Claimed by the Alpha

by Laxmi Hariharan

  It feels natural, more organic than anything I’ve ever felt before. How can it be a mistake, when all my instincts scream that it’s right?

  “Give an omega an inch, and of course she’s going to take over your whole damned life.” He strides to the closet I’d glimpsed in the corner.

  It’s so unexpected. The General of the city, the alpha of alphas, muttering under his breath like he is a henpecked man. I giggle.

  He shrugs into a pair of loose linen pants. He stalks back to me and flings a tunic at me. It’s big enough to cover me all the way to my knees and smells of the sea.

  I slide it on then plop down on the bed. “You’ve used this place before?”

  He angles his head. “Even a bastard like me needs a retreat, somewhere to get away and clear my head.”

  “You mean regroup on the assholeness inside so you can go back and be more of a bastard?” Oh, hell, there I go again, inciting him. Why can’t I just stay quiet? Why can't I conform to the stereotypes of omegas? Gentle. Docile. Right. So not what I am.

  He frowns. A nerve ticks above his jaw.

  My pulse thuds at my temples, but I hold his gaze. So, the guy’s a monster. No argument there. Still, he’s been less of a jerk than I’d thought. He rutted me, gave me what I needed, saved me…from the stupid-ass attempt at trying to drown myself, and now he’s actually trying to have a conversation with me?

  Everything I’ve always expected from someone normal. Someone who isn’t a monster inside. Which he isn’t. And I have never wanted someone average, normal…have I? That would bore me.

  And here I go making excuses for his behavior again. I rub my palm over my face.

  Walking back to the chair, he straddles it. Then smirks in that way I am beginning to think of as The Zeus Special. “Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I’m done being patient. You get one more question, Omega. You'd better make it count.”

  2

  Zeus

  I can’t help it if the words come out more hurtful than I’d meant them to be.

  I am trying, aren’t I?

  I brought her here, gave her time to recover, then allowed her to ask me questions. Questions? You'd think this is an interrogation, and I owed her answers.

  Most of my Council don’t have the courage to challenge me. Well, okay, except perhaps that dickwad Ethan, and he wouldn’t do it with such audacity as this little omega. The sprite demands a response from me like it is her freaking right. And it is. My shoulders still.

  It is her right as my mate to ask me anything…except, no way is she going to find out that I just thought that. I am noticeably softening toward her. I conceded to wearing clothes, allowed her to cover herself up, too. She distracted me—and why am I not surprised? I brought her here with the need to keep her on her back, legs spread so I can fill her up again and again.

  “Why…why are you growling?”

  “Am I?” I realize my thighs are rock-hard, and my spine is stiff. Bloody hell, every muscle of my body is buzzing with need. The pulse pounds at my temples, at my jaw even in my fucking balls, and I don’t like it, not one bit.

  All this time, I've followed my instinct…whether it was in killing the alphas who’d hurt my mother, taking out Golan—that was completely deserved. I jumped into the sea after her…not what I’d expected of myself, okay? I did all that, didn't I? I’ve kept her safe, made sure to protect her from herself, and here she is, staring at me. Her gaze accuses me, tells me that I am in the wrong.

  I wrench my thoughts back to the present and force my shoulders to unwind. But the muscle between my legs, that part of me refuses to comply.

  “Why do you think?” I snarl out the words.

  She winces at my tone. Some of her color fades.

  I should be glad she’s still afraid of me. But honestly, that isn’t my intention. And that confuses me more. For the first time, I am fighting every instinct. Which dictates right now that I shove aside this fake conversation. Push aside my chair, tear off my clothes, strip her naked, and then…hold her. Skin to skin, cheek to cheek. Bring her close to me and purr for her and soothe her. Holy fuck. I am completely losing it. Was it a mistake to bring her here? To keep her in such close proximity to me? To have just taken off from London without informing my team, purely so I could carve out this time and space for myself, for her… I’ve never done this before, never brought anyone else here.

