“I…” she hisses with pain, turns those dark eyes up at me. “I think I’m going… into heat.”
Heat.
Nyx is… going… into heat?
Something snaps inside me, that protective instinct roaring to life through my body.
I rise to my feet, scoop Nyx into my arms, and rush back to the academy building, holding her close and tightly as I navigate through a thin crowd for the stairs. I look at no one, all the while my purr remains strong.
Nyx whimpers and nuzzles the base of my neck, sending jolts of lust straight down to my cock, which stiffens uncomfortably behind the fly of my jeans.
Outside my dorm room, I bend my knees to reach and unlock the door without releasing my Omega, push the handle, kick the door open and then shut it behind me. Bypassing my old roommate’s bed, I head for mine in the back of the room and gently deposit Nyx on top of the covers.
She moans and writhes, grips her stomach, breath coming faster to match my increased heart rate.
What the fuck do I do?
I mean, I know what I’d do if our relationship were normal, but it isn’t. And that’s my fucking fault.
Shit.
I rake my fingers through my hair and pace at the foot of the bed like a caged animal, until an unwanted thought invades my mind and I stop to look down at her.
Nyx’s dark red hair is fanned across my pillow, her eyes are shut tight in pain, her body twisting side to side as she groans.
This can’t go on.
“Do you… want me to get Zephyr?”
I think I threw up in my mouth a little.
But I’d do anything to ease my Omega’s pain.Anything.
At my voice, Nyx’s eyes slit open just enough to see me. “No.” Her voice is barely a breath. “I need you, Erich.”
It’s like my heart stops right there at those words. She needs me? After all I’ve done—or, rather, haven’t done?
Is it really me she needs, or am I just the closest Alpha to her, and instinct is dictating that she needs a knot right now?
I’m a statue at the foot of the bed when her eyes open wider, tears glistening in those chocolate pools. “Do you not want me?”
Horror washes over me. “That’s not it,” I say in a rush. “That’s not it at all, Nyx. I want you. I’ve wanted you since we were teens. I think of you every second of the day, waking or not.”
Confusion mars her brow, and she moves slowly to rise up onto her knees. “Then… why aren’t you helping me?”
Pain pierces my chest, and I grasp at it absently. “Because I don’t know if you wantme,or if you need to be knotted, and I’m the only one here right now.”
She looks so sad when I’ve finished talking that I wish I could swallow my words from existence. Nyx shuffles closer on her knees, reaches out to me, drawing me to her like some siren. Her fingertips softly graze the sides of my face, and she looks up at me, wincing every so often from the pain. “I need you.” Her perfume billows, enveloping my senses. “I want you.”
My eyes shut, lips part, and I inhale the skin of her palm, nuzzling it, my cock turning to diamond.
This is almost everything I could have asked for. And yet…
I take her wrists, pull her hands from my face to rest her palms on my chest and peer down at her. My vision swims.
“I need you to love me.”
Her lips part on a small gasp as a tear falls from her eye, runs down her cheek and drips from her jaw to her shirt.
