Why was it that every damn time Alison let those alphas get the upper hand, she paid dearly for it?
She groaned softly as she woke, wishing she’d at least gotten those thirty seconds or so to lie there in bed and not realize exactly what had happened. Some ignorance would be amazing right about then.
Instead, she’d remembered it all, every filthy detail, every spilled secret.
Why the hell did I do that?
“Come here,” Kyle grumbled and tugged her against his chest. He rubbed his chin on the top of her head as he trapped her against him. “It’s too early.”
“You’re the one who likes to get up early,” she pointed out.
“Sure, when I don’t have a warm, temping omega in the bed. Turns out that changes everything.” His arm was heavy yet reassuring in a way she wasn’t comfortable with—especially after last night.
She squirmed, unable to relax again.
He let out a long-suffering sigh, as though they’d had this fight a million times and he was used to losing. “All right, let’s get up.”
Alison slid from the bed, nearly regretting the choice when the blanket stopped keeping the chill away. The bed was warm, and Kyle’s masculine scent wasn’t the worst thing to spend another hour or two cuddled up to.
She winced, memories of the night before coming back. Nope. Not a chance.
Kyle, despite agreeing, didn’t actually get out of bed. He shifted to sit up, the blanket pulling off him.
Which left him naked. How had she not noticed that before? It wasn’t like ignoring his hard cock was all that easy, and it had been pressed against her all morning.
“So, are you over your mood yet? Because if not, I wouldn’t mind trying to treat it again.”
Alison crossed her arms, ignoring the way it teased her nipples. “You’re just looking for another reason to tie me up.”
“I don’t need a reason.”
That got her going, especially when he set his hands behind his head. It stretched him out, reminded her that the man had very little fat on his body. He really was stunning, especially as his nose healed. In fact, he distracted her so well that she forgot all about their bickering, or about the fact she probably didn’t want to let him know how much he affected her.
He had to suspect—he could smell her, after all—but letting him know it or have any proof was too far.
Yet…she struggled to draw her focus away. He didn’t have the dark hair on his chest that Daniel did, at least not so thick. His was lighter, but it still had that mesmerizing trail down to his groin.
He brought his hand to his cock. “Come on, sugar. Only us up so far. No reason to rush out of bed just yet, is there?”
Alison pressed her lips together, the temptation strong. She’d never really wanted to do something like that before, and yet suddenly she could think of nothing else. Before she even realized it, she’d started to move toward the bed. Her knee pressed into the mattress, beside his foot, and, as she crawled up his body, she felt primal in a strange way.
It reminded her of how she felt when she stalked her prey, when she closed in on someone who had been stupid enough to get on her radar. She felt predatory and powerful and now it mixed with her desire. Her gaze remained locked on Kyle’s cock, on the way his hand moved over it, stroking in slow, long motions from base to tip.
When she got close enough, he slid his fingers into her hair. The tug against her scalp drew a noisy moan from her as she dragged her tongue up the underside of his cock, then took him past her lips.
Kyle controlled the movement, shifting her forward and backward as though she were a toy. He didn’t press in deep and didn’t go fast. Instead, it was leisurely, almost relaxing. Alison used her tongue, wrapping it around the thick head of his cock, tasting the pre-cum that escaped and only whetted her appetite for more.
“You’re such a good girl,” Kyle praised. “You take my cock so well.”
His words washed over her, the praise strange yet welcome. She liked being called good, which was a damn odd thing.
She’d lived her life doing what she wanted rather than what she was supposed to do. She’d fought against the stereotypes, against the expectations laid on her, and accepted that she would never live up to what anyone wanted. If she couldn’t be what she was supposed to be, then she would be the opposite.
It was easier—and safer—to not care what people wanted.
So why was it that when Kyle looked at her with that pride, when he called her good, when he made it clear she wasn’t falling short, it heated up parts of her that had been ignored for her entire life?
Alison gave in to it instead of fighting it. She hollowed her cheeks, tightening her lips around his thick shaft. His groan said he liked the action, and he sped up the rhythm.
