Page 37 of Omega's Triplets

“What if I did?” Mark asked. “She’s our omega, isn’t she? It’s what we brought her here for.”

“She’s been here for aday,” Jamie said. “We were going to ease her in. We promised her she wouldn’t be forced.”

“I didn’t force her!” Mark spat.

“You’re expecting us to believe that she just ran off into the woods with you for a secret rendezvous?” Harley asked. He looked disgusted. “She can’t even tell us apart yet, Mark.”

“I... well, I don’t think she knew who I was,” he admitted.

“My God.” Jamie was appalled. “And you still fucked her?”

“Listen, you weren’t there,” Mark said. “You don’t understand.”

“Oh, this ought to be good,” Harley said. His lip curled in a sneer. “Tell us how you just couldn’t resist her. She was in the river, wasn’t she? I bet she was soaking wet, and you just had to get her out of her clothes, and once you had, you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself. Is that it?”

“No, that’s not it,” Mark said. “Am I on trial or something? Yes, I slept with her. She’s here to mate with us. And okay, maybe I jumped the gun a little—”

“A little? We were going to decide together when the time was right!” Jamie cried. “We were going to decide together what the best way was, so she would be most likely to get pregnant by all three of us at once. That wasyourrule, Mark. That’s whatyoualways said. We’d have to plan and schedule carefully, so we could make sure she carried a litter that belonged to all of us. And then, the first time you got her alone—”

“It wasn’t like that!” Mark said. “I didn’t expect it to happen, all right! It felt like...like it was beyond our control. It was like a force of nature.”

“Oh, what are you, seventeen?” Harley snorted.

“I’m not being hyperbolic,” Mark said. “Itreally waslike that. It was like the feeling of being commanded by an alpha. Remember what that felt like? When Dad used to do it to us?”

Jamie nodded. Harley glared.

“Well, that’s what it was like,” Mark said. “I know this sounds crazy, or like I’m making excuses. But it felt like Ididn’t have a choice. And I think, if you asked her, that she’d say she felt the same way. It wasn’t as if we didn’t want to. It was that the wanting was so big that we couldn’t think around it. It was bigger than we were.”

There was a long silence.

“That does sound crazy,” Harley said finally.

“It’s what happened,” Mark said. “Even now, I can barely stand to be in a room with her. It’s taking all my willpower—but I think the problem before was that I was unprepared. When the feeling first came over me, it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Now that I’m expecting it, I can manage it.”

Harley shook his head. “You can’t be around her anymore,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

Even Jamie was a little taken aback at that. “Hang on,” he said. “How is that even going to work?”

“We can’t trust him with her, Jamie,” Harley said. “He said it himself. He’s out of control with lust. He’s...he’s ananimal.”

It was the cruelest thing Harley could have said, and everyone in the room knew it. As in tune with his animal nature as Mark was, as much as he loved it, he was deeply insecure about the fact that everything he’d ever failed at had been due to an inability to be appropriately human.

Jamie held his breath, waiting to see what would happen.

“You take that back,” Mark said, eyes glittering.

“No,” Harley said.

“I said fuckingtake it back!” He advanced on Harley, who backed away just as Jamie dove forward to intercede.

Maybe Mark would have hit Harley, or maybe he was only raising his fist to threaten him. In that moment, it wasn’t clear. But when Jamie jumped between his brothers, Mark’s hand caught him under the jaw and sent him reeling back into a bookcase. He hit the shelves, dislodging several books before falling to the ground, his jaw aching from the blow.

Harley looked at Mark as if he were scum. “Get out of here,” he said.

Mark stared at Jamie on the floor, looking horrified. “I—”

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