Page 32 of Rivers and Roads

His warm breath ghosted over my cheeks, and I felt a white-hot surge of want as he nosed along my jaw. It was Beta and Omega fighting inside me, and I wanted to scream. It was too fucking much.

“Please,” I managed, and his grip loosened. The moment it did, though, another surge of pain wracked my middle, and I curled my arms around myself. “I don’t…I need…”

I didn’t know what I needed. I needed Danyal, maybe, or some sort of antidote. I felt flushed, like a fever rising, and I turned my gaze to Zane who was staring at me with his nostrils rapidly flaring.

There was a blush over his cheeks—and I knew this scent well. I’d seen the beginnings of a rut more than once with mated Alphas in the service.

Which meant…

“Jesus, no,” I whispered. No. No. No fucking way was I going into heat.

Zane tried to nose his way down my body, and the cramps only got worse. I managed to push him back and stumble to my feet, but he was on me in seconds. I felt panic rising up, and just when I expected him to pin me to a tree, he let go.

When I looked over my shoulder at him, he was crouched low, his eyes looking at me with something like wonder and maybe a little fear. He understood—however much he was capable of understanding.

I held out a shaking hand, and he crept forward until the tips of his claws touched me. “I need to get in the house, Zane. Please come with.”

I wasn’t sure if he got all that, but I turned on my heel and began shuffling steps toward the porch. I was far slower than I had been as a wolf, but the very idea of shifting then made me feel like I was going to lose what little food I’d managed to consume the day before. I heard Zane a few seconds later, and as much as I wanted to be grateful he was trying to help, it was hard to deal with the thick, heavy scent of his approaching rut.

I was almost doubled over in pain by the time I got to the steps, and I stumbled in through the front door, leaving my clothes out on the porch. My legs supported me just long enough to reach the sofa, and I collapsed on the cushions, breathing in a sigh of relief. They were cool against my feverish skin, but I knew it wasn’t going to last. The pain was getting worse, and there was an itch somewhere deep inside me that I knew wasn’t going away.

Not without a knot.

I should have been panicking, and I might have been if I had enough space in my head to do it. But the scent of Zane so close—of Alpha, and want, and need—was overwhelming all of me. I groaned, dragging my hands over my face, and I found myself writhing against the soft cloth.

My cock was achingly hard, leaking all over my stomach, and I could feel another gush of slick dribbling between my thighs.

I turned my head when I heard a faint whine, and I saw Zane standing in the doorway with his cock thick between his legs, hard enough the head was pushing out of his foreskin. He was staring at me with starvation in his eyes, his lips parted on a pant.

It took me a moment to realize that his fangs were gone, and his claws had been drawn back. Was it because he wanted to knot me without hurting me? Or was he healing.

I opened my mouth to ask, but all that came out was a strangled moan as another wave of pain gripped me. In my haze, I knew what I needed. I hadn’t exactly paid a lot of attention in biology when it came to Alpha and Omega mating. It wasn’t something I thought I’d ever need. But I knew enough.

I knew it recently, when Misha was gripped by his heat and Kor was the only thing that could drag him out of the madness.

“Please,” I whispered.

The moment the word escaped my lips, he was on me. His hands curled around my body, shoving me to the side as he fit himself against the cushions behind me. As his body slid along mine, the pain began to ebb, and the more he nosed at my skin, the more I could think.

“I hate this,” I whispered. And it was true. I hated it, because this wasn't the way I wanted him. If I was ever allowed to have Zane, I wanted him enthusiastic and desperate for me on his own, not because his rut told him an Omega was in heat.

He let out another quiet whine, and then I felt a rough tongue laving at the join between my neck and shoulder. A place a Wolf would bite me if we wanted to mate. A place for an Alpha to sink his teeth in, in that peak of passion as his knot would catch and our bond would solidify.

And none of that was for me, because the blood running through my veins that marked me as an Omega wasn’t real.

My temperature rose another degree, and I began to sweat as my dick began to ache. I could survive the heat without his knot, but it would be days of torture. Days of being desperate and unsatisfied. Days of forcing Zane to ignore what he wanted to do most.

His hand moved toward my erection, and I grabbed him by the wrist, pushing him back up toward my chest. “Not like this,” I whispered. “Not when you can’t tell me if this is what you want.”

He made a strangled noise, then blunt teeth grazed my earlobe before he pulled away. His tongue worked in his mouth, and then a single word danced from his lips. “Orion.”

I froze, trying to turn fully in his arms, but he locked his own around me and held me tight.

“Orion,” he said again.

Fuck. Fuck. I sobbed quietly, pressing my hands over his, and I held tight. “I can’t let you do this.”

I heard him struggling again, like every word was a new mountain to climb, but he managed it. “Please. Orion.”

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