by Jill Haven
“He wouldn’t come out this morning,” Mason ranted and kept glaring daggers at Jade who stood with a casual air that didn’t fool me as she inspected her talon-sharp fingernails. Her hair was pulled up in an intricate knot and she was dressed to kill—I just hoped it wasn’t Mason that ended up in a heap at her feet. “She told me to give him time and not force my way in.” Mason pointed at Jade dramatically, in a fashion that even a young dragon should have been embarrassed about, but it was clear he was beyond realizing what he was doing.
“Yes, because the man was just kidnapped yesterday by men who forced him to do who knows what,” Jade hissed. “Use your fucking brain.”
Mason glared. “Yeah, well, that’s exactly why I wanted to look him over, to see if he needed anything. Anyway—” he said loudly in Jade’s direction. She lifted an eyebrow but didn’t otherwise acknowledge him “—he left these.”
Mason shoved a letter at Haiden. We read together.
Dear Dude,
Thanks for helping me out. I know you meant well, but I had to jet out of here. There’s too much shit going down and I have a couple of things to do. Thanks for helping me, and I’m sorry I slid out of here sideways without saying goodbye. When I’m done doing my thing, I’ll look you up. I have a favor to return, after all.
All the best,
Seth Preston
“You have your own letter.” I pointed out a second piece of paper that Mason had wrinkled up in his fist. Mason balled the letter up and threw it in Jade’s direction. She caught it without looking his way, and she pitched it back without missing a beat. The ball bounced off Mason’s nose and I snagged it out of the air before it could hit the floor and smoothed it out. Nosily, I leaned over to read.
Mason,
I saw you last night. You want this? Catch me if you can.
Seth
“Stubborn fucking omegas,” Mason grumbled and stomped away.
“You went in there after we left, didn’t you?” I called cheerfully, but Mason only flipped me off.
“Are you going to go after him?” Haiden asked. Mason was someone I knew well, but he was kind at his core, and right now he reminded me of how I was right before I got together with Haiden—very intense.
“What choice do I have? I mean, we were going to look for the other Divine Omegas anyway. We never expected to find one and have him run away on us.”
“Are we any better than Vladimir if we force him here?” Jade asked quietly.
“I just want to talk to him. If he tells me to take a hike, I will,” Mason said.
“Really?” I goaded him, couldn’t help it. He was so full of shit.
“I’ll convince him to come back with me.”
“With all your manliness,” Jade snarked.
Mason growled out a real dragon sound, and she giggled in a very Jade way, which was a little mean, and the next thing I knew Mason was leaping at her across the room. I half expected her to gut him, but she did something fancy that ended with him groaning on his face on the floor in front of the couch while she still giggled, only this time she had her foot propped casually on his back.
“Yes, you’ll do fine,” she said, snorting and rolling her eyes. “Very manly.”
“This is what my life has become.” Mason crossed his arms on the floor and rested his chin on them with his eyes closed while I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks.
“So, you’re chasing Seth out of curiosity?” Haiden asked. I hiccupped and caught my breath and held his hand tight.
“No. It’s fated.” Mason let out a pained noise and rolled so he could rub at his chest. “I can tell I’m meant for him.”
Haiden shared a look with me. The electricity in my chest jumped and a mellow tingling wiggled across my skin and vibrated all the way over to where our hands were joined. The emptiness inside me settled.
“We’ll help however we can,” Haiden said, and I smiled in encouragement. He’d been talking more, and louder, than when we first met. He flushed.
Mason crawled out from underneath Jade’s foot and stood, shaking himself all over. He looked at Haiden. “If you have anything happen with the baby, call. I’ll come home immediately. I’ll set out to look for Seth, but when you’re closer to your due date—”
“Call?” I asked.
He nodded. “Mabel could help, she’s another doctor in our clan,” he told Haiden, “but she’s never really delivered a live baby before. Usually dragons lay eggs and then they have to be tended and guarded. It’s a different process.”
