Esme
We’re off the Ferris wheel, heading toward the games again because I want to win Gary a friend. Sven’s a few steps behind me carrying my things, and I’m happy, so damn happy. I’m holding a stuffed orca in a crowd full of fair lights with the best male I’ve ever met, and I’m not thinking about anything except all that joy.
But then I feel a rough hand on my arm.
“Hey.Hey.Slow down, sweetheart.”
I turn and there’s an alpha in my space… orc, big, broad, holding a beer and with three more clearly already in him, grinning droopily, and the second I turn to face him he leans in and fuckingscentsme, dragging in a breath at my throat like he has any fucking right to.
“Knew it,” he slurs, sounding pleased. “Smelled you from the beer tent. Unmated little omega all by herself. Where you been hiding…”
I try to shake him off. “Let go of my arm!”
“Aw, don’t be like…”
I don’t get to find out what I’m not supposed to be like because the temperature drops, and the crowd around us goes quiet. The alpha’s grin falters, and a sound comes from behind me I have never heard before. It’s not a growl. It’s lower than a growl… I feel it from my sternum to the soles of my feet, and it is the most terrifying thing I have ever heard in my life. The alpha’s hand goes loose on my arm. And Sven steps around me. He puts himself between me and the orc. I’ve spent weeks watching my guy move carefully around me and I forgot… I fucking forget what he actually is.Whohe is. Seven feet of alpha orc. The one people go quiet around. And right now, all that careful is gone! What’s left is enormous and absolutely freaking lethal! And the drunken orc, who is not small, looks like a lanky teenager compared to Sven.
“You put your hand on my mate,” Sven growls.
Oh shit! Did he call me his fucking mate?!!
His voice is not loud. It’s low, gravelly, and there’s bark in it, alpha command. I watch it hit every freaking one in earshot… grown males in the crowd flinch, drop their eyes and physically step back in a gesture of submission. Their primal instincts taking over.
“Hey, man, I didn’t…” The orc’s eyes are wide; he’s shaking. “I didn’t know she was…I didn’t smell you on her, she didn’t have a…”
“You scented her.” Sven takes one more step forward. The guy takes two back. “You put your hand on my girl, and fucking scented her.” Another step. His growl is constantly rolling out of his barrel-sized chest now; the crowd is frozen in place, staring.
Then Sven moves so fast it’s a blur. One massive green hand closes around the orc’s throat and lifts him off the ground, feet dangling. His beer drops and spills on the dirt. The guy’s hands fly up to Sven’s wrist, clawing, but he might as well be scratching granite. Sven brings him closer, their faces just inches apart.“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t break every fucking finger you touched my omega with.”
The other alpha can’t talk. His eyes are starting to bulge, his legs kicking, and people just stand there frozen.
“Sven.” My voice is shaking. He’s so big, so tall, eyes blazing, muscles tight, veins popping at his forearm, fucking exuding feral rage. Goddamn magnificent. My pussy throbs, my clit tingles, my nipples are hard, I feel slick starting to drip out of me. Oh, God… “Baby, I’m okay,” I blurt out.
At the wordbaby, Sven turns to look at me. His dark eyes are intense; the haze of anger morphing into something else. Something just as big, strong, and powerful. Hunger, possession. Oh,shit, I liked me calling him, baby… He really liked it.
He turns back and holds the orc there for two more seconds, then he drops him like a goddamn sack of potatoes. The alpha crumples, hitting the ground on his hands and knees. He’s gasping, coughing. Sven stands over him, looking so beautiful I want to climb him right here and now.
“Say sorry,” he growls.
“I’m…” The orc looks anywhere but at him. “I’m sorry. Ma’am. I’m sorry, I…”
“Run,” my male adds in a disgusted tone.
He scrambles up and bolts into the night, tripping over himself, and doesn’t look back. Not a single time. The crowd swallows him, the whole fair staring, and I’m standing there with Gary clutched to my chest, my heart slamming and my whole body lit up with something that is absolutely not fear…
Then Sven turns back to me, and it all just… drops out of him. The lethal energy radiating off him just… gone, the second his eyes land on me, and what’s left is just my Sven. Still stern and frowning, but attentive, worried, scanning me from head to toe.
“Did he hurt you? ”
I shake my head, smiling gently. “I’m good, baby.”
“Let me see.”
He gently takes my arm with his huge hand, that was a weapon just seconds ago, and turns it to look where the drunk alpha held me, and the growl comes back for a second before he swallows it down. Then he pulls me into his arms, wrapping me in his warmth, the solid wall of him, drops his face into my hair and breathes me in. And I feel the rumble change… it shifts from that low warning into something else, something deeper, the sound that rolls through me and loosens every fucking thing. Sven is fucking purring. I realize it when my cheek hits his chest. This scary, lethal, giant alpha orc is purring to calm me down, and it’s fucking working. My body goes soft against his, the adrenaline draining out of me.
“I got you,” he rumbles into my hair. “I got you. Nobody touches you. Fucking nobody.”
I can feel people looking at us. They watched the most frightening alpha in the county nearly take a guy apart for putting a hand on me and then fucking purr for me, holding me in the middle of the fairground. And I couldn’t care less. I bury my face into his broad chest, inhale his amazing scent, and let him put me back together.
