Chapter 4

Riley

I don’t know what I expected to feel on our journey. Not this persistent feeling of deja vu as I watched farmland whoosh past out the car window. The massive silver-barked eucalyptus trees that seemed determined to claw at the sky, the paddocks of sleepy sheep cropping grass, they were what I saw every time we drove up to the city as a kid, and yet it felt so weird as an adult. The persistent pressure of my belly was the only thing reminding me that I wasn’t a child anymore.

A really persistent one.

“Pee break?” I asked Haze as we rolled into another tiny town.

“You got it.”

He’d already mapped out every public toilet on the way, knowing what my bladder was like now. Pulling up out the front of a park, he was around to my door and opening it before I could even turn, hands out to help me exit the car.

“You know you don’t have to do this,” I huffed.

“Yeah, but you’re doing all the hard work in this pregnancy, so doing this kind of thing helps alleviate my guilt. Just go with it, OK?”

Those piercing blue eyes of his twinkled, but that wasn’t entirely a lie.

“Are you going to pull my pants down and help me sit on the loo?”

That was a joke, but as soon as I said the words aloud, I had a terrible thought. I was having quintuplets. Was that the way it would be? Towards the end of the pregnancy, would I even be able to see my pants to pull them down? His smirk widened.

“If I’m pulling your pants down.” He drew me closer, his voice a low buzz in my ear. “It’s to do something a whole lot more interesting than that. Women are supposed to get hella horny when pregnant.”

Shit, his words were like a switch to turn my body on. I felt something slick shift inside me.

“It’s the increased blood flow,” I replied stiffly, looking around us for the first time. The town was quiet, the only evidence of life the cars whizzing past on the highway. “The babies’ circulatory systems are connected to the mother’s, so more blood is produced to ferry nutrients around the body and to each child. That means greater blood flow to the groin, resulting in easier and more intense arousal in some individuals.”

“That’s it, baby,” Haze crooned. “Talk science to me.”

“Stop turning our mate on.” Fen’s crisp tones were like a splash of water to the face, forcing me back, but when I moved, I found him right there. His fingers pushed my hair back from my neck, then he traced the shape of my mating marks. I couldn’t help but shiver, a faint echo of the pulses of ecstasy I’d felt when they claimed me rushed through my body. “Or at least wait until I can play too.”

They each moved closer, wedging me tightly between their bodies, but it wasn’t enough. I needed their hands on my skin, their lips mapping every curve. I wanted them to see every inch of me and how my body changed as their children grew within. I wanted to be claimed over and over again, even as their hands cradled my belly. Sometimes pregnancy felt like one long, lowkey heat, something that had Candy tearing her hair out.

“It’s not fair that you have to have all this going on.” She gestured vaguely to my body. “And the capacity for super easy multiple orgasms as well. You keep developing cool drugs. How about one where I could be an omega temporarily?” She bent over and started twerking rather disturbingly, making me wonder if she had learned anything about my designation. “I don’t want any annoying mates hanging around the next day, but a whole lot of knotted cock for one night?”

“Please stop saying knotted cock,” I said.

“Why?” She started gyrating faster. “You get it every night. Surely you can say the words.”

“Because Gideon Crowe, the founder of our company and CEO is just about to walk through the door,” I replied.

“Shit!”

I couldn’t have it then and I couldn’t have it now, so I stepped away from the two of them.

“Unless you guys have whole other kinks I’m not aware of, I’m going to go and pee alone right now.”

“Scream if you see any spiders in there,” Blake called out.

“Spiders? Spiders…!”

Somehow I managed to deal with the dangers of an Australian public toilet, but I admit I checked every corner and the back of the door before I did what I needed to, only to emerge out of the toilet block to see this.

It felt like I spent half my teenage years eating out my own heart over the Vanguard boys, and I felt a whisper of that now. Watching them lean against the car and talk shit, it was like the ten years we’d spent apart never happened. We had a soccer mum van now, not the big beast the boys used to drive around in, but still. I could still see the boys they were in their smiles, in their gestures, which had me thinking.

Was this smart? Bordertown was my home once, but I’d barely thought about it again after I’d left. I couldn’t, not without the pain of being separated from them threatening to engulf me. We were together now. No one could dispute the bite marks on my neck, the babies in my belly, but somehow a small sliver of doubt remained. Were we ever free of that past? I didn’t know, but I was about to find out.

“Is there a decent road house on that map of yours?” I asked Haze as I looked over his shoulder at his phone. “I could murder a burger.”

“I know a place.”

Blake gave Haze directions as Fen wrapped his arm around my waist, steering me towards the car. “One extra juicy burger, coming right up.”

