"That's it," Marie breathes. "Good alpha. So good."
But his scent is wrong—acrid with distress, sour with shame. There's no heat in it. No want.
Ragon growls, low and impatient.
The bed dips as he positions himself, as Marie adjusts beneath him with practiced ease. His weight settles into the middle of my blankets.
Cotton pulls. The mattress sighs under them.
He makes a low sound I hate—something that used to make my body melt—and she answers with breathy sweetness. The air thickens with them: smoke and pine pressed into vanilla until there's no oxygen left for me. The rhythm starts—quiet at first, then becomes something I can't pretend is anything but what it is.
Drake's breathing is ragged, wrong. I hear him gag once, hear Marie's sharp inhale.
"Keep going," Ragon orders, voice roughened.
"I can't—" Drake chokes out. "I'm sorry, I can't—"
"Then get your scent on her," Ragon snarls. "Wrist. Neck. I don't care. Saturate it."
Fabric rustles. Drake's scent blooms sharp and citrus-bright but threaded through with something that smells like grief. I hear him moving, pressing his wrists to blankets, to pillows, marking without looking, mechanical and broken.
Ragon's tempo increases. His breath shortens, turns into hard grunts against Marie's skin. Her voice catches and pitches higher, then flattens into that strained, hiccuping whine that means the swell is coming.
The sound of it is unmistakable: that tight, helpless little cry when an omega is forced steady by a knot and the room has to hold still with her.
Drake makes a sound like he's being strangled.
"Don't watch," Eli whispers against my hair, so quiet I almost miss it. A tiny rebellion. "Don't give him that."
I keep my eyes locked shut.
The bed groans. Ragon's breath snaps. Marie's voice breaks on a high, keening note.
Then the wet, sick sound of release—Ragon finishing inside her with a guttural groan, the obscene slick of it, of their combined fluids spilling out and soaking into my blankets, into the hollow I sleep in, far too close to the place my cheek goes every night.
Drake is sobbing.
I can hear it—raw, broken sounds he's trying to muffle.
My stomach turns inside out.
I lurch forward and retch hard. It splatters between my feet with a noise that makes the back of my skull prickle. Acid and lunch and humiliation. I gag again, and the second wave hits the floor with an ugly slap.
Jasper is moving before I finish. A wastebasket appears under my chin. "Breathe," he says, flat as paper, not comfort, just instruction. His other hand is already snagging paper towels, bleach wipes. He doesn't touch me beyond the bin he holds.
I sit for what feels like forever, the taste of bile etched on my tongue. Ragon’s knot will hold for minutes. I know from five years of experience. Minutes that used to pass too quickly, but now seem like an eternal void.
Eventually,finally, the bed creaks as Ragon eases back. The mattress sighs. The air changes from unbearable to worse—the sharp-sweet milk of it spreading, settling, wicking into cotton. Ragon's scent, Marie's scent, and Drake's grief-soaked citrus all tangled together in a way that will never, ever come out.
Marie makes a soft, breathless noise. "There. There."
Ragon stands then, slow, sure, and his gaze flicks to me. For a second—just a second—something that might be regret cracks under all the steel.
It snaps back into place so fast I want to pretend I imagined it.
He steps out of the nest, redresses, and smooths his hands down the front of his shirt like he was just doing laundry.
"We're done."
