by J. L. Wilder
“Lily, you can’t trust him—” Pax began.
She shook her head. “He imprinted. He won’t hurt me any more than you would. He’s imprinted on me.”
The men looked at one another.
“This is what I was talking about,” Victor said. “This is what northern omegas do. There’s something about them that sucks men in. They’re dangerous.”
But he didn’t sound angry, Donovan thought. He sounded awed. He sounded as if he was admiring Lily, not explaining why they ought to be afraid of her.
“I’m not dangerous,” Lily insisted. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You really imprinted?” Victor asked Donovan.
Donovan nodded. “I don’t know how it happened. I was angry one minute. I was ready to tear you two apart. And then, without warning—”
“Everything changed,” Pax supplied.
Donovan nodded. “I didn’t even understand it. I just knew that I didn’t care about fighting you two anymore. The only thing that mattered was her.”
Victor snatched up his pants and stepped into them.
“That’s great,” he said. “What are we going to do? We can’t all be her alpha.”
“Yes, you can,” Lily spoke up.
Pax looked at her. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s how it is in my family,” Lily explained. “My mother has three alphas.”
“But how does that work?” Victor demanded. “If they were to give her contradictory orders—”
“They don’t do that,” Lily said. “They would never do that.”
“How do they decide who’s in charge?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. It’s a cooperative thing. None of my dads are in charge. Or all of them are in charge.”
“And if they disagree?” Pax asked.
“They talk until they come to an agreement,” Lily said.
Donovan looked from Victor to Pax. If you had asked him yesterday whether such a thing could be possible, whether he could live with two other alphas not through fighting and dominance but through negotiation, he would have said it was an insane fantasy.
But now, knowing that it was what Lily wanted...
He felt as if he would have moved mountains if she had asked him to. Reconciling his differences with Pax seemed almost easy now.
Victor was still frowning. “This is...unreasonable. This can’t be done.”
“My parents taught us that all shifter packs used to be organized like that, generations ago,” Lily said. “Your packs here in the south are centered around the alpha, right? The alpha’s job is to use his power to keep everyone else in line?”
“That’s right,” Victor said. “That’s what’s normal.”
“But it wasn’t always,” Lily said. “In the beginning, the center of the pack was the omega, and it was the alphas’ devotion to her that kept the family together, not orders and dominance. Packs stayed together out of love, not fear.”
“Is that true?” Pax asked.
“I’ve never heard of that,” Donovan said.
“I don’t know what makes you think our packs stay together out of fear,” Victor said. “My betas aren’t afraid of me.”
“Neither are mine,” Donovan agreed. He hesitated, then added, “But maybe she does have a point.”
“She doesn’t have a point,” Victor said.
“She might,” Pax said. “It does sound nice,”
“And look at the way Pax and I have been acting,” Donovan said. “At each other’s throats because we couldn’t get along without establishing who was dominant. We couldn’t even be in the same place without it turning into a fight.” He turned to Pax. “I don’t know about you, but that’s gone now for me.”
Pax nodded.
“You’re giving in to this?” Victor asked. “Both of you?”
“You would too if you weren’t so stubborn,” Pax said.
Victor shook his head. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Pax. This is not what shifter life is supposed to look like. This isn’t the way we were raised. My father would be horrified.”
He turned and ran away toward the woods.
Pax looked at Donovan. “I’ll go talk to him,” he offered.
“Are you sure?” Donovan asked. It was bizarre. He had been so angry with Pax, but now he felt almost protective. He remembered what it had been like when Pax had lived with him as a brother.
“I’ll be fine,” Pax assured him. “I feel like you two could use some time together.”
Donovan could hardly say no to that. He nodded, and Pax turned and disappeared into the woods after Victor.
Lily rested a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked.
He shook his head. “They didn’t get their claws on me. I’m all right.”
She exhaled deeply. “I thought you were going to kill each other. I’ve never been so frightened in all my life.”
Donovan wrapped his arms around her. It felt natural to do so, somehow, even though they hardly knew each other. He already felt as if she was an extension of himself. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Nobody was going to kill anybody. And I’m not going to let anybody hurt you.”
“It can happen without your meaning it to,” she insisted. “Those fights can get out of control.”
“Have you seen a lot of fights?” he asked her.
“Well...no,” she admitted. “My family was very peaceful. Very united. And there aren’t any other packs up north. Only individual wolves.”
“Then you’ll have to take my word for it,” he said. “I know fighting can be risky, but we had it under control.”
“You did hurt each other,” she said. “You clawed Pax. And he bit Victor.” Her voice broke.
He cupped her cheek. “You really care about them. You really do care equally about all three of us, don’t you?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Even though Victor hasn’t treated you well so far?”
“I’m cautious of him,” she admitted. “But I see the potential there. He cares for me. He just isn’t ready to admit it. And I know that he would never hurt me.”
