"Nolan." Tears were streaming down my face now, pleasure and emotion building together, threatening to overwhelm me, my walls clenching around him with every word.
"I love how brave you are." He rolled his hips up, hitting something deep inside me that made stars burst behind my eyes, his hands gripping my hips, angling me to take him deeper. "How strong. How you fight for what you want even when you're scared."
"I love you too." The words burst out of me, raw and real and right, pulled from somewhere deep in my chest. "I love you, Nolan. I love how gentle you are, how patient. How you always see the best in me when I can't see it in myself."
He groaned, his rhythm faltering, his hands gripping my hips harder, his thrusts growing more urgent. "I'm close. God, I'm so close."
"Then let go." I rolled my hips faster, chasing my own release, feeling it building at the base of my spine, in the flutter of my walls around him, in the heat pooling low in my stomach. "I want to feel you. Want to feel you come inside me."
He buried his face in my neck, his breath hot against my skin, his thrusts growing harder, deeper, more erratic. I could feel his knot starting to swell, catching at my entrance with every stroke, stretching me wider, building the pressure to something almost unbearable.
"Going to knot you." His voice was muffled, desperate, his teeth grazing my shoulder. "Can I — do you want —"
"Yes." I pulled his face up, made him meet my eyes, made him see the truth in mine. "I want your knot, Nolan. I want to be tied to you." He kissed me then, hard and desperate, his hipssnapping up one final time as his knot swelled fully, locking us together with a stretch that bordered on pain before blooming into something transcendent. The sensation — the stretch, the fullness, the feeling of being so completely claimed — pushed me over the edge. I came with a cry muffled against his lips, my walls clenching around him, pulling him deeper, milking him.
He followed a heartbeat later, his whole body shuddering, his cock pulsing inside me as he spilled himself in hot waves. The sound he made was somewhere between a groan and a sob, broken and beautiful, his arms crushing me against his chest like he was afraid I might disappear. We stayed like that for a long moment, wrapped around each other, still joined, both of us trembling with aftershocks. His knot pulsed inside me with every beat of his heart, and I could feel the warm flood of his release filling me, claiming me in a way that felt ancient and primal and right.
"I can feel your heartbeat." I whispered against his neck, pressing a kiss to his pulse point, feeling it flutter against my lips like wings. "Inside me. I can feel it."
"That's the knot." His voice was wrecked, hoarse with emotion, his hand stroking up and down my spine in soothing patterns, his purr starting up low in his chest. "It's meant to keep us connected. Physically. Emotionally." He pressed a kiss to my temple, then my cheek, then the corner of my mouth. "Everything I'm feeling right now — all this love, all this devotion — it's being pressed right into you. That's what knotting is for."
A fresh wave of tears spilled down my cheeks, but they were good tears, happy tears. I'd never felt so close to another person in my life. So seen. So cherished.
"How long?" I asked, shifting slightly and feeling him twitch inside me in response, his hands tightening on my hips with a soft groan.
"Twenty minutes, maybe?" He was already softening around the edges, his body relaxing into the blankets, pulling me down with him until we were lying on our sides, still connected, legs tangled together, his hand tracing lazy patterns on my hip. "It varies. For you? I could probably stay like this forever."
I laughed, watery but real, nuzzling into his chest, breathing in his pine scent now mixed with something muskier, something that was us. "That might make things complicated."
"Worth it." He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, his purr deepening — that low, rumbling sound that always made my Omega settle into contentment, my whole body going soft and pliant against him. "Everything with you is worth it."
We lay there as the light faded outside, the stable growing dim around us, the only sounds our breathing and his purr and the occasional shuffle of horses in their stalls. Hope nickered softly from nearby, as if checking on us, and I felt a surge of affection for the mare who had been born in this very stable — the filly I'd named after something I'd thought I'd never feel again.
"Do you remember what you said to me?" Nolan's voice was soft, drowsy, his hand still stroking my spine. "That first day in the stable. After I told you my name."
I thought back, trying to remember through the haze of fear and hunger that had clouded those early days. "I said my name. And that I'd just started."
"You growled first." His arms tightened around me, his voice rough with remembered emotion, his purr stuttering for a moment before resuming. "This rough, defensive growl, like you were warning me off. And then you forced yourself to speak, and your voice was shaking, but you held my gaze anyway." He pressed a kiss to my hair. "I knew right then that you were something special. Someone worth waiting for."
"You waited a long time." I traced my fingers along his jaw, feeling the slight stubble there, the warmth of his skin, the strong line of bone beneath.
"I'd have waited longer." He caught my hand, pressed a kiss to my palm, then each fingertip, his lips soft and reverent. "I'd have waited forever if that's what you needed."
His knot had finally deflated enough for him to slip free, and I mourned the loss of connection even as he gathered me closer, tucking me against his chest, pulling a blanket over both of us. He reached for the towels he'd set out earlier, cleaning us both with gentle, efficient movements — ever the healer, ever the caretaker.
The stable had gone fully dark now, only the soft glow of stars through the high windows illuminating us, painting everything in shades of silver and shadow. Somewhere outside, a night bird called. Inside, there was only warmth and safety and love.
"Sleep." His voice was a rumble against my hair, his purr still going, vibrating through both of us like a lullaby. "I've got you."
"Don't leave." The words slipped out before I could stop them, small and vulnerable in the darkness, born from years of waking up alone.
"Never." His arms tightened, his purr deepening, his lips pressing against my hair. "I'm not going anywhere, Aster. Not tonight. Not ever."
I believed him. For the first time in my life, I believed someone when they promised to stay.
My eyes grew heavy, my body warm and sated, wrapped in the arms of an Alpha who had loved me before I knew how to love myself. In the stable where it had all begun. Where a fierce, half-starved Omega had first glimpsed what gentleness could look like.
Full circle.
