Page 33 of Rivers and Roads

My walls were already fragile, and while I realized then I would hate myself when it was all over, I was too weak. I was ready to crack.

Chapter

Fifteen

ZANE

Safe.

It was something I had been feeling for long enough that the small room, the chains, and the pain was starting to fade into the darkness. My vision was still red, still thick with clouds, but there was a light. There was scent from a Wolf I trusted.

The blood on my hands was not this Wolf’s. It was from them—from the ones who hurt me. Not his, though—the one who forced me to call him master. The voice that would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. But there was still time to make him pay—to make him bleed and beg as I crushed the life out of him.

But even in the haze of that anger, the more distance we put between the little room and where we were going, the more I started to feel like myself.

It wasn’t until I woke with the Omega pressed against me that I remembered my name. Zane—an Alpha. I had no idea where we were, only that the Wolf in my arms was important. That he was to be protected. His eyes looked wrong, his scent was different, but something told me he was mine.

A sort of intense possession rose in me, and I left him curled up as I went to provide. The water was cool against my skin as my claws itched, as my gums ached. I felt like I was somewhere between life and death and had been hovering there for too long. Everything in me wanted to stretch out and change, but the beast down below was too far to reach.

And then he came. My Omega. His wolf, beautiful and black with eyes that were too knowing. His fur was soft against my skin as he let me drag fingers through it, and I thought we could stay there forever. The rest of the world was unkind. All it wanted to do was hurt us.

Then my little Omega changed, and I could smell it. His want, his need. Slick ran down his thighs, and my mouth watered with wanting him. There was a deep desperation that had been growing for years, though those memories were too far for me to reach out and touch. But I knew them. This need for him was an old friend.

His fear wasn’t enough to deter me, though I didn’t entirely understand it. He was afraid of my touch, but he wanted me close. It wasn’t until the pain gripped him that my head began to clear, and not everything was making sense, but he was.

Orion.

My Orion. Who was not an Omega, though everything about him right then said different. But it didn’t matter. And I didn’t think it ever would.

Holding him against my bare skin made me feel complete. I could help him with his pain. I could make it go away. I could sink my knot into his slick heat and keep him locked to me. Nothing would ever touch him.

“Orion,” I managed. Words were such a foreign concept. My head was still so full of feeling and sensation. His rising heat against me was like lightning, the cock between my legs so hard, it was almost painful. I could already feel my knot building, and it took all of my self-control not to roll him over and push in. “Please.”

I heard him sob, felt him press back against me. My nose was flooded with the scent of him—of us. I was leaking against his hole, and the head of my cock caught as I gave a short thrust. He gasped, his nails turning to claws, and he tore at the cushion beneath him.

“Need you, want you. Zane, please, please fuck me.”

It was all I needed. My hand pushed between our bodies, two fingers sinking into his hole. He accepted me like I always belonged there, quivering around me. He gushed more slick into the palm of my hand, and I pushed deeper until I found that spot that made him scream.

His hips fucked forward against the sofa beneath him, and I pulled away, only to take him by the waist. Pushing my cock along the crack of his ass, I watched as it grew wet and heavy. Orion let out a chest-deep whine, close to begging, but I didn’t want that.

I didn’t want to make him wait.

“Orion,” I said again. All I knew was his name and this need to fill him which was impossible to ignore.

“Need you,” he said on the edge of a whisper.

I let instinct take over. He was too tight to take me in a single thrust, and the sofa was too damn small for both of us, but I set one foot on the floor and lifted him by the hips. He moved readily, presenting to me. His scent flooded my lungs, and in that moment, all I knew was him.

The head of my cock caught on his rim, and then with a firm thrust, I was inside. He howled with pleasure, his face buried in the pillow, thrashing back and forth. It was not enough, of course. It wouldn’t be enough until he was stuffed with my knot.

Reaching down, I grabbed him by the wrists and forced him to brace himself on the arm of the sofa. When his claws dug in, I lifted him higher, planted my foot hard, and then pushed home. My knot started to grow as the room filled with slick-heavy noise, and I ruined him. He was coated in sweat, and I leaned forward, dragging my tongue up his spine to taste him.

He was everything. He was perfection. He was the only Wolf I had ever wanted, and the only Wolf I ever would.

And gods—gods—he tasted like mine.

My teeth closed around the back of his neck, and as my knot began to swell, everything in me told me to bite him. My fangs started to elongate again, but just as they pricked his skin, I felt him stiffen.

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