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“Sure is.”
Dio and Pala stripped off, then held me steady and supported Sam as he maneuvered to clamber in while holding me and trying not to jostle me too much on his knot.
“There are some rocks that form rough steps to the left a little,” I directed him. The water was as dark as the rocks below and the fairy lights reflected on the surface so the steps could be hard to see.
Sam stepped in tentatively until the water submerged us up over his waist, and the others followed us in. He groaned in pleasure, but then winced when the arm holding my back slid into the water.
“Here, let me help you get that cleaned up,” Dio said as he pulled Sam’s arm up and Pala supported me from behind.
I gasped in shock when I saw the blood running down his arm, mirroring the rivulets of blood on his chest, only there was more of it.
I tried to pull back as he lifted his other arm from behind me and I noticed it was worse. Sam groaned as I pulled on his knot with my movements. Pala soothed me from behind and kept me firmly in place.
“Is that from the rock wall?” I asked him, and he nodded. “I’m so sorry.”
I felt terrible. I had lured him in here, wanting to be out in nature, but also somewhere private for our claiming. A bedroom had felt too tame for our first mating.
“I’m fine. So fucking fine, Lex. I told you I’d happily bleed for you.”
I snort laughed, but then Pala started washing my back the same way Dio was with Sam’s arms and I realized the sticky mess on my back was blood. It wasn’t mine, though. I knew because I felt no pain. As frenzied as Sam had been, he’d still protected me from harm.
“Besides,” Sam added, “the scratch marks on my back I’ll wear with pride.”
“Your back?” I asked, wondering how that had happened when he hadn’t been up against the cave wall.
Dio grinned at me as he traced a line over Sam’s back. “It seems you have claws when you’re all riled up. Bad kitty.”
“I scratched you?” I asked Sam, horrified.
He just shrugged carelessly. “My beast loved it as much as I did. It riled him up even more.”
“I’m sorry. I told you I didn’t need you to bleed for me, and then I went and made you bleed. Why didn’t you stop?”
Dio and Pala both chuckled.
“There was nothing in this world that could have made me stop once I read the words you wrote and caught your scent as you ran,” Sam said darkly. “You claimed my beast. He took over instantly, and broke every restraint I’ve ever placed on him. I was out the door before I’d even consciously thought about it.”
Our claiming had been instinctive, bloody and hedonistic. I knew now why I wasn’t afraid of Sam’s beast. My omega was a savage beast too, when she wanted to be. When his darkness rose, so did my own.
“How do you feel now?” As much as I had revelled in our claiming, I wanted to make sure provoking Sam’s beast hadn’t harmed Sam. It didn’t seem as though it had. He felt sated, but I needed to know for sure.
“Whole, connected, powerful, blessed,” he said without hesitation, his eyes never leaving mine. “You’re a gift, Lexie. You’ve changed everything in ways I never thought were possible. For the first time since I presented as an alpha, my beast feels content, like he’s a part of me instead of a monster trying to escape.
“You have no idea how much of a relief it is, not to feel like I’m going to explode at any moment. It feels like my power is filtering between us all, like we’re sharing the burden, making it lighter. “
As Sam described the sensation, I could feel what he meant. From the moment I had met Sam, his dominance had felt like it was too much for him to contain. It had been constantly trying to push its way out, like lava from a volcano, no matter how hard he tried to contain it. But now it felt like a heated river, or a tropical breeze, churning through us all.
I looked at Pala. It felt remarkably like his flowing energy, only rougher. It wasn’t a gentle stream, though; this was a powerful river. It made me feel restless and a little edgy.
“I can feel it moving through me now. It feels like a restless current stirring up my energy,” Pala said. Sam frowned at that description, looking concerned for a moment.
“Oh, fuck. I thought my heart was just racing from sex,” I said as I explored the feeling of their energies moving through me. I knew I’d felt energized after Sam claimed me, but I’d thought it was just endorphins.
Dio chuckled and pretended to reach for me. “If you insist.” He didn’t seem as perturbed and I figured he’d been unconsciously siphoning off some of Sam’s energy for years, even without a direct bond.
Pala tried to swat Dio, but he ducked out of reach, then promptly slipped on the rocky floor of the spring. His arms pinwheeled for a second, almost taking out Pala, before his head went under the surface. He came up spluttering as we all chuckled.
“Oh god, Lex. Don’t laugh when you’re locked on my knot,” Sam groaned.
