by Grey, Aspen
He rose up as I passed and managed to drive his shoulder into my belly, knocking the wind right out of me. I hit hard and lost my footing and tumbled over and crashed into a pile of trashcans, sending them crashing down around me.
“Stop!” Ollie shouted from the steps. “Stop it, both of you!”
Don’t worry, babe. I thought as I found my footing. He won’t hurt me. Not again.
Anticipating his follow-up attack, I threw myself to the left and lashed out with my right claw. This time, it found its mark and my foe cried out as I tore the flesh of his side and sent him crashing down onto the pavement. He cried out and I jumped in to finish the job, but the guy was fast—I had to give him credit for that—and rolled out of the way just in time.
“Stop, Arthur!” Ollie shouted, and I looked up to see him leaping down the steps two at a time, still in human form, waving his hands frantically. It warmed my heart to see him so concerned for someone, even if the guy was a total nutjob, but he didn’t know what was good for him. Crazy guys like this never understand “no,” and they never know when to quit. If I didn’t kill him, he’d keep coming back for Ollie and he would never be safe.
My enemy readied himself to pounce, and I saw the fury in his eyes and the saliva dripping from his fangs and lips. Even if I wanted to back down (which I didn’t), he wouldn’t let me. We were in this whether Ollie liked it or not—locked in combat and it wouldn’t be over until one of us was dead.
Come on, you bastard!
I stared at him, waiting for his next attack. I watched his body, noticing all the signs in his muscles, his face, his limbs, that would tell me his next move. But just as he was about to spring at me, something terrible happened.
Ollie threw himself between us.
“STOP!” he shouted, throwing his arms in the air like a suspect surrendering to the police.
What are you doing?
I snarled and circled to the side of him to keep my eyes on our attacker, but Ollie moved with me, staring me down the way a parent might stare down their child who was misbehaving. This exposed his back to the psycho I was trying to keep away from him!
I leapt to the side, trying to get around my mate, but no matter where I went, no matter how I moved, he kept himself between me and the invading alpha, leaving himself open to attack, which had me so panicked I was about to lose my shit.
I looked past him at my enemy and was shocked to see him shift back to human form.
“Okay,” he said calmly, raising one hand and placing the other over the wound I’d given him. “I’m stopping. Just tell your boy to back off.”
Your boy? I thought. No one tells me what to do, pussy!
That’s what I wanted to say, but I was honestly pretty shocked to see him let his guard down like that. In human form, he was nowhere near as fast as me, and if I was able to get past Ollie, I’d easily tear him to pieces before he was able to shift back. Besides, he was already wounded.
“Back off, Arthur,” Ollie told me, taking a step towards me and placing a hand on my snout.
Why? I thought. Was Ollie really that much of a pacifist that the sight of violence disturbed him to the point where he would sacrifice his own well-being for that of another?
Every instinct from my life, my training as a SEAL and my role as his mate, was telling me to do what was best for Ollie, and that meant shoving him aside and tearing this strange man to pieces. Ollie would be angry with me, of course, but he wouldn’t leave me over it, and more importantly, he’d be safe.
I readied myself.
You have to do what has to be done to protect what’s yours.
But Ollie must have read my mind, as he stepped even closer and wrapped his arms around my head. His embrace was soothing, and he knew what he was doing; he was trying to calm me so I’d forget about the attacker who’d just chased him through the streets and call the police instead or some nonsense like that.
But none of that would work. This had to be handled now and I had to be the one to do it. I shook him off and glared at the alpha who’d been dumb enough to take human form around me. I was ready to attack, but nothing could have prepared me for what Ollie said next.
“Arthur, stop,” he said. “He—he’s my fated-mate.”
I froze, looked up at Ollie, who had tears in his eyes, and shifted back to human form.
“Ollie,” I whispered. “The fuck did you just say?”
Chapter Fourteen
Ollie
The words felt wrong coming out of my mouth.
What the Hell had I just said?
It made absolutely no sense.
“He’s my fated-mate.” I’d just said that to Arthur, my fated-mate, referring to the guy who’d just chased me down the streets, the guy Arthur had been intent on killing five seconds ago. But despite my earlier reaction—running away like a maniac—and despite Arthur’s feelings right now, it was the truth; the man standing behind me, who’d saved me at the bar the other night and was now wounded and bleeding because of me, was my fated-mate.
Arthur shifted in front of me and my heart broke as I saw the look of pure confusion on his face.
“He’s your what?” he asked, his voice swollen with pain.
I gulped and repeated myself. “He’s my fated-mate, Arthur. I knew it the minute I smelled him.”
I could have just told him I was an alien overlord come back to Earth to enslave the entire planet’s population. His eyes narrowed and his jaw fell open, as though he were angry and astonished at the same time. He felt betrayed, that much was for certain, but it wasn’t my intention to hurt him. I didn’t know what I wanted. I just knew that I didn’t want Sid getting hurt and that meant that I had to speak the truth.
