Page 21 of Fight or Fly

“Irina,” he said quietly. “Who was she?”

I waited for the familiar tide of old pain to rise, crest, and slowly ebb. “Irina Pasternak was the omega I couldn’t save. She was carrying our pups... and also my mating bite.”

“Ah,” Kameron said. Nothing else—no hollow sympathy, no request for further details.

“What about you?” I asked. I told myself it was just a way to redirect the conversation away from me, but the truth was, I was curious. These two must have had the devil’s own luck to get as far as they had.

His shoulders rose and fell on a silent sigh. “I was born in Kolkata. The locals got tired of our purebred family being too prosperous and too comfortable with our own position. Committee sympathizers came for us when I was twelve, and I was the only one considered economically valuable enough to keep for the breeding pens. When I turned out not to be pliable enough for their tastes, they sterilized me and threw me into the slave market.”

I waited while he gazed off into the distance. He’d summarized his past in a bland monologue, much as I had. I understood the need to tamp those emotions down. He turned and glanced at me before continuing in a more normal tone.

“The person who bought me was secretly working with the underground. She shipped me off to North America and arranged a beta identity for me.”

“Lucky,” I said.

“Yes, I suppose so,” he agreed.

An oddly comfortable silence fell between us. I was aware of Jax and Flynn listening in on the conversation from across the room, but they didn’t try to interrupt.

Kameron’s story wasn’t miles different from Irina’s—though I wasn’t about to say so aloud, given how hers had ended. Irina had at least escaped sterilization, but she, too, had been purchased by one of the underground operatives we called thecatch-and-releasers. It had always enraged me that the best we could seem to come up with was this patchwork method of freeing individual alphas and omegas from slavery. What I really wanted was to put a torch to the entire damned institution and burn it to the ground.

This, clearly, was one of several reasons I was only a lowly foot soldier in the resistance, rather than a four-star general.

“Would you do something for me, please?” Kameron asked, some minutes later.

Tension coiled in my shoulders, but I’d been the one to insist that any omega in my pack’s nest would get exactly what they needed, no matter what that was.

“Yes?” I said.

He released his grip around his knees, his posture going loose-limbed and exhausted. “As, er,enlighteningas the experience was, I don’t think I’m going to be in any kind of shape to play host to a knot for the next day or two.”

Flynn snorted, but—somewhat surprisingly—kept any off-color commentary about female alpha knots to himself.

Kameron wisely ignored him. “That being said, I am so tired right now I can barely see straight. I, uh... I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

That was obvious enough from the dark bags under his eyes. “Tell me what you need,” I said.

He hesitated. “Would you watch over things while I rest? I mean—I know you were doing that already,” he hurried to add. “What I’m asking is...” He trailed off.

“He wants you to watch overhim,” Flynn said. “Ginger Tea, no offense, but you’re still really bad at asking for things.”

Kameron ducked his head, not denying the allegation. An unpleasant mix of dread and longing tugged at me, but there was no avoiding the promise I’d made to look after his needs. I scooted forward, lowering myself off the couch and into the nest—trying not to feel awkward about it.

“Come on, then,” I said, cringing inwardly at how painfully useless I was at things like this.

Flynn rolled his eyes at me. Jax lifted an eyebrow. “Will wonders never cease,” he muttered. I mentally planned the kind of sparring sessions for them that would leave both of them bruised and aching for a week.

Kameron, blushing hard enough that it was visible even with his rich olive skin tone, curled up next to me in the soft nest and rested his head on my thigh. My hand lifted to stroke through his thick, silky hair, seemingly of its own volition. He drew in a slow, careful breath, and when he let it out, I felt his muscles grow slack with relief.

“Thank you alpha,” he murmured.

I didn’t reply—but I did keep stroking his hair... while trying my best to ignore the knowing looks that my packmates were giving me.

* * *

Jax and Flynn tookturns knotting Leona through the rest of her heat. I maintained a martial eye on the birth control situation, ensuring that her cervical cap was removed and replaced at the appropriate intervals.

No one could have slept through her increasingly wild peaks, but Kameron still slepta lot. He probably needed it, especially since Flynn talked him into a second round of sex after he’d had a couple of days to recover from the first one. Well, I saytalked. The others had grown increasingly feral and growly as the heat progressed, so it was more a case of Flynn having pinned Kameron on his back and straddled his hips to keep him there, before informing the omega that he was going to come this time with my clit up his ass and Leona sitting on his face, drowning him in slick.

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