Her purr kicks off again.
The effect is immediate, hitting subdermal-level deep.
My knees actually buckle. One minute I’m walking, the next I’m catching myself like a rookie, boots skating across black ice on the path.
“Ah fuck, you gotta warn me first, baby girl. Nearly sent us tumbling off this mountain.”
She giggles.
I feel relaxed. It’s like the relief of a shoulder massage after days of hauling a heavy ruck, or the first sunshine after a week of rain that’s turned the trenches into ankle-deep sludge. There’s a lazy warmth sliding down my spine, coaxing every tightly coiled nerve into a slow exhale.
“Cheeky Omega.” I tap the tip of her nose.
She bats her eyelashes at me with a languid, smug smile.
There’s a stiffening in my trousers. I’ve been hard all day, but it’s insistent now.
I’m brimming with excitement because I get to indulge in a side of myself that doesn’t have a place on the battlefield.
The part of me that aches to hold, to soothe, to protect in ways that have nothing to do with force.
Every cell in my body is lighting up with purpose.
It’s familiar. I felt it every time she’d fall into O-space during her training and let me be the one to carry her through it. A quiet, special moment where I got to be her anchor.
For a long time, I shoved that instinct down deep. The urge to care, to comfort? That was dangerous in the military. Vulnerability didn’t make you a better soldier, it made you a liability.
But after Halley came into our squad and turned everything upside down, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. That aching need flared like a signal fire every time she looked at me with those wide eyes. And even when she left, that instinct was still there and helped me keep our Pack alive.
Her presence messing with the Alphas' instincts made sense. It’s biology. But me? A Beta? That didn’t compute. She shouldn’t have had such a profound effect. It rattled something loose in my logic circuits, and I needed to know why.
So, naturally, I started digging.
Technology is limited outside the Capital and military zones, but between deployments and bloodshed, I would hack into the command center’s databases. They never caught on, not once. I’m just that good.
So I pulled thread after thread, hunting for scraps of knowledge about the old world Packs, the ones they erased.
Most of it was gone, thoroughly scrubbed from the official records. But that only sharpened my drive. I dug deeper and found fragments in old diary entries, dusty medical texts, and folklore, often dismissed as superstition. I started seeing patterns. Truth, buried beneath layers of dust and denial, waiting for someone stubborn enough to keep looking. Someone like me who wouldn’t stop until he found answers.
I shoulder the front door open, my boots scraping over the threshold as a gust of cold wind claws at our backs. I slam it shut with a sharp kick, sealing out the winter bite just in time. Inside, it’s like a tornado hit.
He's everywhere at once, a blur of limbs, and growled muttering, vaulting over furniture. Blankets, towels, pillows, and even a jacket or two go flying through the air as he scours the den for anything remotely soft.
There’s already a fire crackling in the hearth, flames licking greedily at the wood, a bed of orange coals glowing like they’ve been burning all night. Anyone else, I’d wonder how they got it going so fast, but this is Blaze. Of course the pyromaniac lit a perfect fire in under five minutes.
He stops mid-motion, a blanket dangling from one hand. His pale eyes lock on the trembling Omega cradled in my arms. Instantly, all that frenzied energy sharpens, still wild but honed, zeroed in on Halley.
“Hey there, Sparkles,” he says, his teeth flashing as he smiles at her widely. “How are you feeling? Ready to make a nest with Daddy and me?”
A shudder rolls through me.
Blaze’s grin broadens, lopsided as he looks at me with mischievousness.
Fucker.
He knows what that term does to me.
I’m glad Halley is basically floating in her own insulated space of instincts right now, because Blaze’s attitude is giving me whiplash.
