Page 60 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

60

FAL

W e returned to the palace as soon as we could. The tiny window didn’t help filter out the reek of blood and the potion one of the bark brothers had lobbed in here. Worse than either of those things was the sheer unpleasantness of bitter chocolate still lingering inside from Lark’s terror. We all took off the scent changing trinkets Father had given us, trying to drown out the bad with our collective rut scent.

She didn’t try to say she was fine. In fact, she didn’t really speak. Once the carriage door closed to give us relative privacy, she whined and went to sit in Kauz’s lap. He showed her the patches of woven essence he’d had one of our brothers put on either side of the wound through his wing. The magic held everything together for now. “Just a few stitches and I’ll be fine,” he murmured.

She put her arms around him and buried her face in the crook of his neck. I thought she’d stay there for the whole trip, but she eventually nuzzled him and reached for Tormund, who gladly held her next. Him, she licked, and his side of the pack bond sizzled with lust.

In that moment, I decided. Waiting to descend into the rut haze and fuck Lark silly through her heat was worse than celibate train buddy time. Holding back my instincts was swiftly driving me mad. It was becoming a more acute need because some kernel of me that was all alpha was pinging around in my mind, sure that she was about to perfume. It’s time. It’s finally time.

She lifted her head to glance between Marius and me. He made some kind of inviting feral noise and she sniffed, before wrinkling her delicate nose. Pulling at the fabric of his shirt, he sniffed too. Curiously, I did the same. He smelled of blood and sap—well, he had chopped Floris in the bloodiest way possible to ensure he died fast.

He pulled the shirt off and she must’ve thought this was acceptable, as she cuddled up to him next. They made feral noises back and forth, which further riled up my own alpha instincts. Her heat is here.

Omegas descended into something similar to a feral state when they went into heat. It was an unpredictable time. My mated friends talked about “types” of heats and how each one was different.

Sweetheart omegas like Lark could turn very angry and bite-y for the span of a heat. Or they could beg for babies after stating beforehand that they didn’t want a pregnancy. Or cry the whole time from the pain in their abdomen. The possibilities were endless and most of them made me quite glad I hadn’t been born an omega.

And I was also, maybe, a bit terrified of what kind of heat Lark was about to have. Not that I would tell anyone that.

Sometime in my worrying, she tapped my arm. It was my turn with her, thank fuck. I gathered her up to my chest. She inhaled and purred, shifting so she was breathing in close to the curve of my neck. I couldn’t help a smug smile. “She thinks I smell best.”

“I’ll remind you she perfumed for me first,” Marius said.

“Aye, and you mishandled it. I’ll get her to perfume this time,” I said.

His eyelids fell to make a smoldering look at her. Whatever he said in her mind must’ve been lusty, as she shifted and her body temperature warmed. Still no perfume, though.

She tugged at the lapels of my jacket, then mewled. I took it off and teased, “First my mask, now my jacket?” I draped it over her shoulders and she pulled it around her body, purring rustily as she inhaled and made a blissed face. Aw, stars. She could absolutely keep it. “I’ll give you the rest of my clothes too. Just say the word, mo stór .”

She didn’t respond, and my brothers rolled their eyes at me. It was worth a try.

The rest of the ride home passed in a blink. Of course, when I got the chance to hold our purring omega, it went quick. I left the carriage last and carried her out. Since she didn’t make so much as a peep of complaint, I carried her all the way back to her suite while Kauz went to the infirmary for his stitches and Marius and Tormund split off to clean themselves off quickly in their own rooms.

That left me to take Lark to her rain room and care for her wounds. This felt familiar, except I wasn’t able to hide how faesteel-hard my erection was once I stripped us both naked and started cleansing her skin. Her eyes tracked my movements and watched my face, but she still hadn’t formed a word since we left the forest behind.

“Are you all right?” I murmured, hoping we could at least do simple yes or no questions.

She smiled slightly and nodded.

“Are you in heat?”

For a moment, she had that same lost expression as the face she’d made during our last dance. Then she shook her head.

It was just close, then. This might be a taste of caring for an omega in heat, except she wasn’t in the pack bond yet for me to sense her needs. I washed her head to toe but saw no sign of her mark manifesting.

