Page 45 of Fated or Knot

Fal nibbled the edge of my collarbone. Air flowed over my skin as he scented me. His low rumble was all alpha. I was slick for him already, my core clenching on air once more as mypre-heat threatened to return with a vengeance. I inhaled too, smelling warm sunshine from either his arousal, cutting through the scent dampening soap, or the ghost of his kiss that I’d eagerly return to.

The dark elf took my chin in his clawed fingers, gently turning my head. “Look at him, li’l omega,” he purred in my ear, brushing it with his fangs. “If I can smell how slick you are, he can too.”

Marius watched us with heat blazing in his dilated eyes. I’d seen that expression before, when he’d nearly pinned me to a pawn shop’s display. His hands clenched on the sides of the table, knuckles white. “You’re playing with fire,” he growled.

“He wants you too. He knowsyou’re ours. He just doesn’t want to admit it. All the self-control of the protector heir mixed in with the anxiety of an unmated kelpie. How very…tedious,” Fal continued. His lips dragged on my earlobe, tongue teasing and flicking the hoop I wore.

My breath came in uneven shudders, a needy mewl rising in my chest. I was so slick with need and paralyzed with indecision. We couldn’t do this, right? They had to leave me untouched. No matter how much I didn’t want to be as he teased the kelpie and me both. Each soft noise he wrung from me tightened the tension in Marius’s body another notch. He would snap at any second.

Fal’s other hand found the apex of my thighs, rubbing circles over the fabric between his fingers and where I needed him most. “Strip all that aside, and he wants to fuck you just as badly as I do. Don’t you, Marius?” he challenged.

The kelpie’s face warred between temptation and steely determination before the latter won. “You know we can’t.Ican’t. Stop fucking around, or I will lock you out of this room for the rest of the trip,” he practically rumbled.

“Oh,sucha punishment. What if we locked her in here withus instead? You’re telling me you really believe our forefathers managed not to claim their mate until after she was primped and inspected? If they felt half the need we do, ‘protocol’ is merely a joke.” Fal curled his finger just right and put pressure on my clit. I practically shook with repressed need, knowing exactly where this was going if he wrung as sharp a moan from me as I muffled by biting down on my lower lip.

“S-stop,” I said, pushing against his chest. “We…we can’t.”

Fal’s dilated eyes shrank to catlike slits, and he released a disappointed huff. He had a smug smile in place the next moment. “Very well. I will leave you here for now. Something tells me you two have some things to discuss.” He disentangled us, leaving my core feeling chill and the rest of me a little too warm. Though he’d taken an unaffected tone, he had to pause and adjust the front of his pants to mask the impressive bulge tenting the material. “Farewell, love.” He blew me a kiss with an elaborate flourish of his hand before he left.

The silence between Marius and me hung thick in the air. We both avoided eye contact. I reached for my work, and he fiddled with his book, running his thumb over the pages.

I opened the primer but couldn’t focus on a single word. Not until I had an answer to a burning question. “What does you being a kelpie have to do with…um. Whatever that was?” The more I thought about it, the more I figured it was Fal’s disruptive way of bringing up something I needed to know.

He sighed heavily, putting his book back down. “We’ve met many omegas. Some we have liked, more or less,” he muttered. “Surely you know the stories. Kelpies bond with our mates very deeply. Our loyalty is our most sought-after trait.”

“Have you already bonded with someone?” I could barely breathe. It would explain so much about him and also made Fal’s challenge all the more mortifying.

“No. It’s not…” He shook his head, growling. “I am not bonded. Every single female I’ve met has been unsuitable as a mate. Serian’s royal family is built around scent matches and balances the stability of our whole next generation, the future queen, on fate’s selection. And no offense to you, but fate picked a pixie, a Seelie who has never been challenged like the Queen of Serian is challenged daily.”

“You’re worried I’m unsuitable,” I said with a sinking feeling of dread and understanding.

“Of course I am,” he said, blunt as always. Those yellow eyes felt like they were searing into me. “I’m worried that the moment I give in to my base instincts for physical gratification, I’m going to lose you. If my mother decides you are unsuitable…”

He released a labored breath and rested his forehead on his fingertips, massaging in slow circles.

“It won’t feel good if you cannot be our princess, no matter how much we want you now. If even one of us bonds with you, the rejection will be messy for all five of us,” he said with a low growl.

“I understand,” I murmured. “The pain would be immense.”

“What do you know of pain?” he muttered. I loosed a little growl, a defensive comment on my tongue, but it seemed that was a remark he didn’t mean for me to hear, as he continued more clearly, “If it happens, the four of us, individually, must decide whether to remain together as Pack Sorles and rule one day with a different omega, or leave the royal family to mate with you. No matter what, my pack gets torn apart. Everything I—we—have trained for will have been for nothing.”

He sounded like he’d been dwelling on this for a long while. The bundle of instincts in the back of my head said to put my offense aside.My alpha is in distress. It didn’t matter that it was the grumpy kelpie with a valid reason to keep me at arm’s length. I would comfort him all the same.

I got to my feet. My heart flipped in my chest, beating harder the closer I came to Marius. He stiffened too, leaning back when I eased onto his leg and pressed myself against his chest. But he didn’t push me away, either.

I forced a small purr. Trying to comfort an immovable wall of muscle was harder than I thought it’d be. Especially when he just stared at me like he was wondering what in the stars I was doing.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. If I said it confidently enough, I had to believe it too.

He sighed, though the tension in his body hadn’t reduced in the slightest. “I’ve already sacrificed to be protector heir. I’vebledfor it.” His index finger traced the ridge of the scar cut across his face. “I can’t just…”

I nodded in understanding. He wouldn’t leave his role, even if his brothers did. Not for me. I would not see his kelpie loyalty unless I earned it as his pack princess. And that was okay, too. “I wouldn’t ask any of you to give up everything because of me,” I said in a small voice.

His growl rippled through me, and I shivered. “It’s not your choice, is it, li’l omega?”

“I guess not,” I conceded. There wasn’t a lot thatwasmy choice from here. Until my heat overwhelmed me and my omega mark manifested, no pack could claim me with their bites and their mark between my brows. I gave a hollow little laugh, no humor there. “What’s life without a little uncertainty?”

He frowned, a line forming through his own pack mark. He lifted his hand from his side and halted it a few inches from my face, like he wasn’t sure what to do. I held myself still as the roughened texture of his fingertips skimmed my cheek but ended up leaning away from the unfamiliar rasp of his calluses. “They make this look so easy,” he muttered.

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