“You have delivered babies?” Haiden asked, and I didn’t miss the nervous way he nipped at his bottom lip.
Mason shrugged. “I’ve delivered a few human babies in my day.” He hugged Carlisle, and then me, and even went over and gave Jade a quick hug before he sort of slouched out of the house like a kicked dog.
“Do you think he’ll find Seth?”
Jade began to giggle again.
“What’s so funny?”
She shook her head, but she was far too amused, and then it hit me. She probably knew where Seth was. I thought about pestering her before Mason got too far from here, especially if he was hiding out nearby, but she’d always kept Haiden’s secrets, and if she was keeping this one, there must have been a reason. Haiden went over to the couch and curled up next to her, and I dropped down on her other side. She frowned at us.
“What?”
“So, I’m thinking about buying my omega a house. There would be room enough for you.” I gave her a smile that I’d been informed, more than once, could melt butter.
Her mouth fell open. “You want me to move with you?” She twisted around to look at Haiden and squealed, throwing her arms around his shoulders. “I’m going to play with the baby so much!”
I called Mabel and made arrangements. A week after Haiden was kidnapped and recovered, it was surreal to be driving him into Charleston traffic to the hospital. Mabel had managed to secure a small, clean and modern room with an ultrasound for our use, and she smiled her way through an introduction.
“I’m Carlisle’s cousin and I’m just so happy to meet you.” Her cheeks were rounded and sweet and she drew him close to her rotund body in a hug that had him squirming. Haiden’s cheeks had gone that charming pink that I didn’t think I would ever get tired of seeing and it deepened to red when she leaned forward to give him a good sniff.
“Oh, yeah, you sure are pregnant,” she murmured happily before directing him to a small bed. He’d given me a clear help me plea with his wide green eyes, but soon enough she had his shirt rucked up and part of a machine pressed to his slightly rounded belly while she clucked her tongue.
“There. Baby is behaving. No dragon form. Too bad you’re an omega or you could have the baby here at the hospital,” she said cheerfully. We both gaped at the small lima bean in his belly that appeared on the monitor.
“Should it be that big?” he asked with a frown.
“Oh, yes, dear. You’ll likely go the full twelve-week term. Maybe even thirteen. Sometimes with eggs you only get eight weeks.” She turned and patted his arm and his eyes shot wide with alarm. Oh, hell.
“Wait, only twelve weeks? But nine months? It’s supposed to be months.”
“Carlisle?” she said sharply, “you didn’t talk to him about this?”
“Sorry?”
“You poor thing. I can’t believe you omegas get saddled with addle-brained alphas like this one,” Mabel said while she glared at me and then did the explaining I should have done about the omega birthing process.
Haiden looked gobsmacked, but happy, and I could tell he was barely paying attention to her because he kept glancing at a little picture she had printed out of our growing baby. I took him back to my home in Charleston where he went quiet and shy, the way he was when I first met him.
“It’s just so big,” he kept saying as I showed him around the grounds and house.
He spent the day quietly saying hello to all the clan members who stopp
ed over to meet him. Donovan came first, followed not long after by Agatha, who seemed like she wanted to be furious with me, but couldn’t contain her smiles when Haiden whispered his hellos, but then was able to talk at a more reasonable tone to her after that. Larkin came by, but after only a few painful minutes where he forced a smile, he excused himself again while everyone in the room but Haiden exchanged unhappy looks. Would he ever get over his loss? No one wanted to talk about it out loud around Haiden, and I was thankful. It seemed too much like a jinx to talk about a lost egg right now.
That night, I got into my large old-fashioned four-poster bed with Haiden for the first time, and I honestly hoped we would never sleep apart again.
“We’re not staying in the city with the baby, right?” he asked as he snuggled in beside me. His eyes were tight and anxious. I kissed the top of his head.
“You want to get a house in the country? I thought that was the plan.”
“Please. I thought I’d like it here, but… all the cars and people….” He shook his head, eyes still slightly wide the way they’d been all day.
