Page 35 of Broken Arranged Mate (Badlands Wolves #4)

I wake to the sound of Ash’s quiet whimper beside me. The alarm clock on the nightstand tells me it’s after three in the morning.

After Ash fell asleep last night, I stayed up and did some research on heat, and realized the full truth of what I did to her when I left her before. The pain that she must have been going through, especially because her body expected to have me throughout the heat.

Now is my chance to make it up to her.

The light from the moon brushes over her flushed face, showing some of the faint freckles on her cheeks. Her dark hair is thrown into a bun, still curly and wild from the night before, but now slicked back with sweat. She’s like a furnace beside me, radiating heat.

I can smell the way her heat has intensified in just a few hours, her skin burning and sticky where it presses into mine, the scent of her filling this room, likely the entire house.

It’s intoxicating, arousing, but I force myself to focus through the scent of her heat, the scent of what we did earlier.

Right now, everything about her makes me wild, the intoxicating blend of desire and fertility making my wolf strain toward her.

But right now isn’t about me. This is my chance to do just what I told her I would—my chance to spend the rest of my life showing her I can be the man she deserves.

“Ash,” I whisper, drawing the back of my hand over her forehead, brushing away a few damp strands of her wild hair. “Honey, wake up.”

She whimpers again before her eyes open, blue irises nearly swallowed by dilated pupils. I watch her as recognition passes over her face, then relief, then the tensing of pain.

“Oren,” she rasps, closing her eyes again. “It hurts.”

“I know, baby,” I murmur. “Let me help you.”

From what I learned online, an omega’s heat can vary greatly in the experience.

Some get unlucky enough to only have pain, but most have a mixture of the two.

Arousal coupled with a deep, physical ache that builds until it becomes nearly unbearable.

The worst of it comes in waves, and from the trembling of her limbs, I can tell she’s riding the crest of one now.

Carefully, I disentangle myself from her and slide from the bed, cracking open the window for her like I did last time. The desert night is cool against my bare skin, a stark contrast to the fever-heat radiating from Ash. She reaches for me instinctively, a small sound of protest escaping her.

“I’ll be right back,” I promise, leaning down to press my lips to her forehead before turning and walking down the hall. The house is quiet and cool, the bones of her many projects scattered around, and I can’t wait to see what it will look like when it’s finished.

In the kitchen, I fill a glass with water and wish I had more supplies.

Electrolyte drinks to keep her hydrated.

Special tea blends to lessen the pain. Many families have recipes they develop just for their blood—I wonder if Dorian might have access to any of their grandmother’s old journals, anything to help us find what works for Ash specifically.

When I get back to the bedroom, Ash is curled into a tight ball, the sheets twisted around her legs. Her eyes track me as I set the drinks on the nightstand and kneel beside the bed.

“Come here,” I say, sliding in and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Sit up.”

Ash leans heavily against me as I help her upright. The thin T-shirt she wears—one of mine—clings to her skin, darkened with sweat along her spine. I hold the glass to her lips, and she drinks greedily, water spilling down her chin.

“Easy,” I murmur, wiping the droplets away from her bottom lip with my thumb. “Small sips.”

At the touch of my thumb to her lip, she glances up at me, her eyes going dark. “Take care of me again?”

My cock is already hard as I take her by the hips, turn her around, and push her into the mattress.

“Oh,” she gasps, grabbing a pillow and hugging it to her chest, and I push at her sleep shorts, pulling them down to her knees. “ Yes .”

I slide a hand up the length of her, and, finding her already wet, slide inside, a loose, long groan breaking free from my throat at the feeling of her around me.

I can’t believe I left last time, gave up a week of this —having Ash again and again, then sleeping as my knot empties inside her, only to wake up and do it again.

She rocks her ass back into me, wanting me deeper, so I grab her legs and force them apart, angling my hips to push into her further, and the sound she lets out into the mattress is garbled at first, unrecognizable, until I realize it’s my name.

I reach around her, grab her hand, and plant it on her clit, touching her over the top of her own fingers, desire building in me as I follow along with her tight circles, tracing the paths of her desire.

“Harder,” she demands, and I comply, driving into her with so much force that the mattress shifts in the bed frame. When that’s not enough, she adds, “Faster, please—fuck, Oren, fuck me, please .”

Ash isn’t a delicate flower, as much as I want to treat her like one. And every time I touch her, she asks for more, more, more, until her skin is bruising from the pressure, until she’s coming apart, pain mixed with pleasure until it sends her over the edge.

Maybe it has something to do with her heat—painful and pleasurable, all at the same time.

The sounds of our bodies fill the room, her moans, grunts rising up from my throat. With my other hand, I hold her hip, pull her into me as I thrust forward, chase that feeling of wholeness, completeness, of getting myself fully inside my mate.

When I reach up, tangling my hand in her hair and drawing her head back sharply, I feel her tighten around me for the first time, a sign that she’s about to come.

“I’m going to—” she starts, and I let out a pleased moan, something almost like a laugh, at the way she closes in around me, her pussy pulsing around my cock.

It sends me over the edge, and I collapse forward, pressing my stomach and chest against her back as I release.

There’s nothing like it, an ascension, something fucking transcendental.

When I touch Ash, when I find myself inside her, it feels like I’ve found my real destiny, the one thing I was put on this planet to do.

I grab her, pulling her in, tucking her up against me. My knot is still stuck inside her, releasing the rest of me slowly, but I just don’t feel close enough.

I never do.

“Hey,” she says, just as I’m about to drift off with her in my arms.

“Yeah?” I ask, bleary and worn out.

“I love you.”

She says it so casually, like it’s something we’ve always done, and it makes a smile form on my face as naturally as the dunes form in the wind. Pushing her hair away from her neck, I lean forward and kiss the back of her neck, whispering the words against her skin like I have so many times before.

Only this time, I make sure she can hear me, loud and clear.