Omega's Wedding: A Royal Alphas M/M Erom Novella (Royal Alphas Mpreg Romance Book 3)

by Kaia Pierce

  As several shifters sniffled in the crowd, the priest invited Damon to repeat the same vows, which he recited with perfect grace. Then, they began to undress. The priest continued to speak as King Alex and Damon shifted into wolves before him. Alex was darker and larger with the thick coat of an alpha. Beside him, Damon’s pale wolf looked as harmless as a lamb.

  “In the name of the Wolf Mother, whose blood lives in all shifters, it’s my honor to confirm this marriage. May you be each other’s comfort and shelter. May you love each other in this life and the next, and may your children be blessed by the Wolf Mother’s protection. Your Majesty King Alexander, you may now mark his Majesty, Prince Damon.”

  Now, this was something I’d never seen before in a wedding.

  Fascinated, I rose up on my toes to watch Damon lowering his head, exposing his neck to Alex. In turn, Alex bared his teeth and sank his fangs into Damon’s soft flesh.

  “I now pronounce you King Alexander and Prince Damon Thornriel. Long may they reign!” he proclaimed.

  “Long may they reign!” the guests echoed, amidst cheers and clapping.

  The ceremony was supposed to be followed by the wild hunt. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to participate. As if on cue, everyone around me began to disrobe, preparing to shift into their wolf forms.

  “That’s our tent over there,” Henry said, pointing to one of the largest ones. A banner featuring the Araborn family crest was displayed on its side, so there would be no mistaking who it belonged to.

  Queen Helga unloaded Charlotte into my arms so she could get undressed, too.

  “How long will it take?” I asked Henry.

  “As long as it takes to catch the stag,” Henry said. Gesturing to the crowd around us, he added, “With all these people joining in, it really shouldn’t take long.”

  I hoped so. I hadn’t eaten anything since before I left for Rockport, so I was starving.

  “I’ll see you when you get back, then,” I said.

  After kissing Henry, I hurried Charlotte away to our tent. My heavy boots sank into the soft carpeting of wood chips as I quickly crossed the ceremony space towards the tent with the Araborn crest.

  A black welcome mat marked the location of the tent flap. A wolf was only just beginning to howl at the exact moment I slipped inside, so that it’s wavering voice was muffled to my ears as I marveled at the surprisingly spacious interior.

  Inside, it was about the size of a standard living room. There was a king-sized bed, a bassinet, and a baby’s playpen, all cushioned in thick, fluffy animal skins. The floor was covered in furs, too, and the presence of two portable heaters made it as balmy as a summer afternoon inside.

  I decided I wouldn’t mind waiting here for Henry’s return.

  After lowering a sleepy Charlotte into the playpen, I heard footsteps approaching from outside.

  “Knock-knock,” a feminine voice called out.

  When I drew the tent flap aside, I came face-to-face with Selene. Her hair was curled and piled loosely in a high bun on top of her head. Her black sequined halter dress hung all the way down to the ground, and a lavender shawl covered her bare shoulders. She was sipping from a brass goblet.

  “Can a fellow human come in?” she asked as wolves howled in the distance. It sounded like the pack was in the middle of the woods.

  “Sure,” I said, inviting her inside.

  Honestly, I was glad for the company...even if it was Selene.

  “Hello, little one,” she said, nodding to Charlotte.

  As she stood looking into my daughter’s playpen, I was reminded of the tarot reading she’d given me just a few hours ago. Namely, I was thinking of the Death card.

  It’s either a warning or a blessing, Selene had explained, and left it at that.

  I ignored the chill that went down my spine. “What are you drinking?” I asked instead.

  “Bark wine, a traditional shifter drink. It’s been known to induce visions in humans,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Caught off guard, I could only stammer, “Oh. Um...that’s cool.”

  Selene set her goblet on a nearby wooden stool and flopped leisurely onto the end of the bed. “So what did you think of your first shifter wedding?”

  “It was interesting.”