Arthur’s scent was stronger than ever, but Sid’s was right there with it, both of them taking me from the front and the back like a double-team. How could I have two fated-mates? I had hardly believed in the entire concept yesterday, and now I was allowing myself to believe that there could be two alphas out there that were meant for me?
You must be going crazy.
“Ollie,” Arthur said softly. “What are you saying? I thought I was your fated-mate?”
“I know…”
“I mean—I am your fated-mate!” he hissed. “You and I both know it. We smelled each other. That’s why you invited me upstairs last night!”
“What?” Sid exclaimed from behind me, causing me to flinch, not out of fright, but because I knew that what he’d just heard had hurt him. If Arthur had heard the same thing, he would have been hurt too. And that’s why none of this made any sense.
I spun around and looked at Sid, who was completely naked and mouth-wateringly gorgeous. Part of me wanted to throw myself into his arms and the other part wanted to keep running, not just away from him, but from this entire incomprehensible situation. I just wasn’t cut out for what was going on. None of us were.
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” I said, my eyes on Sid but speaking to Arthur.
“You’re damn right, it doesn’t make sense!” Arthur snapped, racing around in front of me, his eyes wild with confusion. “I’m your fated-mate, Ollie! How can one omega have two fated-mates?”
I looked at him, and then at Sid, and then back to Arthur again while my nose worked overtime, searching their scents for any sign that would tell me that what I believed was wrong. But all that did was reinforce what I already thought—what I already knew. Both of the gorgeous alphas standing in front of me, that seconds ago had been ready to kill each other, were my fated-mates, and no matter how crazy or inconvenient that was, it was true.
“I don’t know, Arthur,” I told him. Then, I turned to Sid. “I’m sorry I ran from you, but I didn’t know what to do. When I smelled you…I thought I was crazy. I just had to get out of there.”
Sid stared back at me for a long moment, then smiled and nodded.
“It’s okay,” he replied, taking an enormous load off of my chest. “I—I wasn’t prepared for what happ
ened either.”
“This is fucking insanity,” Arthur groaned, putting his hands over his head. “What—what are you talking about, Ollie?”
“Okay, can we just all relax for a minute?” I asked, staring at the two naked men in front of me. “You two are going through a lot right now—I know that—but if you haven’t noticed, you’re both butt-ass naked in the middle of an alley in PB and if someone comes around here and sees you both, we’re going to have bigger things to worry about than our own personal problems.”
“Well, I tore the shit out of my clothes,” Sid said, looking at me with an obvious implication.
“NO,” Arthur said.
“No, what?”
“NO, you are not coming upstairs and no, we are not loaning you any clothes!”
“Arthur!” I said like a mother scolding her son.
“What?” he snapped back. “Are you insane? This guy chases you through the city and you want to bring him upstairs?”
“Look, right now we have to solve this problem,” I said sternly. “You two obviously are going to have to work this out, but we need to solve this problem before people start showing up and someone calls the cops on random naked men in the street!”
Arthur sighed. He knew I was right but didn’t want to admit it.
“Hey, man,” Sid started to say. “I’m sorry—”
But Arthur cut him off immediately. He didn’t want to hear it. “Don’t talk to me! Not now!”
Sid put his hands up. “Fine, man. Fine.”
I shook my head, gave Arthur a loving shove to keep him away from Sid, took Sid by the hand and led him towards the stairs. It was next to impossible to keep my mind straight as I took him up to the apartment. His scent was intoxicating and the warmth of his body and the strength of his hand was almost too much to bear.
I took him up the steps and into the apartment, Arthur’s heavy footsteps following behind us. To say I was nervous as I took him inside would have been the understatement of the year—like calling a billion dollars a decent amount of money.
These two alphas were pulling me apart. Their scents were drugs. One of them would have been enough to knock me out, but two? That was just an obscene amount of heavenly sensations for one omega to bear.
Imagine when they both fuck you!
The thought sprang into my mind so quickly it actually made me jump. I glanced back over my shoulder as Arthur came into the apartment as well, taking a place on the opposite side of the room, as far away from Sid as possible. I closed the door behind us and looked back at the room, which had become a face-off.
“Okay,” I said. “Here we go.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sid
Standing in Ollie’s bedroom (that was his name), was very conflicting. Normally, I would have been in “go mode” (if you know what I mean), but under the circumstances, and coming down from a fight to the death that had left me wounded and bleeding, I wasn’t sure how to feel.
He’d stood up for me, and hearing him admit to Arthur, that son of a bitch, that I was his fated-mate, had been incredible. But at the same time, it had a horrid sting to it. It was like winning the lottery and then being told that you could have the money, but they were going to chop off one of your legs when they gave it to you. I’d found my fated-mate, but he already had…another fated-mate?
“Here, Sid,” Ollie said as he crossed the room and pulled a pair of pants from the dresser and threw them to me. “The waist will probably fit, but they might be a little short.”
“A little?” I joked, giving him an eye up and down. Ollie was about a full foot shorter than me, and completely right about the pants. As I tugged them on, they stopped about mid-ankle like a pair of tight, buccaneer pirate pants. I shrugged.
“Hey, I can just pretend that I know something about fashion,” I chuckled.
