Abel's Omega(Gay Paranomal MM Mpreg Romance) (Mercy Hills Pack Book 2)

by Ann-Katrin Byrde

  “There’s no way a person could change their shape into a wolf, either, right?” Abel’s eyes were serious, though his mouth smiled.

  “Shit,” I said, careless of propriety. I thought about it a moment, then looked at Mac and Jason. “Out. Take the pups’ stuff and leave us alone.”

  Jason grinned, though Mac’s eyes went wide with indignation.

  “Come on, Mac,” Jason said, pulling his mate to his feet with him. “Let’s leave the lovebirds alone.” He dragged Mac down the hall to the pups’ bedrooms, and Abel and I stared at each other in a frozen silence of lust, love, and fear. This would change everything.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him.

  He looked down at the floor and scratched his beard. “I don’t know much about omegas—just Jason and our Bram. I hoped I was wrong.” He looked back up at me. “This doesn’t simplify things.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  The chair crashed to the floor when he jumped up and strode over to the window. “Why the fuck can’t something just go to plan for once? I thought we were safe.” He muttered the last bit, and leaned on the window, looking blindly out over the enclave.

  Shit. None of this was his fault, my poor mate.

  Fuck it.

  I got up and walked over to hug him from behind. He took a deep, noisy breath and tensed all over. “Bax…”

  “Shhh,” I said, and relaxed against him. “I’m yours. No need to rush things. You can have me when you want. Meanwhile, we can enjoy the build-up.”

  He laughed, a strained, painful sound. “This wasn’t how I pictured it.”

  I snorted a laugh into the hollow between his shoulder blades. “No, me neither. I’d planned to spend the entire last month before my fall heat dropping hints and driving you crazy.”

  “Are all omegas evil?” he said on a chuckle.

  I turned him around and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Depends on what you mean by evil.”

  He bent his head to mine. “Teasing, tormenting, delicious, wonderful, don’t ever leave me.”

  “Sounds about right.” I was about to kiss him, when the noise of Jason and Mac coming back up the hallway interrupted us. Abel tensed, an Alpha’s territoriality adding fuel to the aggressive nature of a natural alpha. “Shhh,” I said again. “I’m right here. They’re leaving.” And I pulled him into a kiss until Mac and Jason had disappeared out the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Abel didn’t often show off how strong he was, except during his morning sessions with the Security crew, and the occasional bedroom trick. With me, he was inevitably gentle and careful. Not today, though. Today, he picked me up and wrapped my legs around his waist, striding toward my bedroom like the conquering hero he was.

  I was starting to regret the menthol stuff—it reeked, and I’d even put some down by my groin, where it was rubbing against my balls and burning. Not a smart idea.

  Abel buried his face in my neck, snorted, choked, and nearly dropped me.

  Maybe being carried to bed like a monkey wasn’t the best plan. I put my feet back on the floor and raised my face for another kiss. Nothing existed for me except Abel and that itchy menthol burn at my crotch.

  “I have an idea,” Abel said, slightly cross-eyed. His eyes were watering.

  “What?” I murmured. His chest was like iron, something I always enjoyed, but today, with the hormones cranking all my responses up to eleven, I could hardly keep my hands away from it. I tried to rub myself against him, but he shook his head and spun me around.

  “This way,” he said, and pushed me back down the hall.

  “What?” Then I realized—the bathroom. “Oh.”

  “Shower.”

  I nearly protested—a shower would take time, at least five minutes. In that amount of time, I might melt into a puddle of need. And then I remembered one particularly steamy scene, in a book that otherwise had had nothing to recommend it. But I’d kept the book around for that scene alone.

  “Wash that stuff off,” Abel said with a grin. He turned the water on to warm up, testing it with one hand, while the rest of him focused on me.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” I told him. I was at my most sultry now, and I didn’t even mind if the slow way I stripped out of my clothes made me look like a slut. It was for him, and he seemed to appreciate it.

