Page 20 of Night’s Bride (Ragoru Origins #3)

Nash woke abruptly, his insides burning with a fresh urgency. It was immediately followed by a sense of dread. Not just because he could hear the howl of the winds outside the house as the storm returned in full force, but because he knew exactly what this was, and with Emily so close and untouchable it burned through him with fiery agony and hunger, the likes of which he had never before experienced through all the ruts he had suffered. It clawed at him relentlessly, and he sprung up from the nest as he looked around in a wild panic for the way to escape.

The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally harm Emily in his current state. He did not feel in control of himself, and what little control he possessed was slipping by the moment as the hunger yawned and tore into him. It was a living beast within him, a monster that clawed up from the depths of his being in response to the musk of the aroused males, and Emily’s scent thickened in unconscious reply to it as they slept. He stumbled back and shook his head in a desperate effort to clear it. At the edge of his vision, Vrel sat up groggily and Vikt followed with a low groan as the male looked his way.

“Nash… her scent,” Vikt moaned, a husky, eerie sound that mated Nash’s primary cock jerk as it spewed the first of its precum.

He swallowed and nodded as he grappled with his mind. “She is responding to us, to our rising pheromones,” he explained, forcing the words out in a rough voice.

“She is going to kill me,” Vrel gasped as he writhed helplessly in the furs. “This is going to kill me. This was Evelyn’s plan… and Thral’s. Especially Thral’s plan. He wanted to torture us first until we just die from rutting.”

“Shut it, Vrel,” Vikt groaned. “Or else I am going to be tempted to murder you and be a lone offspring.”

“You would not!” Vrel gasped in outrage. “No one else but me would put up with your moods.”

Nash smiled at the males’ dramatics. He was grateful for them rather than annoyed. It lowered the fever of his desire just enough for him to be able to think again with a slightly clearer mind. One thing about their behavior was not right.

“Focus on your blood bond with Emily,” he instructed them. “You are caught up in the power of the rut, but it should not be affecting you this way… not as mated males. You should only be feeling pleasure and a desire to please your mate.”

“We do not have one,” Vrel gasped, and Nash froze in horror.

“What do you mean you do not have one?” he growled. “That is the riskiest, most insane thing you could have done. You have no idea how you might have instinctively reacted, how you might have attacked anyone, mindless with the belief that they were trying to mate with her. Look at you,” he snapped. “You are already behaving irrationally. Worse, you lack the thread of control that you should have to prevent you from hurting your mate during the rut.”

Vikt gaped at him with a look of horror that crumpled into one of anguish. “We did not know.”

Of course they did not know. They were twins. With an alpha who would have preferred to kill them on sight, he had little doubt that such things were not discussed with them.

Nash dragged a clawed hand through his mane. He was supposed to be the only irrational one being affected, not dealing with an entire den of them.

Trying to breathe as little as possible so as not inhale too much of her scent directly, Nash crept toward Emily and gently nudged her shoulder. Thank Mother Ewa that she slept lighter than the males she never mated.

“Emily,” he rasped on a strangled note.

“Nash?” Her face scrunched up slightly, no doubt smelling the heavy scent permeating the air, and sat up. Her gaze roamed the room and then paused on her males with a look of shock. “What the hell?”

“We have a situation,” he needlessly pointed out.

“I can see that,” she returned in bewilderment. “My question is why? What the hell is going on?”

“We apologize, rya,” Vrel said piteously. “We did not know.”

“Know what? And why do my insides feel like they are on fire? I feel…” Her eyes widened as a trickle of hot arousal ran down her leg. “Oh, Blessed Mother.”

Nash’s nostrils flared and he fought back the instinct to draw her back down into the furs and mount her. Very gently, he cupped her jaw in his hand and turned her head to look at him. “What you are feeling is the effects of the rut. The Withering Days are upon us and so your body is reacting to the pheromones we are putting out. You should understand what this means already, yes?” At her nod, he smiled comfortingly. “Your males, on the other claw, are suffering from a different problem.”

“Which is?” she whispered uncertainly.

He drew in a deep breath and immediately damned himself for the way her scent shot straight down to his cocks with hot urgency. “Your mating was never completed,” he explained.

Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Wait, Vikt did rituals for days, and?—”

He shook his head, interrupting her. “He began the process but never saw it through.” He paused for a moment, recalling waking and the sight of the offerings surrounding the little statues. “My presence interrupted it, did it not?” he asked, glancing over at Vikt.

