Everything. Nothing. Too much to articulate and not enough of it rational.
“I can’t leave him,” Riot said finally. The words felt torn out of him, a confession he hadn’t meant to make. “I know that doesn’t make sense. I know I barely know him. But something’s—” He broke off, frustrated by his own inability to explain. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. And I don’t care. I just know I can’t leave.”
“That’s biology talking,” Stave said. “Omega in heat, your suppressants failing, of course you feel like you can’t leave.”
“It’s not just that.”
“How do you know?”
Riot didn’t have an answer. He just knew—the same way he knew his own name, the same way he knew which of his brothers was approaching by the sound of their footsteps. This thing with Cass wasn’t just biology. It was something else. Something he didn’t have words for, which was inconvenient for a man whose original skill set had been built entirely around understanding psychological patterns.
“I don’t,” he admitted. “I just... feel it.”
Stave’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes. Maybe skepticism. Maybe something else. “Feelings are unreliable,” he said. “Especially ours.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to do something stupid anyway, aren’t you?”
Riot met his brother’s flat stare. “Probably.”
For a long moment, no one spoke. Then Prepper let out a heavy sigh and clapped a hand on Riot’s shoulder—brief, solid, grounding. “Well,” he said, “at least you’re honest about it.”
Lilac sat down beside Riot and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, we’re here to help,” she started. She began speaking rapidly in hushed Spanish to him, but Riot didn’t hear a word of it. He was too focused on the sounds coming from the room, the smells, the need—
“Riot!”
Cass was stumbling through the doorway from the hall, golden hair wild, his skin flushed and his hazel eyes scanning the room with frantic intensity. His robes were still soaked through, clinging to his body in ways that made Riot’s mouth go dry and his brain go quiet. Behind him, Dante and Orion skidded into view, their eyes wide as they were greeted with all three Berserkers.
“Cass, wait—” Dante started.
Every Berserker in the room went still as Cass crossed the remaining distance—Riot felt Stave and Prepper tense, felt their predatory attention snap into focus. An Omega in full heat, running toward them, vulnerable and desperate and available—
Claim him. Pin him down. Show them all—
Cass didn’t even glance at them.
He didn’t look at Stave with his dangerous stare, or Prepper with his burned face, or Dante with his Alpha competence, or Orion with his fellow-Omega understanding. He looked at Riot. Only at Riot.
And then he crashed into him.
The impact knocked them both back against the couch cushions, and Riot’s arms came up, catching him, pulling him close, the movement so instinctive it bypassed every rational objection he’d been white-knuckling for the past hour. For one suspended moment, everyone in the room held their breath—Dante poised to intervene, Orion frozen in the doorway, Stave and Prepper ready to move if control snapped.
But before Riot could do anything—before the violence or the claiming or whatever everyone was bracing for—Cass moved.
He settled into Riot’s lap.
Not seductively. Not desperately grinding or presenting or any of the heat-driven behaviors Riot braced himself for. Just... climbed, with the single-minded determination of someone following an instinct they didn’t fully understand. His knees bracketed Riot’s hips, his arms wound around Riot’s neck, and his face buried itself against the curve of Riot’s throat.
Then he started scenting him.
Soft lips dragged across Riot’s carotid artery, a nose pressed into the hollow below his ear. Cass’s clammy cheek rubbed against his jaw, transferring scent, seeking comfort, letting out small, shaky breaths like someone who’d been terrified and was finally, finally safe.
“You weren’t there,” Cass whispered against his throat, the words muffled and broken. “I woke up and you weren’t there and everything was wrong and I couldn’t—I needed—”
He needed me. Not just any Alpha. Not Dante with his experience. Not another Omega to hold his hand. Me.
Riot’s hands hovered at Cass’s sides. He was afraid to touch, afraid to hold on, afraid of what his body would do if he let himself have this. His cock was still achingly hard, his body still screaming for release, but Cass wasn’t asking for that. Cass was asking to be held.
