Chapter Eighteen

Michael

They"re all okay. I mean, they"re not. But they also are. They"re okay enough to talk to us.

"They said they were taking us to the big compound in the Northern territory. Where Doctor Owens is. They said that we"ll be processed and matched there," the mousy omega with blood up to her elbows tells us. Her name is Remy. She"s seventeen, and very angry. She was only picked up a few weeks ago, like the other omegas in the van.

There are eleven of them. She"s the youngest. The oldest, Rachel, is thirty-four.

Desie finishes cleaning her up and bandaging a few of her fingers where the nails were ripped off. They pretty much pulled that beta apart after they dragged him into the van. I kind of want to throw them a parade or a party, but Desie and Seth have coordinated with Nathan to get them to the nearest hospital, which is conveniently owned by the East Coast Council.

Lopez has insisted on staying on the phone with Seth the entire time and he"s determined to fly out to the hospital to see to the care of these omegas himself. He"s taking this very personally. I think that"s a good thing. He had such a heavy hand in the rogue operations for a very long time, whether he enjoyed it or not. A lot of lives have been destroyed because of his work with Flores.

"Doctor Owens?" Seth asks. He"s keeping a polite distance from them. He"s been putting up a good front, but he"s wound up so tight that my neck is starting to hurt. I hope all this doesn"t cause him to have an attack. He"s been doing really well for the past couple months, even with the sexual stuff. But this is a van-load of damaged, afraid omegas and if anything will set off an attack for him, this is it.

Rachel answers instead of Remy. "That"s who they kept talking about. I didn"t know he was a doctor. I"ve only heard people refer to him as Mister Owens. I think he"s the one in charge of the main facility in the Northern territory. They said he was going to tag us before we were placed or matched or whatever."

"Did you overhear anything else? Maybe a location of the facility or compound? Any names?" Seth continues.

Rachel exchanges looks with several of the other omegas who each shrug or shake their heads. "I only heard three names. Owens, Lopez, and Ward."

"What did they say about Lopez?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "Not much. Just that some of us would be shipped to him. I thought Flores was in charge of the West Coast?"

"He was," Ben smiles.

It takes her a minute, but she returns his smile. "Maybe Lopez will be next." She looks at Desie, her smile fading a little. "We were lucky you came along. I know they were going to try to take you, but thankfully they didn't get the chance. Now you're here saving us."

"You saved yourselves," Desie tells her. "We just provided a distraction. You did the hard work."

Almost an hour later, three medical units pull up to collect the omegas. Elizabet calls Seth to let him know that she"s sending a team to stay with them at the hospital and that the team will help them get back to their homes. Most of them are from the Southern territory, and don't live too far from each other. Hopefully they can get checked out and escorted back home soon.

"I wish they had more information," Desie sighs, leaning against me again as soon as we get going again.

"They had another name," Seth says. "And they said Owens was a doctor. They also think Lopez is in charge of the West Coast, and that"s good. It will help if nobody knows he"s working with us. I"m so glad we were there to help them."

Ben glances at him. "How are you feeling? That was a lot."

Seth leans his head back against the headrest, letting out a slow breath. "I"m alright. They were okay for the most part. They were so brave."

Ben nods, his eyes back on the road. "They were. I wasn"t expecting any of that. Well… I expected to shoot that one guy and any other guys that were with him, but I definitely didn"t expect those omegas to pull him into the van. It was awesome."

Twenty hours and six stressful bathroom breaks later, we pull off the highway onto a long road. The sweet scents of the Zaphir distillery are an unexpected treat. I don"t know why I thought it would smell sour, like something rotting, but it"s sweet. It"s cold, too. We"ve had the heat on for most of the trip. Seth keeps telling us that it"s almost spring, but the bare trees and dull landscape make it seem irrelevant.

It"s still wild to me that we not only get to call Corso Zaphir family, but that we also live next to him and his distillery. I can"t wait to see what this place looks like when it"s not cold. We only have a few short weeks until the baby gets here, and I would really love it if everything was in bloom when he"s born. Or she. We still don"t know. In the stress and excitement of everything, Desie hasn"t had time to have more than a functional scan to get basic measurements. The baby wasn"t very cooperative during that scan, so we still don"t know if we"ve got a boy or a girl on the way. I"m happy to be surprised. I think we"re all happy that we don"t know yet. I don"t care which we have, so long as the baby is healthy and has Desie"s eyes.