The male grimaced and nodded, his ears pinning back against his head. “It did not seem right to do so while you were there at first and then…” he hesitated, his ears flicking uncomfortably.

“And then what?” Emily demanded, her voice strained with worry. “What could possibly justify waiting?”

Vikt lowered his head unhappily. “We did not know that this would happen. Vrel spoke truthfully. When Nash woke up and Vrel and I saw that he was a good and admirable male, we chose to wait so that we could all make the bond properly, together.”

Nash blinked at the male in surprise. It was the most foolish and yet endearing thing he had ever heard. He rested a hand over his heart as he regarded the twins.

“You greatly honor me with the depth of your feeling and that you were willing to wait for me—however unnecessary it was,” he added. “It was foolish, but the gesture humbles me.”

“You two are idiots,” Emily said, her words without heat as she looked upon her males fondly for a long moment before glancing up at Nash. “How confident are you about all of this—me, them, our family?”

He peered back at her as understanding settled in place deep within him. She was frightened of making the choice and she was taking him up on the offer he had extended. His expression softened so that she could see the love and adoration he held for her.

“I have no doubts. This is where I belong. To you and to them, as your alpha,” he rumbled in reply.

She sucked in a sharp breath but nodded, a nervous smile playing about her lips. “Okay then. Let’s do this. I accept and choose all three of you. You are my triad, my mates. Nash is my alpha from this day forward until the day we return to the dust of the earth.”

Joy rose within him, overwhelming the hunger momentarily. He straightened to his full height in front of her and he restrained a smile at the way her eyes fastened on his extruded cocks and widened. Without a word, he made his way around her so that he could crouch in front of where she was sitting, staring into her eyes.

“Our blood, hearts, and souls will mingle. This night will break us down, destroy us all, but we will be reformed and breathe again, together as one,” he rumbled as he placed his upper hands on her knees and slowly parted them, revealing the soft flower resting between them. He glanced over at Vikt and Vrel who had managed to crawl to his side, their bodies trembling with their barely restrained need. He held their gazes, and they nodded, understanding what they were to do now as he turned his attention back to Emily. Their rya. “Through blood we arrive into the world, and through blood we are born again.”

The words left his mouth, and he lunged forward, his body covering hers as his teeth gently pierced the tender flesh of her shoulder as Vikt and Vrel likewise delivered their bites. He drove his hips forward at the same time, stretching her cunt around his breeding cock as it pierced her and opening her slickened ass around his secondary cock. She jerked against him with a cry, driving him deeper as the scents of pain and pleasure rose from her. He continued to press into her with tiny pumps, giving her some relief and building her pleasure with rapid intensity before pushing deeper.

“Is that it?” Vrel whispered, but Nash shook his head.

“Through blood the bond is made. We have only done half of it,” he panted.

“She needs our blood as well,” Vikt murmured, finally grasping what needed to be done.

Together, as one, they bit into their palms, drawing their blood and painted Emily’s mouth with it and her tongue as it extended to swipe over her lips. She moaned as Nash’s hips shot forward, burying himself completely within her as the warmth of her awareness slid over his mind. He reveled in it and her newfound pleasure as he gripped her and pumped his cocks in and out of the sucking heat of her feminine sheath.

Her cunt was so tight around his shaft that he felt every ripple of pleasure from her body even as he felt it from their bond running over him in a white-hot tongue of bliss. Vrel gasped in wonder and moaned huskily in reaction, his partially extruded cock thrusting from his sheath fully for the first time without manipulation.

Nash smiled as the male reveled in the sensation, but his attention quickly returned to his mate as she filled his senses. His mate. He had a triad and a female of his own. He grunted as another wave of hunger hit him and he dragged her bottom up from the nest as his hips flexed against her, driving his breeding cock into the strangling grip of her channel over and over. A heaviness settled in his belly as his cocks filled her and it dropped even lower into his seedsack. He growled with the pleasure of it, his claws scraping lightly against her skin, drawing tiny shivers from her that he felt echo along his shafts penetrating her.

He drove into her in earnest, a growl vibrating in his chest as he thrust. Her body tightened around him, making his every retreat difficult, but that just tugged at some deep thread of pleasure he never knew was there as he pulled harder against her resistance, sending tiny claws dragging through him ecstatically before driving home once more into her sheath. It continued to tighten around him in resistance as warmth flooded down his cock to a central point that seemed to bulge, the skin of his cock stretching and tightening with the sensation until he could no longer pull himself free beyond a certain point from the tight clasp of her cunt.

