His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he glanced at Jaxon.
“Do it, Patrick.” Tears slid down Jaxon’s cheeks, the fullness in his heart overwhelming my own.
Patrick’s inner dragon pushed for freedom, expanding and taking up place inside our alpha’s soul. The ancientwords that would bind us together sounded loud in my conscience, but it wasn’t my place to vocalize them.
Perhaps Patrick understood the importance of the beast’s urging—but his humanity still didn’t want us.
Found us lacking.
Tears slid down my face. “We are destined for each other, Patrick,” I managed to whisper past the tightness in my chest and throat as my dragon cowered inside me. “Drawn together in ways I know you don’t yet understand, but wedobelong to one another. Alpha, beta, and female.” I swallowed to withhold the keening readying to pour past my lips.
Anger lit like a flare in the night, rippling through Jaxon’s grip on my hand.
He clasped my fingers tighter, cursing beneath his breath, the beginning of agonizing heartache rippling through the energy linking us together.
“Please,” I pleaded, shaking my head, unable to bear Jaxon’s rising pain atop my own.
Patrick’s whiskers twitched as though he clenched his jaw, and his eyes closed. A heavy exhale lowered his shoulders and bowed his head. “I have questions.”
“Ask them,” I urged, trying to sift through rising anger and fear to reach our alpha’s worries.
“What youneedto do,” Jaxon said, his voice firm—pissed as hell, “is speak the goddamn words like you’re supposed to! I promise everything, and I mean absolutelyeverything, will fall into place. This will feel right—you’ll understand. There won’t be any more of this concern over our ages or the fact you’re a professional who should have the self-control of a goddamn monk!”
Patrick’s head lifted, his eyes narrowing as he lasered in on his beta. “What do you know of my thoughts,boy?” he asked, his voice low and shaky.
A cocky grin split Jaxon’s face, even though it carried nojoy through the tether. “They’re all over your face,Doc. You ooze insecurity like a gaping wound.”
Yessss.
“Let us help to heal you,” I said, slipping to my knees and tugging on Jaxon’s hand to make him do what my dragon had placed in my mind. “The emptiness inside you will be fulfilled.”
My beta dropped beside me, and we stared up at Patrick, both of our physical bodies aroused by kneeling before the one who owned us, heart and soul.
The dragon inside him growled—groaned—with a longing so intense, I couldn’t understand how he had managed to withstand its power for so many years. His physical desire for us radiated through the circle, but still he hesitated, his anxiety palatable and sour in my mind.
“Fucking us out of your system isn’t an option,” Jaxon said as though he really could read Patrick’s mind. Perhaps it had something to do with them both being men, but I couldn’t pinpoint what made my beta’s claim rational. “It’ll only make you want us more.”
Deeper need lay beyond the longing for release, but I couldn’t yet make sense of what was causing our alpha to stand firm.
A brisk wind blew my hair across my face, but I clutched at my mates’ hands, refusing to ease the tickle of strands over my cheeks. “Allow us to love you, Patrick.”
Jaxon’s brow furrowed at Patrick’s continued silence. “Youarewhole of mind,” he stated as though, again, he understood something within Patrick’s psyche that I didn’t, “but allow fate to have her way in gifting you everything else you desire.”
Patrick swallowed. “You’re asking me to end the career I’ve fought to build, halt the forward momentum toward what I have been driven to accomplish my entire life. Youexpect me to give up my dreams for what…to get my dick wet?” He shuddered as arousal rushed through all three of us, inner beasts moaning their desire for that very thing.
“This is only the beginning,” I argued softly, my chest aching and core pulsing with the need to be filled. “And nothing about your current existence needs to end. You aren’t losinganything, Patrick. You’ll be gaining so much more than you could ever have imagined.”
Another shiver caused his body to twitch, and he exhaled heavily, tipping his head back. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, shoulders slumping—but his hold on our hands remained strong and unwavering.
The failing of his human stubbornness fell over us like a spring rain, gentle and cleansing. Still, a part of him wished to hold firm, but the darkness within him wound about his soul, coaxing quietly, pushing. Enticing. Snaking its way through his walls.
Patrick exhaled with a grunt, delicious darkness swirling through our linked arms.
A deeper voice, one full of wisdom, spilled ancient words from our alpha’s lips, their meaning and intention sweeping through us.
My dragon, along with Jaxon’s, wept.
Chapter 29