We’re locked. Pulsing together. I’m crying again, overwhelmed, and he kisses the tears from my cheeks without comment.
“Sleep,” he says. Same word Ben used. Same gentle command.
I obey.
Time blurs.
I stop trying to track it. Stop trying to make sense of which alpha is where, who’s touching me, how long it’s been. There’s only the cycle: wake, need, get filled, come, sleep. Repeat.
Sometimes there’s food. Water pressed to my lips, and I drink greedily without opening my eyes. “Good girl,” someone murmurs. Milo, I think. “Need to keep you hydrated.”
Hands lift my head. Something sweet presses against my lips. Apple, maybe. I bite down, taste juice, and realize I’m starving. I eat whatever they give me. Fruit and crackers and something that might be chocolate. I don’t care. Just chew and swallow and let them take care of me.
“How long?” I manage at some point. The words feel strange in my mouth, like I’ve forgotten how to use them.
“Almost forty hours since the real heat hit.” Ben’s voice. Gentle.
Forty hours. It feels like minutes. It feels like forever.
Gentle hands clean me with a warm cloth. Change the blankets beneath me without ever making me move far from the nest. They work around each other seamlessly, like they’ve done this before. Like they were made for this.
For me.
The thought should scare me. Instead, it settles into my bones and stays there.
Elijah is inside me.
I don’t remember how we got here. Just that one moment I was floating in post-orgasm haze, and the next his cock was sliding home, stretching me open around his thickness.
He doesn’t do dirty talk like the others. Just watches me, dark eyes intense, reading every flicker of expression on my face. His hands are steady on my hips, holding me still while he sets the pace.
It should be unnerving. Instead, it’s grounding. An anchor in the storm of sensation.
He fucks me slow and deliberate. Each thrust hitting deep, pulling almost all the way out before pushing back in. Building me up gradually, layer by layer. No rush. No urgency. Just relentless, patient pleasure.
I try to speed things up, rolling my hips, clenching around him. But he pins me down with a hand on my stomach, presses me into the mattress.
“Let me.” Two words. All I need.
I go limp. Let him take over completely. Surrender control in a way I never do, never have, never thought I could.
I’ve never felt so exposed. So free.
He reads my body like he’s memorized every response. Knows exactly when to speed up, when to slow down, when to grind deep and hold there while I shake apart. He brings me to the edge three times before finally letting me fall.
When I come, it’s a full-body experience. Every muscle clenching, every nerve firing. I think I scream, but the sound is lost somewhere outside my body. Everything is white noise and pleasure and the feeling of his knot swelling inside me, stretching me impossibly wide.
He comes silently. Just a sharp exhale and a tightening of his jaw as he spills into me. But I feel everything, the pulse of his release, the throb of his knot, the way his whole body shudders with restraint.
We stay locked together in silence. His thumb traces patterns on my hip. Circles and spirals, something that might be letters. I drift, not quite awake, not quite asleep, floating in the space between.
Eventually, his knot softens. He pulls out slowly, carefully. I whimper at the loss, at the emptiness returning already.
“Shh.” He pulls me against his chest. “Rest.”
I don’t argue.
Ben wakesme with his mouth.