Once I toweled her off and applied some salve to the cut on her neck and along her scrapes, she went to her nest. What echoed out from that room could only be described as a squeal of outrage.

I came running, just to see her standing with her hands on her hips, staring at the unmade bed and piles of clean nesting materials next to it, along with some heat supplies. She turned to me and gestured at the scene with absolute pique. “I know ,” I said in exaggerated agreement. She could blame my father, who had the house moths cleaning up everything Marius and I touched to be rid of our “stink.”

Lark started in on the blankets, picking out one from the middle and scattering the folded pile in the process. She unrolled her selection and whipped it flat, before laying it on the bed. I watched her curiously, until she turned my way and make a questioning squeak. She picked up a pile of pillows and trotted over to me, placing them in my arms.

“Got it. I’ll help,” I said. I went and placed a pillow at the head of the bed. She was in the midst of folding in a cushion into her creation and looked up, scowling at what I’d done. She came over to pick up the pillow and whipped it away, tossing it to the far side of the room. “Stars, okay. That was a very offensive pillow placement. I apologize.”

She dove into her pile of blankets and emerged with a new selection. Her head turned toward where I’d placed another pillow in the center of the bed. I was curious to see what she’d do this time. She stomped her foot and snatched it up, this time placing it where I’d put the first one.

Hmm, puzzling. But all I knew about an omega’s nest was…well, nothing. I watched her go, increasingly baffled by her frenzy of folding, kneading, placing, tossing, and nodding in approval before she went back to get more fluffy stuff to add.

Marius rushed into the room a few minutes later. She made a sound of relief and they had a brief feral back and forth, before he stripped off his newly donned shirt and handed it to her. As she tucked it into her nest, he turned to me. “You don’t know how to nest build. Get out.”

I smacked my lips. “Rude. I could always learn.”

He tilted his head when she made a soft chatter. “She says you can stay after you go get your jacket,” he said.

I put the pillows down to do just that, and returned to see that he’d lifted a good assortment of her nesting supplies so she could rifle through them. She paused and rubbed a blanket’s fabric over her cheek before purring for a moment in approval and tugging it free to add to the nest. When she saw that I had my jacket, she took it from me and added it to the nest too. Well, I guess I really wasn’t getting that back.

“Your only job in nest building is to offer her things. She decides what goes in and what doesn’t,” Marius told me.

“Was that so much harder to say than ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’?”

“I could just throw your ass out. Help or leave.” He punctuated this with a warning growl.

I opted to help, holding armfuls of heat supplies and pillows that she occasionally investigated. All the while, it sounded like she and Marius were having a full-blown conversation in feral noises. “What are you two talking about?” I eventually asked.

He glanced at me, his pupils fully blown. It took him a moment to respond, “It’s mostly reassurance that it’s a good nest. Don’t talk. You’re going to ruin her concentration.”

“So you’re not talking about this evening?”

“Shut up, Fal,” he said through gritted teeth.

Lark had been kneading on a pillow with a determined furrow between her brows. She paused and looked down at herself, pawing at one of her bare breasts. “What…? Oh. Oh, stars!”

Marius scowled darkly, like he was envisioning my murder, and beat me to her side. He pulled her into a hug. “It’s all right. You’re safe,” he whispered.

She clutched his chest with both hands. “Where’s Kauz?”

“Getting stitches and cleaning himself up.”

“Tormund?”

“Should be here any moment.”

“The horses?”

“They’re fine.”

“Laurel?”

“Taken care of. She’s probably in the infirmary.”

I bit down on my lip to keep from pointing out the priority to her questions. Her tone turned more serious. “My stepmother’s dead.”

Marius nodded. “Aye.”

“And Floris and Dalstin…and Ellisar?”

“We let the faebane take him. Do you want me to share the memory of it?”

“The…the faebane. Oh, no. I killed him? I didn’t, I’m not…I’m not like that. He called it a bee sting…I didn’t realize…”

The kelpie’s face creased with concern as she started to scrabble against him, leaving scratches. He released her and she went over and grabbed two fistfuls of her new nest, tumbling it to the ground and sitting atop it. She clutched at her hair and mewled.

