Chapter 30 #2
I must have started getting wet even before I woke up because my thighs are coated in fresh slick. Stesha turns me over onto my belly, and his teeth sink into the fleshy swell of my ass.
“Beautiful Omega,” he groans, before pushing my knees wide with his and spearing me with his cock.
I cry out in pleasure and arch my back, welcoming him deeper.
The sounds he’s making as he works his shaft into me are lighting up my insides as much as the sweet stretch of his cock.
He holds me tightly as he breathes raggedly, groaning in pleasure and saying my name over and over.
Calling me his good Omega, his aash’lin.
Stesha grasps me around the waist and pulls me up flush against his chest. His fingers find my clit, and he rubs firmly as he pulls me down onto his cock.
I feel his knot against my sex just as I start to climax.
Stesha’s teeth are digging into the side of my neck and his arms are tight around me.
I’ve never known such bliss. He firmly pulls me down against his knot once, twice, again, and I feel his orgasm rock through him.
We both collapse onto the bed and lie there, panting.
“Now this is a rut,” he says, gasping for breath, and then immediately his brows draw together in concern. “Are you all right, Zen? Did I hurt you?”
I shake my head with a smile and plaster myself against his chest. “That was wonderful. Hold me harder.”
I crave for him to hold me as fiercely as he just did while his cock was inside me. If I could take his knot then we’d be locked together in bliss. What if I can never take his knot?
“Will you stay with me?” he whispers up my throat. “My whole rut?”
“Of course I’ll stay. I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
He groans in pleasure and squeezes me tighter. “I’ve never been so happy.”
We kiss for a long time, our tongues twining lazily together, and then more urgently. I feel the heat rise in his body, and his cock, which stayed erect, grows as hard as iron. His scent turns my mind to blissful mush as he lifts me up onto his cock and pulls me down on him.
“Please, Alpha. Your knot. I can take it.”
“You’re not in heat, aash’lin.”
“What if I never go into heat? We should at least try.”
“I would hurt you.”
“But please, I can—”
Stesha rolls us over so that I’m pinned beneath him.
He bites down on my flesh, making me break off with a cry, probably to stop me from begging for something that he can’t give me.
I feel sorry, and confused, and frustrated, until he fucks me so hard and bites me so deeply that I can’t think about anything else.
After, as we lay together, I feel ashamed of what I said. He must want to knot me as much as I do, but he can’t.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, tracing patterns on his chest. “I shouldn’t have asked you for that.”
He cups the back of my neck and draws me to him. “Don’t be sorry. I know you can’t help wanting that.”
“But what if I never can?”
“Be patient, aash’lin. The gods have been testing us sorely, because the Maledinni gods love those who are strong. We will show them how strong we are.”
Maybe they only meant to test us by having our designations emerge at different times, not for Stesha to inflict lavish sickness on his mate and then be locked under a mountain for five hundred years.
Maybe I’m too damaged now to ever be completely happy.
I can’t find it in my heart to trust in the gods after all Maledin has been through, and I can’t help but fret about me and Stesha, even as I finally have what I’ve longed for. Stesha as my mate.
I hate that Emmeric is still finding ways to ruin things for me, and I’m letting him.
Stesha presses kisses to my face as though reading my thoughts. “What we have endured is more than any other Alpha and Omega pair before us. We can’t give up now that we are finally together.”
He’s right. Nothing is hopeless. I just wish I could be perfect for him. I wish I could feel like his Omega, without worry, and without doubt. “We could tell people about us.”
“We could,” Stesha agrees, but in a noncommittal tone.
“You don’t want to?”
“I am happy for you to speak about us to anyone you wish. You have always had many friends among the dragonriders.”
“And your friends?”
“I don’t have friends. I have dragons.”
“Zabriel thinks of you as his friend.”
Stesha’s lip turns up in a smile. “He called me his friend during the Dragon Games. The audacity.”
I laugh. “How dare he. You do not wish to be his friend?”
