21. Ivy
D elicious warmth radiates all around me. Not like the oppressive heat that had me clawing for comfort under the cover of Cillian’s desk—but of dozing off in the sun on a spring afternoon.
I’m so tired, my body lying limp like a damp, wrung-out cloth. Sweat has cooled on my clammy skin, and I would die for a bath right now, but that would mean leaving the cocoon of this blessed coziness.
I’m still dozing, dreaming the impossible dream of several alphas in my bed, tending to my every need. Their strong, massive bodies pressing me between them while they stroke and kiss wherever they please.
In this sleepy vignette, my nose rests against my husband’s throat. The scent of his salt and sea fills my nose, and his lips trace my temple while his chest rumbles a steady rhythm. He is so sweet, my alpha. Ever the gentleman and so wonderfully soft-hearted when it comes to me. I could spend hours in the safety of his embrace.
Visions conjured during slumber always include the striking Lord Rafferty. Now is no different. He rests at my back, curling his strong, lean body around me tightly. The weight of his eager longing is obvious against my backside, and I’m far too tempted to rub myself against him—to tempt him into letting me know the intimate press of him inside me.
Like Cillian, he dotes on me. Only instead of his lips, large hands pet my hair in long, drugging strokes intended to soothe and calm. He too purrs for me, letting comfort bleed from his chest straight into my soul. He smells of burning, of a warm fire on a cold winter’s night.
Perfect.
Between them I’m perfectly content. I’m safe and wanted in all the ways an omega should be. But then, in my dreams this is always the case. Reality is not quite so lovely as this. There I’m forced to suppress certain imperatives like the way my body craves not one—not even two—but three alphas. My heart knows them too, holds a special space for each to claim and settle into.
If I could accept my desires for what they are— fantasies —my life would be so much simpler. But when these dreams show me everything I could have, it’s simply impossible not to drag this pining into the real world.
I hope I don’t wake from this fantasy. Not this time. I want to stay here for as long as I can. All that’s missing from this perfection is the hulking alpha who smells like the soil after rain. He should be here, touching me, speaking in that slow, deep timbre of his. Watching over me like he does so well.
But fuzzy voices cut though my hazy dreamscape, bursting this bubble of incandescence.
“I’m afraid, Cillian,” a voice rasps, oddly reminiscent of a particular lord with the most beautiful emerald eyes. “Ivy won’t want me. I know it. I’ll fuck everything up for you and Sloan.”
Poor alpha with his heavy heart. So much sadness, so much pain and apprehension weigh down each of his words. If I could move, I would reach back and thread my fingers into his beautiful curls. I could comfort him so well—tell him how silly I would have to be not to want his attention. Any omega would be so lucky as to capture Oran Rafferty’s eye.
He may think his intensity, his brash, reactive nature wouldn’t entice, but he would be wrong. I’m positively intoxicated by his passion and the way he wears it like a badge of honor.
“Oran… No . Please don’t start this nonsense again. An hour ago you were ready to burn the world to ash before letting her go. Stop getting in your own way and give her a chance to know you.”
My alpha, my sweet king. He is so good at caring for me, and for others it seems.
The aroma of freshly fed fire swells then. The body at my back clutches me tightly, as though I could be torn from his arms if he relented even the slightest inch. He clings to me like I’m precious air, life-giving and vital.
The strength of his embrace raises the curtain of my consciousness higher. Becoming more aware of myself in increments, I no longer feel so weighed down by the heaviness of sleep. Every breath I take pushes my chest forward against another body. One familiar to the touch. My husband feels corporeal, so unlike a dream.
This is odd. So very odd my fantasy should take on such a vividness.
“Sloan needs to get his arse back here with those nesting blankets. What are we meant to say if she wakes and he’s gone?” Oran again.
He feels far more real than I’ve felt in any dream. It calls to mind the night we spent in Cillian’s study—of the way he touched me as though we belonged to each other.
This is real . It must be, but I don’t understand. I can’t yet push past this last barrier to fully rouse myself and question what in the world is going on. I don’t even recognize where I am. Just that it’s soft and lovely and smells of the most delicious alpha signatures.
“We tell her the truth, brother. Like we agreed. Our omega deserves the truth,” Cillian says, pressing another kiss to my head.
“Which part of the truth?” Oran scoffs. “The one where we found her nearly knocked out in your study due to her rapidly nearing heat?”