Donovan nodded. He was confident that she was right about that. Victor was not a violent man.
“He’s being this way because of his father,” he said.
“Because his father just died?” Lily asked.
“He’s grieving. He’s worried about letting his father down. He’ll adjust.”
Lily wrapped her arms around Donovan.
“Take me somewhere,” she said quietly. “I want to be alone with you.”
He scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the house, past the staring faces of all the betas gathered in the kitchen, and into the room that had been given to him for the duration of his stay in Vancouver. He locked the door behind him and deposited her carefully on the bed.
She lay back, staring worshipfully up at him. Just to be looked at that way was enough to drive Donovan wild, and suddenly he was thanking his lucky stars that she had taken the initiative and asked him to bring her inside when she had. He probably wouldn’t have been able to resist her even if they were still outside, and Victor was having enough trouble with this whole arrangement without having to walk in on him and Lily.
He lay beside her and removed her dress slowly, forcing himself to be patient and to take his time. He wanted to just tear it away, but it was the only garment she had with her, and he didn’t want to damage it.
Finally, after a much longer interval than he would have liked, she lay naked before him.
He drank her in—the curves and lines of her body, her soft, even skin, the swell of her breasts. Even without touching her, he could feel the heat from between her legs. The thought of it made him throb with desire.
“Now you,” she breathed. “Please?”
He would have done anything she had asked. He got to his feet and removed his own clothes quickly, then lay back
down beside her.
She closed her eyes and shuddered.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I want you,” she said. “So badly. I had no idea it would be like this.”
He nodded. He knew exactly how she felt. “Get up on your knees,” he said.
She complied. Seeing her respond to his order, Donovan suddenly understood fully how three alphas could cooperate. Every order he ever gave, from this point on, would have as its primary goal her well-being and happiness. He could only assume that Victor and Pax must feel the same way.
He positioned himself behind her and wrapped his arms around her. For a moment, he simply knelt there, feeling the heat of her body, the way her chest rose and fell in his arms as she struggled to breathe evenly.
Then he pulled her down, slowly, lifting his hips as he did to bury his throbbing cock deep within her.
She let out a sigh of pleasure, her head falling backward onto his shoulder, and Donovan couldn’t suppress his own satisfied groan at finally being deep inside that wet heat. He slid his hands down either side of her torso to grip her hips and pulled her tight against him, rolling his own hips as he did so, enjoying the way she tightened around him as he moved.
“Oh, God,” she groaned. “Donovan. You’re so good, fuck...”
Donovan felt dizzy with desire. He had never realized that his body could crave anything so badly. How had he gone all his life without this pleasure? How could he have imagined that a life without her would ever be enough?
Now that she was here, in his arms, joined to his body like this, he knew that he would never be able to let her go.
He wrapped his left arm around her, reaching up to cup her breast. It was weighty in his hand, overflowing out of his palm as he gripped it. I could spend a whole day here, he thought, squeezing and then releasing to trace his fingers around her nipple. I could spend hours with her breasts and nothing more, and it would still be one of the best days of my life.
She moaned as he stroked her nipple, and he felt her tighten around him. It made him wonder whether she would be able to come from nipple play alone. It was a theory he would have to test sometime—but not today.
He had other plans for today.
Keeping his left hand on her breast, he moved his right hand between her legs and began to stroke her there. She groaned, rocking into his touch, then back onto his cock, fucking herself slowly backward and forward. He could feel her throbbing with need, growing wetter as she worked herself on his hand.
He leaned in to kiss the side of her neck, then bit down gently, not breaking the skin. He could feel her pulse between his teeth, rapid and erratic.
He knew she was close.
“I want you to come for me,” he said, low and heavy against her ear. He was surprised at the way his own voice sounded. He had never heard such a tone from himself. “I want to see you come, Lily.”
She made a sound, a groan that rose to a whimper, and he felt her spasm around him. Her whole body shook, and as she went limp, falling back against him, Donovan lost control. With a roar and three hard thrusts, he came inside her.
He lay down slowly, taking her down with him so that she lay with her head resting on his shoulder. He kept both arms around her, feeling strangely worried that she might go somewhere and leave him behind, even though he knew that it was unlikely. She wouldn’t want to leave him now, any more than he would leave her. The connection between them was strong. He could feel it.
She rolled slightly so that she was facing him. “That was amazing,” she murmured, her eyes drifting closed.
He leaned in and kissed her gently. “For me, too.”
“Do you really think Victor will come around?” she asked.
“He will,” Donovan said. “I’ve known him for a long time. He’s stubborn and set in his ways, but he’s a good man. A good alpha. Once he looks past his grief and sees what he has in you, he’ll be just as thrilled to be yours as I am.”
She made a contented noise, and Donovan knew he had said what she wanted to hear. He tightened his embrace around her and held her as she fell asleep.
Chapter Eleven
LILY
The week that followed was one of the strangest of Lily’s life.
