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“Her heat will break regardless,” says Calix. “It’s not as if, you leave an omega out all by herself that she just stays in heat forever and ever. Heat always ends.”

We all draw back, staring at him, and I feel our collective horror at this statement through the bond.

Calix sets down his food on the counter, scratching the back of his head. He sighs heavily and noisily.

“We would never leave her to get through her heat without help,” I growl at him. “ I would never do that, anyway. If you want out of this thing, Calix—”

“None of us had a fucking choice, did we?” he says, and there’s real agony in his voice.

“No one asked me what I wanted.” He points at the rest of us.

“And no one asked you guys either. You’re just fine with it?

Life-bonded to each other and her without even getting to know each other first?

No chance to go back to your old lives? Chased and overtaken and forced into violence again and again?

If I want out of this thing, what? Let’s be real.

There’s no getting out.” He picks up his food and stalks away, going into the living room area and leaving the rest of us there to gaze into his wake.

I start to say something, but then I don’t say it. I just eat.

Arrow and Knight eat, too.

Eventually, I decide I’m going to go after Calix.

I don’t know what I’m going to say, but—of all of us—I think I’ve probably had the most experience with talking to people about how to accept things that are out of our control.

I was a priest, after all. I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating the classic quandary of why a loving God allows us to suffer.

But when I do, he’s not in the living room.

He’s with Lotus, in bed with her, feeding her, literally putting the fork into her mouth and encouraging her to chew.

“A little more, sweetheart,” he’s whispering to her, his voice tender. He’s in fucking love with her. We all are.

Why, though?

I sit down on the edge of the bed.

Lotus chews. She’s beautiful and nude, and I’ve never seen a pair of breasts that I liked more than hers. My cock throbs as I stare at her curves and her bare skin. I want to fuck her.

She feels it through the bond and gives me a little smile, her scent rising in response. She swallows what she was chewing and eyes me.

“You’re making it harder for her to eat,” says Calix, eyes on our omega.

“I’m sorry, Striker,” whispers Lotus. “I didn’t mean to go into heat.”

“It’s not your fault, sweet girl,” I whisper back. “No one blames you.”

“One more bite, baby,” says Calix.

She shakes her head. “No, I’m not hungry. I just want…” She wriggles, her scent getting more intense. She gets up on all fours and crawls over to me.

I gasp as she pounces on me, taking my cock into her mouth and practically swallowing me. “Fuck, baby girl,” I mutter, stroking the back of her head as she sucks me. “Fuck, that’s good.”

She moans as her head bobs on me.

Calix sets the food down on the floor and comes over, freeing his cock from his pants. He arranges her, pulling her hips up, and he holds the head of his dick between his thumb and forefinger to line them up with her pussy. Then he pushes into her.

She moans again, around my dick, sucking me hard.

Calix and I share her, like that, me in her mouth, Calix in her pussy. He and I look at each other as we fuck her together.

She’s enthusiastic, her scent bright and threaded full of goodness as it goes on and on. When we come, she comes, too.

At this point, Arrow and Knight have come into the room.

Calix hasn’t knotted her, and I look at him, and I say, “If you want to go, go.”

He laughs. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t know what this is, what it means to be what we are—a pack, life-bonded, whatever. But I do know that if you really want to go, we’ll have to find a way to make that happen. No one should be forced into this and definitely not forced into sex.”

Calix pulls out of her.

Lotus’s mouth isn’t on me right now. She looks up at me. “What about me?” she says. “What about me, can I get out of this if I want? Can I go?”

I look up at the ceiling, a bitterness filling me.

“Let’s break her heat,” says Calix in a dull voice.

“Can you do that?” says Lotus, collapsing into me.

I put my arms around her. “Would you like to watch your mates fuck each other, omega?” I say. “Would you like to be sandwiched in the middle of your mates while we fuck each other?”

She groans. “Please.”

And it’s like I said before. With more lube, more lube than last time, it’ll be fine.

lotus

IT DOESN’T WORK .

They’re sore, and I know it’s my fault, because of the time before, the biting frenzy, when I ran them ragged for my pleasure, and here they are, doing it again, for me, and it’s not working, because my heat is just raging through us all.

Knight’s ass is bleeding, and he says it’s no big deal, and that he can handle it, and I feel like I’m being crushed, like the walls are closing in on me and there’s nowhere I can turn.

Arrow keeps assuring me they want this, that they enjoy doing this for me, and I feel through the bond that it’s true.

Well, that it’s both true and not true, somehow.

That they enjoy it, but that they can’t not enjoy it, that even when it hurts, they like it, but that they—we—are all understandably frightened of it.

It’s power, the heat is power, a power that is both part of us and outside of us at the same time.

I realize I’m fighting it, and the fighting is the problem.

We can’t end the heat.

We have to get through it, and that means surrendering. It is going to happen, and there is no stopping it. The best way to get it over with it is to just do it, because fighting it is only prolonging it.

So, I give in.

And my omega takes over. I don’t exactly trust my omega, I have to admit. Whatever that part of me is, she sometimes goes too far. But I have no choice, so I let her take control.

She is gentle with my alphas, though, kissing each of them in turn and then softly ordering them to get on their knees by the bed.

She lines them up, so they are all settled down there, on their knees but with their torsos upright, their knees spread just a little, their cocks knotted up and pointed straight out.

She has me straddle each of them, tease their hard cocks with my pussy, settling on them but not taking their knots, kissing and stroking their chests.

“Tell me whose alpha you are,” I coo to each of them.

And they all respond in husky, deep, masculine voices that they belong to me, to Lotus.

“You’re my very pretty omega,” Striker says to me, affectionate.

“You want to knot me, don’t you?” I say to him, giving him a sultry smile as I sink down on his hard cock.

“Yes,” he hisses.

“Too bad,” I say, giving him a wicked grin and climbing off him.

Then I go to the next alpha in line and tease him.

I do this for a long time, reducing all of my alphas to pleading with me to take their knots, gasping against my lips as I kiss them, saying please in voices that crack.

But finally, I get back to Striker and I take his cock again, sinking down onto him, all the way to the edge of his knot.

“You feel this,” I say to them. “You feel this through the bond.”

They all groan, and Striker’s eyes are close.

“Admit it,” I say. “Say, ‘yes, omega.’”

“Yes, omega,” whispers Arrow softly.

The others say it together. “Yes, omega,” in a little chorus.

“You knot me through Striker,” I say. “All at once, right now.”

“Present, omega,” says Knight in a dark voice.

I groan, gasping, a mix of emotions and instinct, and then I do it. I pull off Striker and go down in front of all of them, down on my elbows and knees with my butt in the air and my legs splayed, ready for a cock, for a knot.

Striker growls and pounces on me. He knots me in one long fluid movement, and everyone reacts vocally, and the bond goes taut and strong.

“Good omega,” says Striker. “Take your alphas’ knots.”

It’s my turn to say “please.”

Because I see it now, see the path free of the heat, see it up ahead, like a light at the end of a long tunnel.

I begin to beg frantically, reaching through the bond for my alphas, needing the energy of all of them to do as I said, to concentrate through Striker, to lend him the power of their alpha essence so that we are all as one, all together, all pushing towards this, my pinnacle, my satisfaction, my pleasure.

I hurtle towards it, feeling my alphas with me, all of us together, the light getting closer, its warmth touching each of us, welcoming us.

And then, we break through, and it’s a release, all of us basking in its joy as we find this here, together .