10

dmitri

I DIDN'T WANT to be alone that evening.

Since that first luncheon with the omega, I'd felt uncomfortable, like something inside my skin was stretching and trying to get out.

Like that Alien movie, basically?

It was no wonder that I was in a bad mood all the time.

But I'd really cocked things up. The omega didn't even like me, and why should she, because every time I was around her, I got all crazed. I'd beaten up Johannes, and Johannes was the most easy-going guy in the history of the universe. So, if I made him mad, yeah, I'd gone too far. And I'd hurt Nik, which really upset me.

Nikolai was sturdy in certain ways, with a deep well of hidden strength, but he was really fragile in other ways, too, and fucking him like that, it had been a bad call, I now realized.

That was probably why he was off with Johannes right now, getting wasted. Nik had extended an invitation to come drink with them, but I knew that it wasn't a serious invitation. I knew that Johannes did not want to go drinking with me after I punched his face in.

I really shouldn't have hit him.

I didn't even get it, because in theory, intellectually, I was fine with the entire arrangement. I'd thought it all through and talked to other alphas who had omegas, and they'd all told me that it was impossible to keep up with an omega, and that I'd be grateful of the help when it came down to it.

I'd gotten drunk with the King once, and he'd told me details about his sex life that I had never wanted to know, but I'd come away with it certain that there was no way on earth that I could possibly manage an omega on my own.

So, I had accepted it. At least I thought I had. And then she was there, and I was scenting her, and I was looking at her, and I never wanted any other person the way I wanted her, and I never felt such a wave of intense, choking possessiveness of her.

I did not want to share her.

There was another reason that I wanted Nikolai around right now and it was that I still had a raging hard-on. I was pretty sure I was in a rut, which shouldn't probably have happened, but then…

I had been in one before. It was after our dinner together. I'd excused myself when I'd gotten so turned on and so eager to touch her that I'd been terrified I was going to rip her clothes off and knot her and bite her right there during the dinner.

I had texted someone to come and fetch me, my fingers trembling, barely keeping control of myself.

I'd always thought she was pretty, of course, ever since we were kids. You know how it is when you're a kid. You're not really attracted to people in that way. You can't be. But you have a sense of aesthetics and beauty, even so, and a pretty girl is pretty.

Back then, when my family had made that positively backward marriage arrangement—I can't even believe that kind of thing is still legal, for instance. We were minors, and we couldn't consent to something like that. I'm just waiting for someone to take that to a court in Valhn and get it overturned. There's no way that can be permissible.

But anyway, back then, I was angry because I had this silly idea that I was going to grow up and become a magician.

Yeah, the kind with the card tricks and the rabbit-in-a-hat and all that?

I never even practiced doing any magic, or anything. I certainly could never perform any kind of illusions or sleight of hand. I think I picked it primarily because it made my mother gasp in horror, and I liked that.

It wasn't really about being a magician.

It was about freedom.

I wanted it.

I didn't want my entire future decided—the woman I was going to marry all laid out for me, the profession I was going to have laid out too. I was to take over all of the family assets and live out my life as a titled landowner of the peerage in Valhn.

I thought, back then, that I wanted a life of adventure and excitement. I wanted to travel. I wanted to perform. I wanted something else for myself.

And then I presented as an alpha, and I had exactly zero choices.

Even her…

When I presented, and I learned that I was now the heir to the throne of the Valhn Kingdom, I knew it negated my engagement to her, and I was disappointed. Then, when I found out that she presented, I was pleased, and I arranged that dinner.

But then, being around her was impossible.

I wanted to attack her.

After I left her, I was hard for three days solid, and nothing I did eased it. I holed up in my room and rubbed my cock raw jerking off. When that wasn't helping, I decided to have sex with people, and I called in some professionals to help, but I wore out three women, all betas, and then I finally consented to something with one of the alphas at court.

His name is Dirk, and he's of the same generation as the king.

He made it stop, I'll give him that.

But it was my first time with a man, and I…

Anyway, I was pretty sure the same thing was happening now, and I was pretty sure it was because of the omega. She just kicked me into a rut when I was too close to her, that was obvious.

What the hell was I going to do about this?

Before, she'd been gone. I'd been in a rut, jerking off, thinking only of her, remembering the smell of her perfume, thinking of how badly I wanted to have her.

But now, she was under the same roof as me.

Typically speaking, I had a great deal of self-control, but when it came to her, I was out of control.

I wished Nikolai were here.

But he wasn't.

And anyway, it wasn't fair for me to take it out on Nikolai. I'd already had rough sex with him once today.

