Page 17 of Their Alpha

“It was the way The People did things,” I mumbled, my emotions bouncing wildly within me.

I definitely still felt afraid, but now I was embarrassed and sad as well. I didn’t want Artemis to think less of me. But that was a new and uncomfortable feeling. I wasn’t terrified of him. I think I liked him. I had no reason to. Alphas were deceptive. He might just be pretending to be good and noble so that he could snatch me and take me once I let my guard down.Hehad done that plenty of times.

But I knew in my gut that Artemis wasn’t like that. Itsounded bizarre to me, but it was like my womb was convinced Artemis was good. It longed for him, longed to feel his thick cock, which I caught myself staring at again, push and prod and thrust inside to spill all his seed within me. It yearned to take that seed and conceive new life.

The feeling was so strong that I pressed a hand to my stomach. The craving to have a baby, to have several babies, really, had been growing stronger and stronger inside of me. I wanted to be a papa so badly. Whether it was instinct, genetics, or my own wants, the need had been growing so loud that it had made the last couple of heats almost too intense to handle.

I’d downplayed my need to Fletcher, because there was nothing Fletcher could do about it. He was doing absolutely everything he could right now, by purchasing the Heat Lightning system and finding the alphas that he’d brought over for my last few heats. He’d purchased the milking bed to keep me absolutely safe from them, exhausted himself making sure I made it through my heats as easily as possible, but he could never impregnate me. Omegas couldn’t sire children, they could only grow them in their wombs.

“Gideon, are you okay?” Artemis asked, pulling me out of my sadness.

I raised my eyes from where I’d been staring at his cock to meet his look of concern.

“I don’t mean to be indelicate, but I can smell your next wave starting,” he went on. His hips thrust, probably involuntarily, shaking a drop of precum from his flared tip.

I panicked and stepped back, but he was right, my next wave was starting. I moaned as a gush of slick slipped down my thighs from my pulsing, gaping hole.

It would be so easy to undo the straps to free Artemis,then to bend over so he could fuck me and end this burning, frustrating ache inside me. If I was just brave enough to?—

“Hey! What’s going on in here?” Fletcher demanded, marching into the room.

He was naked and partially erect, and he had a protective flare in his eyes that made me catch my breath and fall in love with him all over again. He marched over to me, circling his arms around me and pulling me away from Artemis as if Artemis were trying to claw his way out of the chair to get me instead of marshaling his patience to lie right where he was.

“It’s alright, Fletcher,” Artemis said. “We were just talking, but I think Gideon’s next wave has started.”

“What were you saying to him?” Fletcher demanded, nearly wrapping his entire body around me as he backed us toward the bedroom. “Did you scare him? Did you touch him?”

“Fletcher, it’s okay,” I gasped. The touch of his skin all around my body pushed me the rest of the way into my next wave. I let out a groan of need and struggled to get out of his hold. I needed an alpha. I needed my alpha.

The power of that instinctual thought froze me and made me burst into tears. I loved Fletcher with everything I had, but I liked Artemis. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it through this particular heat with Heat Lightning and Fletcher alone, and it broke my heart.

CHAPTER SIX

Artemis

It stopped being a fantasy the moment I saw Gideon’s sweet, terrified face.

Everything within me roared to full alpha protectiveness when Gideon caught me awake and watching him and when he wheeled back to hide in the corner. It tore me up inside to see an omega so traumatized by his past that he would react to me like that.

Talking to him and reassuring him by strapping myself into the chair only made the overpowering ache in my gut and in my heart sharper. Fletcher had spoken about his husband in glowing terms, and he hadn’t been lying. Gideon radiated pureness of heart and innocent beauty. The way his eyes lit up when he’d talked about the omega fairy tale princes had me smiling from the inside along with him. The sound of his laughter was like some sort of magic charm.

I was completely smitten.

And then Fletcher had stepped into the scene as Gideon’s heat wave rolled over him, changing the entire complexion of the interaction. Suddenly, I was an outsider, an intruder in someone else’s bittersweet love story.

The thing was, my heart bled for Fletcher as well. I admired him more than anyone I’d ever known. The strength he was showing, both in exhausting himself to take care of Gideon while simultaneously giving me what I needed in rut and in sacrificing his own needs, was astounding.

I was smitten with Gideon, but I was falling head over heels for Fletcher.

“Everything is okay,” I reassured him, tensing in my self-imposed restraints. “Gideon got up to use the bathroom, and we started talking on his way back.”

“You’re not supposed to see him,” Fletcher half shouted as he walked Gideon into the bedroom. “He’s terrified of alphas. I won’t have you upsetting him.”

“Fletcher,” Gideon cried plaintively from somewhere out of my sight. It was hard to tell if he was pleading with his mate for calm or if he was suddenly so desperate in his heat wave that he was begging Fletcher to help him.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Fletcher called back to him as he walked into the dressing room, looking over his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I swear, I didn’t do anything to upset Gideon,” I said as calmly as I could, straining against the straps holding me down as a particularly fierce pulse of need pushed into my cock and balls. “We were talking. He told me about how the two of you met. He told me the story of Azurus the Sapphire Dragon Prince.”

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