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knight

ARROW WANTS TO lose it, but I stop him. I push through our bond and hold him in place.

Calix is yelling.

I put up a hand and tell him to stay right there, no sudden moves. “He could snap her neck, okay,” I pant. “He could do it. Just stay still.”

“This is your fucking fault,” Calix says to me. “You said—”

“I know, I know,” I say. Carefully, I ease my way down onto the floor, right behind Striker. “Good boy, Striker,” I say, my voice higher, like hers .

If she came up the steps right now, God only knows what would happen, but she’s sedated down there. I’m okay. I know I’m okay.

I need to be okay.

I have my teeth, and I scrape them against Striker’s neck.

He stiffens.

“It’s okay, Striker,” I say. “Good boy. Take your alpha’s teeth.”

Striker turns on me. “I’m lead,” he says in a low and certain voice.

But I notice he’s lifted his hands from where he was holding Lotus down, so that’s good.

“ You submit to me ,” he tells me.

“We’re going to see about that,” I say, and then I bite him.

It’s different than when I bit Arrow. He submitted to me right away, and it just felt right between us, like we were meant to fit together that way.

This is… not like that.

Striker is incredibly dominant, and part of me knows that. Part of me naturally wants to submit to him, so the bite, it feels wrong.

He’s fighting, not outwardly, but inside.

When I bit Arrow, I just rushed into him, like a flood of liquid light, and I filled him up and he liked it.

This… Striker won’t let me in.

I push anyway.

He pushes back. When he pushes back, it feels good. My balls get tight, and my cock feels like it’s going to burst out of my pants. I groan, clamping my teeth down harder, scrabbling to cup his crotch.

He tips his head back when I touch his hard cock, which makes my teeth tear at his skin.

He cries out.

I lap at his blood.

He thrusts his crotch into my palm.

I squeeze him, still pushing, my teeth buried deep inside him. Take me, I think. Give yourself to me.

He groans. “No, I can’t. I can’t , do you get that, Knight? I want to, but—”

You can, I insist, clamping down on my bite. For her. Give it up to me for our omega.

“Show me your cock,” he gasps.

I’m still latched on to his neck, my teeth deep in him, but I obey him immediately. It’s a relief to let the air kiss my erection, which is practically painful at this point.

“Good,” he says, glancing down our bodies. I’m behind him, but I tip my pelvis forward so that he can see me. “That’s good, Knight.” He reaches back and takes it in one hand, my dick. He begins to stroke me.

I moan, into the wound I’ve made at his neck.

“This is mine,” he informs me. “I give in, but you give me this.”

Yes , I think. My cock belongs to you.

And the resistance inside him just crumbles as I rush into him like an unleashed dam. I slide into every crevice, and I’m coming, fuck I’m coming, and he’s purring like crazy, his eyes rolled back in his head, and I can’t stop licking this mark I made on his neck, and…

Fuck.

arrow

I’M CONFUSED.

STRIKER tries to explain, but he’s blissed out.

He and Knight take off all their clothes and retreat to the nest.

We all kind of get it, we think.

Our connection to blood was made the bites trigger us. Knight was always turned on by blood, so that was never connected to Acker for him. She connected to him in other ways, but not that way.

So, if he bites in on me and Striker, he can stop us from losing our shit when we bite the omega.

Theoretically, anyway.

Lotus is shaken up, and Striker hurt her, and she’s tired and worried and sick of not being sure if she can trust the men she’s falling in love with.

Me, Calix, and Lotus stand in the doorway of the room, watching Striker and Knight take turns sucking each other and try to negotiate who’s going to take the other in whose ass. I want to see it the minute Knight agrees to let his virgin ass get filled, I have to admit.

But also…

Lotus.

I show her my teeth. I have them right now. They haven’t gone down.

“I can do it,” I say. “You say Calix is strained, and you seem strained, too.”

She touches my chest. “But if it goes bad again…”

“I don’t have to bite my spot,” I say. “Let’s do it somewhere safe, okay?”

“But you want your spot!” she says. “Don’t you?”

“I’ll bite you there some other time,” I say.

She makes a little noise. “Oh, shit, I’m going to be fucking covered in bite marks, aren’t I?” She is very turned on by this.

“We don’t have to make it scar,” I say. I know this instinctively. There’s no choice with the first bite, but after that, there’s more control.

“Huh,” she says, blinking at me.

“Anyway, we’ll all three go out to to the kitchen table. You sit in Calix’s lap, and you have a weapon of some kind. I’ll bite your hand or your ankle or something, and you use the weapon and run if I lose my shit.”

Knight speaks up, coming off Striker’s cock, which he’s in the middle of sucking. “I’ll stop him, omega, don’t worry.”

She looks at Calix, and they communicate wordlessly for a minute. Then, they both nod.

We end up in the kitchen with her on his lap. She offers me her hand, palm up.

I kiss the center of her palm and then just… do it. I rear back my head, letting my teeth swell, and then strike. I bite the fleshy part of her palm, just below her thumb.

It’s swift and intense, like an explosion of confetti behind my eyes, like being dowsed in glitter. Shit .

It’s exactly like the way it felt when Knight bit me and absolutely nothing the same.

She’s so sweet, our omega, so sweet and wonderful and I fit in her perfectly, like there are all these little nooks and crannies that are me shaped, and as I settle into them, we both feel how good that feels, like she’s been waiting for me to settle into them for all this time, and I’ve been waiting to get lodged in her here, like I’ve been waiting to come home for so long.

I’m here.

I’m home.

I tend my mark, eyes closed, feeling like a set of balloons that have gotten free from their strings and are rising up into the horizon, set free inside my omega. Everything’s good. Everything’s perfect.

