7. Candy

Iwas still in heat. It had been four days of endless pain, and the fuckboy alphas who bought me were finally leaving.

￡100,000, that was what I was worth. And I'd get twenty-five per cent of it, which was more than I ever thought I could earn in my life.

As soon as I entered pre-heat, they were notified, and my alphas drove me to the spa. The winners arrived just as I did. They were uni students on holiday, so they answered the call straight away.

That was the day my omega instincts took over, where I needed to build a nest and create a safe space for myself before we began. They paid to have me for five days, and they came before I could build a nest, so everything from the warehouse staff still lay in the corner, waiting to be unwrapped. They didn"t touch it once the whole time they were in the room.

I thought I just had to pretend I liked it, like every other time I'd fucked for money. I had no idea what it really meant to be in heat.

I'd never felt so used.

I lay on the bed that had been my stage, legs hanging off the end, my heels knocking on the footboard, arms spread at ninety-degree angles as I stared at the ceiling in shock.

Burning tendrils of heat still lit my veins, but my mind was too numb to care about my need for a knot—my body was in charge of that.

I'd been doing this for years. Sex was my game; sex was the way I survived, and how I kept myself in control, but my heat… My heat was something else entirely.

I was a whore—I was here to be used—but there was a huge difference between acting like you wanted it and being so desperate for a knot that you'll let alphas do anything to you as long as you got it.

Even when I was at Stevie's, and lowlife alphas were paying shit money to fuck me in the attic room, pinning me down, sometimes even beating me while I endured it, I had more control than that.

Beta attendants stood inside the room throughout my whole heat. They were the ones who made sure I showered, ate, had time to sleep. Because I knew the rich kid alphas who bought me would have just kept on fucking me until I passed out from exhaustion.

Those alphas didn't give a shit that my body was still on fire when they left.

The attendants were meant to sound the alarm if anything happened outside the boundaries of the strict rules set in place by Michael. Even though I kept throwing them signals, showing them I needed the fuckboys to stop, the bitches simply gave me blank looks and shook their heads. Every single thing those alphas did to me was permissible.

Now I couldn't move. White noise filled my ears on the second day, and I had disappeared inside myself to hide from what was happening. I was there through all of it, but my omega instincts had completely taken over. That primal part of me that demanded a mate was in total control, my body in charge of my mind.

I kept my eyes shut as the fuckboys took me, laughing, jeering, seeing what they could make me do if they deprived me of a knot. I imagined I was with my alphas, that Apollo, Zeus, and Odin were surrounding me with love and drowning me in their scents, dreaming of how they would tear those alphas apart for me.

I thought when the alphas who bought me left, I would pass out and sleep for days. Instead, I was wired, my mind running at a hundred miles an hour as I tried to process what I had been through.

I'd been attacked before; I'd been held down in a dark alley, my screams muffled by a hand over my mouth as an alpha beat and fucked me, but I fought. I fought him every step of the way.

The scars on the bottom of my feet where I ran barefoot across broken glass to get away from him were always there, vivid white lines slicing through my pale skin that proves my strength.

But this time, I wanted it. In my heat, I wanted everything those fuckboys could give me, and I couldn't stop myself from wanting it. Even now, lying here, staring up at the ceiling, my body ravaged and ruined, I still wanted it.

The moment the alphas left, the beta attendants dragged me to the bathroom and made me wash myself. They said they needed to empty the room for the cleaners.

I honestly thought it would be different here. The tears I shed during my heat weren't just from my loss of control, it was from the callous looks of the betas who attended me, immune to my cries for help.

Fuck Michael and his promise to keep me safe. Fuck all of them.

In the end, there was no changing what I really was.

I begged them to let me stay in the room, throwing myself onto the stripped bed before they could take me away.

I rejected the post-heat treatment; I didn't deserve any kindness after all that. I didn't want anyone to treat me like they cared, because in the end, everyone was a liar. No matter how many disgusting alphas I'd fucked since I started selling myself, I never felt dirty. I might have had a shower, but it wouldn't get rid of the stench of my heat.

And I didn't want some random pack taking care of me. I wanted them.

Now the cleaning staff worked around me, clattering empty plates and bottles, hoovering slick from the carpet and scrubbing cum off the walls. All I had were the sounds of people chatting underneath the vast emptiness that consumed me.

The girls at Stevie's had warned me that my heat would be like this, but I didn't realise how much I would lose.

My breaths were the only real proof that I was alive. My chest rising and falling, the brutal thoughts and images assaulting me from every angle as life carried on around me.