  I hadn’t even realized this was where I was headed, not until I’d arrived here with her in my arms.

  “Are we here for small talk? Are these the questions you wanted to ask of me?” I set my jaw, angrier with myself than anything else. And that surprises me. I am not used to this kind of self-questioning. Life had been easy in that sense. Fight for what I believe in. Take revenge. Eat, fuck when I felt the urge. Straightforward. Simple. Boring. Yeah, it had been too easy. I had been jaded. Been waiting for a diversion. Been waiting for her?

  From the time she’d launched herself at me, my life had turned upside down. But I didn’t resent it, when I should be livid that she’d completely blown me off course.

  For the first time since I can remember, my mind is not occupied with the need to take revenge on the city, on all those who did wrong by me. It also helps, of course, that I’ve killed many of them. But it isn’t just that. Every part of me insists it is important that I spend time with her, get to know her…be gentle with her, give her the chance to get to know the real me. That I am not what I seem.

  Now that’s a surprise. And I am tired of the thoughts that chase around in my mind.

  I stand and shove the chair aside. My chest heaves. I know I am purring again. The notes leak from my throat and charge the space between us. The sound swells over her.

  Her shoulders draw back, and her breathing steadies.

  If I could use my voice to pull her to me and bind her to me and not talk anymore, I would. If I could lapse into that masculine part of myself that wants to claim her, consolidate the bond, and force her to accept it, I would. I take a step forward.

  She doesn’t shrink back.

  And that…confuses me. “Why are you not afraid of me?”

  I broke my own rule. I wasn’t going to engage in more conversation with her than what was necessary, but for once, I don’t care. “Tell me.”

  She holds my gaze.

  Her chin wobbles. She’s scared of me, but she is trying hard not to show it. Strong omega. She is beautiful, gorgeous, and magnificent. And I don’t deserve her. For fuck’s sake. It really had been wrong to come here. If I’d realized that instead of teaching her the lessons I intended, I was going to indulge in a bout of self-recriminations, I’d never have brought her here… No, not true. I’d still have come. I am many things, but a coward is not one of them.

  “You won’t hurt me, Zeus.”

  “You sure of that?” I bare my teeth.

  She raises her chin. “You don’t hate me, Zeus. You hate…yourself.”

  “What the fuck?” My heart stutters.

  Her words sink into me. They shake me in a way nothing and no one ever has before. The way I’d taken her the first time, the sense of coming home…all of that pales in comparison to the sheer terror that grips me.

  My scalp tingles with the knowledge of what she’s implying. But I don’t want to accept it. Cannot accept it.

  I plant my feet wide apart. “You pull a fast one on me? Is that why Kayden sent you? To undermine me? To crawl into my head and fuck around with me? Why did you agree to the mission to kill me?”

  There, it’s out.

  The question that has bothered me for so long and which I haven’t asked until now. Because I've too busy trying to fuck her brains out. I’d wanted to knot her to me. And I had…and guess what? It isn’t enough. Fuck. I need more than to just own her in the physical way.

  I need her to trust me. To believe in me, and…there you go. I’ve heard of this type of connection between mated pairs. To be fair, I’d thought it was an exaggeration, stories that we
re propagated in a romantic vision by omegas. Well, whaddya know? There’s a grain of truth to it after all.

  The bond in my chest twangs, and it’s not her…it’s just that deeply ingrained part inside of me that insists that despite everything else, I am not beyond redemption. That this is my chance to atone for everything I have done. This is my salvation. She is my salvation. My answer. This is my chance to find something that is good and real and belongs just to me. She is my property. The thought shakes me to the core.

  “I did come to kill you.” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach those beautiful green eyes. “But not once did you bother to ask me why.”

  “I am asking you now.”

  “Maybe it’s too late. Maybe everything that’s happened between us has shown me that I can’t trust you. That if I tell you the real reasons for my coming, you’ll use it against me.”

  Her shoulders draw up, and she tucks her elbows into her sides.

