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“You ready to join them, beautiful?” Curran asked, stroking over my gland with a light, ticklish touch that made gooseflesh rise along my back.

I didn’t even have to think about it. “Mate me, Gabriel. Please... I’m so tired of being alone.”

It should have been hard to say. Somehow, it wasn’t.

“We’ve all been alone too long,” Gabriel whispered. His lithe frame covered mine.

Curran slid his hand away from my neck. “Ain’t that the truth, Blondie. Go on then, do it. It’s past time.”

Lips, slightly chapped, traced a path over my right shoulder and up. My nerves sang in anticipation. Onyx’s low murmurs of love and devotion to Elijah whispered at the edge of my hearing.

“Beautiful, the four of you,” Curran said.

A warm tongue rasped over the aching place at the curve of my neck. I was already slipping into a knotting haze, the outside world going soft and unfocused. When Gabriel’s teeth sank into me, the pain was there, but so was the surrender. Maybe this was what the antelope felt when the lion sank fangs into its throat.

Inevitability.

Acceptance.

The end of one life.

The beginning of another?

Gabriel groaned against my broken skin, the sound vibrating through me. He lapped at the wound he’d made, heat radiating outward from the point of contact. Heat and... something else.

I’d read alphomic romance novels. Tried to scoff at the predictable conclusion, when the omega protagonist submitted to the alpha’s bite, tying their souls together until death and beyond.

I could feel Gabriel. The faintly nervy desperation to always do the right thing, to never make a wrong decision. To see justice done and protect those he considered to be under his care.

My breath caught—the pain of the bite, the deep itch as the healing properties of alpha saliva went to work... none of it was important. The knot tying our bodies together still throbbedpleasure, but it was nothing compared to the new bond tying our souls together.

“Emma,” Gabriel breathed. “You’re like quicksilver. So bright...”

Tears slid down my temple and cheek. I couldn’t stop them. Wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t a poet. I couldn’t come up with some great metaphor for everything Gabriel was.

“D-don’t leave me,” I sobbed instead, drawing a low noise of pain from him. Gabriel’s weight pressed down more firmly on my body, grounding me.

“Never,” he said.

“No one’s leaving anyone,” Curran rumbled. Callused fingers wiped at my tear tracks. “I swear, you two need each other more than any two people I’ve ever seen.”

“Stop being right about things, damn you,” Gabriel muttered against my shoulder blade.

I blinked my vision into focus, checking on Elijah to find him curled, sleepy and content, in Onyx’s arms. Onyx was still murmuring low words of comfort and reassurance, but predictably, the pair had managed their mating with far less drama than Gabriel and I had.

Drama or no, biology was taking over for me, too. My first peak had passed; my body demanded rest. Alphas were guarding the nest. Now, one of them was guarding my heart as well. My mind surrendered to darkness, surrounded by the shape of Gabriel’s protectiveness and awe.