“What if Alex changes her mind and backs out?” The words burst free without my volition. I kept pacing, not wanting to stop and look at Leo, radiant in her casual nudity as we awaited the alphas’ arrival in the nest.
“At this point?” Leo said. “I imagine Jax and Flynn would cold-cock her again and carry her here.”
“It’s not a joke!” I paused and tried to focus on my breathing, knowing that it was only my fear making me lash out at her.
A hand grabbed the waistband of my jeans from behind and tugged. I toppled onto the semicircular couch with a grunt. The couch sat at the edge of the sunken nest pit piled with cushions and blankets, ready for use. Additionally, a king-sized four-poster bed with a canopy dominated the far end of the room. Maybe including a beta-style bed in an omega nest was a Russian thing, but I didn’t like it. I hadn’t liked it before, and I liked it even less now that I’d seen Alex tied to that bed, fighting her bonds for hours and hours until I worried her wrists and ankles would tear and bleed.
“Odama.” Leo took my chin in her hand and physically turned my face to look at her. “Have you ever known Alex to say she was going to do something and then not follow through?”
I clamped my mouth shut, because of course the answer was no. I wasn’t finished fretting yet, though. She sighed and kissed me. I could feel her growing arousal through the bond... and, more distantly, Jax and Flynn’s. Closing my eyes, I let myself fall into it, experiencing my packmate’s heat vicariously.
“Sorry,” I murmured when she finally pulled away from the kiss.
She bopped my nose with hers. “I love you, odama. We all love you. And before long, we’re going to remind Alex what it feels like to be loved—in body and in mind.” Her fingers plucked at my shirt collar. “Don’t you want to lose the clothes? The others are on their way.”
I shook my head. “Flynn enjoys ripping them off me too much.”
She snorted. “Whereas you don’t enjoy it at all, of course.”
“Did I say that?” Despite myself, my paranoia was beginning to fade. I could feel Jax and Flynn’s emotions accurately enough to be able to tell that nothing was wrong. If Alex had done a runner, they’d be upset enough for me to feel it through the bond, I was sure.
Leo wrapped me up in a hug, throwing a leg across both of mine for good measure. I buried my face in her soft hair—focusing inward, because it was still such a novelty to feel the others inside my thoughts like this. Although it was difficult, I mostly resisted the temptation to think about the inevitable loss that would come when Leo’s heat subsided and my body stopped piggybacking off of her elevated level of bonding hormones. I didn’t want to tarnish what time I possessed with grief for something that hadn’t happened yet.
A rough voice came from the doorway. “Jesus, I don’t know if this is better or worse than walking in to find him eating you out.” I looked up to find Flynn leaning an elbow against the doorframe, watching us.
“Is everything all right?” Alex pushed past him, entering the nest. She looked a bit pale in the face, but she washere.
“It is now,” I said, with complete sincerity.
I felt Leo’s smile of happiness before I saw it—a sensation like the sun coming out inside my mind.
“Come in,” she said, formally inviting the alphas into the nest.
They did. Jax and Flynn wasted no time in stripping off their clothing and tossing it aside. Alex was dressed in a loose tank top and track pants. Her dark hair was down, and her nipples poked through the thin fabric, tenting it.
Leo’s burgeoning lust washed through me. I closed my eyes to savor it, but only for a moment—there was too much to look at. She pressed a final kiss to the hinge of my jaw and untangled from our embrace, giving the others her full attention.
“I’m accelerating from zero to sixty toward heat-brain,” she said, with mild, self-deprecating humor. “I blame you three for that. But while I can still think—Alex, I took my birth control injection last night. If you want to use condoms with me, that’s fine, but the others won’t be. I do draw the line at cervical caps, though. Those things are horrible.”
Alex nodded, though something haunted flashed behind her expression. It was no surprise that she found the subject of birth control and pregnancy a difficult one, after the loss of her pups with Irina. We’d already talked about it in a general sense, however. She knew Leo wasn’t courting pregnancy, but that she wouldn’t be doing cartwheels in an attempt to prevent it, either. Or, at least, she wouldn’t be doing cervical caps. Having been press-ganged into helping her remove and replace the damned things during her heat, I could confirm that they were a pain in the, uh, cervix.
“I understand,” Alex said.
“I have a request,” I said, before I could lose my nerve. “I want you to mate Leo first while I watch.”
Alex settled knowing green eyes on me. “You want to make sure I won’t back out of the bond. I can’t really blame you.”
I sighed. So much for trying to play it off as a kink. “Sorry, that sounded horrible, didn’t it?”
She was spot on, of course. I couldn’t bear the thought of having her bite me when it wouldn’t mean anything real. If she bit me first, only to balk at biting Leo, I wouldn’t have a true bond with her, only a scar. If she bit Leo first, though, I didn’t think she’d hesitate to also bite me. For her, the hard part would already be over.
“No,” Alex said. “I deserve that. Rest assured that I’ll be mating both of you tonight, but you can watch me mark your odama first.”
“Now hang on a minute,” Flynn said. His mood through the connection we shared was light and teasing. “Who said you were monopolizing both of them tonight?”
Jax snorted. “You gonna throw down with her for first dibs, asshole? Good luck with that.”
“Oh, come on—arm wrestling,” Flynn said. “Best three out of five.”