We drive slowly past what Seth calls the manor. It might as well be a castle. It"s huge. And there"s a fountain in front. Brandon grins and waves at us from the porch with one hand, Dutch squealing and dangling by the ankle from the other. Devon steps out from the garage to wave us to a stop.

"Glad you made it. Did you have any more trouble?" he asks when Seth rolls down the window.

"No," Seth answers. "It was smooth after the thing with the omegas. Is everything okay here? I probably should have asked if you needed anything from town."

Devon shakes his head. "Talia would beat your ass and mine if I asked you to stop for anything. Kaleb"s at your place. He"s got it heating up and he"ll give you the keys and show you around. Y"all want to have dinner with us or take some time to rest and decompress after the trip?"

Seth looks back at Desie.

"I don"t know," she says. "Can I let Talia know in a little while? I definitely need to stretch and rest."

Devon smiles. "I"ll tell her you"re going to rest for a while. It"s no big deal if you decide to stay home. She put some dishes in the fridge and the freezer, so you won"t have to cook if you decide to stay home. Are you feeling okay? Obi has texted. And called."

"I"m fine," Desie says, smiling. "Just ready to be out of the truck. I"ll let Obi know we"re here safe and everything is alright."

Devon nods and knocks on the side of the truck. "Good. Okay, I"ll let you head on down. Call if you need anything."

Kaleb is standing on the porch when we get parked and start climbing out. The wraparound porch. It looks like the house started out as a cozy little cottage but it has grown into an estate over the years. It"s not as huge as the manor, which is a relief. Seth might be used to all these big ass houses and things, but Desie, Ben, and I aren"t. We"re already juggling so much change, exchanging our small house for a gigantic mansion would just be too much.

I like the extra outdoor space, though. And the woods. I really like the woods that surround the whole property. Ben likes them too. He keeps looking at them through every window we pass as we follow Kaleb. One of the first things we"re going to do is run through those trees and I can"t wait.

"Thermostat is here," Kaleb points to the box on the wall in the hallway outside the main room. "I doubt I need to show you how it works, it"s just a thermostat. Are one of you more technically inclined than the other? I"d like to give you a rundown of the security room. We set it up in the small room beside the utility room downstairs."

"That would be me." I glance at Ben then Seth. "But I think we should all go down and see how it works. Even you." I raise a brow at Desie.

She sighs, but it ends up turning into a yawn. "That"s a lot of stairs you"re asking me to go down and then right back up. Besides, if I can run the desk at the hospital, I can do this. You guys go on down there. I"m going to go find a bed, all the way upstairs, and collapse into it for about six days. You can show me how to navigate the security system later." She pulls Seth"s cheek down to kiss it because he"s the one next to her then she goes off to find a bed.

The security system isn"t all that complicated to work with, but setting it up must have been a nightmare. Every inch of the interior and exterior of the house is covered on two different feeds, as well as a feed that shows the property from so many angles that it's almost overwhelming. I"m trying to wrap my head around how many cameras must be installed everywhere when Kaleb tells us about the drones.

"Nathan will probably want to come by in the next few days to take you on a walk-through of the property. Seth already knows the layout, but after everything that"s happened and everything that"s still happening, all of us need to be as prepared and knowledgeable as possible. He"ll bring the drones, too. He wants at least two here."

Ben"s eyes sparkle at the mention of them. "Drones?"

"Yeah," Kaleb smirks. "Fancy shit. Just let us know when you"re settled enough to get into all that."

I clear my voice and ask a question I probably don"t really want to know the answer to, but need and want are two different things. "Why so much security? Don"t get me wrong, I love it and I"m thrilled to have it; but places don"t have this much security unless something happened."

