Page 24 of Broken Arranged Mate (Badlands Wolves #4)

Oren leads me far from the house, so we’re running together under the light of the moon, which hangs heavy over the dry desert landscape. Cacti reach up into the night sky like they’re trying to touch the stars, and we dart around them.

I nip at his heels, and he playfully pretends to snap at me, and for a long, suspended moment, we’re tumbling together down the side of a dune, a ball of limbs and fur and sand.

Then, for the first time in my life, I hear a Grayhide’s voice in my head.

Be careful , Oren sends, and the touch of his mind against mine sends a shiver all the way through my body. Then, his words follow, and I digest them the same way. He wants me to be careful—I am something he wants to protect.

Already, this feels like the longest night of my life, surreally so, in the most amazing way possible.

There are so many things that the two of us have left unsaid, but in that house, Oren wasn’t touching me like a man who’d only married for political maneuvering. He touched me like I was something precious, like something he’d waited too long to taste again.

Sand kicks up behind us as we go, the land moving from dense, scrubby ground to the looser, rolling dunes. I’m unused to the land and laugh as I scramble, trying to find my footing.

Okay , Oren sends. This is what I wanted to show you .

He bounds easily to the top of one of the dunes, and I’m reminded that this is his home—that he’s been traversing this sandy terrain since he was a little boy, just a pup. I imagine, when he had his first shift, he was getting the sand between his paws.

At the top of the dune, Oren’s wolf is something from a movie—his soft black fur ruffling in the dry desert breeze, that undercoat of deep red only just gleaming beneath.

His muzzle is lifted to the air, and for the first time, I see the tiniest patch of white just under his chin, a little spot that I’ve never seen on him before.

This, more than anything else, feels intimate. To know someone’s wolf as well as I know his body. And with a sudden, sure clarity, I realize this life might be right for me. I can picture the many times Oren and I will shift together, coming out to the dunes to run and play at night.

I picture all the times I’ll get to see him like this. Alive, his true self.

With a flourish, he turns and sort of shimmies down the side of the dune, then leaps away, cascading the sand so it slides down the slope like an avalanche.

Then, the strangest thing happens. A sound, rising up from what feels like the sand itself, a sweet, low harmony.

If you have just the right touch , Oren says, appearing beside me once more, the desert will sing to you at night.

I can’t stop myself—I turn and launch myself onto him, feeling the way he shifts to absorb the impact from me as we tumble down the side of the dune.

Around us, the land sings, and when we land at the bottom of the hill, we’ve shifted back to our human forms. Oren’s hands are light on my hips, and he gazes up at me with warm eyes.

Time slows when I lower my lips to his, and we melt together once more, my homesickness completely gone.

***

I wake up in the morning aching for Oren.

Still half asleep, I reach backward, trying to find him, touch him, pull him to me. But after a minute of reaching, I realize he’s not in bed with me.

It must be early, because my eyelids still feel practically stuck together as I try to force myself to wake up, arms shaking slightly as I push against the mattress and sit, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

The light that filters in through the window is a pale yellow, like the sun couldn’t be bothered to impart a thicker hue. The curtains flutter around the open window, and I shiver, remembering I’d asked Oren to open it last night.

Last night was all sweaty limbs and hot, sticky air. When we got back from the dunes, we’d taken another shower, then stumbled into bed, touching each other until I eventually fell asleep.

Now, I swing my legs out of bed, letting out a little moan at the feeling of them pressing together.

According to the pack doctor and talking to the other girls, my heat is milder than others—proven by the fact that I was able to leave the house and play in the sand dunes—but it lasts longer, and the lust comes to me in waves, crashing against me with surprisingly debilitating force.

Being in heat makes every one of my synapses feel lit, each inch of my skin as sensitive as a new wound. And my clit is sensitive, too, responding to even the movement of my legs with want.

But the worst part is the fact that, as an omega, I can’t relieve any of the mounting pressure without something that hits the right spot inside me. Something that emulates the knot of an alpha—or is the knot of an alpha. Without it, omegas just cry and suffer.

We’d learn about it in school, history books explaining how omegas could go crazy from too many heats without relief. This was back before the invention of knot-simulating sex toys, which most omegas have, in case of emergency.

I have one, but it’s in my nightstand back at home. In Ambersky.

Wandering through the house, I poke my head into each room, waiting for the eventual moment when I’ll see Oren.

At first, I think he might be in the kitchen, making breakfast, but the kitchen is cold and empty, the open window over the sink letting in a surprisingly bracing breeze for the bright sunshine flooding in over the rock yard outside.

I lift up onto my tiptoes, letting out another little noise of pain and lust, and pull it shut.

He’s not in the living room, not in the garage, not anywhere outside the house. The vintage car from the wedding is still outside, parked at the same angle it was when we got here, but Oren is nowhere to be found.

His scent floats through the house like a ghost, and every time I catch it, my body contracts, heart lifting with the anticipation of seeing him, even though my brain knows better at this point. At this point, my logical self is aware of what’s happening right now.

My body, growing tired of being awake without sex, sends a debilitating wave of lust through me, so strong it’s like every muscle in my body contracts. I drop to my knees on the floor, gasping and reaching out, bracing one hand on the floor and arching my back.

Biting my tongue, I fight against the fury that’s building inside of me.

If he’s gone, it has to be for a good reason. Maybe there’s an attack—but who would be attacking? And he would wake me, ensure I had someone else here with me, before going.

Omegas in heat, alone, are often the targets of coercion, or worse, straight-up violence. If a rogue alpha finds you while you’re in heat, you’re in trouble.

At least, that’s what I’d learned growing up. That being in heat makes you soft, weak—and in most ways, it’s true. My muscles are shaking and tired, like I’ve just finished an hour-long workout, and the arousal is so strong I can’t focus on anything for a solid five minutes.

I turn on my side, squeezing my legs together, crying out at the sensation.

It’s not enough. It could never be enough.

Being in heat and not having the right penetration feels like starving to death, and getting to smell the food you so desperately need. I could touch myself right now, reach down into the waistband of Oren’s boxers and draw pleasure out of my body, but it would ultimately just make it worse.

“Oren!” I call, in case he’s here in the house somewhere, and I just haven’t seen him. Rage hurtles through me, and I lift up, hating how desperate and alone I feel. “Oren!”

But he doesn’t come. Because he’s not home.

I want to think that this is just like what happened last time—that the two of us shared an amazing night, and he decided it wouldn’t happen again. But this isn’t like last time, because back then, we didn’t owe each other a thing.

Now, he’s my husband. He owes me common decency, respect.

Maybe we’re not mates, but after what happened last night, I’d let myself stupidly— stupidly —believe that he felt something for me. That he cared about me as something more than just a political pawn, the sister of the Ambersky alpha leader.

But obviously, he doesn’t.

With no warning, Oren has disappeared and left me here to suffer through my heat alone in a new territory, a new house, all by myself.

Only a single day into marriage, and I already want to kill my husband.