  Selene’s eyebrows rose and disappeared under her bangs. With a sigh, I went to sit down beside her.

  “To be honest, it kind of freaked me out,” I finally admitted.

  Selene smiled in a satisfied way. I supposed she’d suspected it all along.

  “Ever since I fell in love with Henry, I’ve been trying to picture myself becoming part of this world,” I continued. “I’ve always been human. I’ve only been human. But my partner is a shifter, and my child is half-shifter. Sometimes I feel like I can imagine myself becoming a shifter one day, too. And other times, it scares the shit out of me.”

  “You don’t have to be a shifter, you know. Plenty of shifter-human relationships have gone off without a hitch,” Selene said.

  “But only a shifter can marry another shifter.”

  “Who says you have to get married?” Selene countered.

  “Nobody. But being married means something. It means...so much more than just falling in love.”

  At this point, even Charlotte was staring at me, as if she were interrogating me with her eyes while Selene interrogated me with her mouth.

  “Remember the cards,” Selene said.

  I snapped my attention away from Charlotte. “What do you mean?”

  “Death represents the end, or a new beginning,” Selene reiterated. “Whether it marks the end of the chapter or the beginning of a new one is up to you.”

  “Really?” I said sarcastically.

  Selene stood. “The cards may give you guidance, but your life is still your own to steer,” she said.

  With those words, she picked up her goblet and held it out to me. Shortly, I realized she was offering me a sip of her bark wine.

  “I thought it makes you have visions,” I said.

  Selene smirked. “It does.”

  After contemplating for a moment, I took the goblet out of her hand and drank long and deep.

  Chapter 11: Damon

  The forest was bristling with smells and sounds. The soft crunch of snow, the snap of twigs, and a hundred panting wolves, tongues lolling as they chased the scent of their prey.

  Rabbits. Squirrels. Pheasants.

  But it was the stag we all wanted. The stag had the strongest smell of all, like delicious, raw flesh.

  Even though I was a prince, I was still an omega. I was smaller and slower than the others, so I fell behind. I didn’t mind, though. I liked being alone on the mountain—my mountain.

  Alex owned all these lands. Now that we were married, they were mine, too.

  With the sound of the pack’s movements fading away in the distance, I stopped in a clearing to catch my breath.

  Suddenly, I heard rapid footsteps closing in from behind. Before I knew what was happening, a wolf pounced on top of me, pinning me to the frozen ground.

  I recognized his scent.

  Alex? I projected in mindspeak.

  Hello, husband, Alex’s voice responded in my head.

  Hello, husband, I echoed back.

  His belly pressed to my back, I could feel him beginning to shift. So I shifted, too.

  I closed my eyes, ordering my wolf to retreat back inside. My bones crunched inside of my skin. My paws burned as fingers and toes burst out of them. Alex grunted and pushed himself off of me just as I regained the ability of human speech.

  “What are you doing?” I managed to ask through chattering teeth.

  Alex smirked. Instantly, I was slammed with an undeniable sense of déjà vu. We’d had a moment just like this one over a year ago, back when we were just beginning to fall in love.

  Butterflies swirled within my gut. Somehow, even after a coronation and a wedding, Alex retained that impish charm that hooked me in the first plac
e.

  “We still have to consummate our marriage,” he said.

  “Now?” I sputtered. “But we’re not even—”

  “Yes, now,” Alex interrupted, stepping closer. Close enough to touch my hand. Close enough to feel my breath.

  Close enough so that I wouldn’t be able to resist him.

  Before I could stop myself, I let him kiss me right there in the snow, as naked and furless as the day we were born.

  I moaned as his lips crushed mine. “The pack might circle back to us soon,” I said, pulling away.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Alex muttered. He dragged me back to him until I was pinned against his chest. At that point, I could no longer resist, and I melted in his arms.

  Alex was already hard. His manhood was pressed against my stomach, throbbing against my own rapidly hardening cock. As Alex’s nails skimmed down my biceps, I felt a burning sensation in the side of my neck, exactly where Alex had placed his mark.

