Page 41 of Chain Me Knot

She grabs his hand, turning glazed eyes on him. “The one…I go to.” Fresh tears spill down her cheeks, mixing with shower spray. “Makes me…free.”

Her face scrunches and she starts to cry, her sobs too big for her body. The sound echoes off the tile walls, a symphony of despair that makes my alpha howl with the need to make it better.

Soren chokes off a strangled sound. “She disassociated. Her trauma caused her mind to create safe spaces, escape routes. For Emma, it's a beach. A sanctuary she invented to survive her abuse. A place her mind created when her reality was literally unbearable.” He swallows hard. “In her current state, she likely didn't know she was entering the pool. She was in her safe place.”

“Fucking godsdammit,” Phoenix breathes, horror evident in his voice.

Soren’s gaze holds the weight of the world. “It means she's more broken than we imagined. This level of dissociation suggests severe psychological trauma beyond even what we suspected.”

“What triggered it?” I’m helpless. Useless. All my training, all my experience with traumatized omegas, and I have no idea how to help our own mate. “Why now? Why tonight?”

Soren shakes his head, at a loss. “Could be multiple factors. Stress of the hearing tomorrow. Physical exhaustion. Unknown environment. Emotional overload. We need a proper psychological evaluation to—”

Emma whimpers, cutting him off. The sound is so pitiful, so lost, that I find myself holding her tighter, trying to shelter her from demons I can't even sense. To my surprise, she burrows her face against my scent gland on the side of my neck, inhaling deeply.

The effect is immediate. Her trembling eases, her crying quiets. But then her scent rises, filling the steamy bathroom with heavenly honeysuckle twined in rich vanilla notes. The unmistakable scent of omega slick hits next, rich and heady, cutting through the steam like a blade.

“Fuck. No wonder she didn’t want us to come into the bedroom. She’s…her body is…starting to work again,” Phoenix breathes.

Her scent is so thick and sweet it goes straight to my cock. Every muscle in my body tightens, responding to her pheromones on a cellular level.

A deep groan tears from my throat, echoing off the shower walls, raw and hungry. Emma shivers, a moan falling from her lips. She twists in my lap, her thighs clenching together as her back starts to bow. She thrusts her perfect breasts out, her nipples pink and beaded tight. My mouth waters for a taste. Just one lick that will do nothing to sate the fire inside me. Need deep and all-consuming flows through me, replacing my blood with misplaced arousal.

The urge to fill, breed, claim is so overwhelming it’s painful. It takes every ounce of control I possess not to give in to these urges, not to let my biology override my ethics because the last thing Emma needs right now is my lust when she’s at her weakest.

Phoenix's breath catches. His pupils blow wide, dark with desire. His hands clench and unclench at his sides as he fights his instincts as his scent billows with the stream rising from the water.

A muscle jumps in Soren’s throat as he swallows hard, fighting the urge to claim written in every line of his body. “We can't let her go through this alone. She’s in pain and she needs us, but this can’t be another basement episode for her. She can’t associate us withthem.”

Her sweet scent rushes through me, sending a path of fireworks straight to my balls. My cock is so hard it could cut diamonds and I’m sure my zipper has made permanent marks on the underside. I don’t care how much pain I’m in. That’s irrelevant compared to what she needs from us.

I look down at our broken omega, our mate, this precious creature who'd rather drown than face another alpha in her time of need, yet her face is pressed to my neck, seeking comfort even in her confused state.

“We’re going to help her. Whatever it takes, whatever she needs. We help her through this,” I say, because the last thing she needs is to be left in more pain.

“And if she dissociates again?” Soren rasps.

I tighten my hold on Emma as she snuffles against my neck. There’s nothing we won’t do for this omega. “Then we find a way to make reality better than anyescape she can imagine. We become her safe place, or we'll lose her to that beach forever.”

A cry of pain tears from her throat. She clutches her stomach, her nails digging into her skin. Fresh slick coats her thighs as she writhes. She squeezes her eyes shut, tears swelling beneath her lashes. “Alpha.” Her voice is so frail. So small. “Please. Make it stop.”

Witnessing her in this amount of distress makes me sick. I know what I have to do. What any prime alpha worthy of their scent-matched omega needs to do. I've been trying to protect her by muting our bond, by holding back the tide of my emotions, but she needs to feel exactly how different we are from Pack Carmichael before we lay a single hand on her.

She needs to feel what a true alpha should feel for their omega, and gods help me, I feel all the fucking feels.

“I'm going to open the bond. Let her feel everything. My remorse, my protection, my...” I swallow hard. “My love.”

Their expressions turn equal parts grim and hopeful as they understand what I'm proposing.

“It could overwhelm her,” Soren warns.

“She needs to know she's not alone anymore. She needs to understand not all alphas are like the ones she's known. The only way to do that is to be her godsdammed scent-matched alpha. Like I should have been from the start. She knows what it feels like to be abused, but she has no idea how it feels to be loved.” I ghost my fingertips along her delicate jaw, taking in the network of fine veins beneath the surface of her skin. She's so pale, so translucent, like moonlight given form.Beautiful. “Are you all in?”

“Always,” Phoenix answers immediately, his hand steady on Emma's back. His voice holds pure conviction.

“Whatever she needs.” Soren’s gaze melts into tenderness.

Their hesitant excitement and desperate need bleed into me. They ache to bond her properly, to complete what fate started when she made her our perfect match. They're as much her scent-matched mate as I am. More worthy, perhaps,since they've maintained control while I acted like a rutting animal in that basement.

---