My body felt like I had lead rather than blood coursing through my veins. I tried to swim out of the darkness, but it was hard. I felt… wrong. That permeated my brain before I was even fully conscious.
As I waded back to consciousness, and my senses finally came back online, I knew there was something very, very wrong. I wasn’t in my bed; this one was too soft, but even that couldn’t cushion my itching, burning skin. The scents in the room were both familiar and foreign. The ache in my gut was only exacerbated by the fear that was beginning to flood my body. There were fingertips brushing my head that seemed to chase away the pain for a moment, making me almost purr. Then those soothing fingers began to pull away, and the pulsing pain began to crowd back in.
I grabbed the first body part I could, which was a wrist. As if having my eyes shut was the only thing holding back the residual ache, it all flooded in when they snapped open. I writhed on the bed, and it felt like my body was betraying itself, the pain growing and growing until it was unbearable.
“Help me,” I gasped. “Please. I hurt. Everything… hurts.” Even my eyelashes hurt, and instinctively I knew that this dark-haired man, this stranger, could make it all go away. I curved toward him, trying to drag him down onto the bed. But he was tall and strong, and I could sense his Beast close to the surface.
Manix.
Where the fuck was I?
“It’s okay, Kitten. I’ll make all the pain go away.”
His words were like a balm, and while I would normally be afraid of him, all I wanted was for him to get down into the bed with me and roll my body across his. I justknewhe was an Omega.
Scents overwhelmed me, but there were two I knew. “Corvin? Beck?” Their familiar scents calmed me, and when Beckett’s soft face appeared, I cried. He looked exactly the same as he had all those years ago, when I’d loved the boy he’d been. “What’s happening to me?”
“Kitten, listen closely.” He was using his Alpha voice on me, and I had no choice but to listen. “An illness swept through Maxton, affecting only Beta females, changing your biology. It’s made you an Omega.” He swallowed hard, and I was transfixed by the bobbing of his Adam's apple. “And you’re in heat. That’s why you feel this way.”
None of that made sense, and it was like I was that kid again, trying to understand the boy in front of me as he spoke a foreign language. It just made me cry harder. “Make it go away,” I sobbed as another stabbing pain hit me. “It hurts so much.”
There was a low, savage growl in the room, and for some reason, it soothed me rather than scaring me. I knew the timber of the growl, knew the Alpha pheromones that were coating my skin. Corvin. He was here too, and another knot of tension eased in my chest.
The pretty guy with the soft eyes was there again, pieces of his auburn hair falling across his forehead. “I know it hurts. I’ve been there. Unfortunately, you just have to wait it out.” His face looked torn.
“You’re theirs? The Omega?” His face crumbled, but he nodded. Part of me hated the sadness in his eyes, though I wasn’t sure why he was sad. “I understand now. Now that I see you.” I tried to give him a reassuring smile, and he cupped my cheek.
“I didn’t know about you.”
My eyes flicked to Beck, who had his head in his hands. I felt bad, because that was my fault. I’d made them swear. “Good men. Kept their word.” Fuck, this Omega male’s hands felt so nice, cooling my skin where he touched, and chasing away the pain. I needed more. “Lay with me?” It was a whine. “You make it hurt less.”
He hesitated, looking at the Alphas in front of me. Finally, he nodded, taking off his shirt and climbing onto the bed with me. “Skin contact will help. I, uh, I’m only going off my own experience. I don’t know what happens with female Omegas.”
I sighed as his chest met the skin of my back. I wanted to press myself against him until I was inside him. It soothed, but didn’t chase away the pain altogether. I needed more, but I didn’t know what that more was. Honestly, I would have given my left nut for it. I didn’t actually have nuts, but it was one of those English sayings the guys had taught me, and it stuck.
“Name?” Pain was killing my language, slurring my words until I was reverting back to that wild language of my past.
“Darius. My name is Darius.” I froze as I felt the hard length that could only be one thing pressed against my ass. He grunted as he felt my body stiffening, and he bent his body away. “Ignore that.”
Oh sure, I was going to ignore the giant dick pressed against my back. The Beast inside me—the one in heat—arched back against him, chasing the feeling again, and the human part of me was horrified.
“I’m sorry.” But I couldn’t drag myself away.
He grunted again, his hand on my hip stilling my grinding. “Don’t be. Our biology is urging us to do the very thing we were created for. Male and female Omegas were made to fit together like this, made to ease the pain of the other. We are two sides of the same coin.” He cleared his throat. “My body wants to soothe the ache of yours in the only way it knows how, and your Beast is fully on board. But we aren’t just Beasts; we’re people too, and logic is what’s needed right now.”
His hand stroked up and down my hip soothingly. I realized I was still in the yoga pants and sweatshirt I’d been wearing… however long ago. They were nearly threadbare, and if I stood in the sun, they were basically transparent, but they were the last items of clothing that Beckett and Corvin had gifted to me before we’d cut ties. I mean, beforeI’dcut ties. Lorso had taught me a few things when I was a kid, and one of them was how to know if another Manix was approaching. I’d avoided them for months, until they’d finally just stopped coming altogether.
The pain dulled at Darius’s touch, but it was still there, like a burning in my abdomen. “How would you stop the pain?”
He stilled, and I could sense him looking at the Alphas again. His Alphas.
“Kitten…” Corvin’s voice was filled with longing and pain.
“I want to know.”
“Tell her. She has a right to know. Doesn’t mean we’ll act on it,” Beckett said softly, always the cool voice of reason. God, I’d missed their bickering. Not that I’d tell them that.
I felt Darius stiffen behind me, but he didn’t stop the movements of his hand. Skin to skin, that's what he said. But my sweatshirt was still in the way. I tugged it up, tucking it up under my chin, baring my back to his front. The moment our skin met, I shuddered. This was better.
