Maybe Alex would let the ‘ice queen’ armor thaw a bit for Kam, though, since there was no possibility of pups. I was pretty sure that with enough lube and prep work, Kam could take her up the ass. Alpha clits weren’t nearly as girthy as alpha dicks, though the knots more than made up for it, supposedly.
Through all of these rosy visions of our future pack, I held Kam and let the rumbling thrum of contentment in my chest soothe him. Eventually, his quiet weeping subsided into the occasional hitch, until he finally went limp, giving himself over to me. I liked that. I liked ita lot. I also liked the way Leona’s hand had crept up my arm to fist the material of my shirt, anchoring her body against us.
“Better now?” I asked.
A slight hesitation, and Kam nodded, not speaking.
“All right,” I said. “I need to get Leona some water before she falls asleep. I’ll be right back.”
I climbed out of the makeshift nest a bit stiffly, tugging my shirttails down to cover my dick since there was no question of getting my fly closed until the knot went down. If I’d been inside her, Leona’s muscles would still be holding us tied together—there would be a subtle shift in her pheromones whenever she stopped clamping around the toy, and that would convince my knot to deflate.
The water bottles were lined up on the side table where I’d left them. I grabbed two and brought them back. “Here,” I told Kam, pressing one into his hand. “Stay hydrated.”
He took it, not quite able to meet my eyes with his red-rimmed ones. “After weeping out a bucketful of water, you mean?”
“Well, that and being held hostage in a cave for six days,” I said.
He untangled from Leona enough to roll onto an elbow and drink, while I helped her do the same. She definitely seemed more coherent than she had earlier—probably thanks to getting some decent sexual relief for the first time since her heat had started. I supported her head and she drank greedily, finishing three-quarters of the bottle in one go.
“How on earth did you find us?” Kam asked, sounding steadier now, if still a bit sheepish.
“Combination of military satellite intel and doing recon on a shit-ton of cave complexes in the general vicinity of Târgoviste,” I said. “Those crazy terrorist bastards weren’t nearly as stealthy as they probably thought they were.”
I wasn’t about to go into detail regarding how we got access to the intel so quickly... or how badly we’d been freaking out as the days slid by with no success. Thank fuck they’d both at least been alive when we found them. We’d been too late in the sense of Leona’s heat and Jax’s health, but maybe it wouldn’t end up being the irrevocable kind of ‘too late.’
“Jax said you’d come for us,” Leona said quietly. “He never doubted it for a minute.”
An emotion that wasn’t the simple kind threatened to get tangled up in my chest, so I changed the subject. “You should be enjoying your knot right now, sweet thing,” I told her. “But if you wanna talk instead, maybe you can tell us how this setup is working for you. There’ll be at least another couple of peaks coming before it eases off.”
She blinked huge hazel eyes up at me, and I tried not to melt like a damned snow cone in July.
“This was... better,” she said. “Thank you.”
Kam watched her with a worried expression. “Was what I did all right? You’re sure?”
She blinked at him. “Of course it was,odama. Was it... all right for you?”
“I just want to help,” he said, a bit desperately. “To... not make it worse.”
“Youarehelping,” she replied. “Of course you are.” Her gaze moved to me. “And... I’m really sorry, Flynn. It’s not that I’m scared of you. It’s just that Icannotend up pregnant. I absolutely refuse to bring children into this world. Not the way it is now.”
“Pups,” I corrected, trying not to think of Irina... of the way it had taken both Jax and me to hold Alex down and keep her from running off half-cocked when we got news of the arrest. “Pups, not children.”
“Leo’s parents are betas,” Kam said. “So actually, it could go either way.”
That made sense. Beta parents were much more likely to be able to sneak alphomic offspring through the system. Though it was hard to imagine how betas could possibly have whelped such a perfect omega female.
“No, I get it,” I told her. “It’s fine.”
Of course, by ‘fine,’ I meant ‘frustrating as hell.’ But I could understand where she was coming from, at least.
With a heavy sigh, Kam set aside his empty water bottle and settled in next to Leona, rearranging her in his arms. “You know, once upon a time there would have been easy access to contraceptives for heats. Omegas could buy synthetic alpha pheromones to manage the peaks, or as sexual enhancements outside of the normal estrus cycle.”
I grunted and returned to my place on his other side. “Kinda makes me feel surplus to requirements.”
Leona gave a sleepy chuckle.
Kam let out a sharp little puff of air. “That’s not what I meant. Just that back then, we could have control of our own bodies, and manage our reproductive lives in whatever way we saw fit. “
