Page 13 of Lost Wolf (Exiled Omegas #2)

Thirteen

Omega

After wishing everyone a good night, Luke and I head back upstairs and crawl into bed, not even bothering to get undressed. Luke curls around my back, tucking me against his chest. He’s warm. And he smells good. And… for the moment, I let myself revel in nothing else but the connection between us.

The situation might be a little—okay, a lot —weird, but I can’t complain when it led me to the handsome alpha fated to be mine. There are plenty of things we still need to figure out, but that’s a problem for tomorrow.

So, cocooned in warmth and the scent of mate and home and safety, I drift off to sleep.

For the first time in I'm not sure how long, my dreams are clear, or at least intelligible, my human mind more easily able to process and understand the images playing through my head. Faces without names pop in and out along with places I don't recognize, but instinctively know somehow.

A cabin in the woods.

A dining room filled with people.

An expansive view from the top of a mountain overlook.

Two more faces flicker by in quick succession, both male, one of them creating a pit of anxiety in my stomach. I don't know who they are, but the feeling of one of them is definitely off.

Next, there's a woman's pale face wearing a sad smile as she lies in a bed.

I know her.

Sort of.

She’s… someone important.

I reach out to her, my hand small and dirty, and she grasps my fingers and pulls me forward, urging me to crawl up on the bed with her. I'm much smaller than I am now, small enough to curl up next to her and barely take up any room.

My heart hurts with an aching loss I don't understand as she tucks me under her arm and sings a soft lullaby, the tune eerily familiar and the lyrics a memory hovering just out of reach.

“You'll have to be strong,” she says. “They'll want to take from you, use you, but you can't let them.”

She's crying now, silent tears that trail down her cheeks as she stares down at me. “I wish I could be there to see you grow up. You're the one I'll miss most of all,” she says. “My little omega, my Ollie.”

“But why do you have to go?” a child's voice asks with my mouth, a plaintive plea in the tone, and even though don’t really remember this woman, there’s a hole in my chest when I think about her being gone.

“It's my time,” she says. “But the pack will look after you.” Almost too low for me to hear she adds, “I hope.”

She sniffles and ruffles my hair. “You just listen to your brother and everything will be okay.”

But it’s not okay.

The dream fractures into a nightmare of leering faces and dark rooms and, finally, the cage at the lab. The images come faster and faster until they’re flashing by so quickly, my mind can’t even register them, and I’m drowning in a sea of broken memories.

My breath catches in my throat.

And then it all falls away.

I shoot up into a sitting position, heart racing, and breaths coming in panting gasps. Tears are running down my face, my heart crying out for the woman I finally recognize— my mother .

Beside me, Luke stirs awake, his eyes blinking open. His gaze narrows in on my tear-streaked face and his brows draw together. He quickly sits up and tugs me toward him, wrapping his arms around me and tucking my head under his chin as I bury my face in his chest. “What is it? What's wrong?”

“My dream… I remembered my mother,” I choke out. “She was dying. She's dead.” Anxiety twists in my stomach. “She said the pack would look after me, but what if Doc was right? What if it was my pack’s Alpha who did this to me? What if those triumvirate people try to send me back to them?”

“No matter what happens with the triumvirate or with your birth pack, if you decide you want to locate them, you’re mine now,” he says, his voice a soft rumble in his chest. “The bond we share is new, and I’m not sure anyone fully understands how fated mates work, but we’re in this together. No matter what. You're it for me, and I won't let anyone hurt you ever again. I don’t care who they are.”

His words are enough for me to let go of the fear and uncertainty lingering from my disconnected dreams. I close my eyes, nuzzling at his neck and basking in the warm comfort of his presence.

“She called me Ollie,” I whisper after a few seconds. “I think that's my name. It… feels right.”

“That's a good name.” He brushes a kiss over the top of my head. “My Ollie.”

The way he says it, the words mirroring my mother’s from the dream, causes a sudden spike of anxiety and my muscles go tense as my thoughts spiral down an unexpected path. Can I truly believe this man I just met is going to take care of me based only on this near magical connection I barely understand?

Where the doubt comes from, I have no idea, but the longer I sit with it, the more pervasive it gets until I finally have to ask, “How do I know?”

“How do you know what?” asks Luke, rubbing his hand over my back.

“How do I know this whole fated mate thing isn’t just another trick?” I lean back and force myself to meet his gaze, biting at my lower lip. “That you’re not just another Alpha out to take advantage of me?”

Luke stammers, stunned half into silence, then sighs and shakes his head. “I guess you don’t.” His brown eyes bore into me, his expression earnest and open. “But even if you can’t quite trust me yet, which is completely understandable, you can trust your wolf. He won’t steer you wrong, not with something like this.”

When I don’t respond, he reaches his hand forward, holding it out expectantly. I place my hand in his and he presses my palm to his chest, right over his heart. “I have very little experience with this, and I can’t tell you how it all works, but I know you’re mine. Can’t you feel it too?”

The thing of it is, I can. There’s a vibrating connection between us, tying us together. It’s not love, this connection more biological than emotional at this point, but that possibility is definitely tied in there somewhere.