“Fuck.” His voice dropped lower, into something almost a growl. “I can’t wait to knot your sweet cunt, sugar. I bet you’re going to feel amazing, all stretched tight around me.”
Yes. Alison couldn’t even pretend to not want that, all her resistance and worries gone.
Kyle pulled her back so his cock rested just beyond her lips. He let out a deep rumble, his fingers clutching her hair tighter just as his hot cum landed on her tongue.
“Hold it,” Kyle snarled, voice rough. His dick jerked as each spurt left him, and after a moment, he withdrew from her mouth.
He tugged her up his body by her hair, then pressed his thumb against her lips. He hooked his finger down when she parted for him and opened her mouth.
His lip curled up even while he panted, breathless. “Look at how well you listen, sugar.” He dipped into his pooled cum before pulling away. “Go on, swallow me down.”
Alison obeyed as he took her lips in a kiss that stole her breath.
If this was what she’d resisted for so long…
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be.
* * * *
Trent smiled at Alison. He had to admit, she looked better. She was flushed, but she seemed as though their lesson the day before had worked. Some of those defenses of hers hadn’t come up again yet.
That and her morning with Kyle. In fact, both she and Kyle had seemed all together better.
They sat at the table, finally ready to address the reality of what Alison hadn’t told them before.
Watching how she melted against Daniel, the way she eased when he set his hand on her nape, a mindless touch that soothed them both, made Trent tighten his lips.
He wanted that…
He craved the closeness, the sense of belonging again. Daniel and Kyle had it, had kept their bond after the fallout, and now? Now Alison was settling right into it.
It was petty of him to envy them that, but that didn’t stop him from feeling it. What would happen? Would Trent go back to his life while Alison, Kyle and Daniel went off to live some happily ever after?
“Explain, girl,” Daniel said.
Alison turned to glare, but Daniel only lifted an eyebrow.
She sighed and leaned forward, setting her forearms on the table. “Her name is Anne.”
“How do you know she’ll be at the auction? Not to be unkind, but omegas disappear all the time,” Trent pointed out.
“Because I know her. She wasn’t the type to run off. She mentioned someone was following her just before, and when I looked into it, I found out there’s a scouting group that works in her area. I checked hospitals, friends, everything. There just isn’t another option.”
Trent heard the fear beneath her steady voice. He knew that unease, the worry when someone couldn’t do anything but wait.
How many women had gone missing, ones who had just stopped coming into his gym, when he’d had to just wait and see if they ever showed up again?
Most didn’t.
“So you dangled yourself as bait so you could find Anne?” Kyle reiterated.
She nodded. “This is the last auction. She has to be here, and I’m not going to let her disappear without doing whatever I can.”
“And you didn’t tell us this because?” Daniel asked.
“Because I thought you might have thought it wasn’t a good reason, maybe thought I was too close to the case and, frankly, because it wasn’t your business.”
Ouch. So it seemed her temper wasn’t entirely doused. Then again, Trent doubted it would ever be fully gone. Not that he minded. A wilting flower wouldn’t last long in this world.
Kyle didn’t look nearly as willing to accept her sharp answer, though. “You need to make sure you stop keeping secrets, sugar. I trust this is the last one?”
She waited a moment too long to nod. Still, Trent knew they only had so far to push.
Besides, no doubt she had secrets of her own, ones she didn’t owe them.
“I want you to write down everything you can recall about Anne. Description, history, all the facts. They need to be added to the case files so we can hopefully identify her during the auction raid. We’ll find her, pet.”
A slow breath blew through Alison’s full pink lips. She twisted her hand and squeezed back—an unexpected reaction. “I’m not used to this.”
“To what?”
“To having someone on my side.”
That got him. He knew exactly how that felt, to always feel as though he had to shoulder everything on his own. Hadn’t he just been thinking it? It got old, fast, and Alison had done it her entire life, it sounded like.
“It’s new, sure, but new isn’t bad. Hell, you might just be surprised by how much you like new,” Kyle said.
She pressed her lips together, as if she couldn’t quite fathom such a thing, before she nodded.
Trent realized why exactly it bothered him so much to see Kyle and Daniel grow closer to her. She seemed like a stand-in for him, someone getting what he craved, gaining back that sense of family and connection.