Victor quickly abandoned the idea of locking her in the omega room, gathering that she had no desire to flee. It was a truth that Lily was having trouble reconciling. She loved her family. She hated that she had left them with no clear idea of what had happened to her.
But she couldn’t possibly leave her alphas. Not now that she had finally found them.
It became apparent that none of them had had an omega before. They were very adept at dealing with her in the bedroom—well, that was to say, Pax and Donovan were. Victor still hadn’t taken her to bed. Lily didn’t know what he was waiting for—she thought it likely that he would get over some of the awkwardness he obviously felt toward her if they simply slept together. But he was clearly reluctant to do so, and she didn’t want to push it.
But when they weren’t in bed together, no one seemed to know what to do with her.
Donovan’s strategy was to dote on her. When she joined them at meals or when he found her in the living room with a borrowed book, he hovered, offering to bring her things or to massage her shoulders. It was sweet, and it made her feel cared for in a way that was new and unfamiliar.
“You don’t have to just sit there while I read, you know,” she told him one afternoon. “You could get a book, too, if you want to hang out with me.”
“I just want to make sure you have everything you need,” he insisted.
“I feel bad that you don’t have anything to do.”
“Being with you is something to do. I can massage your feet for you if you’d like.”
She laughed. “Yeah?”
“Would you be into it?”
Lily put her feet up on the couch. He sat next to her and pulled her legs into his lap, kneading the soles of her feet.
She tipped her head back and sighed happily. She had grown up watching her mother be treated like a queen, and she had assumed that her expectations for the men in her life would be high because of it. But she had never really understood how nice it would be.
He pushed the skirt she was wearing up above her ankle, lifted her leg, and kissed gently.
She sucked in a breath, surprised by how tantalizing such a relatively chaste kiss could be. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Anyone could walk in right now.”
“I don’t think they will. And I don’t care.” He gave her a wicked look and continued to kiss his way up the inside of her leg.
Heat flared within her. “Donovan—”
“What? Do you want me to stop?”
“N-no...”
“Didn’t think so”
She couldn’t think straight. This was risky and she knew it. It wasn’t just her alphas that could walk in at any time. Any of the betas might well come in here too.
I should really ask him to take me to my room. I know he would, if I asked.
Yes, that was what she should do. But that would mean asking him to stop what he was doing, and the pleasure surging through her body was too overwhelming. She couldn’t stop.
Her skirt was up around her hips now. His lips were at the top of her thigh.
He grinned up at her, then pulled the skirt down over his head, burying himself between her legs.
His hands closed around her panties, yanking them down to her knees, planting her feet flat on the couch, and then his hot tongue was licking slowly and surely at her, driving her wild.
She bit down on the side of her hand. She couldn’t allow herself to cry out. Someone would come running.
He lifted her hips, giving himself a better angle, fucking her with his tongue, closing his lips to suckle at her. She writhed against his face, unable to restrain herself.
His hands reached up and fisted in hers, giving her the leverage she needed to take just a little bit of control
back, to change the angle and ride his mouth the way she needed to. The heat built up inside her, swelling until she thought she might not be able to stand another moment—
And then she was coming, her legs locked around his head, her teeth digging into the insides of her own cheeks to keep herself from screaming.
He withdrew and took stock of her. Lily knew she must be a sight right now—skirt rucked up around her, gasping, half on and half off the couch.
“I’m going to fuck you know.”
It was an order. There was no question in his tone. He grabbed her legs with his hands and pinned them to the back of the couch above her head, exposing and opening her wet folds. His cock was erect and dripping with pre-cum. He wasted no time burying himself deeply inside of her.
The pain Lily felt was euphoric. It was the hardest he had fucked her up until this point and she wanted more. He was pounding and grunting, his ripped muscles dripping with sweat.
“Don’t stop, please. Give me more. Give me all of you!” she screamed.
At this point there was no hiding what they were doing. Donovan must have been rattling the whole house with his pounding. The couch almost tipped over.
“Oh Fuck Lily, ....I’m coming,” he gasped, as he released all of his seed deep into her. He crashed into a heap beside her on the couch, breathless.
“I guess you were into it,” he said at last.
Lily burst out laughing. She pulled him closer beside her, relishing in the feel of his body as she slowly recovered.
AFTER DONOVAN HAD LEFT Lily let herself go into her book. She was so lost in its’ fictional world that she almost didn’t notice when her precious Pax popped his head through the window.
“I didn’t know you could read,” Pax said.
She raised her eyebrows.
He blushed. “I didn’t mean that in a disparaging way. It’s just that you were raised in the wild. I didn’t know you had learned.”
“My parents taught me,” she said.
“How? I mean, in the wild...”
“We wrote letters in the dirt with sticks when we were starting out,” she said. “When we got a little more advanced, we switched to books.”
He crawled through the window. “You had books?”
