Page 49 of Jace

“Don’t ‘Em’ me, tough guy. I’m not afraid of you.”

On the other side of the room, the full crew was in attendance—omegas poised with food halfway to their lips, the guys looking on with amusement. Dane chuckled, the fucker.

Why exactly had I let Emma in the gates again?

Yeah, that was right—she’d been shaking the mesh like a madwoman, looking straight up at the surveillance camera, demanding to speak to the manager.

The fucking manager?! Like this was some kind of holiday resort.

She was batshit crazy. It was either bring her in, or have another damn riot on our hands when the rest of the deadbeats in this zone roused themselves to come and check what the fuck was going on.

“Are you even listening to me?” I asked. “You get your sister is newly mated, right? And from the sounds of things, they were busy alleviating their newly mated needs.”

The frown faded, her eyes went round, and she opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before spluttering, “Newly mated needs!” Her scowl was back in an instant, little chin tipping in defiance that might as well have been a red flag to the alpha side of me. “I demand to see my sister, this instant, before your ‘brother’” —she put air quotes on the word with an exaggerated roll of her eyes— “gets notions of breeding her.”

I rubbed my jaw as though pondering this. I was confident Jace was already balls deep and well into the process of breeding her formerly sensible sister, so I offered Emma a fake smile. “How about no.”

Then she poked me one time too fucking many.

“Oh!”

Her screech accompanied me tossing her over my shoulder. Small fists beat against my back, while she cursed me out like a pro.

And just like that, all the tension left me, because handling brats was a personal forte of mine. All alphas had a beast and all had a weakness. My beast’s weakness was taming querulous women, and this one needed a firm but loving lesson in boundaries and respect applied to her arse via my hand.

“Quiet down, princess.” I landed the first swat against her backside, chuckling when it roused an outraged squeal. I nodded my head to Dane, who was watching with a shit-eating grin. “If Jace and Sloane surface, tell them I’m going to be” —I gestured toward the wriggling spitfire hanging over my shoulder— “handling this little problem.”

I didn’t wait for a reply, just punched the button on the elevator, and with Emma still wailing about her rights, exited the room.

Epilogue

Sloane

If I thought waking up mated was a deliriously gorgeous feeling, waking up bred was something else. My body sang with pleasure, but not so much an intense, grasping, sexual one. I woke up, heard the heavy sounds of Jace’s breath, stared at the ceiling, and felt it. I’d never wanted to have kids before, feeling like I had my hands full with Em and the estate but… My hand dropped down to my flat stomach, the palm stroking over the smooth surface, and I felt it. Just a pinprick of…life, I guessed. No consciousness yet, no existence beyond a few multiplying cells, I knew that academically, but in reality, it was as if someone had gone all out to give me the perfect gift, one I hadn’t even known I wanted until I had it. My eyes pricked with tears, sensitive bloody omega, but I didn’t care. I let them come, because with them came a rush of the most perfect, all encompassing love.

I’d lost so much when my parents died. We’d expected them to be there, to see us grow up into adulthood, find our way in life, and be the amazing supportive presence they’d always been, and that had been torn away. I’d stepped up, tried to be them for Em, keep her safe and happy and get her through the grieving process, but now I had something for me. We could build our own family here. Jace and I, we could be just like my parents, surrounding our child with love and…

The thoughts were pushed aside as the feelings just kept rising, and then a montage of images hit me almost physically. A little boy with a shock of dark brown hair and a mulish expression, just like his dad. A delicate little girl who’d stumble over her feet but pick herself up again with a grin. I could see them, right as they?—

“Baby?” Jace mumbled the word, fighting against sleep, obviously being wakened by what was going on in me. He blinked rapidly, trying to make his eyes see me. “Are you OK? Did something…?”

The words stopped when it seeped in, that bone-deep knowledge that I felt, that we felt. He frowned slightly, looking down at my hand on my stomach, and then his face transformed. Big growly fucking alphas, they make you think that they’re made of rusted steel and barbed wire, but at their centre, they were gooey marshmallows. Jace stared at my hand over my belly like it was the Holy Grail or something, his hand shaking as he reached out, covering mine with his.

“Jesus, Sloane…?”

I nodded slowly, smiling the smuggest of smiles.

“We’re…” He tried to say it a few times, his brain fighting his mouth, so I had to do it for him.

“We’re going to be a family.”

Then he surged forward, covering my body with his, pinning me to the bed in a way I knew now I would always crave, his mouth finding my mating mark just as I found his.

“I don’t know what the fuck I did to deserve you, love, but I promise you, I’ll show you every damn day that I do. You’re mine, Sloane, mine.”

“Mine,” I agreed, relaxing back onto the bed and closing my eyes, just sinking into the emotions and the sensations of being an omega with her alpha. “Mine.”

Art

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