Page 23 of The Runaway
Antoine shook his head. “It’s already been half an hour or more. Helen has maybe another hour before the pain starts to hit. By the time they get back, she’d be in a lot of trouble.”
Fuck. Two equally strong impulses pulled at Gabriel. The first was the desire to avoid mating with an omega under any circumstances. He’d seen omegas mated repeatedly, until they were bleeding and unable to walk. He’d heard them begging for mercy, pleading to be left alone, and seen the dull, vacant expressions in their eyes after months of the brutal treatment had broken their spirits and left them as hollow shells.
But at the same time, there was no way he could simply leave Helen to endure the pain. That, too, had been done to some of the omegas in the army, and their screams of pain still haunted his dreams.
“Look, Antoine…” He let out a long, slow breath. “Can I be brutally honest with you? And I apologise for how indelicate this is going to sound.”
Antoine nodded. “What is it?”
“I haven’t mated with any of the omegas because…” He stopped, words failing him. “Fuck, I… Shit.” He rubbed his eyes, images of blood and twisted bodies crowding his mind. “The truth is… I haven’t even been able to get it up in six months.” He felt his face heat at the admission, and he avoided Antoine’s eyes. “I saw things during the war that… that killed any desire I felt. I can’t… I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to force anyone to mate when they don’t want to. And we both know that no omega in the world is going to openly reject an alpha if they’re given an order to mate. It seemed easier to just avoid the whole thing. And honestly, given how long it’s been, I don’t know if I’d actually be of any use to Helen anyway.”
Antoine looked shocked by his announcement, though he was trying hard to hide it. “Even if the…? I mean, the pheromones are fairly potent. Don’t you think you would…?”
“Maybe,” Gabriel admitted. “Maybe not. I honestly don’t know.”
A tense silence fell, both of them avoiding looking at the other. This was not the sort of conversation Gabriel had ever imagined he’d end up having.
Finally, Antoine broke the silence. “As unusual as this might sound,” he said, “I do understand where you’re coming from. A few months after I bought Dante, I was made aware of… Well… He was used very harshly before I bought him,” he said, fumbling over the words. “And I finally realised how much he disliked mating. At that point, I stopped having sex with him at all. For months. He had to twist my arm a fair bit to get me to start again. But that’s a whole different story.
“But Helen’s in a different category from Dante. She’s lived on this estate ever since she was eighteen. Christophe bought her as a virgin, and she’s never had to endure anything but the most gentle and respectful of matings. She’s never made any objection to any of it. And even she admitted that the pain would be worse than a partner that wasn’t to her liking. If there were any other choice, I wouldn’t ask. But right now, you’re her best option.”
“What if I really can’t help her?” Even now, Gabriel felt no desire, not even a hint of arousal.
“If it really comes to that, we’ll wait until Jean-Luc comes back and get him over here as quickly as possible. But that’s a worst case scenario.” He looked at Gabriel with a sad but hopeful expression. “Please, Gabriel. I can’t just leave her to suffer.”
Gabriel sighed. “Fine,” he said, feeling none too optimistic about it. “I’ll come and see her.”
“Thank you.”
Antoine led the way quickly back towards the farm, taking Gabriel to the entrance of the omegas’ quarters. He opened the door and looked inside, but didn’t let Gabriel past. “Helen? Gabriel’s here. Could you go into the mating room? Is everything set up in there?”
Gabriel couldn’t hear the reply, but he did detect a faint hint of omega scent through the door. Antoine, due to his bonding with Dante, was entirely immune to Helen’s scent. After a bonding, an alpha lost all interest in any other omega, and if any other alpha scented Dante during his heat, he would actually be repelled by the scent. It must be nice, Gabriel supposed, to not have to worry about the complexities of the usual alpha-omega interactions.
“She’s all set,” Antoine told him a moment later. “She’s gone into the mating room. There’s a supply of food and water in there and a few spare blankets for the bed.” Heat matings were notoriously messy, and Gabriel was relieved to hear that this estate was well prepared for them.
“Are you sure she’s okay with me being with her?”
“She might be a little reluctant,” Antoine admitted. “But as I’ve said, we’ve all agreed that there’s no other option. But… I know this is probably a big ask, but if you can manage it, don’t take her hesitation as rejection. She will accept you. Just reassure her that you’re not going to hurt her and everything should be fine.”
Gabriel took the words to heart and braced himself for his inner alpha to start kicking up a fuss. Being rejected by an omega during a heat tapped into some deep and powerful emotions, and from what he’d heard, alphas in rut reacted in one of two ways; some would immediately begin trying to woo the omega, providing gifts of food or showering them with compliments in order to win their favour. But the other half reacted with aggression, seeing the omega’s reluctance as an insult, as defiance and an attempt to escape. And it was in those cases when the omega was likely to be hurt.
Unfortunately, none of the omegas he’d mated with during their heats had ever tried to reject him, so he didn’t know which way he was likely to go if Helen triggered his possessive instincts.
“Is the room clear?” he asked, making no attempt to enter the omegas’ quarters yet. Once he got a serious whiff of the pheromones, anyone standing between him and his target was likely to be seen as a threat, and they would be in serious danger of harm.
“Everyone else is gone,” Antoine said. “It’s going to be fine, Gabriel. I’m sure you’ll do a good job.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Gabriel said, though he felt none of Antoine’s optimism himself. “Well, here goes nothing.” He strode forward, taking a deep breath as he crossed the room. Helen’s scent was thick in the air, a clarion call to any nearby alpha that she was looking for a partner. He felt a rising possessiveness as he approached the door, his inner alpha issuing a gleeful ‘Mine’as the pheromones began triggering his own hormonal reaction. But even as he placed his hand on the doorknob, his cock remained stubbornly flaccid. The next twelve hours were going to be interesting, to say the least.
CHAPTER TEN
That night, Connor lay in bed, doing his best to get some sleep. The rest of the omegas were curled up and snoring peacefully, completely ignoring the mating going on only a few metres from them, behind the closed and locked door of the mating room. Was that the normal way of things? To Connor’s way of thinking, it seemed callous to be so unconcerned about the fate of one of their own. On his previous estate, whenever an omega had gone into heat, the other omegas had huddled in a corner, muttering amongst themselves about how the victim might be faring and ready to lend a hand to tend any injuries the instant the heat was over. But here, once Gabriel had been safely shut inside with Helen, the rest of the estate had gone about their usual business with barely a mention of the heat for the rest of the day.
But Connor, like the rest of the omegas, had witnessed the tense discussion that had gone on before Antoine had gone to fetch Gabriel from the pigsty, and he’d spent the day feeling nauseous as he imagined all the horrors that might be happening to the poor woman.
During the discussion on what was to be done about Helen, several of the omegas had spoken in favour of riding to town to fetch Jean-Luc back, or of attempting to cross the bridge to the Allard estate, while Helen herself had vacillated between anger and tears, and had even gone so far as to demand that Niles service her heat instead of Gabriel.
That had launched the room into a fiery argument, Adalene screaming at Helen to stop trying to steal her alpha, several of the omegas making disparaging comments about Adalene’s arrogance and ‘princess’ status on the estate, and finally, Antoine himself had broken up the argument, loudly declaring that Niles was not available. “I have always done my very best to look after all of you,” he said to Helen, “and to offer you freedoms that go well beyond what most people would consider reasonable. But I don’t have any other options right now. I’m not willing to break up Adalene and Niles’s relationship, and that means that Gabriel is your only other option. I would not be suggesting this if I thought there was even a hint of a chance that he would harm you. He’s a good man. Just give him a chance.”