I took a seat on one side of her while he took the other. I gently disentangled one of her hands before she could pull any strands loose. “Hey. You did what you had to, and now you’re free of him,” I said, pitching my voice low and gentle to soothe her.

Marius went for a more blunt approach. “You didn’t kill him. The faebane did. You’re not a killer.”

Her star-flecked eyes darted left to right between us, maybe deciding which reassurance she liked better. She bowed her head, then curled further as a wave of warmth rose from her skin. She wrestled her hands free of us and wrapped them around her middle as she keened. I winced as the shrill noise skittered over my nerves. That sound . It was agonizing to my alpha instincts, just like she had to be in agony as her body clenched.

“Don’t fight it, it’s okay. Let the heat come,” Marius coaxed. His hands formed tight fists as he must’ve felt the echo of her pain.

“I need…no no no. My nest.” She lifted her head and glanced down at the mound of fabric we were sitting on. “This is wrong, wrong .”

Lark sprang up and fretted with the half-built nest before she started tossing nesting materials every which way with a frustrated growl. She then moaned out a feral sound of despair and picked up the first blanket she’d originally placed on the bed to restart building her nest. Marius replied softly with a noise of his own, while glaring at me. “I’ll shut up this time,” I whispered.

He snorted dismissively. “Impossible. It’d be better if you intercepted Tormund.”

That was smart. It seemed she needed her feral mate the most right now, anyway. I went into the adjoining bedroom to wait for the redcap, drawing the privacy curtain in the meantime.

When Tormund finally arrived, he took one look at me and started shedding clothes, folding them neatly to the side while I explained that Lark was building her nest. We waited, both of us uncomfortably aroused, and extra uneasy about it without our female between us.

I figured the nest was done when Lark poked her head out of the privacy curtain. She saw Tormund, her expression lit up, then she chirped at him. “Your pants,” Marius translated from somewhere behind her.

“You want my pants, li’l bird?” the redcap asked, puzzled.

She bobbed her head and snatched them from his hand when he came over, ducking back into the nest just as he was leaning down to kiss her. I had to chuckle at that. “Bet you she asks Kauz for his underwear,” I said offhandedly.

His brows clashed into one long line. “Why?”

“She has pretty much every other article of clothing in her nest now. And I don’t think she wants socks.”

I perked up as the privacy curtain was pushed to the side. It was just Marius, who looked at us, sighed, and started disrobing the rest of the way as well. “She kicked me out,” he said.

“Aren’t we just the pent up lads club now?” I remarked.

I strode toward the nest, ignoring Marius’s warning growl. Lark was pacing the length of the room and had one hand resting on her belly. I watched her in concern, unsure of what she needed, but I inched forward until she looked at me and slowed her stride. “Fal. Fal, it’s stuck,” she said in a roughened voice.

“What’s stuck, mo stór ?”

“My heat. It won’t come.” She stopped a pace away from me, sounding increasingly panicked. “He said there would be consequences. I could’ve just gone into heat earlier. Or earlier still. Back and back, I pushed it. Now it’s stuck. When I want it, it’s not here and you’re all waiting and?—”

I closed the distance between us and slanted my mouth across hers. She parted her lips immediately, and her sweet taste coated my tongue. I rumbled deep in my chest. The rut haze pushed in on my mind and I did the same thing she was doing. I had it wait just a little longer. As we kissed, I nudged her back. One step, two. I petted her hair and down one wing until she started to purr. Three steps, four.

With a gentle nudge, she toppled back atop the fluffy nest she’d just made. I caught her legs and nudged them open as I crouched between her thighs until I was at eye level with her slick-coated slit. It was a rare moment when I didn’t want to say a starsdamned thing, so I simply tapped the pack bond in the signal for come here .

Then I buried my face in Lark’s pussy and started eating with abandon. Her breathy, desperate moans were music to my ears. She rocked her hips, chasing my tongue and lips. I lapped up her slick, just like a tomcat for her cream. She was as pent up as the rest of us, maybe more so, with four mates around yet little stimulation for days.