“Whatever you want. I can run my business from anywhere these days, with the way the world is connected. Would you like to look near Muscogee?”
He shivered and shook his head. “No. I got a call from the sheriff’s office. They found my Dad’s body. They said it looked like a… a mountain cat got him. They seem really confused. I don’t want to be there anymore.” Haiden’s face slipped toward sadness, and I couldn’t have that. I kissed him until he pressed himself against me, shifting his hips and sighing in little ways that let me know he was ready to be loved. I’d wanted to murder Haiden’s father myself, but seeing how sweet Haiden was, and that he still cared after everything his father had put him through, I was glad I hadn’t burdened him with that.
I pulled back to whisper, “There are a lot of beautiful places near Charleston. That way the clan could visit as well.” He snuggled in tight to my side, warm and wonderfully muscled and solid.
“I’d like that.” He slid his glasses off. I took them from him and turned to put them on my bedside table, loving the way they looked resting there. “Carlisle?”
“Hm-mm?” I answered, turning back to him, warming up quickly to the idea of christening my bed.
“Do you think, I mean we’re having a baby in twelve weeks. Should we… tonight? When are you going to mate me?” His hair was sticking up in all directions. I smoothed it down with one hand and my heart warmed.
“You mean, you want me to mate you now?”
He smiled and closed his eyes, his dark eyelashes beautiful against his cheeks. He nodded. “If it hurts, oh well. I want to belong to you.” He rested his hand on my chest and the small flutter of an ache that lived there receded. I shivered under his touch as he carefully slid his hand downward. I was still wearing my boxers, so he was only able to tease me. I shucked them off and my cock sprang up to slap against my stomach.
“Now? Right now?”
“Yes,” he said with a laugh, and tilted his chin to present his lips to me.
I kissed him. I couldn’t help it. I got lost in the heat of his mouth and I was harder than I’d ever been in my life. What started as a warm, sweet thing progressed rapidly to a fiery urgency boiling in my blood that I’d never felt before. My chest ached and pulsed along with my cock, the bond that I shared with Haiden seemed as out of control and excited as the rest of me. I rolled onto my back and he climbed on top of me, eating at my mouth, working his body against mine until we were both ready to burst.
It was him who fished the slick out of my bedside drawer and slapped the tube into my hand. I rolled him onto his belly, and he got onto his knees, smiling over his shoulder at me while he bit his lip.
“I want this, Carlisle,” he whispered. “I might be a little scared, but I love you, and I want everything with you. This baby. This life. Your family. Everything.” He spoke so fast that his words ran together, but I felt the same way. Everything was taking too long, and I didn’t want to wait anymore.
My hand shook as I slicked my shaft up, and I was so eager to get inside him that I only gave him a cursory swipe with my tongue between his ass cheeks. He sighed and moaned, pressed back against my mouth, and I knew he liked that, but tonight I needed something else. I felt an instinct urging me forward. This wasn’t even about knotting him, though that blew my mind every time, this was about sinking my fangs into him and joining us body and soul.
He clawed at the sheets and growled, sounding for all the world like a dragon. “Now, Carlisle. Can’t you feel it?” Something trembled through me, fire and electricity that gathered in my chest, under my breastbone, around my heart. It felt good and pure, like the edges of a lightning strike.
“Yes, yes, I can.” I slicked up my cock better and squirted some lube on his ass and then I was pressing in without much prep. He was relaxed and took me easily, though. When I was buried to the hilt in his soft heat, he fluttered his internal muscles around me and I pulled out to pound into him again, almost viciously, far rougher than we’d ever been with each other.
He moaned and nodded, pushing back against me. We battered each other with our bodies, and I could feel my orgasm building, our bodies pulling at each other. My chest ached and burned, but I could tell something was happening—something good—and he screamed. Something flashed in the room. I could feel it inside and out, searing my bones, and then my heart was hammering faster and every nerve I had was on fire in the best way possible. My orgasm flooded through me, catching me off guard.
