.
But something deeper; something else entirely.
“Yes,” he sobbed. “So happy.”
When the wave peaked, and he shuddered, ready for my knot, I gave it to him.
“Say my name,” I begged just before pushing inside. “Say it, say it—”
“Atlas,” he wailed, fingers gripping the sheets. “Atlas, breed me!”
My knot popped past that tight ring of muscle, and it closed around the base of my cock. I shouted, fireworks exploding behind my eyes when he squeezed around me. The head of my cock brushed up against the softest part of him, nearly ready.
Claim him, claim him, my alpha snarled.
At the last second, I turned my head, biting the pillow until it tore. My climax guttered, and I cried out at the ruined orgasm.
He was mine. I needed to make him mine. It wouldn’t be right until I did.
Too far gone in his own pleasure, Max passed out in my arms almost immediately after. Panting and locked together, I realized how foolish, utterly foolish, I was for thinking this could ever be temporary.