Page 8 of Toxic Revenge, Part Two (Mafia Omegas #2)

Chapter

Seven

TALIA

I worked overtime to crawl around the bed and set up pillows. It was impossible to get the nest right. There was something missing, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Little omega.” West placed a hand on my shoulder. “Let me do that. I can help you make it perfect. You need to sleep.”

I’d already slept. Maybe not for long, but I couldn’t sleep again until the nest was right. My skin itched with the need for… something.

“No,” I mumbled. “I can’t tell you what it needs. I don’t… I don’t know what it needs.”

“I do.” He used his larger build to grab my hips and haul me back to the centre of the massive bed.

My heart raced, the heat pain fading as arousal took its place, but he didn’t touch me more. He placed a chaste kiss on my forehead and moved away. As fast as it arrived, the arousal vanished, reminding me that I was far past the point of heat where a knot would make everything perfect.

It might make it better .

But I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want my first heat with West to be a fucked up version of what it should be. I didn’t want my head filled with Benjamin’s foul emotions. Disgust and hatred occasionally pierced through the haze of my medication—emotions that didn’t belong to me.

That negativity belonged to him . My unwanted bondmate.

I hugged myself, trying to push his feelings away again.

“What does it need?” I asked quietly. “If you’re so sure?”

West grabbed a pillow, scent marking it and placing it beside my head. I inhaled, basking in the potent scent of wool and smoke. He did it to a few more pillows, arranging them around me.

That did fix it… to an extent.

“Mercer and Conrad will put their scents on them when we can get them here. Then I’m sure it’ll have everything you need, alright?” West said.

“When will they get here?” I whined. “Have you talked to them?”

He hesitated, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “I haven’t,” he admitted. “I can go check on things once you’re asleep again. I’ll be back before you wake up, alright?”

With a little whimper, I grabbed one more pillow and shoved it at him. “Do this one, too.”

Maybe with one more scent-marked pillow, I wouldn’t be so upset by the thought of him leaving me. Even though I would be asleep and probably wouldn’t notice.

He didn’t hesitate. It was back in my hands, covered in his scent, in a second flat. The blanket of smoky wool numbed some of the instinctual discomfort, and I relaxed. My eyes slipped shut, breaths slowing from the frantic pace they’d kept before.

I blinked blurrily as West laid a blanket over me, laying beside the pillow fort he’d made. “Do you still want me?” I asked in a whisper.

The answer was obvious, but I needed to hear him say it.

Especially because Benjamin kept shoving his loathing through our bond, reminding me I was bound to someone who only wanted to hurt me.

I needed West to want me. Without him, I would break.

“I’ll always want you, Talia.” He leaned over the pillows and kissed my forehead. “Nothing that asshole does will change that.”

I reached out for him, pulling him until he was part of the fort and I could rest my head on his chest. Wrapping his arms around me, he made sure he was pressed as closely against me as possible. A faint, rumbling purr had me going lax.

“Please rest,” he murmured. “You need it, OK?”

When I’d first woken up, I hadn’t thought I would be able to sleep. There was too much Benjamin—too much pain. Not enough nesting comforts to soothe my primal instincts.

But now? With his scent and the resonance of his purr surrounding me, I might be able to let my body take over and give me more of the rest I desperately needed.

“I’ll try.”

And soon, I’d drifted off with my blanket of warm wool.

“Give me the pillows when you’re done with them. I know how she had them arranged.”

West’s commanding whisper woke me from my light sleep.

I wanted to keep dozing—my head was heavy, my body pleasantly warm, and Benjamin was temporarily only a footnote in my mind. Snuggling deeper, I was almost out again when a pillow was replaced near my head.

Sandalwood and brown sugar.

Autumn leaves.

They’re here.

I bolted upright, whining when my head swam. My vision wasn’t clear for a few seconds, but after the haze of sleep wore off, I could see him.

Mercer.

“You came,” I whispered.

His attention zeroed in on my neck. The bite mark. It ached under his intense stare, but I ignored the throbbing and threw myself on Mercer in an aggressive hug.

He held me tight, leaning us forward until I was lounging on my nest of pillows again, with him tucked beside. “Of course, sweetheart. We got here as soon as we could.”

“Where’s Conrad? I smell him too.”

West and Mercer exchanged a glance. “He’s… sleeping. Recovering, so we can’t wake him. But I brought his scent in here for you,” Mercer said.

The gunshot wound. His hospital bed... The way he’d growled at me. Ruin and chaos, most of it a blur, the last solid memory I had before it was only the delirium of gargoyles and car gardens.

I whimpered. “Is he… OK?”

“We think so. We’ll know more when he wakes up.”

“Can I visit him?”

Mercer brushed a strand of hair from my forehead. “When your heat breaks, you can,” he promised.

My chest tightened. I wanted to beg them to let me see Conrad before then, but they would never agree, and I knew why. He’d been feral when I’d left him, and my heat pheromones would only drive a feral alpha closer to madness.

We’d learned that the hard way.

“Your heat scent is fading,” West reassured me. “The heat-reduction meds the nurse gave you when you first arrived are working. You should be out of it soon.”

“Agreed,” Mercer said. “Can you tell me how you’re feeling?”

I melted into the mattress between my two alphas, making sure I had a hand on each of them.

Mercer’s question was… complicated. I didn’t want to delve too deeply into how I felt.

If I did, the nest’s comfortable haze might fall away and bring me back to how I’d felt out on the street, at the moment my life had been ruined.

But Mercer was only worried about me, not trying to make things worse. For him, I tried to do a base assessment of myself.

Breathing deeply, I started with my feet and worked my way up my body.

My feet were aching, sore, and scraped up.

My knees, palms, and elbows were scraped the same way, throbbing faintly when I paid too much attention to them.

While I laid still like this, my thighs and calves only felt heavy, but when I moved a leg, it became obvious how much exertion I’d put them through.

I wanted to stop there.

If I went further into this assessment, I’d have to acknowledge…

My stomach was twisted in knots, gnawing emptily at itself. The discomfort was stable, constant, but if I laid in the fetal position it helped me to ignore it.

Slick wet my inner thighs, the remnants of when my body had wanted me to tend the sexual needs of this heat, but my core was clenched tight. I didn’t want anyone near me in that way right now, not even my mates.

And my heart… it throbbed. Every beat was noticeable when I focused on it. It reminded me that my heart was with this pack, but my bond… I’d let my bond be taken by another alpha.

That bondmark on my neck seared with pain, a phantom of the moment he’d taken everything.

Tears beaded in the corners of my eyes, and I had to stop before going anywhere near my mental state.

“Everything hurts,” I said. “But it’s not all physical pain. The nurses patched me up well enough that it’s mainly just discomfort now, except when I think about how I ended up with all these scrapes and bruises.”

Mercer’s lips pressed against my hair. West grabbed my hand and squeezed.

“Thank you for checking for me,” Mercer said. “We’re going to make it all better.”

He was lying to comfort me. There was no way to fix all my mistakes. I’d accept the lies, though. It was better than facing reality in my fragile state.

“You three always make me feel better,” I admitted.

“I’m glad. You should get some more sleep, princess. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I hummed softly. “Maybe by the time I wake up, I’ll be officially done with this heat from hell.”

“You will be,” West said. “You’re almost done, so sleep.”

He might have been lying too, or at least pretending to be certain when he wasn’t. I didn’t care.

Curled up between two of my alphas, I was as comfortable as I could possibly be. Soon, I was back in the depths of sleep.