Page 140 of Torment Me Knot
“Sera.” I cup her face. “I want to bond with you. Please. I want you to be mine.”
She goes very still. “Aubrey—”
“You don't have to say yes,” I say. “But I need you to know I want it.”
She studies me for a long beat. Then she tilts her neck and bares the gland there, the line of it exposed. “Yes, Omega. Please. Bond me.”
I sink my teeth into her neck. She gasps against my hair and bites my shoulder and the bond opens and she pours into me. All that fierce, controlled, battering-ram energy suddenly without walls, and underneath it something so careful and so frightened and so determined to belong.
I lick my mark and she shivers. “Mine,” I whisper. I hold her tight.
And now for my other alpha. I look over my shoulder, gripping his arm and positioning it in front of my mouth. “Mine, also.”
I bite down, and then he is in me too, alongside Sera, and where she came in like walls coming down Kev comes in likesomething that was always there finally being named. Steady. Certain. A decade of patience and quiet love and the particular grief of a man who had stopped expecting this. All of it arriving at once, pressing into the space behind my ribs.
“Omega, I need—Please may I claim you back,” Kev rasps.
Kev nuzzles into the curve of my neck, his stubble dragging against my skin. I feel the want rolling off him. His whole body is shaking with how much he needs this.
“Gods yes. Claim me. Both of you!” I cry.
Sera's mouth drops to the other side of my neck. Her lips drag across the gland there and I feel the same need in her — sharper, more desperate, the longing of someone who almost didn't let herself want this at all.
They bite down together. The pain is nothing. What comes after is everything. The bond opens on both sides at once and I pour into them and they pour into me and for a second I can't tell whose chest is whose, whose heartbeat is whose. Kev makes a sound against my neck. Sera's arm locks around my waist.
I grab both of them and hold on.
Kev drives deeper. I cry out. Sera clenches and I feel it from both sides at once, knotted and locked, nowhere to go.
Kev goes rigid behind me. Sera inhales sharp. They are suddenly aware of each other through me. I am the point where they connect. I feel Kev's want lock onto Sera. Feel hers lock onto his. The need between them has been building for weeks and now it has a direction.
“Sera.” Kev's voice is low. “My love. Please.”
She lifts her head from my neck.
“Yes, Alpha. Please claim me,” she says.
Kev surges forward and bites Sera’s gland. Her whole body jolts. She tightens around me and I cry out from the sensation.
“Now you know exactly what you are to me.” His voice has gone to gravel.
Sera goes completely still. Not shocked or frightened. Just… overwhelmed in a way I don't think I've ever seen from her. Like nobody has ever chosen her this openly before.
She breathes out shaky. She reaches for him, gets her hand at the back of his head, and pulls him in. She bites the side of his jaw hard enough that he hisses. His arm comes around her waist and he drives into me again and the three of us shudder together as the bonds between all three of us burst open at once, each one feeding into the others.
“Mine.” I spill inside Sera's lock. Kev knots me from behind and I am locked from two directions, pinned in place, and I am sobbing as we climax together. Then everything inside me goes quiet.
Completely.
Every fractured piece sliding into place so suddenly it steals the breath from my lungs.
Nobody moves for a long moment.
The bonds pulse hot and alive between us while we lie tangled together in the ruined blankets, all of us breathing hard.
I brace myself for the aftermath anyway.
Panic. Shame. That hollow sickness Axel trained into me until touch always ended in pain.