Marius and Tormund entered the nest to see her arching her back and screaming as she came fast, drenching my face and the soak mat beneath her. I only eased back to her inner thighs, licking slowly as she came down from her pleasure high with panting breaths.

The other two alphas sat on either side of her. Marius grasped the back of her head to pull her into another kiss. She hummed and flicked her wings as he poured several days of loneliness into the passionate lip lock. Tormund cupped and teased her breasts, plucking at her nipples and running his hands over her curves and wings while Marius swallowed her moans of delight.

I waited a minute before giving her seam a testing lick. When she didn’t seem overstimulated, I delved back into her pussy gladly. Her taste was blissful and I could drown in how sweet it’d gotten. Nestled between her thighs as I was, the warmth coming off her core was easier to measure. It seemed to be mounting as she lost herself in us and forgot that she was expecting her heat.

If it came, great. If it didn’t, we’d at least coaxed her to come anyway. I just wanted to see her come apart in the good way after the stress of tonight. She was still my princess, and the strongest female I knew. She was still mine .

I moved my mouth to her clit, giving it a little pinch between my lips. She jolted and threaded her fingers into my hair. They pressed down to demand more. As I worked a finger into her channel, crooking it to stretch her, she stopped kissing Marius for a moment. “Where’s Kauz?” she whispered, before she grabbed Tormund and drew him into a kiss next.

All three of us immediately started poking the pack bond. Kauz probably jumped a foot, wherever he was, as he was hit with dozens of insistent signals to come here . We were so annoying about it, he poked back at us multiple times.

“He’s coming,” Marius rasped.

She didn’t have much of a chance to reply. Tormund kissed her deeply while I flicked her clit with the tip of my tongue. Her legs tensed. I withdrew my finger from her to reposition her thighs, spread wide, and her knees over my shoulders. I started in on drawing the Serian alphabet over the little nub of nerves with my tongue, complete with a careful flick with each accent mark. I worked my finger back into her pussy, then stretched her further with a second.

Sweat sheened her as she writhed between us. Her channel squeezed my fingers tight in a pulse that shook her from the core out. Could that have been one of her cramps? It wasn’t so bad with three of us touching and playing with her. Her pussy felt hot around my fingers, and more so by the moment.

Her body wound tight for another detonation. My gaze flicked up to watch her face, but instead I got an excellent view of my brothers pleasuring her too. They cupped her pinkened skin and caressed her curves. Tormund eased off from kissing her, as we all wanted to hear her scream as she came. Marius layered love bites over her shoulder, his sharp fangs dimpling her skin with just the right amount of pressure so he didn’t draw blood.

The privacy curtain was drawn aside while she was teetering on the brink of her release. Her star-flecked eyes danced as her lips framed Kauz’s name. Then she came with a scream. Fuck , I loved hearing her come apart. My brothers echoed my thoughts aloud, or in Kauz’s case, his wings rustled. I lapped up more of her come as she fell limp, only held up by Marius and Tormund.

She panted and exhaled with little moans, her eyes shutting tightly. “Look,” Tormund said in his loud whisper.

I followed the line of his pointing finger. Right above her left breast, particles of magic formed the distinctive horseshoe-like shape of an omega mark. It was no bigger than the size of my fist. It filled in and darkened rapidly until it was an unbroken black ribbon.

For a moment, we stared at it in awe. Here was our triumph: our mate ready to be claimed. Her perfume gusted around her in a cloud of dessert. Chocolate and honey crackers, sweetened with her fertility. I double checked the inside of her arm before anything else. The fertility blocker charm was still inked on her skin. No babies, not yet. That was a big step for another time.

I glanced back to see Kauz discarding a bath robe. His short hair was still spiky and damp, but he was clean and white bandages peeked from the folds of his hurt wing. I was glad he made it to see her mark manifest.

We eased her to lay on her nest and everyone backed away, except for me. I climbed up with her and skimmed her omega mark with my fingertips. Her eyes shot open with a gasp. “Sensitive, isn’t it?” I murmured. There seemed to be more nerves in a designation mark than anywhere else, like we were really touching a piece of another’s soul.

Her gaze found mine. She was an open book, vulnerable in that way that still seemed a little lost. “Fal.” A hint of recognition glinted amongst the fever overtaking her from the inside out.

