Page 30 of His Stolen Omega

“Why? If you adjust to me, it means you’ll have someone else to help look after you.” Koah frowned. “You’re burning up. Does it feel like—”

“Heat,” Elm confirmed. “Cramping is getting worse. Leave.”

“You sure? I’ve got what you’ll need.”

Elm scowled. “I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last alpha on the planet.”

“Ouch.”

“You smell…wrong.” Even if it wasn’t as bad as before, it still wasn’t pleasant. Elm’s body wasn’t producing slick for Koah, it was merely entering another damned mating period. “If…” he didn’t want to ask but couldn’t see a way around it, “I go into full blown heat, will I sleep with you even though I don’t like your smell?”

“If I’m the only option, yeah.”

“I don’t want to.”

Koah sighed. “Full disclosure? I’m not really feeling you either, but neither of us really have much of a say. If we’re ordered to do it, that’s what will happen.”

Elm frowned. “It’s not like you’re a captive too.”

“No, but I’m a good little soldier.”

“That’s—” Elm’s sentence died on a moan, but again, one not meant for Koah. A new smell had just drifted toward him, one that smelled like ecstasy. White lotus and frost maybe.

Levi entered and just as Elm’s eyes caught him over Koah’s shoulders, the dominant alpha attacked, pheromones cutting across the air like steel blades.

Koah cursed and darted away, spinning on his heels to growl.

Elm hissed as well, dropping to his knees, a slight burning sensation skittering across his skin momentarily before the approaching alpha switched to targeted soothing pheromones that eased the sting.

“Good little soldiers know where they aren’t supposed to be,” Levi stated as he entered the cage. He didn’t glare, but there was an obvious glimmer of anger in his gray eyes when he set them on Koah. He spun on his heels, blocking Elm in the process, as though wanting to separate the two of them.

“Whoa,” Koah held up his hands in surrender. “Fiora told me to come. She said we needed to adjust—”

“No one goes near him but me,” Levi cut him off. “Tell your sister.”

Koah looked like he wanted to argue, but then shook his head. “Whatever. I’ll leave you to it.” He bowed respectfully but then left without so much as a word to Elm.

Neither of them had bothered closing the cage door.

Levi turned and caught Elm staring at it. “Going to make a try for it?”

Elm was desperate to get home.

But not that desperate.

“No,” he licked his lips, “you seem like you’re already in a bad mood.”

“Smart.” Levi walked up to the edge of the mattress and then crouched in front of him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It feels like heat. But that’s…I shouldn’t…right?”

“If you were a born omega that would be correct, but the research I’ve been reading up on states the change can take upwards to a year. During that time, the heats will come frequently, but sporadically.”

“Fantastic.” He closed his eyes when a tear slipped past his defenses, but he immediately opened them again when the alpha stood. “Where are you going?”

“To prepare.”

“For what?” Elm growled before he could answer, figuring it out on his own. “Absolutely not. You are not putting anything up my ass again.”