I wanted to wait with the omega, that was the thing. But if I stayed this close to her, I was going to break.

I made a split-second decision to go north to Heirastein Castle. It was located high in the mountains, and there might even still be a little snow there, even though it was springtime. I could go riding there, ride for days, on horseback, ride the rut right out of myself.

I called for servants and started making orders, and they snapped into action.

I sat in my quarters while people swarmed around me, packing my suitcases, and then, Cole, the King Consort, arrived in my room.

I got to my feet, flustered. Omegas always made me flustered. Cole was bonded and I didn't want him like that, but it was still always difficult in the presence of an omega. With my rut on me, it was harder, worse.

There was something else about Cole, something in his scent.

He rushed across the room to me. He was bronze-skinned and elegant, from Spesseta, his black hair falling in waves around his expressive dark eyes. He put a finger in my face. "You can't go anywhere."

Up close, the scent was unmistakable, and it stirred me, even though I knew that he wasn't mine, even though I didn't want him. "You're going into heat," I said.

"Oh, believe me, I know," said Cole. "Why do you think that is? It's your damned omega, whatever you did to her today. I haven't even met her, but there are traces of it all over the castle. I walk the places she walked, and it's happening."

With female omegas, they often had something of a cycle—that is, if they were off suppressants. It could be as often as a beta woman's cycle, a heat once a month. Sometimes, it was less frequent. But all omegas were on suppressants these days. Of course sometimes, the suppressants failed.

Alphas were all required to undergo a quarterly injection that was essentially a chemical castration. It wore off, but it meant that we couldn't father children so easily.

If an omega was in heat, they were fertile, male or female.

Male omegas went into heat as a response to stimuli. They didn't have any kind of cycle. A female omega in heat? Yes, that could trigger Cole's heat.

"You're saying Aurelie's going into heat?" I said softly. That was why I was in a rut. Shit.

"You can't leave," said Cole.

No, I could not.

aurelie

IT WAS FUNNY how I didn't realize what it was even as it was getting worse and worse.

It took Ilse to tell me.

I asked her to come talk to me, because I wanted to sort through whatever it was that had happened with Dmitri, where I'd turned into his willing little obedient omega just because he kissed me a couple times and groped my ass. I couldn't believe that I'd told him I wouldn't see Johannes at all. I couldn't believe that I was sticking to it.

Disobeying him seemed, well, unthinkable.

Was this going to be the rest of my life? It wasn't that it was awful to obey Dmitri, that was the thing. It felt very good, almost a sexual pleasure, every time I thought about seeing Johannes and then told myself no. A little burst of hot goodness washed through me when I did that, a reward. It was fucked up, but I liked it.

It was disturbing, however.

I didn't want to be ordered around by my husband and my mate. I wanted us to be equals. I wanted to have my own agency. I didn't want him to puppet me.

I was going to say all of that to Ilse, but she came into my room, sniffed me, and then her eyes got all big and she backed out of the room and slammed the door.

"What?" I'd said. "What?"

"You're going into heat!" she'd said from the opposite side of the door.

It was like when you get a cut or something and it doesn't hurt, and then you see the blood, and then ouch .

It was like that.

When she said it, suddenly, I felt the heat, and I realized I'd been feeling it all along, but now it was too intense for me to even know what to do with it. I let out a gasp and I staggered backwards, away from the door until I collided with the four-poster bed in my room and then I crawled onto it.

That had been, I don't know, two hours ago.

Things had progressed since then.

The first thing that had happened was that Ilse sent a doctor to me, who checked all sorts of things, even did a very invasive pelvic exam, and gave me an injection that she said probably wasn't going to work, because that kind of thing didn't work once the heat had started to come on, but that it probably wasn't going to hurt anything.

There was the option of what I'd had done before, which was to be sedated.

I remembered what heat was like, and I'd said, yes, definitely, yes, sedate me.

"Let us talk to your alpha, sweetheart," said the doctor.

That drove me crazy . More of this indication that I didn't belong to myself. I was his. His puppet. His to move around. His to control. His to do whatever he wanted with.

If he wanted me to suffer through this heat alone, then I was going to have to, and no one was going to even listen to me.

So, here I was, huddled up on the bed. I had every pillow in my entire room all piled into the center and I kept piteously calling for more pillows, more blankets, softer things, anything soft.

I had long ago progressed to a stage where I couldn't bear to be wearing any clothes.

At first, it had only been undergarments. I'd taken off my bra and my underwear and thought I could handle being in thin, cotton pajama shirts and pants, but eventually, those had to go too, because they were just too much.