He couldn’t fault her for it, but damn, he wished he could see a way where he could get that, too.
* * * *
Daniel hated being the one to back down, yet something had nagged him for days.
Each time he looked at Trent, each time they ended up at the same table, when they happened to pass in a hallway, an uneasy gnawing in Daniel’s stomach refused to be ignored.
It reminded him of his mother telling him that was his conscience, and that he’d better listen to it before things got worse.
That had brought him out back, where Trent was flipping burgers at the barbecue. How can someone frustrate me this much but still feel like family?
If he ever figured out a reason for that, he’d be the smartest man in the world. Family had been pissing one another off forever.
“Let’s stop doing this,” Daniel blurted out.
Trent looked over his shoulder, his eyebrow lifted, before pointing at the burgers with his spatula. “I mean, they’ll burn if I ignore them.”
Smart ass. “You know what I’m talking about.”
Trent sighed, flipped the burgers, then turned to face him. “We’ve been over this. I can’t come back. I won’t.”
Daniel fought down the urge to argue, to remind Trent of all the good they used to do together. That fight wasn’t one he was winning, so he stayed on track. “I know. Look, let’s not bullshit. You’re feeling Alison just like us. It doesn’t matter if we get pissed, if we fight, clearly we aren’t done with one another yet, since we seem to want the same omega.”
“Fate does think she’s funny,” Trent admitted.
“She is hilarious. Alison can’t follow us around, right? What if we tried to make this work? You’re settled here and so is she. Kyle and I have talked, and we can try to take on less field work, but when we have to go? You’ll still be here.”
A tic in Trent’s jaw said he wanted to like the idea. “You ever think maybe too much time has passed? Like maybe wounds heal and no matter how much we want to go back, we can’t?”
“Yeah, I did think that, until I saw how Alison brings us all together. Can you honestly say you’re willing to walk away from her? That you’re willing to throw this all aside because we had a problem?”
Trent shuffled his foot on the ground, distrust there.
Daniel couldn’t blame him, not entirely. What had happened had been horrible. There were times Daniel thought about it—when he didn’t think just about his side, but when he actually considered Trent—and he never failed to feel like shit. He and Kyle had walked out on Trent when he’d needed them.
They’d done it hoping he’d come back into the fold, and when he hadn’t, the more all of them had pushed, the more hardened in their positions they’d become.
And yet seeing Trent with Alison, Daniel thought for the first time in a very long time there might be a shot. Maybe they could fix this.
“I don’t know,” Trent admitted.
“Fair enough. Just…think about it, okay?”
Trent nodded, and Daniel left him be, hoping he’d just need time.
They could fix this, if only everyone would stop being so fucking stubborn.
* * * *
Waves of nausea rushed through Alison. She huddled in the tub, the water from the shower rushing over her. She’d twisted the dial to cold, but it did nothing to cool her skin.
Her stomach wouldn’t settle, rolling and threatening to expel what little she’d eaten that day. What the hell is wrong with me?
Her mind moved sluggishly, as though it couldn’t quite keep up with whatever she was thinking. All of it frustrated her, had her sliding her fingers through her hair and grasping as though that would make her feel better.
Had she caught a bug? A flu? A cold? Something? It had been days of feeling under the weather.
Whatever it was, she didn’t have time to deal with it. She couldn’t just go to the store and pick up medication, and the last thing she wanted was to face the alphas and have to ask for anything.
She hated to need help, and that was all the worse when it came to failures of her body. Not to mention they’d hover.
Still, taking enough cold medicine to knock her out and sleeping through the worst of whatever this was sounded amazing.
She shivered, as though even with the sweat, even with how it seemed flames were licking over her skin, she was still reacting to the cold of the water.
Something was wrong.
Paranoia got her first, a creeping fear that perhaps the slavery ring had gotten wind of their involvement. Could they have had poisoned food sent there? Maybe the alpha who had come to the meeting had done something to her. The idea of dying from poison before finding Anne haunted her.
Then she stilled, terror filling her.