  “And maybe if you don’t tell me, it will be so much worse for you.” I close the distance between us. “Or perhaps that is what you want, Omega?” I bend my knees and thrust my face close to hers. “You want to drive me over the edge until I take you again and again? Until I fuck you, and knot you, and ensure no thoughts rattle around in that pretty head of yours?”

  Her breath hitches. The pulse thuds at the base of her neck.

  The golden sparks in those green eyes flare. I want to reach out and lick up those lips, to drop to my knees and raise that damn tunic and bury my face in her pussy. Bring her to climax and forget about everything. And that would be so easy. To follow my instinct and be what I am, an alpha who takes, and fuck everything else.

  Fuck these doubts I am having about myself.

  I reach for her.

  3

  Lucy

  He drops to his knees in front of me and yanks my thighs apart. His touch is rough, and I am sure his fingers have marked me. The heat from his body infiltrates through the thin tunic and suffuses my skin.

  Goosebumps rise on my forearms.

  The scent of my arousal seeps into the air. Sugary, spicy, and that arouses me further.

  I don’t need to tell him how much I want him; I don’t need to say anything. My body, it seems, does all the talking. It insists that I want him.

  He flicks his gaze up and I swallow.

  Violet flames flare in those blue irises. That only happens when he is angry or aroused or both. His nostrils flare, and I know he’s smelled my body’s response.

  He pushes the thin tunic all the way up until it’s bunched around my waist. I don’t have any underwear, and of course, he knows that.

  If he looks down, he’ll see exactly how turned on I am. That my core quivers and moisture clings to my swollen sex, which is throbbing for him. He holds my gaze, and the color heightens on his cheekbones.

  There’s no other change in his features.

  Still holding my gaze, he glides his palm up my inner thigh to come to a stop right before he touches my clit.

  I shiver, and heat flushes my cheeks.

  With his other hand, he massages the outside of my thigh, then slides up to grip my butt. “So fucking gorgeous.” He massages the curve of my ass. "So perfect. So soft and firm and all mine. Mine to break. To do with as I want."

  There is a brooding quality to his voice as if he's talking to himself. That dark edge of cruelty I've glimpsed in him laces his tone. Coating it with intent. I have no doubt that he will follow through with his words. It's why he brought me here. It's why I am powerless to stop him. Why I revel in every depraved thing he wants to do to me. Why I want it more than anything else.

  A shudder sinks into my blood and whips straight to my core. My pussy trembles. My thighs quiver. A moan wells up, and I bite down on my lower lip to stop it from streaming out.

  “I want to mark you all over, so every time you look at any part of yourself, you’ll know it belongs to me.” His voice lowers, and the meaning in his words heats my skin.

  Yes. I pant. My heartbeat thunders. Sweat trickles down my throat, hugging the valley between my breasts.

  The emotions that pour off him are so intense… Like he’s baring his soul, and I am sure I am mistaken.

  This is Zeus, the father killer. The alpha who tricked me into laying with him. Except, the skin is stretched across his features, and his voice is rusty.

  My instincts insist that he’s never said this to anyone. Not man or woman. To no one but me. Only I have this effect on him.

  I made him lose his control enough for him to take me from the warehouse.

  It’s because of what I do to him that he jumped into the sea to save me. Then, instead of returning with me to his stronghold, he brought me here. Away from everything. Away from his Council, from the other alphas. He doesn’t want to share me with them.

  He wants me all to himself.

  The sheer possessiveness of his gaze, the raw need implicit in his touch, all of it should fill me with power knowing that I have this effect on him.

  Instead, fear laces my nerves.

  I can’t do this.

  I don’t want to be the woman to tame this beast. I don’t want to be at the receiving end of this alpha’s affections. It will tie me down, surely, more than anything else. He will demand a response, one that will not be adequate. I can’t… I don’t have it in me to want him the way he needs me. “I belong to no one,” I firm my lips.

  “Wrong again.” His fingers squeeze my hip, sending a pulse of pleasure-pain streaming straight to my core.