Kaleb closes his eyes for a moment, taking a breath. "The short of it is that before our pack joined with Corso"s, there were several attempts to take Jasper. The last attempt likely would have been successful if not for Talia. I can"t talk about what happened to her right now, today has been good and I don"t like thinking about it, and if she wants you to know she"ll tell you herself. But something terrible happened, and then after the packs joined there was another very serious invasion," he pauses to glance at Seth, "and more terrible things happened. Corso is terrified that Dutch will outrun all of us one day and if he were to touch the fence with the voltage we have set it to, it would kill him. I"d like to think that Dutch can"t get away from us long enough to get to the property lines, but you"ve met him. So, cameras. Drones. Us. It has to be enough."

He smiled a little while talking about Dutch, but Corso"s right. Dutch is little now and we can catch him easily enough if he actually manages to get away from all of us. Once he gets older it might be a challenge; and by then there will be more children to keep up with and keep safe. If they"re anything like Ben and me, we"ve all got our work laid out for us.

"We"re here with you now," Ben says, his voice hard. "It will be enough."

After Kaleb leaves, we go looking for Desie. We"re exhausted. Days of driving, all the stress of the trip, and the unexpected rescue of a van-load of omegas has taken its toll on all of us. She claimed the bed at the end of the hall. There are two windows on one wall that present a beautiful view of the woods. It"s more soothing than I expected.

The bed is massive. Jasper said it was, but seeing it in person is way different from hearing about it. I know what"s going to happen, though. The three of us are all going to curl around Desie in a tangled knot in the center of the bed. This is probably going to be our room. We won"t need the three other bedrooms for ourselves anyway. We"re going to need them for the kids we"re going to fill this house with.

Desie is still sleeping after three hours, but I have to get up. I woke up starving. Seth is awake too, and we slide out of bed as stealthily as we can and head down to the kitchen. Kaleb said there was food in the fridge that we can just heat up and I"m going to eat at least half of it.

"Are you alright?" Seth asks as he starts spooning food onto plates.

I shrug. "I guess. We"re here and we were okay enough for all of us to fall asleep at the same time, so I guess I"m alright. I"m glad she"s still asleep. She needs it. I"ve been worried since we pulled off the curb back home that the trip was going to throw her into early labor. Then all that shit in the middle. I"m just glad to be here. I don"t want to deal with another stressful thing until her water breaks."

Seth nods and puts a plate filled with three different types of casserole in front of me and hands me a fork, then puts a glass of water next to my plate. He does that, serves us. Without discussion, Seth has fallen into the lead alpha position, which is exactly what Ben and I need. Rafe would have been our lead alpha. Rafe made sure we ate before him, exactly the way Seth does. I"ve seen packs where the lead alpha is waited on by everyone. I can only imagine how it would go if we tried to wait on Seth.

"Yeah," he agrees, sitting down to dig into his own plate of food. "I would really prefer that everything stays good and calm for a long minute. I don"t think I"m lucky enough for an indefinite calm, but I"ll take as much as I can get."

It isn"t quite the middle of the night, but it"s gotten late enough that I need Desie and Ben to get up and eat something. They can go back to sleep after, but neither of them have had so much as a snack since we had lunch a couple hours before we got here. I finish my food and wash the plate, then head back upstairs to wake them up.

A strip of light from the hallway falls across the middle of the bed. Desie"s eyes are closed but she isn"t asleep, and the rhythmic movement under the blankets lets me know that Ben is also awake. Desie groans and Ben"s muffled laugh makes me smile as I walk through the door.

"I was coming to wake you up, but I can see that was unnecessary."

Ben throws the blankets off and props up on his elbows. "I beat you to it. Where"s Seth?"

"Downstairs, probably putting together some food to bring up." I lean against the dresser and watch a pout pull at Desie"s face when Ben continues the conversation instead of what he was doing before I interrupted.

"Is it very late?"

I bite back another smile. Ben doesn"t care how late it is, he just wants to tease Desie. "Not very, but it is late. You woke up just in time to go to bed."

"We"re already in bed," Ben purrs.

Desie lifts her head to glare down at him. "I"m going to kick you out of it if you don"t finish what you were doing."

"I"m going to finish," he smirks. "Don"t you worry. Michael"s going to come help me."

"Seth, too," she says.

"If he gets up here in time," I say, crawling into the bed.

