Chapter 18 #2
Marie limps to the edge of my nest like a bride to an aisle.
She looks down at my blankets—the cardigan I fold into the curve of my pillow, the strip of blue cotton I sleep with when Eli is on nights—and then she looks at me.
"Don't worry. We'll make it nicer."
Ragon steps between us, and his back fills my view. "Hush, Marie. Don't make it worse."
He turns to face the alphas.
"All of you. We saturate this nest with pack scent. She learns tonight that pack means everyone, including Marie. Drake. Eli. You're helping."
Eli goes rigid. "No."
The word drops like a stone.
Ragon's head swivels toward him, eyes going dark. "What did you say?"
"No," Eli repeats, voice shaking but steady. "I won't do this to her. I won't violate her nest. You can order me to hold her, you can make me watch, but I will not put my hands on Marie in Vee's safe space. I won't."
Ragon takes a step toward him, scent spiking with fury. "You refuse a direct command?"
"On this? Yes. Write me up. Discipline me. Kick me out of the pack if you want. But I will not do this."
The air crackles.
For a heartbeat, I think Ragon will strike him.
Drake steps forward, hands up, voice strained. "I'll do it. Ragon, I'll— I'll help. Leave Eli alone. I'll do it."
"Drake, no—" Eli starts.
"Someone has to," Drake says softly, not looking at either of us. His voice is hollow. "If I don't, he'll make you. Or he'll make it worse for her. So I'll do it."
Ragon's jaw works. He stares at Eli for a long, dangerous moment, then turns his attention to Drake. "Fine. Get started."
Drake closes his eyes for a heartbeat.
Then he moves.
He doesn't look at me when he steps into my nest. Doesn't meet my eyes when he starts unbuckling his belt with hands that shake so badly the leather slips twice.
Marie is already there, already arranging herself like she's done this a thousand times, already tilting her head back with that practiced softness.
"No one comforts her after," Ragon says, still turned away. "No one touches her. She sits with this."
"Ragon," Eli says, voice thin. "Please. This is going to damage her. You may not be able to come back from this."
"Hold her."
Eli's fingers tighten on my arms.
I can't make my mouth work.
My body is busy: heart hammering, lungs wheezing, glands squeezing out distress that makes the room smell like old hurt and burned sugar.
Ragon steps into my nest first.
Everything in me screams.
Not out loud. Not exactly. There is sound but it's not language. It's the sick-animal cry a throat makes when something sacred goes under boot.
I say the word please so many times it loses shape.
No one pulls them back.
Jasper's hand slides down my arm and wraps around my wrist. The pressure is steady. Grounding. It says I see you without violating Ragon's command. It's not enough. It's everything.
"Watch," Ragon says.
He drags his wrist along the edge of my pillow, slow and deliberate, laying down smoke and pine like a border line.
He wipes his jaw along my blanket. Marie mirrors him, rubbing her wrist, her neck, slow, careful little swipes that lay vanilla into cotton thread by thread.
She doesn't go near the place where my cheek presses at night—she goes directly there.
Over and over, like she's soothing a skittish animal with candy.
Ragon kneels and puts a knee on the place where I curl, right in the sweet-spot hollow of the nest, his weight sinking into the heart of it. He drags his palm slow over the spot where my shoulder lives and leaves it there a second too long.
I am noise again.
I hear it like it's coming from the hallway.
Jasper's fingers ghost tighter at my wrist. Eli's breath is ragged by my ear. His scent shifts toward apology so frantic it makes me dizzy.
"Get it done," Jasper says, clipped. "If you're going to do it, do it."
Ragon inhales like he's tasting my fear and forcing it into a column.
Marie leans down and presses her cheek into my pillow.
Her eyes stay open.
They stay on me.
I go very still.
Not because it helps.
Because something inside me decides the only way to survive this moment is to turn into furniture.
Ragon strips with brutal efficiency—belt, buttons, zipper, each sound a little cut in the air. "Eyes open."
I squeeze mine shut.
"Open," he repeats, softer, heavier.
I keep them closed anyway. It's the last line I have left.
Not looking doesn't save me from anything.
Drake's voice, tight and wrecked: "Marie. I— I can't—"
"Just my mouth, sweetheart," Marie coos, sugar-sweet, like she's comforting him. "That's all. Just take my mouth."
The sound of fabric shifting. A zipper. Drake's ragged exhale.
Then the wet, obscene sound of it—Marie's breath going sharp and needy, Drake's choked noise that might be a sob, the rhythm of her head moving.
I can hear him trying. I can hear the desperate, bitten-off sounds he makes, the way his breathing goes harsh and fast like he's trying to force his body to respond.