“Fuck, yes, Carlisle, don’t stop,” he sobbed, and squeezed around me. My knot expanded, locking us together, and he shoved back hard against me, pushing me farther inside his body than I’d ever been. My mouth tingled and my teeth itched, and then that feeling in my chest, that trembling gold rush, like dashing down the side of a mountain, overtook me and I darted forward, striking. I sank my fangs into the nape of his neck, to the right of his spine. He stiffened under me and squeezed so hard on my knot that I came again, a violent heat streaking through my stomach. Droplets of his sweet blood hit my tongue, delicious, like honey. He jerked and thrashed, and I could hear him gasping. He milked my cock with his ass and finally he gasped and moaned. We both collapsed to the bed, me crushing him. I carefully extracted my fangs, but when I went to roll to the side, he reached back with both hands to stop me.
“Stay,” he said. “I’m fine. I’ve never… I feel so good. I want your weight to keep me from floating away.” The way he said that had me groaning and rutting against him again, even though we were already stuck together in our bliss. “I feel different,” he said. “Like I could lift a bus. I’ve never felt this good in my whole life.”
“No buses,” I mumbled.
He laughed, and I held him tight.
28
Haiden
Ten Weeks Later
“I love this place,” Jade said with a sigh. We sat bundled up in blankets on the front porch of the rambling house Carlisle had finished buying less than a week ago. It was made of stone, which I loved, and Jade seemed like she wouldn’t ever get tired of sitting out here with me. There was plenty of room for a swing set out front and I was already plotting where the sandbox would go. Tall old pine trees stood guard all along the property line and birds hopped around there, singing to each other and eating pinecone seeds, or at least I’d decided that’s what they were doing. There was a chill in the air, and the weatherman said we might get snow later. I was beyond excited.
“I have a new house,” I said to her with a grin. “I never thought I’d be able to say that.”
She smiled at me and leaned over to rub my belly where it stuck out in front. “I can’t believe how big this one is already. You’re so lucky.”
I glared. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about how it will get out. I’m not sure I am.”
She smirked, but I opened the edges of the blanket I had draped around me and lifted up my shirt, flashing her my big
round belly. “How is this supposed to get out of me?”
“See here?” she pointed at a line along the bottom of my stomach, almost like a scar, that had formed over the last week. I swatted her hand away from it because I’d found out when Carlisle licked over it this morning that it was sensitive and tender. “This mark will open up to allow—”
“I don’t want to think about it,” I groaned, and shoved my shirt back down. “We’re not discussing it. If it’s going to happen, it will happen.”
She shook her head and giggled some more like a jerk. It was easy for her to think this was funny. She didn’t have to have the kid. My stomach ached, nothing crazy, kind of like my knees used to at the end of a long day at Go Wild, but I knew without anyone telling me that my pregnancy was almost over. It looked like I’d swallowed three beach balls.
“Who is coming here to shift today?”
“I think Donovan said that he was bringing Mabel and Larkin,” Jade said happily. I was surprised, but she’d taken to Carlisle’s family really well. “There were like six other people I didn’t know, but they’re bringing pizza.”
“Good. I wanted that.”
She laughed. We both stopped talking as a strange car came through the trees and up the long driveway. I tensed and then relaxed when I realized that it was Mason driving. He stopped the car close to the front porch on the grass, right where I knew Carlisle would yell at him for parking, and got out. He was scruffy, his clothes were dirty and wrinkled, and he looked like he was ready to take a nap on his feet.
Jade grinned, and I had to chuckle. “Seth giving you a run for your money?” I didn’t usually like to screw with people, but the thing between Mason and Seth had been out of hand almost before it started. “I talked to him last night. He told me to tell you hello when I see you again.”
Mason scowled and his face turned beet red. “Brat,” he grumped, and clomped up the steps to join us. He flopped down onto the porch at my feet.