So, now, I was burrowed into the pillows, squirming around, covered in soft blankets, thinking about that sedation injection and wondering how in the world I was going to get it. Maybe if I talked to Dmitri, maybe then I'd get what I wanted.

But I sort of doubted Dmitri even cared.

He saw me as an annoyance, and he simply wanted to order me around so that I didn't cause issues for him.

But maybe I could text him.

Where the hell was my phone?

I whimpered, catching sight of it, all the way over there on the end table by my bed.

I pushed aside the covers and felt the bite of the air on my skin.

Nonono. I burrowed back down into my pillows, pulling the covers back over me. Stay here in the nest, I thought.

It wasn't even a nest, of course. It was a bed with some pillows on it. It was awful.

There were apparently nests in this castle. They were on the top floor, in the attic, tiny rooms with sloping ceilings that would be perfect and small and enclosed and everything good in the world.

I whimpered again.

Okay, I needed to get to my phone.

I took a deep breath and squirmed in that direction, not throwing off the covers, just reaching for it and trying to stay as covered as possible.

The doorknob to my room jiggled.

I moaned. Oh no. I had locked the door back when I could move around and get off the bed, not thinking that I'd get to the point where I was this bad. How was anyone supposed to get in now?

"Aurelie?"

I sat up straight, throwing off the covers, my body on high alert at the sound of his voice. I let out a whine and went up to present for him, panting. My alpha. My Dmitri. His voice was all rough and raspy and I wanted him. I let out a high-pitched noise, butt in the air, worrying my face into the pillows on the bed.

The door burst open, splintering, ruined. It hung half off one of its hinges and I gaped at that, stunned.

Dmitri hurled himself at me, covering my body with his, pressing me belly-down into my pillows and blankets. He kissed my neck and my shoulders, moaning softly against me.

I thrust up into him, rubbing my ass into his crotch. "Please," I said. "Please, please, please."

"Aurelie, sweet baby girl," he breathed into my skin, "I'm so fucking sorry about this."

"Please," I said. "Please."

He had his hand at his crotch, and it was also fondling my naked ass. "Shh, shh, just calm down, pretty thing, calm down, I'm here. Fuck." He freed himself, and I could feel the heat of his huge erection against my skin.

I moaned, a desperate noise.

"Shh," he said again, and he penetrated my wet pussy.

I let out a garbled noise. Fuck, that felt good. He was nice and thick and hot and perfect. He jammed himself into me, all the way up to his knot.

Ohh, his knot. I wanted that knot.

He fucked me steadily into my pillows, which pressed into my mound from all different angles, rubbing me outside as he rubbed me inside. It was very, very good, and I was in heat, and I fell apart right away, climbing up a hill to a nice, sweet burst of an orgasm like the sun cresting over a hill.

"Yes, alpha," I groaned out. "Yes, please, please, alpha."

"Good omega, just like that," he breathed. "There you go, there . Better?"

"Yes," I gasped. "Yes, better, but…"

"Not enough, I know." He pulled out.

I let out a cry of what I think might be termed outrage.

He peppered my back with kisses. "Shh, not here, okay? That was just… I couldn't stop…" He groaned, sagging into me.

I whined, trying to present again, even though he was lying on top of me. I was having flashbacks of the time I'd been in heat with Corentin, how I'd been too stupid to understand what I wanted for most of it, and then how I'd realized I wanted things and asked for them and then felt guilty because he couldn't give them to me, and why did I want so much when he couldn't help me and why was I such a problem?

Panic was rising in me.

"What's that in your scent?" Dmitri sounded like he was worried, too. "What did I do?"

I was going to start crying.

He vaulted off of me. "Roll onto your back, omega," he said firmly, his voice like a port in an awful storm.

I did exactly what he said, letting out little sobbing breaths. I lay there on my pillows, totally naked, looking up at him.

He climbed back over me, hands and knees on either side, his still-hard cock sticking out of his pants, and looked me directly in the eyes. "Here, omega, here."

I nodded, gazing into his eyes, lost in his eyes, needing him. "Please," I said again.

"I am taking you to a nest, you understand?"

"Oh," I said with a little smile. "Really?" A rush of relief went through me.

He grunted. He kissed me hard. "That's better, sweetness, that scent is much better."

I writhed up into him, pressing my breasts into his shirt. "Dmitri," I sighed.

He put a hand on my neck and pinned me down.