Desie grabs the back of my neck when I get close enough and pulls me down to kiss her, gasping against my mouth when Ben resumes his attention. For a few minutes it feels like it did before everything fell apart, back when it was just us and Desie. Before Flores. Before Lopez. I kiss down her neck, dragging my teeth across Seth"s mark. She turns her head to the side, encouraging me to focus on the pleasure that mark brings her and an unsettling feeling clouds around me, polluting the warmth of the moment.

It took everything falling apart to complete our pack. It took Flores circling and then taking Desie for me and Ben to finally get our shit together and fix things. We wouldn"t have Seth if we hadn"t gone to that bar to watch over Desie while other packs tried to claim our omega.

"Michael," Ben snaps, drawing my attention.

My growl and the small taste of blood in my mouth startles me and I jerk my head back. I look down at Desie to see an impression of my teeth overlapping Seth"s mark, two glaring pinpricks where my canines broke the skin. "I"m sorry, Des. I didn"t mean to hurt you. I just had a dark thought."

"You didn"t hurt me." She gently touches my jaw. "What was your dark thought?"

"We almost lost you. Twice."

She gives me a small smile. "But you didn"t."

"We could have. If Seth hadn"t been there that first night we would have lost you then."

"But you didn"t, Michael. I"m here, and so is Seth. We are here together. We"re going to be okay."

"You good?" Seth asks from the doorway.

I press my forehead against Desie"s and close my eyes for a moment. We are here together. We are whole. "I"m good." I kiss her again. "We"re good."

"We"re just getting started," Ben nips the inside of her thigh. "Come pick a spot."

Seth"s gaze darkens as it passes over each of us. The corner of his mouth lifts as he settles heavily against the door frame, casually crossing his arms over his chest. "I"m content where I am. Y"all carry on."

Ben nods up at me and repeats Seth"s instructions. "Carry on."

"Yes," Desie says. "Carry on."

I reach down and guide Desie"s leg to drape over my hip and kiss her once more before going back to Seth"s mark. I love how much pleasure those marks can give her. Manipulating those marks with teeth and tongue elevates anything else happening to her. Ben would have led her to a gasping orgasm all on his own, but my attention launches it into a screaming one that has her clawing at my shoulder with one hand and yanking Ben"s hair with the other.

This is the first time in our lives either of us has had hair long enough for her to pull. Our hair is thick, and if we let it go long enough it gets wavy and then it sticks out weird. We kept it short when we were younger because it was easier to deal with; and we kept it short when we were doing the fights because hair long enough to grab is a liability. We"re not fighting anymore, but I don"t think I want long hair. Ben has made it more than obvious that he enjoys the hair pulling so we might end up, for the first time in our lives, with an obvious difference in our appearance.

Ben raises up onto his knees and shoves his shorts down. "How adventurous are you feeling, baby?"

Desie licks her lips and glances between us. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Ben says, reaching down to grasp her breast and tug at her nipple. "This is our first night in this house. And Seth is over there hoping for a good show. And me and Michael are both right here. And I just think it would make for a really good time if we didn"t take turns. Are you feeling up to that?"

I watch the understanding of what he means grow in her eyes and she starts to smile, but then she bites her lip. "I don"t know if we can." She reaches down to place a hand on her stomach.

"Oh, we definitely can," Ben smirks. "I"ve been thinking about it. I might have even done a little bit of research on the topic. There are a bunch of positions that will work out just right as long as you"re comfortable."

"Like what?" she asks.

Ben offers a hand to help me up. "Just go with it."

I kick off my shorts and wait for direction. I"ll be more than happy with anything he"s got in mind. Ben helps Desie up next and flops down on his back in the place she was laying. He gestures for her to come to him. "On your hands and knees, so I can make it good."

He nods at me after she"s in place facing away from him and that"s my cue to provide a distraction. Desie loves it when we fuck her this way, but it"s been a while since we"ve done it and she likes something to do while one of us opens her up. This time I get to be the distraction.

I get on my knees in front of her. "You want me like this? Or lower?"

"This is good," she says, and grips the base of my cock. She licks across the head then sucks it into her mouth and I sink my fingers into her thick hair. Ben isn"t the only one who likes hair pulling. By the time he pulls back on her hips, I"m past the point of being hard and more than ready to be inside her.

"I need you to kind of squat over me," Ben tells her. "It"s going to feel awkward, but only for a minute. If you don"t like it this way we"ll do something else, okay?"