I wouldn't let this happen again. I had to be prepared next time. I'd learn how to use my heat, like I did with everything else in my life.

How was I meant to live through it? How was I ever going to live with myself if that was the person I became every time I had a heat?

Because it wasn't only me that had been destroyed. I had three scent matches, three alphas who stood guard as the fuckboys took me for days. But I didn't even know if they were out there anymore. Maybe they were so disgusted with me that they'd abandoned me.

Fucking someone for a few hours a night was nothing compared to what I'd just done.

I used to own the word ‘whore'. It was a nasty slur that shocked people, but it was my badge of honour. Because even though life had thrust me towards selling my pussy to survive, I still chose it. It was my choice to fuck for money, but that…

I'd lost. I was ruined.

And I had ten years of it. Ten contracted years of being fucked beyond my control, three times a year. I could already see how time would stretch out.

I made ￡25,000 in less than a week.

That was one thought that kept me going. How much could I earn if I kept at it? ￡25,000 a heat, for ten years, three times a year. I would never have to worry about how I was going to survive again.

I had to look at it that way. Instead of the empty horror pounding through me as I saw what it truly meant to lose control, I needed to focus on the future.

I just had to hold on and pray Apollo, Zeus, and Odin would still want me when it was over.

Idon't know how long I'd been lying there before the smell hit me.

My body was numb, every part of me ached, and I wanted to sink into the mattress and disappear forever, but sleep wouldn't come.

So they did instead.

Mangos—juicy, delicious, ripe, pulling me into sunny jungles, filled with singing birds and the humming of insects, humid heat surrounding my body with warmth and safety. It was enhanced by the heavy scent of lemon vodka, so hard and severe, taking me to frozen tundras and ice-capped mountains, cooling the fire in my veins that burnt my skin and dug into my flesh.

"Candy, darling, for fuck's sake." Odin's strained voice cut through the dull buzz in my ears.

I moaned, swept away by their contrasting scents as I looked up to meet Odin's eye, and the harsh scar that tore the right side of his face. The emptiness there was exactly like mine.

Perfume wafted from me as Apollo leaned towards me. The bed dipped, my left hip dropping as he crawled over.

"What did they do to you, sweetheart?" Apollo whispered so gently it nearly unhinged me. I was close to curling up and sobbing in his arms. I kept myself strong my whole life, but I wasn't brave enough to stand losing control.

I was tougher than this. I might not have handled worse, but I wasn't broken. Yet.

Apollo lifted a finger, brushing away a loose hair from my cheek, and I shuddered at his touch.

My gaze jumped to Odin towering above us, a dead fury emanating from him, his dark aura sweeping through me, setting me off again.

I wasn't done yet.

My omega instincts awakened as my need for a knot reignited. I had to do something. I had to find a way to bring them inside me.

I whimpered as my back arched, looking pleadingly at Apollo. I didn't even know if I could talk. I had spent so long either shouting or sucking that my throat had worn down.

Just seeing them again made accepting Michael's offer worth it. If I hadn't come here, if I hadn't signed the contract, I wouldn't have found my scent matches.

"Don't worry. We're here now." Apollo's voice was like a light in the darkness, chasing away the painful ache of my heat.

He lifted a thin blanket over my naked body, covering my chest and legs. His fingers caressed my right arm, and tingles scattered from the point of his touch.

With one brush of his finger, my hollow emptiness was already filling with love.

Apollo took my wrist, shifting my arm. He let out a deep sigh, and the bed creaked as he moved. I watched him, pain lacing my body as he placed a tender kiss to the soft skin of my wrist before lowering it to my stomach. That was why I rejected the post-heat treatment, because I couldn't deal with kindness after the past three days.

I moaned as he bent forward, reaching for my other wrist. His scent washed over me as he eased my hand to join the other on my stomach. I drew in the largest breath I could, a twinge stinging my chest at the effort. I wished his ripe smell of mangos could be permanently etched into my skin so he would always be part of me.

I thought the first time they saw me naked would be a private show, where I'd wind them up with a strip tease until they were putty in my hands.

But never like this.

"Come on, darling," Odin's voice came from my right, low and heavy, and I could taste the fear in his scent. "Let's get out of here."

So quickly, his giant hands pressed against me, one feeding under my knees, the other at my lower back. Suddenly, I rose into the air, my body limp and lifeless as a wall of hard muscle covered in a tailored white shirt became my new pillow. "There we go. I've got you."

On instinct, I lifted my aching arms and clung to his neck, my hands barely meeting the top of his spine. Everything about Odin was huge, and I finally relaxed, finally safe.