The vial… The drug…
She recalled the way she’d sniffed, taking in that putrid chemical scent, how it had stuck to her sinuses even as she’d tried to blow it out.
Another rolling wave of pain forced a whine through her gritted teeth.
The answer was so obvious, even if she had tried to ignore it.
The drug had sent her into heat…
Trent glanced at his watch, the food growing cold.
“Is she not going to eat?” Kyle picked at his own meal, stealing bites as though it didn’t count if he didn’t use his fork. “She barely touched breakfast or lunch.”
“She needs to eat,” Trent said. The side of him that liked to set rules and boundaries wasn’t about to let her skip so many meals, not when he was in charge of her. “I’ll go check on her.”
Her shower had been running for almost an hour, but the alphas had given her privacy. They were a house full of adults, and even if she was playing the part of their submissive, he understood that need for alone time.
He took the stairs in a quick jog, then knocked on the door to her room. No answer, but if she were in the shower, she probably couldn’t hear him.
He pushed open the door, then went to the bathroom. No steam escaped, which had him frowning. He knocked, again, but still nothing.
A tightness in his chest made him knock harder. Fear crept in, slowly, whispering all the reasons she might not be answering.
After waiting another moment, he twisted the handle.
Locked.
“Alison,” he called out, raising his voice so she’d hear it above the running water.
Silence.
Heavy steps preceded Daniel’s voice. “She had better be in there.”
A quick nod from Trent was his only response as he moved away, then leveled one hard kick at the door. The hollow interior door gave way with a loud crack, and sure enough, the bathroom didn’t have a bit of heat in it—or Alison.
She’d run.
“Fuck,” Daniel muttered.
Trent twisted to find the window open—not large enough for one of the alphas to fit through, but Alison wasn’t all that big.
“What the hell was she thinking?” Trent went to the window and peered out, hoping to catch sight of something. Instead, the darkness stretched across the yard and he couldn’t spot anything moving.
“Shit,” Kyle said as he walked into the room “Pretty much. The girl bolted. I swear, I’ll make good on my threat to paddle her ass over this,” Daniel said.
Kyle shook his head, his cheeks pale. “Neither of you smell it?”
“Smell what?” Trent asked.
Kyle offered a hard look, something in his gaze saying he wasn’t joking for once.
That was when Trent stopped, forcing him to breathe in, to think, to pay attention.
It hit him fast. Weak—probably why he hadn’t picked up on it right away—since she’d been out of the room for at least twenty minutes, but it was there.
Heat.
Suddenly her behavior, her reaction, all made a little more sense.
Alison had gone into heat, and rather than face that with the alphas, she’d run away.
And when Trent’s cock hardened, when he let out a feral snarl, he couldn’t really blame her a bit.
Daniel’s desire to turn Alison’s ass red abated some when he finally caught sight of her.
Damn, she looks pathetic.
It seemed her energy hadn’t lasted long, or perhaps the cramping pain had grown so quickly, she couldn’t run far. She’d made it to the detached garage on the property, the door ajar when they went outside to follow her tracks. She’d gone out through the bathroom window, down the lattice on the side of the wall, then across the yard. A few places showed indents in the dirt—hands and knees—where she’d tumbled.
Each one tugged at him. By the time he actually got a look at her, curled up in the corner of the garage, a soft whimper on her lips, he just didn’t have it in him to be angry.
Finding her took the tension down a bit. Whether anything they experienced between them was real or not didn’t change that his instincts had recognized he was responsible for her, that all the alphas were. Her going missing had turned the three into snarling, possessive beasts.
“Sweet,” Daniel said, keeping his voice gentle as he dropped to his knees beside her. Sweat coated her forehead, and she’d squeezed her eyes shut tight.
She flinched when he brushed her hair from her face. “Fucking drug,” she whispered.
Damn it. Heats at the best of times weren’t all that fun for an omega, but when spurred by that drug? They tended to hit harder and faster.
Even though a part of him, that primal side that didn’t care about right or wrong—the one that thrived off survival—loved the idea of her going into heat, of servicing her, of watching her grow with his child afterward, the logical part knew this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
“Breathe slowly, pet.” Trent sat down beside her, then managed to get her head into his lap, so at least she wasn’t entirely lying on the floor. “I want you to try and take a couple of deep breaths.”
