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lotus

I’M SHAKING. I’M rubbing my neck, shaking, and I’m stuck on his knot and I can’t get away.

I can’t talk. I can hardly breathe.

I’m still just shaking .

It was so quick, and they haven’t done anything quite that vicious in a long time, and I feel like a really stupid person.

Why did you let him fuck you?

After the thing happened last night, we’ve all been wary, and Striker said we should be careful about sex.

We just had that conversation on the porch, all that back and forth.

And yet, when I came in here and we all started rolling around together in my new nest, all of that went out of my head, and I let this happen.

Arrow has his head back, leaning on Knight’s shoulder. His lips are parted and his eyes are half-lidded. He looks blissed out as Knight laps hungrily at the little wound he made on Arrow’s neck.

What the hell just happened?

Striker appears in the doorway. “What’s going in here?” He stalks across the room and crawls onto the nest. He sees me rubbing my neck, and he touches my skin, his expression alarmed.

“Who did this to her? She’s bruising up.” Striker’s voice is terrible and it runs through all of us like a rumble of an earthquake. He’s the lead alpha, whatever that even means (It’s something Calix said), and he has an influence over all of us, even me.

Knight continues lapping at the little holes his teeth made on Arrow’s neck, his movements languid. His voice is lazy. “It’s all right. I stopped him. He’s mine now. He won’t do that again.”

Arrow lets out a little, bemused laugh, and he’s pleased. “I am, yeah. Yours.”

Knight’s hand rubs up and down Arrow’s chest. “Yeah, baby,” he says, licking him vigorously. “You did so well. Took my cock in your ass and my teeth in your neck. Mine .” There’s a hint of a growl in his voice, and it’s possessive.

I blink up at them, still rubbing my neck, still shaking, and I feel a jolt of jealousy at the two of them like that, so connected .

It bubbles up in me and I can’t stop myself. I’m saying it before I can even think. “Bite now, then? Knight, let Arrow bite me.” My voice is piteous and needy.

Knight focuses on me and pauses his lick. “Well, okay, sure, omega. Arrow, baby—”

“ No .” Striker’s voice halts all of us.

I shiver in the wake of it. I turn to Striker, and my voice is still piteous. “Where were you?” I accuse him.

He lets out a noise, almost a whine. His hands are on me, stroking my face, my shoulders, my arms, and he rains kisses over my forehead and nose and my cheeks, words tumbling out of his mouth.

“Fuck, sweet omega, I’m so sorry. I was walking around the house, trying to clear my head.

I… I’m so sorry, my pretty Lotus. I shouldn’t have— you needed me. ”

I reach up and thread my hand into his hair and hold onto him. I’m still shaking.

Striker groans. His face is close to mine, and he gazes into my eyes, but he’s talking to all of us. “What happened?”

“We… got worked up,” I say in a tiny voice.

“Arrow showed me things for the nest, and we started making it nice and then we started kissing and then they had knots and they smelled good, and Knight wanted to fuck Arrow, and I wanted to watch that.” I can’t even describe how hot that made me, the two of them going at each other. “So…”

“We got our teeth,” says Knight. “Like, really got them. I felt it before a couple times, but never quite like this—”

“What teeth?” says Striker, annoyed. He disentangles himself from me, first giving me a gentle kiss in the middle of my forehead and then sitting up to face Knight.

Knight shows Striker his teeth, but they’re just normal now. Knight furrows his brow, running his tongue over his canines. “Well, I guess they went down. It’s, like, uh, it’s like an erection, only two of them, in your mouth, and they’re so damned sensitive, and you just want to bite.”

“I wanted to bite her before,” says Striker. “I didn’t have… teeth.” He thinks about it, scratching the back of his head. He surveys me.

“I think you did,” I say in a tiny voice, because I remember it.

After the first time all four of us were together, Striker and I woke up first, and we had a solo session, just him inside me as the others slept, and I remember seeing him, a couple times, his head rearing back like I just saw both of my other alphas did, their long fang-like teeth glittering as if they were about to strike me like a cobra.

“Oh,” says Striker. He touches his canines, looking concerned.

“It’s okay,” said Knight. “It’s good. Bites are good. You want them, Lotus.”

“I do,” I say. “The Vasilissa here, Penelope, she says I need to get them, that it’ll help.”

“Never mind the teeth,” says Striker, shaking his head as if to clear it. “What happened to her neck?”

It’s quiet.

I rub myself there again, feeling small and afraid.

Arrow’s eyes open. He shoves at Knight’s forehead, dislodging him from his licks.

“Hey, I need to do that,” says Knight, reaching for him.

