Page 50 of Untamed

Arlo rolls us before I can decide whether I want to stay on top. My back hits the mattress and he stays buried inside me through it, catching his weight on one arm while I hook a leg around his waist. When he pulls out too far I drag him back with my heel. "Don't fucking tease me." His mouth catches mine at the same time he drives forward again, and yes. That. Better.

The rhythm goes rougher from there, his hips hitting mine hard enough to move me against the sheet while slick spreads warm between us. Every time my body clamps around him the bond throws his reaction straight back, his purr breaking against my collarbone while my hum climbs into something louder. His beard scrapes down my throat. My fingers dig into his shoulders. Then his knot starts to swell and the first thicker drag of it makes my whole body answer with another wet pulse around him.

Arlo slows enough that I notice. I catch the back of his neck and pull his forehead down to mine. "Knot me." His eyes stay on my face, nothing clever coming out of his mouth for once, and I wrap both legs around his waist. "Do it."

Arlo pushes forward until his knot catches wide enough to burn, my fingers locking harder into his shoulders as the stretch builds by degrees. Slick eases some of it, but not enough to blunt the drag of him forcing me open, and I want the rest anyway, want the weight of him and his swollen knot pressing deeper while his Alpha scent pours over my skin and my Omega surges toward it.

With one deeper push, his knot seats fully and the bond flares so hard his purr hits inside my chest before the sound reaches my ears, vibrating through both of us where his body is pressed over mine. My hips jerk against him as his swollen knot grinds deep enough to send pleasure straight up my spine, my back bowing off the mattress when I come with my mouth against his throat. The sound tears out of me into his skin while my body clenches around him in hard pulses, trapping him deeper as the bond floods with heat that isn’t only mine.

His arm tightens beneath my shoulders when Arlo shudders over me, keeping me close as his hips press in and he comes with his knot holding us together. I feel every pulse inside me, each one answered by another clench I can’t control, my legs still shaking long after the worst of it passes. One hooks behind his thigh and stays there while his weight settles more heavily over me, his face buried against my neck as his breathing breaks hot over my skin.

Sweat cools between us where our bodies are pressed together, slick wet along my thighs and the sheet beneath me while leather and coffee fill every breath I take. My fingers are still tangled in his hair, and when he shifts against me, I tighten them once, not enough to pull, only enough to keep him where he is while the sharpest edge of the pleasure starts to ease.

By the time his knot begins to soften, I can feel every small change in the pressure inside me, the stretch loosening a little at a time until Arlo can finally move without dragging against swollen skin. He eases free carefully, slick following warm down my thigh as the sudden emptiness makes my body tighten around nothing. A tired sound catches in my throat, answered by the deeper vibration of his purr against my neck while he reaches for the blanket without lifting all his weight away.

The blanket comes over us as he settles back against me, catching the warmth before the room can get at too much bare skin. I turn with him until my cheek rests over his heart, his pulse knocking hard beneath my ear while one of my hands finds his ribs. My palm spreads over the place my claws opened yesterday, but there’s no wet blood under my fingers now, no torn skin giving beneath them, only heat and the movement of his breathing.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Orion

The shirt's been bothering me since I put it on, not enough to make me tear it off, but enough that I keep noticing the collar against my throat and the cuffs brushing my wrists whenever I move. The jeans pull behind my knees when I bend them, and the boots are already too tight around my ankles. A few weeks ago I would've given up before I made it downstairs. Today I fix one twisted cuff in the mirror, decide I'm done fighting with it, and leave the room fully dressed.

Arlo's at the kitchen counter with his keys in one hand and an apple in the other. He stops chewing when he sees me, which has me looking down at myself before I can help it, checking for a missed button or something else I've somehow managed to fuck up. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” He sets the apple down, and warmth comes through the bond before I get anything useful from his face. “You look good.”

My face heats. Of course he feels that too. The pleased little shift through the bond makes it worse, so I grab the folded kitchen towel and throw it before he can say anything else. He catches it against his chest with one hand, laughing under his breath while I head for the door, and I don't have to look back to know he's still smiling.

The boots turn into a problem halfway across the compound. One sock bunches under my toes, the leather keeps rubbing the same place above my ankle, and by the time we reach Kael's porch I'm curling my toes inside them every few steps. I keep them on until we're through the door, then hook one heel against the other and shove both boots against the wall. Arlo glances down, catches the look I give him, and uses his own boot to push mine out of the walkway without saying a damn thing.

