The pack alpha reaches for Elowen as he lies down, pulling her up and over until she's straddling him.
She goes without resistance, her dark hair falling around her face, her eyes glassy and half closed in a way that tells me she stopped making conscious decisions about twenty minutes ago. Her body is running on something older and deeper than thought.
Cliff doesn't even have to guide her. He simply grips the base of his thick cock, glistening with slick and cum, and she eagerly sinks down inch by inch. A soft broken sound pushes from her throat, part pleasure, part surrender. Her thighs tremble as she takes him, her body stretching to accommodate his size.
Once she's fully seated, her head falls back, exposing the elegant line of her throat, and she moves with the instinctive rhythm of someone completely lost to it. Her lush hips roll in a hypnotic circle, grinding against the alpha, taking him as deep as she physically can.
I watch them for a moment, wild and intense.
The whole room has gone somewhere I can't follow.
Cliff is fucking Elowen with a relentless intensity of a man operating entirely on instinct, his jaw tight and his eyes black and his hands on her hips like he's forgotten how to be gentle and doesn't particularly care. Across the bed, Raff is the same, his rhythm deep and grinding, his face pressed into the back of Adam's neck, one hand fisted in the sheets beside the unconscious omega's head.
Both alphas are so deep in rut they've stopped being people and become something downright feral, claiming their omegas with a single-minded focus that leaves no room for anything else.
And Elowen. She's so completely gone.
Her eyes are blown out wide, her beautiful body rolling and bouncing, every inch of her practically glowing. She looks like she’s in a trance, her conscious mind somewhere far away. Her body knows what it needs and takes it.
I'm the only one in this room who is still fully present.
And it feels weirdly lonely in a way I wasn't expecting.
My eyes drift back to Adam, to his sweat-damp skin and the tangled blankets and the heartbreaking vulnerability of him. Blood is smeared along both sides of his neck where Cliff and Raff bit down, twin marks dark and raw against his pale skin. He looks so small and limp and completely unguarded in the center of the nest he built without knowing why.
Every beta instinct I have rises up at once with a single, clear directive.
He needs to be cleaned.
Without a second thought, I move toward the edge of the bed and slip off the mattress. My feet find the floor, and I'm halfway to the bathroom when Raff's voice cracks across the room likea whip.
"Beta." The single word carries the full weight of an alpha deep in rut, commanding and absolute and brooking absolutely zero argument. "Get back here,” he growls.
I stop.
Every instinct I have that belongs to Cliff and Raff, the years of learning how to read their ruts and stay close and give them what they need, pulls me toward the bed. I know what Raff wants. I've been through enough ruts to know exactly what my role is supposed to be right now.
But Adam's pale, unguarded face is right there.
And Elowen's soft, exhausted body is curled against Cliff like she might dissolve if he lets go.
I turn back toward the bathroom.
"I'll be right back," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel.
The bathroom is cool and quiet after the thick, saturated air of the bedroom. I stand at the sink for a second with both hands braced on the porcelain, just breathing.
My reflection looks back at me. Flushed and damp and thoroughly wrecked, my hair is sticking to my forehead and my lips swollen. The look of a man who had the most overwhelming sexual experience of his life and is now hiding in the fucking bathroom to avoid obsessing about it.
I run the water warm, not hot. Hot will sting.
Then I find the softest washcloth on the rack, the old white one that Adam keeps separate from the others because the texture of the newer ones bothers his skin during flares. I run it under the water until it's thoroughly soaked and warm all the way through.
Reaching under the sink, I quickly find a small bottle of unscented soap. Elowen put it there two days ago. I assumed it was for her, but now I’m wondering if she knew what was going to happen.
I wring the cloth out, fold it, and carry it back to the bedroom.
Raff watches me cross the room with dark, rut-heavy eyes that track my every movement. He doesn't say anything this time.