  My shirt fell to the floor, then my pants, and then I was naked in front of him. His gaze raked over me, and if I hadn’t already been hard and wanting, I would have been after that.

  I let him guide me into the tub, and the water fell over me like summer rain. Abel took a step back, but I reached out and grabbed his shirt. “Stay,” was all I said, not really a command, but as close as an omega could get.

  “All right,” he said slowly. He didn’t seem capable of looking away from me anyway, so maybe my impulsive gesture had been unnecessary after all. I didn’t care—I’d enjoyed it.

  I pushed my soaked hair away from my face and bit my lower lip, imagining all the things I could do with his body.

  He took a shaky breath and leaned on the wall next to the end of the bathtub. “Do you know how hard you are to resist when you do that?”

  I just smiled and held out my hand. “Could you pass me the soap in the top right-hand drawer?”

  He raised his eyebrows, but did as I asked. The soap was brand new, a Christmas present from Jason. It smelled of trees and fresh air, and the forest under a full moon. I don’t know how they managed it, but it was amazing. Foam poured off the little block as I rubbed it between my hands and the scent of the open forest rose into the air. “Come join me,” I offered as I started the work of getting the menthol off me. “You know, for quality control.” I lowered my voice. “In case I miss anything.”

  His eyes widened and his breath caught audibly. “You are such a temptation.”

  “Don’t resist,” I whispered and reached out with one wilderness perfumed hand. “Come to me.”

  He tore himself out of his clothes and was on me in seconds. His mouth met mine, a kiss that would have bruised me if he’d not kept himself on such a tight rein. It was always like this—so tender, and just behind the tenderness, a roiling cloud of power and fierce strength, its roots sunk deep into the pack and the pack members. I clung to him, the soap almost forgotten, until he took it from my hand and stepped back under the spray.

  “We still need to get that stuff off you,” he said with a smile and a dark, hungry look that made my thighs spread out of pure instinct and need.

  Abel stroked the soap over my skin, beginning with my face, fingers leaving behind a wake of fire on my skin, warm pink as the blood rushed to the surface of my skin to dance beneath his touch. I practically purred under the attention—shallow omega, perhaps, but he smiled at the sound. His hands worked down over my neck, my shoulders, to my chest and belly. I whined unintentionally, and flushed even harder at his satisfied expression.

  He leaned in for a kiss, his hands dipping lower, easing the burn on my balls and making the one inside them worse at the same time. This time I whined on purpose, though I suspected he already knew how much I wanted him. It would have been pretty hard to miss.

  I reached for him, but he pushed my hands away. “Hush. I’m busy,” he said, his voice rumbling like distant thunder, raising the hairs on my arms with his own version of lightning. My legs shook beneath me, and even more so when he turned me around, pressing my hands against the wall in front of me. His breath was warm on my ear, warmer even than the steam that floated around us. “Just a few bits more.”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek and braced myself as his hands roamed down over my back, then farther, to cup the curves of my ass. His cock brushed against me, and I had to press my face against the wall to keep myself where he’d put me. I was so aroused it was nearly painful and every breath that passed my lips carried with it a small sound of desperation. It was as sexy in real life as it was in my books. At least until the actual sex started.

>   The bathtub had wide edges and a narrow, slick bottom, which meant that when I braced my feet against Abel’s thrusts, they slipped and only his arm around my waist kept me upright, but my added weight put him off balance, his feet no more capable than mine of getting purchase on the slick enamel. I laughed and reset myself again and again, but it soon became obvious that we were spending more time on not falling than on banging each other’s brains out, which had kind of been the point of the shower sex.

  Another romantic theory busted.