There're too many people in the living room for me to keep worrying about my feet. Beck and Monet are near the table, Malik has one of the Collective maps spread out in front of Kael, and Slate's standing near the window. I know most of their scents now, which should make the room easier than it used to be, but voices are already overlapping and somebody drags a chair behind me before I've decided where I want to stand. Arlo's close enough that the bond keeps him fixed inside me, yet I still check where he is.

Then the woman beside Slate looks at me, and the rest of the room drops back. I don't know her, but something under the unfamiliar scent catches wrong in a familiar way. Her hair's short and messy around her face, her shoulders too tight for someone sitting down, and she's watching me with the same hard attention I'm giving her. Slate catches the exchange before Kael says, “Orion, that's Reverie,” and the name puts the last piece where it belongs. She's the hyena.

Nobody says Feral. They don't have to. Reverie doesn't look away, Slate doesn't pretend he missed what just happened, and suddenly I'm tracking the room around the three of us instead of only Arlo. Unfamiliar Alphas stand between Reverie and the kitchen, too many bodies keep moving behind Slate, and there's enough noise that I hate having both of them where I can't see what approaches. I move until they're behind my shoulder and everyone else is in front of me, only realizing how obvious I've made it when Slate gives me a small nod.

A fox pup wanders between my bare feet before I can decide whether I care that Slate noticed. One tiny hand wraps around my ankle, and I freeze because stepping on him would be worse than anything else happening in the room. His palm is warm against my skin. I stay there long enough for my jaw to loosen without noticing it happen, which is when Preston finally looks over from the couch.

“I was going to make fun of the shoes,” he says, eyeing the boots by the door and the kid hanging off my leg, “but I think you've suffered enough.”

I stare at him until he laughs and looks away. The pup squeezes my ankle again, warm fingers tightening against my skin, and I decide Preston can survive without an answer this time.

Kael drags the map across the table hard enough to knock one of the pups' wooden blocks onto the rug. “We've got three Feral lines in the same room for the first time. The Collective never meant for any of you to compare what happened to you, so that's exactly what we're going to do.”

The pup eventually lets go of me and runs back toward Slate. I sit beside Arlo, but the room keeps piling up around me: chairs scraping, people talking over one another, scents changing every time somebody moves. Human skin starts feeling like one more thing I have to pay attention to. Malik's halfway through an old supply route when I stop trying, shift beside Arlo's chair, and lower myself across his feet. His hand sinks into the fur at my neck without interrupting Malik, warm pressure working through skin and muscle until I can listen instead of tracking every sound at once.

Slate goes first, and he doesn't clean up what Veltmoor did when he explains it. Six removals. Six bonds cut out of him after they were allowed to take. He remembers what changed after each one, when the fox started pushing through, which parts of his body stopped returning completely, and how long they waited before putting him through it again. Reverie fills in her history after him. One prior bond, with the hyena already surfacing by then.

When the conversation reaches me, I shift back beside Arlo's chair and tug my shirt down where it rode up over my stomach. “Six removals for Slate. One previous bond for me. And only one bond for Reverie after her body was already pushing toward the shift. Whatever the Collective's been doing, each Feral line needed fewer steps than the last, and each of us ended up paired with an Alpha whose body changed when the bond locked.”

Arlo's hand settles on my shoulder, solid and warm through the shirt. “My wounds started closing in seconds after we bonded. They didn't only change Orion. Whatever they were trying to trigger changed me too.”

Reverie's fingertip stops halfway down one of Malik's copied Council tables, right beside a row of bond outcomes and dates. “Then the Alphas aren't incidental. They're part of the design. If the Collective's refining the process every time, whoever comes after us gets a version with fewer mistakes. They'll know which bond works, which stressors force the shift, what changes to watch for in the Alpha, and how much control they need over both people.”

The room gets quieter as she talks, not silent, just still enough that every shift of a chair suddenly sounds louder. My shoulders pull tight while I count the bodies between Reverie and the nearest exit. I move my chair enough to cut off the clearest path from the Alphas I don't know, and Slate catches it without saying anything.

Kael flattens one palm over the papers, covering half the neat little columns with his hand. “Then we stop helping them by keeping everything separate. Every Council visit, every exam, every change in a bond gets shared. If one pack learns something, all three know it before the Collective gets another chance to use it first.”