Page 23

Colton

After Willow dropped that bombshell about curses not being curses, she showed us to a couple of prepared bedrooms, coaxing us with promises of a good night’s rest, safe and sound. Then promised to show us things that would change our lives the next day.

No amount of information Willow could share with us would change our lives as much as one fleeting thought I’d captured.

Somehow, Caius was able to block my curse, and for one moment, he relinquished control before slamming the door in my face, just at the right time for me to hear one of Willow’s thoughts, like it was just for me.

And a request that I say nothing.

Which puts me in a really shitty position that I won’t forgive any time soon.

Rai is fast asleep, still obviously drained from overexertion. Aubrey went off with Caius to tour the grounds’ defenses, the only way he’d agree to rest tonight. After I explained that Aubrey couldn’t speak without killing him, Caius seemed pleased his company would be as quiet as he seemed to be.

Mira’s racing thoughts are a soft murmur inside my mind, too difficult to keep up with. I can feel her spiraling as I leave the bedroom assigned to us Alphas, close the door behind me, and make my way to her door, where I rap softly on the wood. An instant later, she opens the door, and I’m looking down into the face of the woman I love, those silver eyes wide and worried.

I’d do anything to take her worry away.

I swoop in and capture her lips with mine, those soft, lush pillows part in surprise, then she relaxes as I pull her close in an embrace, sweeping my tongue into her mouth. Guiding us both inside her room, I close the door behind me before breaking the kiss, my hands on either side of Mira’s face to guide her to look up at me. I grin. “I’ve been waiting to do that for hours now.”

The smile she gives in response is brilliant, sparkling, and warms my heart in ways I never imagined possible.

This curse has haunted me for half my life. I’ve never been able to escape its whims, escape the thoughts it forced into my head. And then Mira came into my life, and everything changed. Everything keeps on changing.

“I love you,” I say, earnest conviction in my voice and expression. I want her to know how real this is, how deeply it flows.

Her bare hand sweeps through my hair, and I stifle a groan at how nice it feels, having her fingertips brush my scalp.

“I love you, too,” she whispers. “So very much.”

I crush her in my arms again, swaying a bit to some romantic music in my head that I remember my parents playing in our house when I was little.

Mira’s arms wrap under my arms, her hands rest at my shoulder blades. “That’s a nice song,” she says, causing me to misstep. I hadn’t realized I’d been projecting the song into her mind.

“Don’t stop.”

So I don’t. I keep pulling on the memory of that song, playing it soft but clearly in my mind, sharing it with the woman I love as we dance in the sunbeams shining in through the windows.

When the song, or what I can remember of it, ends, I say aloud the thought I’d been holding back. “I can’t believe we made it out.”

She hugs me tighter, her face buried in my chest where she inhales me with a shuddering breath.

Her rose and myrrh scent invades my senses, overloading me in a way I’ve never known. Then that scent mixes with something new, something delectable that makes my mouth water, my teeth ache, and my cock stiffen.

A soft whine erupts from Mira’s chest, and she steps away from me, hand to her lips, eyes frightened. She winces in pain and grips her abdomen with another whine.

Oh no.

Oh shit.

She’s going into heat again.

I can barely get the words out, barely make my body move toward the door, that beast inside my chest growling and chomping, fighting my every move. “I...I’ll go get...Rai…”

My hand on the doorknob, she whines my name, reaches for me. “No…” she’s breathless. “I want you. Need you. Please...my Alpha…”

I’ve never moved so fast in my life, dashing toward my Omega, my beloved, and lifting her into my arms to carry her to the only bed in the room. A king-sized bed, I note.

I lay Mira on top of the dark red covers, her head leaning against a pillow, and I climb onto the bed like a predator, her silver eyes narrow at me with lust I can feel as much as my own.

“Hang on,” she says in a rush, and I blink as she begins to remove her clothes, fast. Unwanted flashes of Rai tearing her clothes off when they’d mated invade my mind, and I raise a brow at her after she tosses her shirt to the floor. “I don’t have spare clothes.”

Her expression is so innocent, I grin wickedly, though I’m a bit disappointed she has enough sense right now to be level-headed despite her heat.

