Page 49 of Their Alpha

“Give it time,” Randy said, patting my shoulder again before stepping back. “I watched the three of you together. Biological bond or not, the three of you clearly share a bond of the heart. Everything else will fall into place from there.”

I said goodbye to him, thanking him for giving me a lot to think about.

And it was a lot. I’d been walking around with the assumption that things were the way they were, I’d bonded with one man, and that that would inevitably leave the other out. But what if that wasn’t true?

I finished securing everything in the back of the SUV, folded up the wagon and stored that as well, then shut and locked the car. Once that was done, I headed off to the fence at the back of the travel center, where Artemis and Gideon were chatting freely while gazing out at the field of cows.

“I didn’t mind that part, really,” Gideon was saying, full of enthusiasm and cheer. “I always liked the animals, even though the alphas in the community were responsible for anything serious with them. My omega and beta siblings and I were responsible for feeding them, though.”

“What about milking them?” Artemis asked.

I couldn’t help it. Hope had taken over in my soul, so I interrupted with, “Leave it to you to ask about milking.”

Artemis’s reaction was immediate. Warm, fuzzy sheepishness pulsed through our bond at me. His face went pink as well, and he and Gideon exchanged an amorous look.

“Not that kind of milking,” Artemis said, clearing histhroat and looking around to make certain no one was near enough to overhear.

Gideon laughed. It was my favorite sound.

He then fell into an incredibly naughty look and said, “Okay, don’t ask me how I know this, because I wasn’t supposed to see it. The People might be old fashioned in a lot of ways, but we still use modern machinery and things for our farming. That includes milking machines.”

I smiled before he’d even told the story. He’d actually told me before, and I thought it was hilarious.

“Once,” he went on, looking guiltily up at Artemis, “I went out to the barn to get a bit of peace and quiet, but my oldest brother, Luke, was already there. He’s an alpha, and he was about seventeen at the time. I heard the milking machine on and groaning, so I went to look. Fortunately, I stayed hidden, because Luke had attached one of the milking sleeves to his cock. I swear, he must have had about four orgasms in the time I hid there, trying not to laugh as I watched him.”

“Was it a Mammulator 6000?” Artemis asked, completely serious, his face turning a bright shade of red.

Gideon gasped at him. “Yes!”

I slapped a hand over my mouth to stop my laughter even before Artemis cleared his throat and said, “I did a fantasy sometime last year, and that’s what the omega used. Trust me, four orgasms while hooked up to that thing was amateur hour. The suction is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Of course, it probably helped that the omega had me bent over a table and was fucking—and you definitely don’t want to hear the rest of that.”

“No! No, I do!” I said, tingling with arousal as Artemis’s wicked memories shot through the bond at me. Hell, justthe idea that he would want me to fuck him at some point had me glittering with possibility.

Fortunately, Gideon seemed to think it was hilarious. He couldn’t stop laughing. “The two of you,” he said, snorting as he glanced between us. “You should see your faces.”

I was so glad no one was around to overhear us, not even Randy. The silly, sexy conversation felt special to the three of us. It was something that could bring us together, nasty though it was. And more than anything, I just wanted the three of us to be together.

“Come on,” I said, taking the lead as Gideon and Artemis continued to laugh. “Let’s get you two knuckleheads home and store all this food. We have a generator to get running, too.”

We headed to the car, and for the first time since our ordeal had started, I felt like we might be okay.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Artemis

As far as high-tension, high-risk outings to a public place in order to stock up on supplies so we could hole up for a few weeks went, our trip to the travel center was a success. The SUV was full to the brim with everything from food to fuel for the generator to a few extra things, like books and a card game Gideon had picked up, to keep us entertained for however long we needed to stay hidden.

To be honest, as quaint as I thought the cliffside house was and as much work as Fletcher had put into it, I hoped we’d be able to leave it in time and return to Barrington and our lives once the threat of Justice Goode taking Gideon from us or harming our strange little unit was removed.

And I did think it could be removed, I just didn’t know how yet.

Gideon was in a surprisingly good mood for someonewith a deep fear of other people who had just spent a few hours in public. He chatted away about the cows and about his good memories of growing up on a remote farm as I drove us back to the coast. He added in a few references to his favorite captive omega princes and their apparently incredible alpha dragon princes, though I lost track of which prince was which after a while.

I liked it when Gideon was happy. He radiated happiness in a way you couldn’t help but feel. I still had my suspicions about what the true source of that happiness was, and I was fairly certain he’d snuck back into the bookshop and purchased one of the books about pregnancy when he thought Fletcher and I were distracted, but I didn’t want to bring it up until we all felt safe.

Interestingly, Fletcher was hard to read on the drive home, even with the bond. He was deep in thought, but the emotions that accompanied his thoughts bounced around so much that there was no way I could figure out what he was thinking. Only couples who had been bonded for a long, long time could read each other’s thoughts literally. For everyone else, the bond only transmitted feelings.

“You okay?” I asked Fletcher once we parked in front of the house and got out to unload the car.

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