  My thighs clench, and I ache to press them together to hold in the moisture that’s pooling at the base of my channel.

  I don’t want him to know how much his words are affecting me. More than the raw way he’d consumed my body, the sound of his voice, the intensity with which he is searching my features, looking into my eyes, demanding I give him that part of myself I have sworn I’ll never share with anyone else, definitely not this alpha…all of it prompts me to scoot back from him.

  He lets me.

  That should have warned me, but right now, all I can do is pull up my legs. I fold them against my chest, yanking my tunic down to cover myself, then I retreat until my back is to the wall.

  “If you think that’s going to stop me, you are mistaken.” He leans back on his heels.

  “Wha…what do you want from me?” My voice comes out in a squeak.

  “Haven’t I already told you?”

  I clear my throat. “No.”

  “You’ve sensed it, Omega. You know what I need.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Why can’t he just keep it simple? Take my body, own it, plunder it, use it as he needs. “Why are you complicating everything?” I throw up my hands and swear.

  He laughs then.

  A full-blown, from-the-belly laugh. His features light up. His eyes gleam. The sheer charisma of his presence calls to me. Heat curls low in my belly. My throat goes dry. I curl my fingers into fists, and my nails dig the palms of my hands. I don’t trust him. Not one bit.

  He rises to his feet, and glares down at me from that great height. “Only you, Omega, would say something so completely audacious and so completely true.”

  “You are not listening.” I huff out a breath. “I can’t give you what you need.”

  “You can and you will, this, I promise you.”

  That hard tone in his voice drives me over the edge. Anger thrums at my temples.

  “I cannot be the kind of omega you expect me to be.” I bounce my fingers on the bed. “You have some crazy image of me as a breeder, someone who will happily submit to you whether in heat or not, get pregnant, and bear your bastards.”

  “Didn’t hear you complain the last time you asked me to take you. Your exact words I recall were: Rut me, Alpha. Fuck me," he smirks, "Alpha."

  Jerk. And why do I find his words so damn hot? My pussy quivers. Heat sears my cheeks and I glare at him.

  “You wanted to have a conver
sation, then you complain when I oblige.” He holds my gaze and I don’t trust that oh-I-am-so-innocent look of his features.

  He’s right though. It’s the first time we are talking for any length of time without the man trying to stuff his dick into me. Only I hadn't counted on his words being as much of a turn on as his moves—and fine, I admit it, a part of me misses his touch, his primal hunger, the way he consumes me every time he takes me.

  Things were much easier when there was just lust between us when I could blame my body’s response on the fact that he didn’t give me a choice. Which he is now. I press my arms close to my sides. “I don’t want to do this.”

  “We are not doing anything…” His gaze rakes over my huddled-up self. “Yet.”

  “That’s what I mean.” I firm my lips. “Why aren’t you throwing me down on my back and shoving my legs apart and slamming yourself into me?”

  “I already have.”

  And isn’t that the truth? My shoulders hunch. I lean forward, agitation squeezing a band around my chest. “Why aren’t you doing it again? Isn’t that why you brought me here? Isn’t that what this entire ‘teach your omega her lesson’ is all about?”

  “It is.”

  “So, then?” I spring up on the mattress and close the distance between us. I peer up into his face, trying to read his features, trying to figure out what the hell he is thinking.

  The alpha who had fucked me, knotted me and rutted me over and over again—that, I get. That was when he was behaving true to form. But this? Him revealing his true self—that he is an intelligent man who wants to talk with me. Who speaks in riddles, who keeps his distance from me...this Zeus scares me more. I want to approach him, claw at him, and ask him exactly what he is up to…this…this is exactly what he wants from me.

  I fold my arms over my chest. “What’s your game?”

  His eyebrows lower. “Now you are the one speaking in riddles, little squirrel.”

  “I have a name,” I snarl.

  “I know.”

  “So use it.” I curl my fingers so my nails dig into my forearms.