  “Ooh,” I moaned, my cock twitching.

  Suddenly, Alex grabbed me by the hips and spun me around. I gasped as he tore my hair back. His teeth glanced against my right ear. My asshole tingled in response, growing slick with my desire.

  “As your husband, I can claim you whenever I want,” he murmured. He reached around my ribs to tweak my nipples. “And I’m claiming you right now.”

  Still gripping my hair in his fist, he thrust my head forward until I bent at the waist. I grabbed my ankles as I felt him pulling my cheeks apart.

  “God. Look how wet you are for me, baby,” he said, his tone low and guttural. Then, he groaned as he entered me, burying his entire length in two seconds flat.

  “Oh, God, Alex!”

  “Yes, baby…”

  Alex dug his fingers into my hipbones and thrusted, hard enough to strike the bottom of my stomach. The force of his thrusts drove me forward until I had to press my palms to the ground.

  “This is right,” Alex said breathlessly. Isn’t it?

  My brain was slipping into its wolf. So was Alex’s.

  I growled, frenzied. I wanted to keep my focus without slipping away.

  Don’t resist, Alex’s voice murmured soothingly in my mind. Let go…

  A packmate howled somewhere far away, as if in answer. Let go.

  I’ll let go, I thought, just before my mind evaporated away.

  Chapter 12: Lucas

  It’s been known to induce visions.

  But this wasn’t a vision. It couldn’t be. Selene was no longer sitting on the end of my bed. Instead, it was a woman in her 70’s. If I leaned close, I could smell her clean, soapy-smelling perfume.

  “Gran?” I said.

  I had to rub my eyes to make sure she was real.

  “Oh. I’m not real. I’m dead, remember?”

  “I...I know.”

  “Now, we don’t have a lot of time,” Gran began.

  I jerked up and glanced around. “Are we in that In-Between again?”

  “Kind of, I guess. But it’s mostly the bark wine, honey. You’ll piss it all out in about ten minutes.”

  “Okay, Gran. Why are you here, then?”

  “You tell me.”

  Abruptly, I remembered all the ache I’d been carrying in my heart over the fact that I was in love, and my grandmother had never even met my mate.

  We don’t have much time…

  Jerkily, I pointed at the playpen. “Gran? I...I had a baby. Charlotte.”

  At that exact moment, Charlotte’s tiny, fat hands grasped the side of the playpen. Her round head popped into view immediately after. She turned her face in Gran’s direction and grinned, showing all her gums.

  “Can I hold her?” Gran cooed. Without even waiting for an answer, she stood up and bent over the playpen, scooping Charlotte up between her strong forearms. “Now, I know your subconscious didn’t conjure me up just so I could meet this little angel. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

  I sighed and played with the corner of a fur blanket. “We just got done with a wedding,” I finally admitted.

  Gran’s face fell as she shifted Charlotte’s weight from one shoulder to the other. “And it’s got you thinking about your own wedding, right?”

  Once again, Gran’s razor-sharp sense of intuition was proving its worth. Even after death.

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “What did I always tell you when you were young, Lucas?”

  “That I’m not like my parents,” I whispered automatically, as if I were seven years old again.

  I did feel as small as a seven-year-old at that moment. That was the age when I walked home from second grade, crying the entire way. Some kids had told me I’d never grow up to be married, because my parents weren’t. Ever since then, the idea of having a wedding and a lifelong partner had seemed like an unreachable dream, something sweet meant for everyone else but me.

  “As long as you…?” Gran continued to press.

  “As long as I don’t make the same mistakes as them,” I finished dejectedly. “But how do I know I’m about to make a mistake before it’s even happened?”

  I threw up my hands, feeling helpless.

  “Jesus, kid! Just try your best. It’s not that hard,” Gran said, placing Charlotte back into her playpen. “Now wake up.”

  “I thought I was already—”

  “Lucas, wake up!”

  “But I’m—”

  “Lucas!”

  * * *

  “Lucas, wake up!”