  Eventually, Abel lost patience with our flailing. “One of us is going to break something.” He shoved the shower curtain out of the way, ripping it off the rings in his urgency, and stepped out of the tub, dragging me with him. He pushed me toward the wall and I flung out my hands, coming to rest with my cheek against the cool painted surface. Abel’s hands were warm, almost hot, on my hips. He ran a finger down my spine, making me arch and cry out. The sound pleased him—he gave a soft growl, and then he pushed inside me again, and oh, it was exactly what I needed. My entire body relaxed and I sank into the feel of him moving within me, focusing on the sensation of his hands against my skin, the sound of his breath. and the growling groan that announced his own pleasure in me. My body felt light, except for the weight of arousal centering around my womb. It wouldn’t be long—I was losing track of anything except my own desire, and already I could feel the building pressure of my own orgasm. Abel grunted and began moving faster, his hands on my hip tight and possessive. I moved one of mine down to cover one of his and his pace stumbled a moment.

  “I love you,” I whispered, the words as heated as the air around us.

  He placed his other hand on the back of my neck, like a hug, or a caress promising safety and the deepest emotions of the heart. “I love you too.” His hand stayed there as he drove himself back into me. I began that final climb towards my ultimate pleasure and, just as I reached that edge where one more touch, a caress, a loving word, would push me over the edge, I felt him begin to swell within me, and the pressure on my womb and the desire boiling molten in my balls shattered my senses into tiny, glittering fragments of pure joy. Abel shouted something unintelligible behind me and clasped me tightly, his body pressed hard against mine.

  I prayed it was a heat, prayed his seed would find fertile ground within me. As I did, an image of a tiny pup grew in my mind’s eye, with Abel’s dark eyes and my hair. And I loved him already.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Abel woke in the middle of the night to the sensation of Bax’s hands drifting over his body. “Again?” he asked, part amused, part astonished. After the shower, they’d tumbled into Bax’s bed, where Bax had gone on to prove that there really was something to the whispered myths about omega heats.

  “I did warn you,” Bax said, and flicked his tongue over one of Abel’s nipples.

  It made him gasp, but he couldn’t resist the draw of his mate’s desire. “I think it’s something that has to be experienced to be believed.”

  Bax sat up, his expression troubled, though his hand on Abel’s torso never stopped it’s gentle wandering. “Do you want me to go sleep elsewhere?”

  “No!” Abel pulled Bax down on top of him and kept him there with arms and legs wrapped around his body. “It wasn’t a complaint, just an observation.” He paused to appreciate the moonlight on Bax’s fair skin. “I’m going to have to take the day off tomorrow.”

  Bax laughed and rubbed his nose against Abel’s. “We’ll know by tomorrow evening if this worked, maybe even earlier. But if you’re tired, I can go elsewhere.” He laid his head on Abel’s shoulder and sighed happily. “This is kind of a novelty for me.”

  “Novelty?” It for certain wasn’t Bax’s first heat, so what… Dammit. Patrick. He didn’t want to ask, but at the same time, he wanted to know. To understand what he was doing that was different, so he didn’t accidentally do something that took Bax back to that time. “How is it novel?”

  Bax lifted his head again and smiled sweetly. “It’s hard to explain. But I want you, even outside the heat. And that makes this…I don’t know. Easier? I’m having way more fun now.” He laid his head down again. “It’s okay. I know you don’t like to hear about Patrick.”

  Abel rubbed his hands over Bax’s back, making his mate purr with pleasure, and used Bax’s distraction to argue silently with himself. Eventually he sighed and hugged Bax tightly to him. “He was a big part of your life. I don’t want you to think I need you to pick and choose the parts you share with me. I should be stronger than that.”

  “I don’t doubt you are. But you need your strength for so many other things. I don’t want to drain that so I can be careless in my speech.”

  Abel snorted softly. “You give me more strength than you ever take. Tell me.”

  Bax hesitated, then rubbed his cheek against Abel’s chest. “It wasn’t that I was unhappy all the time. Just, never really happy. But sometimes, when a day went well, and I didn’t make a mistake that inconvenienced Patrick, well…” He sighed. “I wanted to make it work, and sometimes, when he was happy and relaxed, I would go to him, because that’s what mates do, right?”

  “You were lonely.” Abel could hear it in Bax’s words.