I moaned as my nose grazed his neck, a deep breath making me drunk on the pure scent of him. "Odin…" I murmured, licking at his skin, drawing a quiet groan from him that went straight to my pussy.

His thick brown beard scratched against my cheek as I leaned into his hold and met his stormy gaze. I didn't want them to treat me with pity, like some of those attendants did. I needed my mates, my alphas; I needed the men who would love me even when I broke.

Wrapped in a fluffy violet blanket, Apollo's scent blended with ours as Odin turned and led the way through corridors and down a flight of stairs.

"You could take me here, you know." I gasped at the thought, shifting my hips, rubbing on him as he walked. I wished Odin and Apollo could wipe away every memory of what had happened in that room. Finish my last heat the way it was supposed to go, with my mates. "You could push me up against the wall and fuck me," I groaned.

Odin's energy hardened, his grasp growing firmer. "We're here to take you back to London. Nothing else," he said, his attention fixed on Apollo as he walked in front of us.

I curved my back, dropping my left arm to trace the solid line of his pecs through his shirt, shifting my shoulder to grind on his nipple.

He flinched, and sparks lit up inside me. It was the first sign of real life I'd felt for days.

His heart beat next to my ear, and I saw the slight bob of his Adam's apple as his body shook, but he was walking too quickly for me to tell for sure how affected he was.

The sound of their footsteps changed from carpet to tiles, and the walls shifted from the elegant royal blue of the heat suites at Knottinghill Spa to a soft white of the staff corridors.

I groaned as a fresh scent hit me, and I turned my head, whimpering as Zeus raced towards us. "What the fuck, guys? Why the fuck are you taking so long?"

Apollo stepped in front of us, looking up at him. "Zeus…"

"No, I can't believe you've been—"

"Zeus." Apollo's voice was like a whip, cutting through everything else in the wide corridor. Zeus's back straightened, angry, as his gaze flicked to me.

He instantly changed, his rage morphing into pain when he met my eyes.

"Oh, fuck," he rasped, backing down instantly. "Oh, sugar, I'm so sorry." He swept towards us and, within seconds, his thick fingers buried themselves in my hair as he bent over, pressing his lips to my forehead.

In my numb state, I could only feel Zeus's lips and Odin's hands.

Passion fruit blended with Apollo and Odin's scents, the sweet burst like a perfect sorbet on a hot day helped lift the ache. My eyes fluttered as I breathed them in, finally whole.

"Are you ready to go?" Zeus murmured as he pulled back.

"Go where?" I croaked.

Zeus cupped my cheek, and I eased into his smile as a new wave of heat flooded me.

"Home."

They were arguing the moment Apollo started the car. I could hear them in the background as I drifted off in Odin's arms.

"She's still in heat!" Zeus said from the passenger seat. "We can't leave her alone after all she's been through. Let's take her back to ours."

Odin's breaths thrummed through me as I lay against his chest in the back of the car. My breaths were in time with his, peace I'd never felt before drifting over me as the delicate strokes of his thumb on my forearm lulled me back to sleep.

"Michael said she rejected a post-heat treatment." Apollo's voice was so beautiful, so light compared to the deep rumbles of Odin's chest and Zeus's rough snarl. "We can't take her back to our flat when there's nothing there for an omega."

I didn't need a nest when I had them. Those alphas didn't let me make one, so I didn't need one now. That's what I thought, but my instincts were telling me to gather blankets and pillows, anything soft and lovely, so my three alphas could lay me down and fuck me until I was sated.

"We're her scent matches, Apollo." Zeus grew more frantic by the second. "We'll be enough."

I kept my eyes closed. I didn't want them to know I was awake. Just hearing Zeus say how we were meant to be together had tears threatening to spill from me. I hated that my heat made me more emotional. My weakness was even more obvious like this.

"That won't be enough to protect us from Michael if he finds out," Apollo said, and Odin let out a sharp exhale. A pregnant pause hung between the three of them before Apollo spoke again.

"I know, Zeus," he said softly, answering the unspoken question. "I know, but I don't want to risk losing her. We can't fight Michael on this."

"You're talking like it's already happened," Odin said quietly, as if he was trying not to wake me, and I couldn't resist snuggling closer to his chest. His whole body stilled as I shuffled and, as soon as I was comfortable, his gentle aura covered me, and he stroked me with his thumb again.

"The second we saw her, it happened," Zeus shot back. "There's no going back from this now. And we can…"

But those were the last words I heard as Odin's steady breaths carried me away into sleep.