Jez
NEVER, EVER,EVERlet them put you in a van. That lesson had been hammered into me so long ago that it was basically part of my bones at this point. I couldn’t string two thoughts together, thanks to the lava pumping through my veins instead of blood, but the old instinct not to be trapped inside a dark, enclosed space on wheels still managed to shove its way to the fore.
I cringed back in my mate’s arms, as though the van’s open doors had some kind of an invisible force field around them, pushing me away. My mate hesitated as my distress flooded the brand-new bond.Protect, protect, protect... echoed across the raw connection, blotting out everything else.
The animal part of me wanted to trust that promise of protection, but there was some reason I shouldn’t. I couldn’t think...I couldn’t think. I wanted so badly to pass out, drifting down into the warm darkness that I knew was waiting for me after my mate had knotted me through my first peak.
I didn’t dare.
Then another familiar face loomed over me, blunt fingers sliding through my sweaty hair to soothe me.
“Hey, sweetheart,” said the alpha that smelled like Christmas Eve in my mother’s kitchen. “Easy, now. You’ve got to trust us, all right? It’s safe. We’re gonna take you home so you can fuckeach other to your heart’s content for the next few days. It’s actually real nice inside, see?”
That voice had been kind to me in the past. It had also been cruel, but... not recently? I felt like I should listen to that voice. It was becoming harder and harder to keep my eyes open. I craned my head around to follow the alpha’s gesture.
The alpha inhaled sharply. “Oh,fuck,” he said under his breath, although I wasn’t sure why.
Inside the double doors, instead of the bare metal box I expected, there was a padded den full of cushions and fleecy blankets, dimly lit by red-tinged fairy lights tacked up around the edges of the van roof. There should have been bars or a metal grill separating the back from the front, but instead, it was justopen.
The beta male who’d come with us from inside had the driver’s door open and was poking around, fiddling with the mirrors. My instincts said ‘friend, but complicated.’ My mate’s instincts said, ‘scent, mark, protect,’ and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
But whatever the case, this van wasn’t like the other vans I’d known. It screamednest, and I’d never had one of those before. Not properly. I’d also never wanted one as much as I did right now. My awareness was circling the drain, and it would feel so much safer to close my eyes inside this cozy little den than to try to keep them open.
Sensing my capitulation, my mate climbed awkwardly into the nest with me still cradled against his hard body. I didn’t try to struggle away this time. Maybe, for now, I didn’t have to fight. Maybe I could let all this happen... let my mate, and my other mate, and my betafriend-but-complicatedwatch over me while I rested. I knew on a deep, instinctive level that the lava in my veins would drive me toward another peak soon enough.
The strong arms holding me lowered me onto softness and helped me burrow in until I was comfortable. I was distantly aware of the back doors closing us inside, and the passenger door opening a few seconds later. Christmas Eve climbed into the front, and the last thing I heard was his voice, gruff and low-pitched.
“Hello, police? I need to report a human trafficking operation. There are several underage omegas being held at the abandoned grain silos near McKinley...”
The growing inferno in my womb dragged me back to consciousness some unknown amount of time later. I was someplace different. Familiar, yet not. The layered patchwork of scents made me think of an attic room with dust coating the surfaces and rattling eaves overhead... but it also made me picture a bedroom that smelled like yeasty bread and sweet orange peel.
This was neither of those places.
Here, the whiskey and oak undertones took on a life of their own. The scent of my mate—who even now was stirring in the back of my awareness like a giant predator coming awake.
My belly cramped, dragging a whimper from me. I curled into a tight comma shape among the blankets, clutching at the pain with clumsy arms. Instantly, a huge shape crouched over me, caging me in with its body. The whiskey-barrel scent rolled over me in a slow wave.
I breathed it in, feeling like a bottomless pit had opened up inside me. The terribleneed... I’d never felt anything like it before, slamming into me from two different directions. Surely it would crush me into nonexistence.
Another cramp curled me tighter into the fetal position. The figure looming over me leaned down, snuffling softly alongthe side of my neck. A rough tongue swiped across the raw marks decorating my mating gland, and it felt like someone had jammed a live wire directly into my nervous system.
I cried out, arching into the contact.
“Jez?” The gravelly voice came from elsewhere in the room. “Hey. You’re back at the pack house, in Heath’s room. You’re safe. I, um, gave you a birth control shot while you were out, but since you and Heath already did it once, it’s not a guarantee. I’m on dampeners. I’m here if you need anything, but... uh... it sounds like what you need right now is a knot. So, just ignore me.” The sound of a throat being cleared. “Anyway... yeah.”
It was just a bunch of sounds washing in one ear and out the other. Maybe they meant something, but it was too late to try and decipher them. I twisted my neck, looking around until my eyes landed on a tense body perched in an armchair across the room.
Why was he all the way over there when I needed himhere, with my mate and me on the bed?
I couldn’t waste energy on wondering, though. Not when strong hands rolled me onto my aching belly and pinned me there. A thick cock rubbed between my ass cheeks, the tip smearing wet trails against the small of my back.
I whined and snarled, snapping my teeth in frustration at having what I wanted so close to where I needed it. The large hand wrapped around the nape of my neck fell away, which was also thefucking oppositeof what I needed. But then the weight on top of me lifted, and hands gripped my hips instead.
My mate dragged me up so I was kneeling on the squishy mattress, my upper body still splayed out flat. Thumbs dragged my cheeks apart, and I shrieked as lips and teeth closed around the sensitive flesh that had been revealed.
My mate bit and licked and sucked and growled, marking me with bites and bruises even as one hand slid around to pressthick fingers inside me. I sobbed, needing more, more,more. The fingers inside me curled, stretching me until it wasalmostenough. A climax hit me broadside and with no warning, unseen and crushing in its intensity.
My sobs rose into a scream as my cramping passage tried to suck my mate’s entire hand in up to the wrist. It was like a knot, but itwasn’ta knot...and I needed a motherfucking knot.
