Kavin answered quickly. “An Omega’s heat usually lasts three days, up to a week at most.” I let out a squeak of shock, but he was still speaking. “But in your case, since you’ve put off your annual cycle for four years, I wouldn’t be surprised if it lasted longer.”
“Longer?” I gulped. “What about food, or water, or...”
A knock on the door interrupted us. “Roya, darling?”
I let out a horrified laugh. “Valerie, um, I’m fine! Are you all right?” I literally couldn’t leave the bed with Kavin lodged deeply inside me. “Don’t come in!”
“We won’t. Let one of your men come to the door. We’ll hand in food and water. Whichever one isn’t… engaged.”
“That’d be Thorn,” someone murmured beyond the door. “Kavin’s still…”
A cough sounded, then a low voice grumbled something that sounded like, “Takes after his dad.”
“Kill me now, Roya,” Kavin muttered.
“After all the work you did to save us?” I let my fingers trail down to the mating bite that he had somehow, though I couldn’t remember when, placed on my inner thigh. Touching it set off a new wave of tremors inside. I would have to be careful with that one. “Maybe we should stay for a few weeks. They’ll all go away,” I said, as Icarus raised himself off the bed.
He looked refreshed, as if he had never been in a battle at all. “Well done, young warrior,” he said to Kavin, and bowed slightly to me, winking. “Mate.”
“Icarus, you’re all right?” He nodded and moved toward the door. I stifled a growl when he left the nest, but he returned almost instantly. My emotions swung wildly from alarm to anger to relief to lust. “I can’t control my feelings,” I murmured.
Kavin stared into my face, those stars still wheeling in his gaze. “Neither can I,kralovna. Will it feel this good every time?” The room filled with laughter, all my men awake now. Icarus and Altair went to the door together to gather the food, sheets wrapped around their waists.
Kavin’s obvious pleasure, and the way he and Thorn moved to make certain I was hidden from anyone at the door, kept me from feeling embarrassed. It helped that Kavin was every bit as new to all of this as I was. Somehow, though, his youth made me feel like I was debauching him… What would it be like to take the Alpha’s role with him someday? Tie him down and have my way with him. My eyes darted to Thorn, whose tongue had darted out as he stared at the place where Kavin and I were joined. Maybe Thorn and I could both tie him down.
Kavin’s knot finally began to deflate, and he pulled out, so I put that thought away for later. The heat that had subsided when he was inside me returned with a vengeance, my stomach cramping.
“Can I ease you, Roya?” Thorn asked. “While you’re… here with me.” His eyes were soft, his slight smile so filled with love, it brought tears to my eyes. “I want to see your eyes open this time, Roya. I want you to know you’re mine. That it’s me inside you.”
My pussy clenched, the emptiness there an ache stretching from my knees to my waist. “Hurry, Thorn, it hurts.”
“I’ll make it better, little queen.” He lowered his face to mine, dropping the gentlest kiss on my lips, then lavished my body with his hands and mouth, while the others watched, waiting patiently.
When he slid inside me, the tears that had been threatening began to spill. Thorn hesitated and I grasped his waist, urging him to keep going as I tried to explain.
“I’m not sad… I just love you. So much.” My eyes moved to the others. “I love you all.”
Thorn stroked the damp hair on my forehead, dropping a kiss that felt like a benediction there. “I love you, too, Roya. And I will love you every day, for the rest of our lives.”
When he said that, I felt a thrumming begin inside my chest, as if my heart were trying to reach out to each of these men and connect us somehow.
And then, it did. As my peak approached, as Thorn moved within me faster, streams of light pulsed from my eyes, forming a glittering web that somehow connected us all. I blinked, but the web stayed, hanging in the air. The room itself became a sacred space, filled with magic. Filled with love.
Altair let out a soft curse. Icarus thanked the Goddess. Kavin stared at the lights in wonder. I trembled with passion and a pleasure so intense I wondered if I was dying.
I could feel Thorn inside me before, but now it was as if each of them had taken up residence inside my soul. Our lives were connected, and I could feel the thick golden cord of my wyvern mate’s energy extending to the others. Protecting them as well. Promising to keep them by my side, for as many years as we could contemplate.
In that moment, we were one. And then I tumbled into my heat again, the soft beauty of that moment overtaken by a feral need that I had put off for so long, too long. My soul had been fed.
Now my body demanded the same.
ROYA
When I first entered the old queen’s nest two weeks before, I had known hundreds of ways to die. After my time inside, I knew one more.
Death by embarrassment.
My Alphas had been encouraging me to leave the nest for twenty-four hours, but I knew better. As soon as I did, I would have to face a palace full of people who had all heard every second of the past two weeks.