That disappointment flies right out the window the moment her bra joins her shirt on the floor, and I’m greeted by two glorious pale globes of flesh that I want nothing more than to sink my teeth into. My mouth waters so much that I have to swallow my saliva so it doesn’t drip down my chin like an animal.

On her collarbone is a clean bite mark, still red but going pale around the edges.

I want my mark on her more than I ever imagined. Probably because I never imagined I’d have an Omega to mark—to want me to mark her. The damaged, institutionalized Alpha.

Shaking the thoughts from my head, my hands land on the waist of her pants, and she jolts. “I promise not to tear them off.” I smirk at her before she relaxes back on the bed. The scent of her slick further invades my senses as I unbutton and pull the zipper of her jeans down. Mira’s breathing is shallow and quick, her belly and chest rising and falling rapidly as she lifts her hips to help me pull the fabric from her legs. I find myself standing at the foot of the bed, flinging her pants to the floor and raking my gaze from her sock-clad feet to the black cotton panties on her hips, to those glorious breasts that rise and fall with her breaths.

I’m frozen in place, hypnotized by her beauty. When our gazes meet, she reaches for me again. Without another thought, I pull the blue long-sleeved Henley from my torso and throw it to the ground violently, and as I undo my belt to remove my pants, I catch her eyes roving over my arms, my obliques, my pecs. For a moment, that cocky grin settles on my face at the thought of being admired, before the haze of lust lifts like a rug being yanked from under me.

I’m frozen, again, realizing exactly what she’s looking at.

The lust is gone from her face, too, as if her heat is completely forgotten. The worry in her eyes too much to bear. I avert my gaze and dip down to retrieve my shirt, but Mira’s hands are on my skin, and I shiver with uncontrollable desire; that creature in my chest lets out a soft and gentle purr of delight.

Her hand grips my jaw and turns me to face her. “Who did this to you?”

I deflate like a balloon, my ass meeting the mattress and bouncing my body a couple of times. This was not a discussion I wanted to have right now. I didn’t want to have any discussions. I wanted to mate my Omega. But it seems the haze has been lifted, reality punching me in the gut yet again.

I look down at my arms, my chest, at the pale, raised skin, ghosts of self-inflicted pain. Smooth or jagged, short or long, the scars of my desperation will haunt me forever.

“I did.”

Her arms wrap around my shoulders from beside me, holding me tightly, her voice whispers against my shoulder. “I love you. Tell me.”

My entire body hunches forward, and I let my shirt fall again, giving up on avoiding this. I’d have to deal with it sooner or later. Every ounce of my being knows we’re mates, and this is unavoidable.

So, in the comforting embrace of my nearly naked Omega, her breasts crushed against my bicep, I tell her the truth.

“The first time I heard someone else’s thoughts in my mind, I had no idea what was happening. I thought that I was going insane, like in cartoons. But, you know, not funny.”

My head shakes. “My family never talked about the Cursed, just completely ignored anything to do with them. Switched the channel if they were mentioned on TV.” I frown. “At first, the voices weren’t many. They were manageable, or at least I could hide it. But it was summer and school was out, and my parents weren’t big on letting me go do things with my friends, so I was stuck at home. One day, I heard my mom’s voice say, ‘I hate that bastard,’ while looking at my dad. I thought she’d said it aloud, so I asked her why she hated Dad. She was horrified. Yelled at me for making up stories and sent me to my room. That was when I realized something bad was happening.”

Mira kisses my shoulder, a silent urging to continue.

“Things got way worse from there. I denied it to myself for the longest time, but I finally realized that I was hearing people’s thoughts, and the more distressed I was, the more thoughts would invade my mind. The constant assault drove me crazy. I couldn’t function, couldn’t think for myself. In the throes of mania, I wound up kicking the wall, hard, right at a stud. Pain shot through my body, and there was this blissful silence that followed.” I grip her forearm across my clavicle, holding it tight, trying to breathe evenly. “I realized that pain would temporarily make the voices go away. Pain granted me relief from this psychosis invading my life.”

“You started hurting yourself for relief,” Mira supplies softly, no judgment in her tone.

I nod and absently trace the raised flesh on my bicep, some straight, some angry and jagged, all created by sharp edges. By my hands.