She nods and does what he says, holding onto my forearms for balance.

"Ready?" he asks.

She nods again and gasps when he enters her.

"Okay?" he asks again.

"Okay," she breathes. "Don"t stop."

Desie holds onto me while Ben guides their movements, lifting and tilting her hips until he"s deep inside her and she"s making small sounds of pleasure. She"s soaking wet, slick with want, and my fingertips slide over her easily. I reach down to circle her swollen clit and she moans, letting her head loll back. "Yes, Michael. Do that. Don"t stop."

Ben holds tightly to Desie"s hips with both hands and looks over her shoulder at me. "Help her lean back."

"I"ll smoosh you," she complains, horror washing over her face.

Ben fights back a laugh. "You won"t. Put your arms back, on either side of me. We"ll help you."

Her brows scrunch up but she cautiously puts one hand behind her and allows Ben to guide it, then lets go of me and puts her other hand back.

"Good," Ben encourages. "Now fix your feet so you"re comfortable."

"I"m going to squish you, Benjamin."

"Shut up and don"t make me laugh. If you do squish me, and you won"t, but if you do I promise I"ll like it. Just get your legs comfortable."

Desie actively doesn"t look at me or Seth. I can feel how awkward and worried she is. "What"s wrong, Des? You like it when we both fuck you. What"s bothering you?"

She huffs. "I"m huge right now. I feel like I"m going to kill Ben, and I feel like I look horrible. I don"t know how to not look awful right now."

"You don"t look horrible or awful, Desir"ee," Seth tells her. "I understand that you might feel like you do, but you"re very, very wrong. I, we, love how you look. Right now and always."

"I can barely see over this belly, Seth."

"Then close your eyes. Don"t worry about seeing anything." Seth starts a soft, low purr. "Close your eyes and think about how Ben and Michael are making you feel. They"re making you feel good, aren"t they?"

Desie closes her eyes and nods.

"Good. That"s all we want. For you to feel good. And you should know, Desir"ee, that belly that you"re so worried about is one of the hottest things I"ve ever seen in my life."

Ben adjusts his position a little and nods at me. "Ready?"

"Ready." I move up, running my hands over her thighs as I press myself between them, nudging Ben"s legs a little further apart so I have room to move. "You ready, Desie?"

She gives me a tight nod and I start working myself inside her. I grip the tops of her thighs, my fingers brushing against Ben"s where he"s holding onto her hips, and I stretch my thumb to press against her clit. I want her so overwhelmed with what we"re doing that she forgets to be self-conscious.

"Oh," she gasps. "Oh god. It"s so much."

I"m only a little more than half-way inside her. It"s such a tight fit in this angle. Ben isn"t moving at all as I keep pushing deeper, but Desie is. Her hips are moving almost involuntarily between us. When I finally get all the way inside it takes her breath and we all have to be very still for a few moments. Then I pull out and thrust all the way back in all at once and both her and Ben groan.

There"s not enough room for Ben to move very much, but we find a rhythm. It"s mostly me fucking Desie with deep, slow thrusts while Ben raises up to meet me, but it"s enough to pull several shaking orgasms out of her.

"Soon," Ben hisses through his teeth. I look away from the decadent sight of both us filling her to check in with him. His gaze is trained on the mirror on the back of the closet door, so I look over there, too.

"Fuck," I growl. Shouldn"t have done that. Fuck. It"s a side view of the three of us. "Now. Right now."

"Not yet," Desie pants. "Almost."

Ben drags his hands up her sides to cup her breasts and rolls her nipples between his fingers and I stroke her clit a little faster. She needs to cum again and fast. Immediately. I might not last, especially if I keep watching the mirror.

Desie drops her head back, her neck arching. "Almost, almost, almost."

"Now, Desie," Ben barks. "Right now. Fuck."

Within a minute she"s clenching around us and gasping with her orgasm and I snap my hips one last time before I"m growling my own release.

Ben is laughing with his. "I want to do that every day."

It isn"t until later, when we"ve all curled back around each other to sleep for the rest of the night, that I remember that the house is bugged with lots and lots of cameras and we can watch replays of anything we do anytime we want. That"s probably going to be one of my favorite things about this house.