I gasped, liking that more than I wanted to admit. He wasn't hurting me or anything. I could definitely breathe. I felt very safe though, his hand on my neck, his huge hand against that small, vulnerable part of me. I perfumed wildly, eyes rolling back in my head.

"Stop," he growled.

"Can't," I said. Nothing he said was going to make the perfume stop when I was in heat.

"If you don't stop, I'm going to knot you right here and now on this bed with the door hanging off the hinges. That what you want?"

"Um…?"

He rolled his eyes. "Don't answer that." He let go of me and got off the bed. He struggled to zip away his erection, which was pulsing and huge and still wet with my slick. Then he wrapped me up in one of my soft blankets and picked me up bride style.

I latched my arms around his neck. "What about my pillows?"

"There are pillows in the nest," he said.

"Enough pillows, though?" I said, reaching for the ones on my bed. "Need some of these in case."

He sighed, shaking his head at me, but there was some look in his eyes, something indulgent, something affectionate, something right . He seized two of the pillows, tucked them in against me, tightened his grip on my body, and then swung me out into the hallway.

I clung to him.

He went down the hallway.

"If we're going to a nest, does that mean you're going to knot me?" I said.

"As if I could stop myself," he said, his voice threaded with desire.

"Are you going to… bite me?"

"I don't know," he said. "It doesn't matter, sweet girl, that's the thing. It doesn't matter when, not in the end. We can be bonded before the wedding."

"But tradition," I said.

"Fuck tradition," he said. "It'll be whatever you need, got it?"

I liked the idea of that, but I didn't believe him. Thus far, it had really not been about whatever I needed, that was the thing. It had been about whatever he thought was the way it was supposed to be. I was nervous.

But it was better that he was here, and I wanted a nest, and I wanted his knot. Compared to just a short time ago, everything was much, much better.

"If I do," he said, "we should have a discussion while we're still relatively in our right minds about where you want it."

"Where I want what?"

"The bite, baby girl," he said softly.

"Well, it's tradition for it to be on the neck, isn't it?"

"Cole wanted his bite elsewhere," said Dmitri. "It's where you want it."

"Where did Cole want it?"

"I understand he has two on his inner thighs, one from the king and one from Ilse," said Dmitri.

"Oh," I said softly, stretching the word out, thinking of Nikolai's mouth on my inner thigh as he had gone down on me earlier that day. "Inner thighs."

"It's where you want it, though, sweet girl," he said.

"Well, I always just figured it would be on my neck," I said.

"Because tradition," he said.

"Well, you're very traditional," I said.

"You must have some opinion about the permanent mating mark I'm going to put on your body," he said.

I hesitated. Why hadn't I thought about this? It was my body, after all. "Do you have somewhere you want to put it?"

"You're afraid of me, aren't you?" he said gruffly. We were climbing up a set of stairs and he had to move his arm to tuck my head in against his chest so that I didn't bump it.

"No," I said. "I just don't have a real strong opinion about the bite. I think it's more important to you than it is to me."

"It's your body, omega."

"Yeah, but the mark means that my body sort of isn't mine anymore, right? Like, it belongs to you now." Bitterness crept into my tone.

"Well… yeah, I guess there's that interpretation," he said softly. "But I'd like it to mean that we belong to each other, I guess. Because, I swear to you, omega, you already command me, and you have no idea how much."

"You said earlier that I have to submit to you," I said.

"I know I said that, but I didn't mean it to be, uh, like that."

"Oh, right." I was sarcastic. "You mean the super empowering kind of submission."

He winced. "We're obviously not ready for the bite. I won't, okay? We'll wait. We'll do whatever we need to in order to get you through this heat, and that'll probably mean bringing in Johannes and Nikolai, which you won't mind, right? You like them both? You like them more than you like me?"

Now, it was my turn to wince. "No, I wouldn't say that."

We cleared the top of the steps and emerged onto the top floor. The roof did come to a peak in the middle. We were in the attic.

He turned and headed down the hallway. I peered into open doors, but they were all dark inside.

"It's okay to say that omega," he said. "You don't have to like me. You just have to be a very good girl and get stuck on my knot, okay?" His voice was a purr.

I convulsed at the words. "Yes, yes, please."

"Good," he said.

"But I still… there's something powerful between us, Dmitri. You do this to me. You trigger my heats through my suppressants. It happened after the dinner, too, and—"

"Really?" He stopped in the middle of the hall, looking down at me. "That's why I went into that rut?"

"You went into a rut after that dinner?"

"Why do you think I left in the middle of it?"

My lips parted. "You've… all along, it's never been that you didn't like me, just that I made you crazy turned on, isn't it?"