“I didn’t want to,” I go on, “not really. But I would do anything to be normal. Anything not to have to be sent away.” A sob catches in my throat, and I clear it. “I caught my parents thinking about sending me off into the system, about doing away with their little ‘problem,’” I spit. “Then they started arguing out loud about whose fault it was. Whose genetics created this monstrosity of a boy they had living in their home.”

“You’re not a monstrosity.” Mira’s words hold more conviction than I’ve ever heard. “You do know that, right?”

I nod again in silence. My brain knows it, especially since meeting all the other Cursed in the system. But my heart...I just don’t know. My parents abandoned me like I was trash. The academy was preparing me for a life as a militant slave. What worth could I possibly have?

“Colton.”

My face swings toward Mira, her expression hard, eyes fierce. “You are worth everything. You are worth us all risking our lives to escape that hell. You are worth living every day of freedom we have to the fullest. To make a difference.” Her hands press to the sides of my face. “You are my Alpha. We are a pack.”

My vision swims just before her lips meet mine in a kiss so filled with passion, I can scarcely believe it’s real. Her rose and myrrh scent invades all my senses as she flips me onto my back on the bed and straddles my clothed hips. When she trails open-mouthed kisses down my chest, my abdomen, my cock strains against the zipper of my jeans so hard I can feel it as if my trunks aren’t between me and the metal.

I let out a groan as she unfastens my belt and pulls my pants, along with my trunks, all the way off my legs, her fingers grazing my skin the whole way.

My cock juts straight up, and Mira’s tongue wets her lips from the foot of the bed as she stares at it. As she hooks her thumbs into her panties and shimmies them down her legs, I prop myself up on my elbows and watch every movement, taking in the details of her body, her glorious scent, the way her chest rises and falls with each breath.

She is magnificent. And she is mine.

I need her. I need to taste her.

When she starts to crawl over me, I grab her body and reverse our positions, and she lets out a surprised squeal.

I cage her face with my elbows, run my fingers through her hair, and bring my mouth to hers, dipping my tongue inside. She reciprocates with a moan that turns into a whine, and I know whatever reprieve she’d had from her heat is now over.

It’s time to take care of my Omega.

I release her lips and do the thing I’ve craved since she removed her shirt, sinking my teeth into one of her breasts, making her gasp and her back bow into my mouth.

It isn’t a mark, but the creature inside me is pleased with the gesture.

Another quick nip on her other breast, and I trail my way down her body, nibbling and kissing and licking my way down, across her hip bones. She moans and those hips jerk upward toward my face, a small cry the only warning before her slick releases from that glorious pink pussy, nearly soaking the bed below.

When I lean back a bit to slide further down her body, to put those pink, glistening lips right to my face, her whine is...beautiful. I raise my eyes to look at her face, and her silver irises are already on me, unwavering. My cock aches to be inside of her—to rid myself of this celibacy born of disinterest in anyone I’ve ever met.

But Mira...my Snow Bunny...she is everything.

With a fierce, possessive growl, I dive into her pussy with my face, swiping my tongue slowly across that little nub, making her scream my name with the kind of desperation I feel for her deep in my soul. Swirl and swipe, then I form an O with my lips and suck, drawing another scream of pleasure from my Omega. Another gush of slick, and I can’t take it any longer. I move down and slide my tongue inside of her, licking and lapping at her delicious nectar, sweet tang in my mouth, while letting her rub her clit against the tip of my nose, fucking my face.

When she comes, she comes so hard I think she’s going to sever my tongue inside her, those soft velvety walls constricting and clamping down and then releasing, over and over.

Her body twitches beneath me, and I smirk. Not bad for a first-timer.

But the job isn’t finished. And it’s time I had my own dream come true.

I crawl and stretch out like a cat beside her along the bed, wrap my arms around her, then roll onto my back. My cock stands up perfectly straight, painful in its rigidity, and when Mira moves just right to make me slide between her ass cheeks, I groan as the pleasure shoots to the base of my spine.

With her hips gripped in both my hands, I look up at her face, flushed with pleasure and shining with perspiration. The love I have for her swells inside my chest, taking over every cell in my body, as I growl, “Ride me, my Omega. Take your pleasure from your Alpha.”