“I’m here. We’re here.” I wanted to reassure her one last time before the heat haze took her mind. “I’m going to bite you into the pack now. Then we’re going to see you through this heat, no matter what.”

It was probably superstition, but no one else would touch her until I’d fully claimed her with fangs and knot alike. Nothing could get in the way of the process. She was too precious to all of us.

“Yes.” She reached for me, parting her thighs. “I need you.”

My next breath seized in my chest. Stars, I needed her too, so much I ached with it.

I lowered my weight carefully overtop her, bracing under one of her wings so I didn’t crush it. She shivered as my breath ghosted over her new mark. It’d rested on her skin, dark and perfect for only a few minutes. I pressed my lips to it, then laved the whole shape of it. Her mewl and moan accompanied a general tremor through her whole body.

I wanted her very soul to know pleasure from my touch before I claimed it for Pack Sorles. As I traced her mark’s curve with my fingertips, I took in her expression again, fully expecting her wits to be gone from her heat. Instead, she was still gazing back at me. Another testament to her strength. Trust and love and need glittered amongst the stars in her eyes as she gave a little nod.

I returned my lips to her mark and lined up where I wanted to place my permanent claim. My fangs sank into the very top of the omega symbol and an ultra-concentrated burst of her pheromones coated my mouth. Closing my eyes, I focused intently. Our pack formed an incomplete circle, woven together with strands of essence, the bonds of family, and magic nearly as old and unknowable as the forces that’d shaped the fae races.

There was a gap in that circle between me, the founding member, and Tormund, the newest. Lark’s essence fit in perfectly there to complete the pack. Gasps sounded from my brothers as she joined the pack bond at last. Her unregulated emotions flooded in: heavy pain tightly entwined with lust, wonder, love, surprise, and the sensation that she was hot. She was burning up .

She squirmed beneath me as I pulled my fangs free. The complicated mix of feelings in her winked out, save for the strongest two, pain and need. “I need you,” she mumbled, shifting, pawing at her overheated skin. “Please, I need you.”

“I’m here,” I answered. And practically fumbling to get inside of her as quickly as possible.

I guided my length through her lower lips, hissing as my intimate flesh felt the heat pouring from her pussy. She was completely soaked with slick and took my cock to the root in one long push. “Yes yes yes .” It was a euphoric echo to her nest building despair. She undulated her hips, grinding against me.

One thrust and I was gone, too. I finally let the rut haze have my mind, now that I had my mate pinned beneath me at long last. Her scent clogged my senses. She was all I wanted, all I needed. And with that fertility blocker on her arm, I could breed her for days without consequences. I’d take great joy in feeling her writhe against me from the breeder’s delight as I stuffed her full of my seed.

I lifted and bent one of her legs to rut her deeper and harder into the softness of her nest. It was well constructed; it cushioned her body just right to hold her in place for each thrust. Again, her unfiltered feelings hit the pack bond, and I shuddered as her pleasure and mine combined. If it was always like this, she was rarely going to have a chance to leave this bed. She felt too fucking perfect.

She came a third time and absolutely howled her bliss even while she continued to move into my thrusts, rolling her hips into mine for more. She was going to be insatiable during this heat. I could already tell. The muscles in her greedy pussy clenched and jerked around my cock.

It was impossible to pace myself. I stroked the hair out of her face, wanting to watch her reaction when I spilled. My knot throbbed to the pace of my heart, inflating more and more until it no longer pulled out of her smoothly. When it was big enough to catch the rim inside her pussy, I ground myself deep and savored how she locked down on my knot. So tight. So good. “ Good omega,” I growled out with effort.

The tension between us tightened into that exquisite moment when my knot could no longer expand and the pressure was too much. I came like a breaking dam, flooding her womb with days’ worth of pent up seed. Her mouth parted as her body fed her bliss from the hot rush filling her core. She went slack…wait.

She went slack completely? Lark slumped straight into unconsciousness before I was even done breeding her. I reacquired a few of my wits, enough to understand what was going on.

Another outline was appearing on her skin. The pack mark of Pack Sorles, shimmering into place between her brows.