Stesha thinks about this for a long time.
“My Alpha’s pride has always been aware that Zabriel would surpass me in rank once the prince became a king.
He challenged me week after week to spar with him because he was longing for the day he would make me eat dust. And he has, once or twice.
We have been rivals, but we work well together, and he listens to me as his advisor.
He had a presence of mind after we awoke from under the mountain that I lacked, and I still can’t fathom how quickly and easily he took Maledin back from the Brethren.
” He shakes his head in disbelief. “I was so lost, aash’lin, but he knew exactly what to do. ”
“It sounds like you respect him, which is the first step toward friendship. I have seen the two of you together lately, and you are very comfortable. You enjoy each other’s company.”
“Alas, I think you’re right. I have a friend.”
I burst out laughing.
Stesha smiles. “But I still don’t want to tell anyone about us. Nilak knows you’re my mate, and that’s all that matters to me. You may confide in whom you please.”
I think about it. “I may talk to one or two people, but I always wanted to walk into a room and for people to just know I’m an Omega.
That we are mates. For heads to turn, like they did with Onderz and Mirelle.
Zabriel and Isavelle. Kane and Ravenna. No one had to be told about them.
I want to feel for the first time in my life that I am who I really am.
” As I’m talking, my smile fades and frustrated tears collect on my lashes.
Stesha doesn’t tell me I’m stupid for wanting this or that it doesn’t matter what other people think. He presses a soft kiss to my brow. “I understand.”
“You do?”
“Until recently, people have always known what I am. I walked into the Great Hall or onto the streets of Lenhale, and people knew my designation. Respected me. Listened to me. In New Maledin, a lot of people don’t know what an Alpha is.
Apart from people noticing I’m unusually tall, I’ve felt invisible in a crowd, and I’ve hated it.
So I won’t tell you it’s silly for wanting to feel like an Omega. ”
I burrow into his arms and against his big chest. I want people to realize we’re a fated pair in one of those perfect moments.
Stesha running across a courtyard to snatch me up in his arms as our scents burst around us, and people watching fondly as he carries me away to my nest, shielding my trembling body from the light.
My perfume overwhelming everything as I go into heat.
Unless I’m broken forever and that never happens.
Stesha must smell unhappiness in my scent because he whispers into my hair, “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, Omega.
I’ll train every wild dragon in Maledin to eat out of your palm.
I’ll wait another five hundred years for you.
I’m the luckiest dragonrider in the world because I get to carry your sweet, golden heart into the skies with me.
If anyone tries to take you from me, I’ll kill him. ”
The threat of blood and violence against unseen enemies isn’t like the perfect moment I visualized, but it is very Stesha, and it makes my heart beat faster.
On the third day, Stesha’s rut subsides, and with it, my body seems to calm as well.
I sit up slowly, blinking in the morning light, relieved to find the golden rays are not lancing through my skull. “I think…I think my false heat has gone.”
He gently combs his fingers through my tangled hair. “That is good news, aash’lin. My rut is leaving me as well. It must have been that our cycles wanted badly to sync up.”
“Did you enjoy your rut?”
He turns me in his arms and takes my face in his large hands. “I have never known such happiness. I can’t believe I’m this lucky. It has made all the pain and misery of the past worth enduring, because now I have you.”
“Will we be all right, you and me? Will we be able to put the past behind us?”
“I hope that the pain will fade, but I will never forget what we have been through to get here. It has been a trial, but it all proves how strong we are, aash’lin.”
“We could have turned on each other. We could have turned on ourselves. I thought about it many times.”
“So did I, aash’lin. But what stayed my hand was always holding you in my heart.”
He presses a hand to my heart, and I cover it with my own.
“And I you. I hope that we have many things to look forward to together.”
“Tell me what you wish for.”
“Everything,” I whisper. “Is it too much to ask?”
“For my Omega? Never. We will have everything.” He kisses me with promise.