13
gatlin
I’m in the middle of leading a group of mostly women in their fifties and sixties in a tai chi sequence when I feel it.
My omega is in heat.
The bond flares like a supernova, whiting me out, and I lose my balance in the middle of The Dragon Stretches Its Tail.
Immediately, I center myself.
I allow the sensation to be and do not try to change it, do not try to end it, just exist with it, which is the basis of all tai chi, anyway, flowing movement through mindfulness, feeling the body and accepting it, accepting each sensation as it comes and experiencing it, not controlling it.
I get through the sequence, but I do cut it short. I had planned to take them through Parting the Wild Horse’s Mane and Repulsing the Monkey Mind, and I don’t.
Instead, I close the way I always close, silent movement, compassion prayer with a general call for self-compassion as well, and then I let everyone go, get on my phone, cancel the rest of my afternoon, and text Kane.
Way ahead of you, he texts back. Got our suitcases packed, putting them in the car. You get here, and we’ll head out.
In the car, he drives and I sit in the passenger seat, drumming my fingers against my thigh. I’m second-guessing this. “He told us he wants space. We both agreed to give him space. We both agreed no contact.”
“Yeah, and when we talked about what happens if he goes into heat, he said he would be on suppressants, and that it wouldn’t happen, but that if he had a breakthrough, he was not going to be a martyr about it.”
He did. He said that. He said that he didn’t want anyone else to take him through a heat besides us, and that he didn’t want to go through another heat without alphas.
But the suppressants he got were really good at keeping heats under control, something like ninety-nine point three percent or something.
And anyway, he didn’t go into heat often, he said, even when he wasn’t on them, or at least, he hadn’t gone into heat in a long time.
The one heat we had with him was a bit of a shitshow, admittedly. I don’t know how we ended up biting him.
I’m not usually one of those out-of-control alphas. I don’t like it when people blame their designations for eroding boundaries, not usually. But Ellis unravels me.
I feel a certain element of trepidation at seeing him again.
Excitement, too.
But, uh, yeah, that boy, he’s possibly the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Kane reaches across the car and squeezes my knee.
“Babe, it’s going to be fine. He gave us his new address for this exact reason, and we’ll go in, knot him silly, break his heat, and then we go home.
It’s what we always wanted, anyway. Omegas are like puppies, right?
They’re cuddly and fun but they’re a fuckton of work. We’re all better off this way.”
I swallow hard. This is what Kane wants.
Me? I don’t know. We’re not getting any younger, Kane and me.
He is thirty-three, and I am thirty. When I was younger, I was on board.
Just him and me. We’d work hard and play hard and have a great house with nice things and travel a lot.
No need for, uh, puppies. Or children. Or omegas. Or…
Sometimes, out of nowhere, I feel this ache in my chest. It’s as if, for all of the comfort and ease of our lives together, for all of the pleasures—good food and good wine and leather couches and art on our walls—everything seems empty and pointless.
I know that Ellis was work.
I know that having children would be hard. Night feedings and stuffy noses and skinned knees. But what’s the point of doing anything if you don’t have people to do it for?
I have Kane, but Kane doesn’t need me. Kane and I are self-sufficient roommates who fuck, that’s what I think sometimes. I don’t want Kane to be needy or anything. I don’t want to depend on him either. I am an alpha, so I need to be self-sufficient.
Mostly, I just let these things go. I know that desires come and go, and that being unsatisfied is a temporary state of being. My pain is not me. My desire is not me. My dissatisfaction is not me. These are just things that happen to me and pass through me.
I look out the window, trying to center myself again.
Another flare comes through the bond, however, and Kane feels it, too. He gasps as he grips the steering wheel.
My cock wakes up. Fuck, I have a knot, and it’s huge. I grunt.
Kane switches into the fast lane. “Don’t worry, babe. I’ll get us there.”
It should be a two-hour drive.
We do it in an hour and twenty minutes.
hannah
Ellis tries to tell me that he does not need me, but this is ridiculous, and I don’t go anywhere. I get him into his nest, and I get his jeans off of him, because they are soaked through with slick.
He’s shivering like crazy. He says he does not need to fuck me, and I figure that’s bullshit, so we fuck. I straddle him and grab his hands and pin him down and ride him through three condoms.