“And here we are.”

Ryan sounded relieved and just a tiny little bit bitter.

I pulled away from Blake and Colt, even though they were giving me the best massages. I couldn’t feel the back pain, the ache of my swollen feet, not when I saw the now-faded town sign appear. Those sheep grazing in the small paddocks, there were less of them. Some of the land had been given over to new housing estates, but that didn’t stop me from seeing it. The same road into town, the same oak trees flanking each side, the same flowers waving in the breeze, the monument erected to World War I veterans. As we passed a bus stop, my eyes half closed and that’s when I saw her.

Teenage me waiting by the roadside, her arms wrapped around her books. She was entirely focussed on the road, waiting for the bus to appear, and because of that, she didn’t notice them. Or did she? Her back was ramrod straight, her whole body tense as the Vanguard boys strolled up to the bus stop, surrounding her like the pack of wolves they were. The books were plucked from her fingers and when she turned to see who took them, the rest of the boys clustered closer. Sliding their hands across her shoulders, lifting her ponytail and wrapping it around their hand as?—

“We all good, Riley?”

Fen, all of them, were far too attuned to the way I was feeling, and that went double since we got in the car. I forced myself to smile.

“I’m fine, just… remembering. The ice cream from the corner store.” I pointed a finger at the window as we drove past a shop, relieved to see a familiar sight. It looked a little older and more tired than I remembered.

“Damn, they were good,” Colt groaned.

“Especially when old man Blackford gave us an extra scoop,” Ryan added.

“Walking up to the fish and chips shop when the alphas were working late,” I said, staring at what looked like a new takeaway that had replaced the other one.

“And sneaking too many chips from a tear in the corner.” Blake chuckled. “The dads forcing us to go back and buy another order from our own money.”

“Climbing that tree.”

“Nearly getting run over on that corner.”

“Racing our bikes?—”

“Sneaking out to the park at night.”

They kept coming thick and fast, this shared past. Sometimes it felt like we were so focussed on the present we couldn’t see this anymore. Half the reason why it hurt so much leaving here was how good it was. Compared to the city, it was a quiet life, but it was also a peaceful one. Bordertown was a reasonable size being a regional hub, but that didn’t stop it from operating at a fairly sleepy pace.

It was a nice place to raise kids.

I blinked, almost able to hear Eloise’s scream at that thought, so I stuffed it right down.

“We’ve got to report to the alpha residence first.” Fen’s eyes held mine in the rear vision mirror when he pulled the car over. “The Williams pack took over when we stepped down.”

Academically that made sense, but in my mind, I saw the boys that had confronted the Vanguards that night and found it hard to imagine them ruling anything. Every visiting pack needed to touch base with the one that ruled a town as both a courtesy and to avoid conflict, but this was different. It wasn’t just us driving up to the big house that the boys had grown up in, that my dad had served in.

That had become my second home.

But when I stared up the big stone steps as we pulled up out front the alpha residence, it wasn’t my long dead-dad or the boys’ the stepped out. The Williams pack looked the same but different, as no doubt we did, but Cheryl…?

I saw teenage Riley again, this time sitting on the back seat of the bus, her leg pressed against Fen’s as Cheryl sauntered closer. She looked my ‘friend’ up and down like he was something delicious and she was dying for a taste. The omega was a little older, her expression a little harder, but that same look of glee was right there on her face. She stepped forward, her waist blissfully slender while mine was swollen, and put her hand on her hip.

“Fen Vanguard…” Her words were like a caress along my mate’s cheek, and that had my wolf throwing itself against the barrier between us. Fen had shoved her off his lap back then, but she wouldn’t get a chance to get that close this time. “You came back.”

For just a moment, I saw hope rise in her eyes, only for it to die the moment I stepped forward.

Cheryl had barely noticed me back then, but she saw me right now. The smile faded as she took me in. Not just my scent, my wolf, because by the flare of her nostrils, she picked up both. No, it was the swell of my belly that had her turning pale.

“We did.” Fen’s arm went around my waist. “Keith, alphas.” He nodded to the ruling pack to be polite. “Mum would’ve let you know we were coming to town for a visit.”

“You said you weren’t coming back here ever, Vanguard,” one of the Williams alphas growled.

“Not coming back until we’d found our fated mate,” Blake corrected, and I almost smiled as each of the Williams alphas blanched at his size. He crossed his arms, displaying the thick ropes of muscle there. “And we did. You remember Riley. We always knew she was the one for us and she accepted our bond.”

“You…?” Cheryl said that one word with all the venom most people saved for child abusers or murderers. “You’re Omega Vanguard?”