“And just how many heats have you been through, oh great expert?” Even though her words were strong, the tone came out breathless and strained.
“Keep mouthing off,” Daniel said. “You might as well get your money’s worth out of it right now when we can’t punish you for it.”
Lines appeared in her face just as she curled in on herself and cried out through gritted teeth.
Trent stroked across her forehead while Daniel rubbed her hand. They weren’t much, but right then that was all they could offer.
“We have a sedative, sugar.” Kyle crouched, tilting his head as though he could look into her face even though her eyes were shut. “We made sure to have it on hand just in case. It’s already pre-measured, so we can knock you out. You don’t have to suffer.”
Her swallow was loud, and her wince said her throat was already dry. The trembling that racked her entire body showed the strain her heat had already placed on her, and it hadn’t been more than an hour. She jerked her head from side to side, a quick, decisive refusal.
“You can’t suffer like this,” Daniel told her.
“I thought you liked a little pain.”
The joke drew a smile from him. “This is not to my taste. Don’t be stubborn, not about this. We’ll get you into bed and medicate you and you won’t have to hurt. We’ll watch over you the whole time.”
She shifted, nuzzling her cheek against Trent’s lap, an oddly affectionate gesture that Daniel was sure she’d never do if she were in her right mind. “I don’t want to be drugged.”
“I don’t like taking meds either, but I can promise you, if my insides were tearing themselves apart like yours are, I’d make an exception,” Trent told her.
Again, she shook her head. “I’ve made it through heats before.”
“But never when caused by a drug and never when living with three alphas. Look, pet, even if you could make it through the entire thing without giving in, I’m not so sure we could.” The way Trent said it, the tightness in his jaw—it made Daniel ache.
The man worried too much. Daniel had no question that if she wanted to ride the entire thing out without a lick of help—he ignored the way the word ‘lick’ made his mind go—that Trent and the rest of them could resist.
Another wave hit her, so close to the last that it proved this would not be an easy heat. She dug her fingers into Daniel’s thigh, a grip that would leave bruises, and ones he happily accepted. If bruising him helped her, he’d take it with a smile.
Alison shuddered at the end, then slid her hand beneath Daniel’s shirt. “I won’t take the drug,” she said, this time more weight to her words.
“I don’t want to see you suffer.” Trent sounded defeated and backed against a wall.
“Then don’t,” she said, crawling into Trent’s lap and taking his lips in an aggressive kiss. Her robe opened enough so she was bare to his eyes.
Trent’s groan was loud, and he didn’t resist, not at first. Instead, his hand went to her hair and he kissed her back.
Daniel rubbed his hand over his face, looking for strength. For what, he didn’t know. God, he wanted to give in… He wanted to service Alison through her heat, to knot her over and over again until the insanity of the heat abated for them all, until none of them could move anymore and fell asleep sated and exhausted.
But he owed it to her, to all of them, to be sure.
“Think about this, sweet,” he said even though waiting and thinking were the last thing he wanted.
She broke the kiss, her eyes glazed over from lust as she looked at Daniel.
“You sure you really want this? Beyond the fact that it means actually having sex, you know the risks. You could end up pregnant.”
That made her pause, as though just the word woke her up. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, her gaze down. “I understand the risk.”
“How about you look at me when you say that,” Daniel said. “If you can’t even look at me, you don’t really want this.”
She whined, pressing her face to Trent’s throat. Through her back, Daniel could feel her muscles go rigid, tensed in pain. After the wave ran through her, after she caught her breath again, she twisted so her forehead rested against Trent’s shoulder but she could see Daniel. There was absolute surrender in those eyes.
Of course, whether she’d been worn down by pain or she really wanted them, well, that was impossible to know. It was the risk when dealing with omegas—especially when heats were involved. Was it them or was it biology? “I know the risk,” she assured him. “I know you could knock me up. I get it. I’m not some fragile thing that doesn’t know how this works. Now, will you stop arguing and fuck me already?”
And that was an offer Daniel couldn’t ignore.