He shrugged. "Pretty much."

"Oh," I said.

He started walking again. He veered into a room and it was full of candlelight and soft, warm lights, and servants crawling around, arranging pillows and setting out trays of snack foods like crackers and cheese and cured meats.

"Everyone out," bellowed Dmitri.

All the servants scurried away as he set me down on the springy floor. The whole room was a mattress. I lay back, sighing, kicking off the blanket.

"Shut the door," yelled Dmitri.

The door slammed, just as I was revealing my nudity.

He collapsed next to me, lying on his side, peering down at me. "Oh, hell, I didn't think I was going to make it. I thought I was going to fuck you on the steps like ten times."

I giggled. "Really?"

"Yes, thank you for arguing with me like that or I might never have managed it. You have no idea what you smell like right now."

"You do like the way I smell?" I was still insecure about that.

"Baby, you smell like everything I ever wanted wrapped in bacon and dipped in chocolate."

"Bacon and chocolate?" I said, thinking that over. "That might be good."

He ran a hand appreciatively over my body. "You have such perfect breasts. I love the shape of them and I love the size of your nipples and the color of your aureoles, and after we're a little less frenzied, I'm going to spend a long time just tasting them. I like the soft little protrusion of your belly and your ample hips and your thighs, and this, of course this ." He cupped my pussy. "You're perfect. You're so pretty and dark and tiny."

The praise made me short circuit. A spasm went through me, and my teeth chattered. I went up to present for him again.

He sighed, lying next to me, surveying me from beneath, reaching in to fondle my breasts as I rubbed my face into the surface of the nest and pushed my ass higher and higher into the air.

He undid his pants again, pushing them entirely off and got up behind me, stroking his hands over my thighs and hips, positioning himself right at my opening again. "Good omega, good girl. Love watching you present for me. You're such a pretty, submissive little thing, aren't you?"

I whined.

"You do want to submit to me, don't you, omega?" His voice was a dark tease.

"Yes," I gasped.

"Want to submit and take my knot."

"Yes," I panted.

"Ask for it."

"Can I… can I have your knot, alpha?" I managed, sort of angry with him for making me do that, but mostly just slicking like crazy because it was turning me on.

"Yes, definitely," he said. "That's what we're going to do right now, because we both need it. I'm going to knot you nice and hard for as long as we need it. Then, afterwards, you'll be stuck on my cock and all mine, omega. Can't get away once I'm locked in. You want that, though, right? Want trapped that way?"

I let out a garbled breath.

He rubbed the head of his cock against me, through the slick at my opening and then down to tease my clit.

It felt amazing. I let out a series of noisy breaths.

"Say it, omega. Tell me to trap you, make you my captive, use my cock to keep you right here with me."

"Please," I whispered.

"Please what?"

"Knot me, alpha," I said. "Make me yours."

"Oh, you're mine, omega," he said, sinking into me.

I cried out as he filled me back up again.

"Fuck, you feel so good. You have a perfect little tight, wet pussy, don't you? Fuck, fuck, fuck." He thrust all the way to his knot and then rocked against me. "Losing it, omega, losing it."

What did that mean?

"You want it, right?" He was out of breath. "You need it?"

"Your knot," I moaned. "Yes, please, alpha. Need it."

He dug his fingers into my hips and yanked me onto his knot. He was enormous, and the stretch was like a ring of fire as he wrestled his way in.

I screamed.

He made some kind of garbled noise.

And then he was in, and I came right away. His knot seemed to hit all the right spots, and I tightened into one point of perfect, wondrous pleasure and then contracted again and again, squeezing him inside me in a little rhythm, and every time I contracted, it felt so good that it intensified the sensation.

He was fucking me through this, making some kind of strange animalistic noise as he pounded me from behind, which he couldn't even really do, because he was knotted into me, so he was stretching the skin of my pussy to thrust into me, and that felt good too, that was making my orgasm take on some kind of strange and odd dimension that was even better.

I don't know how long it went on, but I never exactly stopped coming.

I hit several different peaks of climax, and they started to ebb out, but the orgasm never really stopped. I just came and came and came and he fucked me while making that rabid-bear sound at my back and it went on and on for a while.

Eventually, my legs gave out, and I collapsed, face down into the bed.

He, still inside me, came with me, and kept fucking me, but slower.

Slower and slower, until he was barely rocking into me, and my orgasm was just these tiny little aftershocks that hit me and made me hum.

Slower.

Slower.

And then, a wave of nothing but warm, good darkness that enveloped us both.

Maybe I slept.

I don't know.