“Oh, it’s fashionable to look like you are wearing your little brother’s clothes?” Arthur asked.
“Arthur!” Ollie snapped, aiming a scolding finger in his direction. Arthur twisted his lips but kept quiet.
“I don’t think I have a shirt that will fit you.”
Sid pondered, eyeing my exposed chest with an obvious look in his eye. I felt my dick jerk slightly. Under normal circumstances, I’d be full-mast by now.
Fuck you, Arthur, I thought as I shot him an amused look, gloating in his mate’s admiration for me. He raised his chin and glared.
“That’s okay, Ollie,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “But maybe you could look at this for me?”
I indicated to the wound on my side. The bleeding had slowed, and I wasn’t in too much pain, but I looked like someone who’d just been attacked, and that was no way to be walking around the city.
“Oh!” Ollie gasped. “Wait right here! I’ll get you cleaned up.”
Ollie vanished into the bathroom, leaving Arthur and me alone in the single room of the apartment. He was still staring at me, obviously not on board with anything that was happening. I didn’t blame him.
“You think you can steal him from me?” Arthur asked, still naked—and comfortably so—before me.
“That’s not my plan,” I told him.
“Plan?” he replied. I instantly regretted my word choice. “So, what is your plan?”
“I shouldn’t have phrased it that way,” I replied.
“You’re damn right you shouldn’t have.”
“You two be good in there!” Ollie’s voice called from the bathroom.
Arthur scoffed and stepped closer to me and lowered his voice. “Listen, motherfucker. I don’t know what you did to convince Ollie that you could ever mean anything to him, but I see through your bullshit.”
“Arthur—”
“No, you don’t get to talk right now!” he snapped, waving a finger in my face. I licked my fangs and fought the urge to shift and bite his head off. “Ollie is mine and that’s all there is to it. Who the fuck ever heard of having two fated-mates?”
“Hey, what am I? God? I don’t fucking know! I didn’t make this shit up!”
“Psssht!” Arthur scoffed, turning away from me as Ollie returned with a handful of things. He pointed to the only chair in the apartment.
“Sit,” he commanded. Such authority from an omega. I did as I was told and he knelt down in front of me with a medical box that looked like it could be hanging from any wall in a hospital.
“Yes, sir,” I joked. He smiled up at me as he took my hand away from my wound to look at it.
“How is it?” I asked, as the angle made it hard for me to see.
“Not too bad,” Ollie replied as he took a bottle of what was probably hydrogen peroxide or something and dabbed it onto some gauze. “This will sting a bit.”
“He’s a tough guy,” Arthur mocked. “He can handle it.”
He was pissed at all the attention I was getting, so I decided to milk it a little bit. I kept my eyes on him while “his” mate went to work cleaning my wound. He was right, it did sting a bit, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle, and seeing the frustration and annoyance in Arthur’s eyes was worth every bit of the pain.
“Arms up,” Ollie told me as he took out a roll of Ace bandage. I complied and kept my eyes on Arthur as he wrapped my chest and used a little metal clip to secure it in place. Despite the tension between Arthur and me, I was feeling pretty intimate with Ollie and felt my cock start to grow more within the pants he’d lent me. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of room in them for what I was packing, and after a while it began to hurt.
“There we go,” Ollie said triumphantly as he sat back on his heels and admired his handiwork. His eyes stayed on me a little too long, though, and it became obvious that he was admiring a little more than the job he’d done with the bandages.
“Okay, this is absurd!” Arthur finally snapped. “He’s bullshitting you, Ollie! You can’t have two fated-mates!”
“How do you know?” I asked. I don’t know what possessed me to say it, as I was
just as incredulous as Arthur at this point. I guess it was just how emphatic and sure of himself he was being at declaring me a charlatan. How the fuck would I fake the scent of a fated-mate? That was even more impossible than an omega having two alphas that were meant for him.
“What did you just say?” Arthur growled.
“I said, how do you know?”
“Oh, I heard you,” he replied.
“Then why did you ask?”
“Guys, guys,” Ollie said quickly.
“Because I think you are a bullshitter!” Arthur snapped.
“Look, man. Fated-mates are already crazy enough as it is,” I told him, my mind simply searching for some kind of explanation that could make any of this make sense. “Who’s to say that there couldn’t be two alphas for one omega?”
Arthur scoffed and slapped a hand on his thigh. “What are you, some kind of freaky swinger or something? You one of those ‘alternative lifestyle’ people like dudes with seven wives?”
“No, no, no,” I replied, shaking my head and doing my best not to laugh. “I’m just putting it out there. If both of us know that Ollie is our fated-mate, and he knows it, too, then maybe…”
I paused and looked at him. He shrugged. “Then maybe what?”
I opened my mouth to fill in the blank, but Ollie did it for me.
“Maybe it could be true.”
Chapter Sixteen
Arthur
What did he just say?
“What did you just say?” I gasped, staring at Ollie with utter confusion. Had he just really suggested that there was actually a possibility of him having two fated-mates, and one of them being this dickhead Sid who I’d been ready to kill just a few minutes ago?