But Arrow holds him off and focuses on me. “Oh, shit, Lotus.”

“You tried to kill her,” says Striker.

“I was going to bite her,” says Arrow. “She was begging me for it, and I had this feeling, like it was right and it was now, and there was this spot on her body, and I knew that was my spot, that was where my teeth fit into her, and I was…” His expression twists.

“Oh, God, and then I tried to kill her.”

It’s quiet again.

Arrow’s fingers brush over my neck. He reaches down, between us, to find his cock. He tries to tug himself free, but he’s knotted in, and that just hurts .

“Ow, no, you can’t do that!” I cry out, panicked.

Arrow stops. He turns to Striker. “Can you bark me free?”

Striker shrugs. “I don’t know. Sometimes, I can.”

“I tried to kill her,” says Arrow. “I can’t sit here in the afterglow, feeling her perfect pussy gripping me and—” He looks at Knight. “And you .”

Knight puts his mouth back on Arrow’s neck. “Shush.” He starts to lick again.

“So, the bite made you try to kill her?” says Striker.

“Bark,” says Arrow.

Striker huffs and then he nods. “ Deflate, ” he says.

Nothing happens.

Arrow groans. “Oh, fuck, Lotus, I—”

“It’s not the first time,” I snap at him. “Anyway, I know it’s not your fault.”

“So, who’s fault is it?”

“Hers,” I snarl, and that ripples through all of us the same way Striker’s voice did, and all three of them turn in the direction of the door to the basement, heads up, eyes focused, looking like dangerous birds of prey ready to fly off and do my bidding, rip Dr. Acker to goddamned shreds.

I want it, and I feel I could send them down after her, that they would obey me.

We all are charged with it for several minutes and then I let out a breath, and the air in the room changes, like the passing of a storm.

They all come for me, leaning in and kissing me wherever they can kiss, and I reach up and stroke their faces and their hair, soothing them. My chest vibrates, and I purr, and they purr back, and that goes on for several long moments.

Part of me is a little freaked out when we get like this. Animal. Designation. Instinct.

But the purring is soothing, and we all relax.

Arrow submits to Knight’s tongue again, sighing. Knight licks long stripes up Arrow’s neck, still purring. Arrow speaks, his voice subdued. “It was blood.”

“What was?” says Striker, who’s voice is different now, also subdued.

“I thought that I was going to sink my teeth in her and that I would taste her blood.”

In spite of myself, I purr at that. Want him to taste me, I think.

“I remembered the way it tastes, omega blood,” says Arrow. “And then, it was like she was in my head. Acker was. Like I wasn’t even here, like I was back in Cedar Falls, and she was calling me her good boy and petting me like a dog, and I just—” He grimaces.

“The way omega blood tastes,” says Striker in a guttural voice, and a shudder goes through him.

I put my hand on his forearm, steadying him.

He turns to me. “I’m all right.”

I give him a nod.

Knight speaks up. “When I was getting lube to take Arrow’s cherry, I saw that there’s some stuff in the bathroom, salve and things. Get that to rub into her neck, Striker.”

Striker crawls out of the nest. “Arrow’s cherry, huh?”

Arrow blushes and his scent rises, but it smells rich and sweet and good.

“Yeah, so you bit Arrow?” Striker leaves the room, going into the bathroom, but his voice carries. “I remember that Calix said we could bite each other and that it would scar up like an alpha bite, but this seems like more than a scar.”

“Yeah,” says Arrow reverently. “I feel you, baby.”

“Mmm,” says Knight, still licking. “Yeah, me too.”

“What do you mean, you feel him?” I say.

“It’s like, uh, he’s in me,” says Arrow. “All in me, not just stretching my ass, but in me all over.”

I don’t understand that, but they’re kissing now, Knight and Arrow, and Knight’s running his hands up and down Arrow’s chest, clutching him close as their mouths move against each other. I like the way they look when they kiss, I have to say. I let out a little sigh.

Striker’s back with a little tin. He settles in next to me and begins to gently apply it to my neck. He does this carefully, speaking to Knight. “And now you think you can control him? Arrow, can he control you?”

“I don’t know,” says Arrow.

“It’s not like I can control him,” says Knight. “It’s like, uh, I can help him. If he started going off the rails, I could pull him back.”

“That sounds like control,” says Striker.

“Well, whatever,” says Knight. “You can control us. You do that bark thing on us.”

Striker pauses, making a face at my neck. “Okay, good point.”

Knight goes back to licking the bite mark on Arrow’s neck, which actually looks like it’s healing. It’s making two big scar marks on his neck, raised bits of pink, shiny skin.