  Someone was shaking me by the shoulder. Groggily, I opened my eyes. A piercing bolt of pain sliced through the center of my head.

  “Henry?” I rasped. My mouth was drier than dryer lint.

  As I blinked through my headache, Henry’s amused face came into focus. The mattress slanted downwards, angling slightly to the right as it sank under Henry’s weight as he sat near my head.

  “We’ve caught the stag,” he exclaimed. “How about some barbeque?”

  “Along with pheasant and rabbit, in case venison isn’t your cup of tea,” Queen Helga added, swooping into the tent in her heavy plush robe. It dragged across the ground as she moved towards the playpen. “I’ll just take Charlotte and give you two your privacy.”

  My eyebrows rose as she ducked out the exit with our daughter. Well, that wasn’t suspicious. I gave Henry a pointed look.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  His expression guarded, Henry grabbed my arms and hauled me up into a sitting position. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  Any remaining thoughts I had about my dream left my mind as I focused my attention on Henry. Judging by the lack of emotion in his face, I could guess that what he was about to say was very good...or very bad.

  “Lucas,” he began, “I know we planned to keep marriage off the table until Charlotte starts school, but I...I’ve known all along that you’re the only man for me. I’ve known since you visited the Sunset House for the first time in Chicago.”

  “And you went crazy thinking I was in trouble,” I remembered out loud, slightly numb with disbelief. That had been just days after we first met. I tried to keep the sense of shock off of my face, probably unsuccessfully. “You knew that early?”

  Finally, Henry smiled, putting me at ease. Relief washed through my body like a cleansing flood.

  “I did. And I don’t see the point in waiting anymore when we’re clearly in love and committed to each other. So, Lucas Stewart. Will you marry me?”

  All I could do was stare as my brain slowly processed the words Henry had just spoken to me. Every muscle in my body was frozen, all except one. My heart was beating violently, louder than the teeth-rattling drums from Alex and Damon’s wedding ceremony.

  “This means I’ll have to become a shifter,” I said.

  Henry’s face fell, and I was back to thinking about my dream, or vision, or whatever it was that made me see my Gran. I still didn’t understand what she was trying to tell me.

 
“I know, Lucas. It’s a lot to ask. I just want to be your husband already.”

  Henry’s stormy-gray eyes searched my face as I replayed Gran’s advice.

  Don’t make the same mistakes my parents made? What’s that supposed to mean? I wondered privately to myself. What had Gran meant by that? Was she warning me not to fall in love, not to have children?

  It was too late for that.

  My parents hadn’t been in love. They only thought they were, until I came along. Then, things went south, I was left at Gran’s at two, and that had been my life since. Obviously, my mother and father didn’t love each other, but they believed they were in the beginning. That was why I existed.

  My whole life, I’d believed that love was a farce. Yet, here was Henry, willing to put his kingdom on the line to marry an outsider. Not only was I a commoner, I was a human. Sure, there had been that curse that made me briefly pregnant back in Chicago, but I was still one-hundred percent mortal man.

  And Henry didn’t care. He wasn’t going to let me go, because he loved me.

  Just like that, the meaning behind Gran’s words became clear. She’d wanted to let me know not to walk away from family, the way my parents had.

  Henry was my family.

  So I couldn’t walk away from him.

  The furrow in Henry’s brow deepened. “Lucas? Did you hear my—”

  “Yes.”

  Henry’s forehead smoothed itself out. “What? Really?”

  A wide grin spread across my face. “Yes, Henry Araborn. I’ll marry you.”

  Henry’s eyes were shining. With surprise, I realized that they were shining with tears. It brought tears to my own eyes. I wasn’t used to seeing my strong alpha partner being so vulnerable.

  “Lucas,” Henry said, taking both of my hands in his. “When we get back home, I’m going to have some rings made.”

  We kissed, and I couldn’t have been any happier than I was at that moment. It felt so right, like everything was finally falling into place. I couldn’t believe that I’d never realized it before.