Oran’s question helps me remember how I stumbled my way into Cillian’s study, looking for a dark place to hide. If my heat is truly approaching, it would stand to reason I would seek out a nest. But then where am I now?
“Or do we tell Ivy how we let her, our Fate-blessed mate, be sent across the sea for an entire year? All while we waited in agony for her return,” Oran rambles on, ratcheting up my heart rate with every spoken word. “How about how we’ve planned to bring her into a pack the world won’t accept? Hmm? What comfort is all this uncertainty to an omega?”
My body, once loose and light with warmth, tenses like a bowstring. Ice-cold panic seeps into my skin, chilling my very bones. The alpha bickering continues and I’m decidedly awake now—alert and registering what’s been revealed to me with a clear head.
They’ve known about me—about us—for a year . But I was ignored, rejected by both of them for weeks on end. Convinced I was promised to a man who couldn’t stand my company. Every night I’d berate myself for being drawn to my betrothed’s dearest friend. Every night I yearned for Cillian’s affection.
All while they knew we were fated?
They couldn’t even deign to speak to me until the night before I left. And what was their plan then? Have me together, use my body and discard me, all the while knowing I was wallowing in ignorance and shame over the whole ordeal?
I’m losing myself again. But not to the blinding waves of heat or the fantasies I’ve so foolishly allowed myself to fall into this past year. But rather, to slicing anguish.
I’m certain my heart is bleeding as it breaks apart, marring this once-perfect comfort with the physical evidence their betrayal has left on me. Hot tears fall freely down my cheeks, soaking Cillian’s tunic, but I can’t worry about that when my every breath is a painful reminder of their rejection. Of their betrayal and untruths.
To think I was worried about being like my father when really, I should have been more cautious of whom I gave pieces of myself to. He was the first to show me how alphas truly are: liars. Just as Rose warned.
I want to run. To scream. But my sobbing, rattling breaths alerts the traitorous twosome that have trapped me between them.
“Ivy,” Oran calls, petting my hair. I hate it now. Hate that the tender touch has been ruined by his deception. “Take deep breaths now, love. You’re going to pass out again if you don’t settle.”
“Darling, you’re breaking my heart with these tears,” the king of treachery coos in an attempt to calm me. His gentle kisses are venomous untruths that make me want to scream.
Here I thought that when I last visited Namara my perfume hadn’t developed enough for Cillian to be certain of our scent match. I truly believed he realized it at our wedding—the very same moment I did.
But he knew.
They lied—made me believe I was not even worthy of a single conversation or consideration about what such life-altering news would mean. They could have courted me, let my brother know of the gift we’d been given so we could find a way forward, together.
But instead, they’d rejected me.
Now I’m meant to be some soft, malleable thing for them to dote on? No.
I screech, unintelligible, as pain cuts to the heart of me—trying to claw myself free from the prison of their embrace. I can’t stand the thought of being held as though I’m precious when it’s clear my emotions are just some silly game to them.
These alphas, these deceitful beasts, are unfazed as they attempt to still my flailing. They offer pleas, apologies, explanations, but I hear none of it—I won’t accept more lies from their lips.
When it feels as though I might scream myself hoarse, a door barges open, rattling the hinges with the force in which it hits the stone wall.
My alpha emerges with arms full of soft, lovely things and a look of sheer panic across his handsome face. Is he a liar as well? Or a beacon of hope amidst the impossible darkness swallowing my heart?
Sloan drops his pile of treasures to the ground, rushing toward the mysterious bed where I’m being held captive. He rips me from the arms of the king and his most loyal liar.
My alpha cradles me against the safety of his massive chest, purring instantly and turning my limbs liquid. My body responds to him in ways it doesn’t with the others. Like it knows he is my north star—my guiding light meant to always lead me home.
His fresh earth scent and rumbling chest act as a balm to my broken heart. It fills in the cracks so I don’t fall to pieces.
“That’s it now, petal,” he breathes, caressing me everywhere, all at once. Sure, heavy hands mold me into something less liable to break and I devour every ounce of devotion this alpha pours into me.
When my sobbing finally subsides, I tuck my nose against his neck to draw slow, drugging breaths of him into my lungs. Only then does he look to the now-silent fabricators of fiction.
“What in the ever-loving fuck have you two knotheads done?”