She crawls into my lap, holding onto Calix.

Oh, shit. Calix.

I just bumped into Calix as I’m making myself at home in her, but the bump, it was like, a merge. I feel Calix, through her, and Calix… wow, I like Calix.

She kisses my temple. “Your spot, Arrow. Now.”

I lap at her, shaking my head.

“He can’t, sweet thing,” says Calix, scooting over to the chair next to mine. He rubs her back. “He’ll tend this mark, okay? But don’t worry. This is good.” He smiles at me.

I smile back as I lick the sweetness of my omega’s essence. Fuck, yes. This is very fucking good.

lotus

I LEAN AGAINST Arrow’s chest. He has my hand against his mouth, licking his mark. I can’t see him from this angle, but I know exactly the kind of insouciant, proud-of-himself look that’s on his face.

Calix is on my other side with his arm around me.

We’re all looking at Knight and Striker on the bed.

Knight’s lying on his back with his legs spread and Striker is, you know, inside him.

“What?” says Knight. “It’s less gay if you bite him first.”

Arrow licks a long stripe up the middle of my palm, which sends delicious shivers through me. “I really wanted to watch this, I have to say, you losing your ass virginity.”

“Do we have to call it that?” says Knight, but he’s grinning. He looks very happy.

“I’m knotting him,” Striker tells us, glancing at us over his shoulder.

I walk into the room, leading my bonded alphas behind me, and I climb onto the bed. “You guys look scrumptious and smell even better.”

Knight winks at me. “So do you guys.”

Striker catches me and kisses me. “Hey,” he says, looking into my eyes. “I fucked up.”

I swallow, holding his gaze. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Regardless,” he says, “I don’t want to hurt you, omega. I almost hurt you badly. And it’s not the first time.”

“Yeah, but come on, it’s all fixed now,” says Knight, patting the pillow next to him in the nest. “Lotus, sweet pretty thing, I got them both on a leash now, and he’ll bite you and then I’ll bite you, and then we’ll all have crazy good sex for, like, days, and it’s going to be great.”

I giggle, settling in next to him.

Arrow settles too, still tending.

Calix is standing over all of us, arms crossed over his chest.

“I’m not on a leash,” says Striker, rotating his hips, thrusting his knot into Knight.

Knight groans, shutting his eyes, his scent going bright. He liked that. “Fuck you, yes, you are .”

Striker looks at me. “But, yeah, I think it’ll help.”

“But we can’t do it tonight,” says Knight, beckoning with one hand to Striker, who moves in and gives him access to the mark on his neck. Knight licks him lazily. “We’re distracted.”

“Fuck yes, we are,” says Arrow.

One bite at a time seems like a good pace.

They’re very intense, the bites. With Calix, I felt like we merged into one being, and with Arrow I feel like he filled in all these missing spots within me, made me whole in ways I hadn’t even quite realized I was empty.

Arrow is steadying and sweet and devoted to me.

I’m devoted to him, too, but it’s different than with Calix.

I shut my eyes and bask in the feeling as Arrow licks his mark.

“I’m not sure I should leave you guys alone with her,” says Calix.

I open my eyes. “Wait, what?”

Calix sighs. “This almost went really bad, Lotus. I don’t know if you have any idea how bad it almost went. He needed to just move his hand and he would have snapped your neck.”

I seem to remember someone saying that, but whatever it was that Striker was doing to me in that moment didn’t even really hurt that much. It was just firm. I couldn’t move. He had me pinned. I actually kind of liked it, because I like it when my alphas hold me down and take me over.

Striker moves so that he’s looking at Calix but Knight still has access to lick his neck. “Yeah, but it won’t happen like that again, because Knight and me—”

“Yeah, Knight said he could stop Arrow, and then you all went off the chain when Acker got free,” says Calix. “I’m not going to Cedar Falls tomorrow. I’m calling off work. I may have to quit.”

“Wait,” I say. “Arrow and I have a bond now. He’s not going to hurt me.”

“We don’t know that,” says Calix. “The bond with Knight and Arrow did jack. Trying to bite you tonight made Striker go ballistic—”

“Yeah, but Arrow was fine this time,” I say.

“And it’s because of the bond with Knight.

” I have a sense of it through Arrow. I’m not exactly connected to Knight, but I feel Arrow connected to Knight.

“Anyway, I thought we were going to try to figure out how to save all the omegas and alphas in Cedar Falls.”

“Yes,” says Knight as he tends. “Because we are the cobra-men superhero scent-match pack who is going to save the damned world.”

“The goddess-damned world,” I say in agreement. “We’re going to fix everything.”

Calix scrubs his face with one hand and groans.

I reach for him. “Calix, sweetheart, you’re exhausted. Come lie down. You want to knot me? You want me to suck you? You might need that, huh?”

Calix climbs over me. He kisses my mouth and turns to Knight. “Since when did you want to save the world?”

“I don’t want to,” says Knight. “I want to kill shit. It’s just, you know, fate.”

I snort.

Striker shoves him. “You’re an ass, you know that.”

“Yeah?” says Knight.

Now, they’re kissing, and I look at it and sigh, because it’s so good to see my mates connected. Also, I think I may have some kind of voyeuristic kink for men fucking each other, which… I think that’s going to work out well , actually.

“I love you,” Striker’s saying against Knight’s lips.

“You’re mine,” Knight says back.

“Just say it back, you dick,” says Striker, thrusting into Knight again.

Knight gasps. “Fuck you, I love you, okay?”

I giggle. I kiss Calix.

He strokes my hair away from my brow, settling between my legs.

“Don’t you want to save the world, Calix?”

“Can we do that, though?” he says.

“Why not?” I say, kissing his chin. “Why the fuck not?”