"That's it," Marie breathes. "Good alpha. So good."
But his scent is wrong—acrid with distress, sour with shame. There's no heat in it. No want.
Ragon growls, low and impatient.
The bed dips as he positions himself, as Marie adjusts beneath him with practiced ease. His weight settles into the middle of my blankets.
Cotton pulls. The mattress sighs under them.
He makes a low sound I hate—something that used to make my body melt—and she answers with breathy sweetness.
The air thickens with them: smoke and pine pressed into vanilla until there's no oxygen left for me.
The rhythm starts—quiet at first, then becomes something I can't pretend is anything but what it is.
Drake's breathing is ragged, wrong. I hear him gag once, hear Marie's sharp inhale.
"Keep going," Ragon orders, voice roughened.
"I can't—" Drake chokes out. "I'm sorry, I can't—"
"Then get your scent on her," Ragon snarls. "Wrist. Neck. I don't care. Saturate it."
Fabric rustles. Drake's scent blooms sharp and citrus-bright but threaded through with something that smells like grief. I hear him moving, pressing his wrists to blankets, to pillows, marking without looking, mechanical and broken.
Ragon's tempo increases. His breath shortens, turns into hard grunts against Marie's skin. Her voice catches and pitches higher, then flattens into that strained, hiccuping whine that means the swell is coming.
The sound of it is unmistakable: that tight, helpless little cry when an omega is forced steady by a knot and the room has to hold still with her.
Drake makes a sound like he's being strangled.
"Don't watch," Eli whispers against my hair, so quiet I almost miss it. A tiny rebellion. "Don't give him that."
I keep my eyes locked shut.
The bed groans. Ragon's breath snaps. Marie's voice breaks on a high, keening note.
Then the wet, sick sound of release—Ragon finishing inside her with a guttural groan, the obscene slick of it, of their combined fluids spilling out and soaking into my blankets, into the hollow I sleep in, far too close to the place my cheek goes every night.
Drake is sobbing.
I can hear it—raw, broken sounds he's trying to muffle.
My stomach turns inside out.
I lurch forward and retch hard. It splatters between my feet with a noise that makes the back of my skull prickle. Acid and lunch and humiliation. I gag again, and the second wave hits the floor with an ugly slap.
Jasper is moving before I finish. A wastebasket appears under my chin. "Breathe," he says, flat as paper, not comfort, just instruction. His other hand is already snagging paper towels, bleach wipes. He doesn't touch me beyond the bin he holds.
I sit for what feels like forever, the taste of bile etched on my tongue. Ragon’s knot will hold for minutes. I know from five years of experience. Minutes that used to pass too quickly, but now seem like an eternal void.
Eventually, finally, the bed creaks as Ragon eases back.
The mattress sighs. The air changes from unbearable to worse—the sharp-sweet milk of it spreading, settling, wicking into cotton.
Ragon's scent, Marie's scent, and Drake's grief-soaked citrus all tangled together in a way that will never, ever come out.
Marie makes a soft, breathless noise. "There. There."
Ragon stands then, slow, sure, and his gaze flicks to me. For a second—just a second—something that might be regret cracks under all the steel.
It snaps back into place so fast I want to pretend I imagined it.
He steps out of the nest, redresses, and smooths his hands down the front of his shirt like he was just doing laundry.
"We're done."
Drake is still kneeling at the edge of the nest, face buried in his hands, shoulders shaking.
Marie lingers one heartbeat longer.
She lifts my pillow to her nose, inhales deeply, and then sets it down with a little pat.
Then she straightens, limps out of my nest, and takes Ragon's arm like she's earned it.
He turns toward the door. "No one helps her. Not until I say so."
He leaves.
Marie floats after him.
Drake doesn't move. He's frozen there, hands over his face, breathing like he ran a marathon.
"Drake," Ragon calls from the hallway. "Now."
Drake flinches. He lowers his hands—his eyes are red, wet—and he looks at me for one terrible second.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, voice shattered. "Vee, I'm so—"
"Drake!" Ragon's voice cracks like a whip.
Drake stumbles to his feet and goes.
The door hits the jamb with a soft, final sound.
The quiet after is so loud I could drown in it.
Eli's hands loosen.
Jasper's grip remains a second longer.
I sit there, air moving in and out, the scent of my own room newly foreign, the center of my nest smelling like someone else's definition of home.
"Vee," Eli says, very low. "I'm—"
"Don't," Jasper says. "He gave a direct order."
Eli's breath stutters. "I know."
Jasper's fingers tap my wrist once, twice, a signal. I hear words he doesn't say: I will get the footage. I will file. I will not let this be the story anyone writes without evidence.