I nod and a tear streaks down my cheek. “I don’t know why…”

“It’s okay.” He releases my hand and cups my face, brushing his thumb over the corner of my lips until I release the lower one. “Stop biting. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Sorry,” I say after a long pause. “I think the dream must have unsettled me more than I thought.”

“No need for apologies,” he says, cupping my cheek and staring into my eyes.

Something shifts between us, his gaze darkening and darting down to my mouth as desire coils low in my stomach. Unlike when I was in the bathtub, Luke doesn’t hold himself back this time. He leans forward slowly, giving me plenty of time to pull away if I want to.

I don’t.

I stay almost perfectly still as he ever so gently brushes his lips against mine. He pulls back almost immediately, searching my face to gage my reaction. He smiles at whatever he sees there and leans forward again.

This time, I sway to meet him, a new hunger awakening in my stomach as our lips meet. Suddenly, I can’t seem to get close enough, can’t seem to feel enough. I scramble forward, moving to straddle his lap.

Luke hums his approval and his hand curls around the back of my head as he deepens the kiss. He runs his tongue along the seam of my lips and I open, taking his tongue into my mouth. A low whine starts in my throat. There’s still too much distance between us, my instincts urging me to get closer, closer, closer.

I rock my hips, my erection pushing against Luke’s answering hardness, and he lets out a soft groan. The sound sends a shiver down my back and I repeat the motion, again pulling a pleased noise from Luke’s throat.

Pure instinct drives me to do it again and again and again, until I’m panting with need, my frustrated whine building ever louder as my movements become more jerky and erratic. Luke’s hands move down to my hips, gripping tightly and guiding me in a steady rhythm so I’m getting the friction I’m dying for as I chase the release I desperately need.

Luke pulls away from my mouth, his own breaths coming fast and hard, and he rests his forehead on mine, our panting breaths mingling in the space between us as I continue rocking my erection against his. The back of my neck tingles, the sensation on the edge of painful, and I whine again, the high-pitched noise almost frustrated as I chase something that feels just out of reach.

Luke makes a shushing noise and rubs his cheek across mine before moving down to mouth at my neck. His teeth graze the line of my collarbone, a hint of inhuman sharpness that sends a pleasant shiver down my spine. He freezes in place for a moment, his gaze coming to meet mine, a question in his eyes I can’t quite read. He strokes his thumb across the skin of my stomach under my shirt.

When I make no move to stop him, he slides all his fingers under my clothes, each point of contact amping up the heat building in my body. I try to rock my hips again, but Luke anchors me in place with one hand, then slowly slides the other into the front of my pants, keeping my gaze the whole time as if asking permission.

He has it. He can have everything.

His fingers wrap around my cock one by one until he’s gripping it with an almost too tight hold. The noise that escapes me is almost embarrassing in both its volume and the pure wanton need in the sound.

Luke’s lips curl into a hungry smile and he drops his gaze, nipping at the side of my neck as his hand begins to move in a slow stroking motion. Pleasure races across my nerves, a jangling sensation of want and need and more until I cry out, the pressure inside me cresting into an explosion.

Luke’s lips find mine again, his mouth catching my little whimpers and moans as he milks me through my orgasm. Once I’m done, all tension bleeds out of me and his kisses soften into brief brushes of his lips against mine.

“Shhh,” says Luke as he runs his nose over my cheek.

And I realize I’m crying, silent tears tracking down my face.

“I don’t—I don’t… I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I say, my chest shuddering with my tears.

“It’s been an interesting few days,” he replies. “And, as far as you remember, that was new to you, right?”

Flames lick at my cheeks, and I glance down at my hands, only now truly registering the squishy wetness in my pants. And the fact that Luke’s hand is still loosely curled around my spent and increasingly oversensitive cock.

“Um, yeah I think so,” I reply. “Sorry if I wasn’t…” I clear my throat and dart a glance up at Luke’s face. “Do you need me to…?”

Luke lifts my chin with two fingers until my eyes meet his. “I’m happy with whatever you’re willing to give. The whole fated mates thing is new to me too, but we’ll eventually figure it all out. Just being close to you is enough for me right now. We don’t need to do anything else.”

“What if I… want to?” I have no idea what I’m doing, but my instincts haven’t led me astray so far. The thought of taking care of my mate, of bringing him the kind of pleasure he just brought me, makes my chest warm.

Heat flashes in his eyes and one side of his mouth tips upward. “Then—”

A loud electronic chime echoes through the house, and I jolt at the noise. Luke’s brows draw together and he carefully gets up off the bed, wiping his hand over the comforter before approaching the door.

“That sounded an awful lot like a doorbell,” he says, opening the bedroom door and leaning out into the hallway. The chime comes again, and I hear Doc’s voice filtering in the door from farther down the hallway.

“There’s a camera on the doorbell, but my phone is dead, so I can’t log in to see who it is,” says Doc. “Do you want me to go down and answer it?”

“No,” says Luke firmly. “I’ll do it. Given how early it is, I somehow doubt whoever’s at the door is a welcome guest.”