He’s still shivering so bad.
At this point, he tells me about space heaters, so I bundle him up in about ten blankets and I go find them.
When I get back, he’s thrown off all the blankets and he’s up on his elbows and knees in the nest, presenting, his asshole glistening, still shivering all over, rubbing his forehead into the blankets and moaning.
I set up the space heaters and he groans something about toys. I find them, along with his porn magazines and lotion. He tells me I do not need to put them inside him, and I’m pretty sure that’s bullshit, too, and we do that for a while, me fucking him with toys and rubbing his cock.
It’s warm in the nest now. He’s shivering less.
“It won’t be too much longer,” he tells me. “I can feel them in the bond. They’re coming.”
“Your alphas?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says.
This… I’m relieved. Also? Disappointed, which makes no fucking sense. I am panicking right now, although I’ve been completely shoving down the panic so that I can try to help him, even though I know I can’t help him. I’m a beta, and I can’t get him through a heat.
“I’m so sorry, Hannah,” he groans. “I’m so fucking sorry about fucking everything.”
“Shut up and stop apologizing,” I say, harsher than I maybe should be.
But he seems relieved. “Okay,” he says. “Whatever you say, Hannah.”
And then I realize he needs to be taken charge of in heat, and I make him lie back and I run my hands all over him, and I tell him he needs to lie still and relax and let me get him off again. He does that, and I tell him that he’s a very good omega, and he visibly reacts to that, moaning a little.
So, that goes on for a while, me deciding what we’re going to do, telling him that it’s going to happen, and praising him vigorously. I alternate between fucking him, making him roll over and take toys in his ass, and giving him hand jobs. He comes about seventy times.
Maybe I’m exaggerating, but whatever happens, he never gets any relief. He’s still hard and he’s still obviously needy.
Eventually, I hear a car pulling up.
I leave the nest to go and open the door. I’m not dressed. I’m wrapped in a blanket, and I don’t even have the capacity to feel embarrassed about this. I just beckon them to come inside.
Ellis’s alphas are tall and broad shouldered. They are wearing nice clothes and they have product in their hair. They are very surprised to see me.
“He’s in here,” I tell them, bringing them through the house to the nest.
They poke their heads in and crawl inside, because the ceiling is low.
Ellis sees them and lets out this whine.
They pounce on him, both of them purring at him, and he rubs into them, purring back, letting out tiny pathetic whines, and they are kissing him all over and stroking him and calling them their pretty boy in throaty little voices.
Well.
Guess my work is done here.
I back out of the nest and brush myself off. Where did I leave my clothes?
Doesn’t matter, I have other clothes up in Ellis’s bedroom. I wonder about this blanket. Ellis probably wants it. I guess, after I get dressed, I’ll come back and give it back to them.
But when I do that, when I look into the nest, these men I don’t know are naked. One of them is knotted into Ellis and the other is on his knees, cupping Ellis’s face as he rocks his cock in and out of Ellis’s mouth.
It’s incredibly hot, and I shouldn’t be seeing this, and I make a noise, and all three of them look at me.
“Sorry,” I say. “I thought Ellis would need all the blankets he could get.” I set it down.
Ellis spits out the cock in his mouth and reaches for me. “Hannah, say you forgive me.”
“Who’s this?” says the alpha who was in Ellis’s mouth, grinning at me. Wow, okay, that’s what a knotted up cock looks like. Holy fuck, that is big. I realize I’m looking at his dick and not his face, and I blush and meet his gaze. “I’m no one. I’m leaving.”
“She’s my girlfriend,” says Ellis. “Please, Hannah, if you don’t forgive me, just say you do. You can take it back later.”
The alpha cups Ellis’s face again. “Hey, pretty boy, do you want her to stay?”
Ellis says nothing but he perfumes, and it’s so intense that I can smell it. It practically chokes me.
The alpha grunts and slips back into Ellis’s mouth. “Get in here, girlfriend,” he says to me warmly. “If you can handle it, that is.”
The other alpha turns from fucking Ellis’s asshole and says, “Whatever our omega wants, he gets,” to me.
Well.
I guess I’m going to be participating in a fourway. Okay. I can… do that.