  “I suppose. I didn’t love him, but I felt something. I used to think about it a lot, trying to make sense of my life and find a way to live within it. I think omegas are made to love someone—I think it’s built into us and when we aren’t given a choice, we do the best we can.” He rolled off Abel’s body and sat up, his arms wrapped around his knees. “I’m not making much sense here.”

  “No, I get it.” And he did. “I don’t fault you for trying to create some sort of relationship in your mating. And I’m sorry I told you I didn’t want to hear about Patrick. I just don’t like thinking about you being unhappy.” He ran a hand up Bax’s spine. “I’m angry at him, and a bit jealous, too.”

  Bax turned, surprise widening his eyes. “Jealous? Why?”

  Abel shrugged. “Now’s my time to say I’m not making much sense.” He pulled Bax back down on top of him and Bax came easily, gracefully molding himself to Abel’s side. “He had something wonderful, something I’m still coming to terms with my luck over, and he wasted his opportunity. And I feel guilty, because if Jackson-Jellystone hadn’t treated you the way they did, and made you so unhappy, we would never have met, and a part of me is glad that that happened. But yes, I resent that he mated you, and there are parts of your life I’ll never get to share with you because he got there first.”

  “You get to share this with me. My first ever spring heat.” Bax sat up and threw a leg over Abel’s hips. He reached between them and sank down until Abel was buried deep inside him, riding him with a gleam of mischievous pleasure in his eyes. “Lots more firsts too. My first ever mating ceremony. My first real job—you’ve already had that one. My first ever chosen mate.” He leaned forward, his palm against Abel’s cheek, hips still rocking in that age-old dance of pleasure. “My first love.”

  The intensity of Bax’s last three words took Abel’s breath away. “Mine too,” he managed to stammer out, then pushed all other thoughts but Bax aside and gleefully gave himself to his mate, as Bax gave himself to Abel.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Abel had been right about everything. I was still sorting through my emotions but two things were certain—I was pregnant, and I’d never been happier.

  The effect of the hormones had faded the next day, as they had every other time. And now it was the afternoon of my mating, and myself and my rozvennya—all the omegas that had come from Buffalo Gap, plus five provided by other packs, and Bram—were crowded into Holland’s apartment, across the hall from the one I had lived in until this morning. Abel’s brother Quin had arrived yesterday and taken over the project of moving all my possessions into Abel’s apartment today. Jason had the pups, for which I would forever be grateful. I couldn’t imagine trying to make it through the preparations today with the four of them un
derfoot.

  The omegas were already dressed, in shades of green and brown and blue, what jewelry they owned gracing necks and wrists. It was mostly homemade, rawhide cords and hand-carved charms to dangle from them, but it was their best, and they looked lovely.

  I would be wearing deep forest green, in part because it suited me, but also because it was the color of the plants that fed our prey and showed that I would ensure my pups would be fed. Loose pants and short boots, and a long-sleeved button-less shirt held closed by a belt made of woven leather were the total of the mating outfit. I’d lose the shirt during Abel’s vows, replaced by clothing he provided for me. My necklace from Patrick nestled in the hollow of my throat, and Cale, Holland’s younger brother, was fussing with my makeup.

  “You know, I can do this myself,” I said, and had my hand smacked for moving.

  “You’re mating the Mercy Hills Alpha. There’s a human reporter here, and Alphas from half the packs in the country are here to witness it. You have to look good. And, unlike the rest of us, you never really had to learn how to use this stuff.” He shot a shyly flirtatious glance at the human, and I wondered what I’d gotten myself into, because it was almost certain that the responsibility for keeping them all in line would fall to me, as Alpha’s Mate.

  Thom grinned and, just on the edge of my vision, a flash of movement preceded the faint click of a photo being taken. I suppressed a sigh of frustration and composed myself while Cale ran a careful line of hair-thin eyeliner around the base of my eyelashes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thom lean back in his chair and glance around at the rest of the omegas in the room.