And then he felt it. The blessed culmination of all pleasures that the gods gifted to them. His secondary cock began to vibrate in her rear passage, stimulating his breeding cock in such a way that he felt his seedsack draw up tighter and his cock swell uncomfortably in preparation to breed her.

He panted raggedly as her channel clenched tighter and tighter, rippling and pulsing around him with its liquid heat, and her cries filled the room with her climax. It was the sweetest song to him, and he drank it in and continued to do so when it faded into a musical litany made of her every whimper, gasp, and moan as she writhed around the cocks piercing her. He rutted into her, his hips bouncing against her bottom at a speed that left her unable to move with him with no other option but to jiggle with every rapid thump of his thrust.

Pleasure wound tighter and tighter within him, the heat of it drawing through him and settling deep within him until finally it shot through him in an eruption at its pinnacle so that he roared his completion as his breeding cock released stream after hot stream of seed where it jerked in place, pressed firmly against her womb. Her shout followed his and she was still trembling with her release when he suddenly lowered himself back into the nest, holding her tightly against him. Drawing back on his mating bulge as far as he could, he reached between them and pulled his secondary cock from her ass, leaving her open to her other mates.

“Join us,” he growled, and the other two males, who had been waiting at his sides, surged forward eagerly.

Vrel managed to get in ahead and pressed his cock into her ass with an eager thrust that momentarily made Nash’s eyes roll back in his head. It was not only his primary cock filling her ass that delivered such pleasure, but it was the secondary cock forcing its way partially into her cunt that made him shiver as the male licked her shoulder and back lovingly. Emily trembled and moaned between them, her cunt weeping continuously with a mixture of her own arousal and the excess of Nash’s seed. He planted his feet on either side of Nash’s legs to give himself more leverage as he surrendered fully to the rut, every thrust triggering a new stream of seed erupting from Nash’s cock until the male exploded with a snarl that sent Emily spasming around them both all over again with a piercing shriek.

Nash grunted as the male withdrew with another tender lick to her neck, but the moment Vrel was no longer positioned over them, he began to rut anew from beneath her as his seed continued to pour from him into her. She moaned and trembled in reaction, her fingers clinging to his fur until Vikt crouched over them, his eyes burning with hunger as his blue tongue slid along one fang. Suddenly the male dropped low, not even bothering to rut her ass like Vrel did. His thick cock pressed beside Nash’s and he pressed forward, drawing out a loud moan from their mate as he fought his way in, Nash’s seed spilling over his length. Since he could not get around the mating bulge, his effort forced Nash deeper so that their mate trembled between them and his secondary cock grazed Nash’s ass.

Their angle did not allow much in the way of penetration, but the pressure focused there as the male growled low in his throat and began thrusting had Nash shivering once more as his muscles tightened with pleasure as Emily panted and moaned between them. And when he reached the peak of his climax and fell over its edge, it was with Vikt’s throaty growl and their mate’s cry of ecstasy within his ear. In that moment, Vikt’s cock jerked madly against him in the throes of pleasure as Nash’s seed erupted from him in a fresh stream as the shared ecstasy ran through them all.

Vikt remained in place for several heart beats but eventually withdrew to join Vrel. The twins curled together at his left with content smiles on their faces. For the first time, Nash understood that level of true contentment, and he smiled as well as he hugged Emily to him until his cock finally deflated and slipped free. He did not expect her to remain lying on top of him but that did not stop him from feeling slightly remorseful when she finally slid out from underneath his much larger body to nestle between him and her other mates. She smiled sleepily at them, her hands brushing over their fur lazily in gentle strokes that were only interrupted when Vrel suddenly bolted upright.

“It is the first day of the Withering Nights! I must go get my gift,” he said as he shot up from the nest.

“Wait for me, I need to get mine as well,” Vikt agreed, following after his brother, the twins both suddenly re-energized despite the frenzy of their rutting just moments earlier.

Nash stared after them in amusement, but when the twins left the room, he sighed heavily and looked at Emily regretfully.

“I did not prepare anything,” he admitted in a thick voice. “I did not suspect… not before the Withering Days concluded.”

“Shh,” she whispered, touching the tip of his nose with her finger. He stared at it cross-eyed, and she smiled in response. “It doesn’t matter. That you are here with us is the only gift I want… this year,” she teased. “You can spoil me next year.”

The corner of his mouth quirked, and he inclined his head in agreement. “Next year,” he promised.