His Forbidden Omega (The Royal Omegas Book 1)

by Kristen Strassel

  He frowned. “It’s not that easy. Nothing ever is.”

  “You’re the king.” It was getting harder to talk, and he knew it.

  “That’s right. I am.” With one smooth thrust, he slid his cock inside me. The relief was almost instant as he rocked his hips back and forth, his balls slapping against my sensitive lips. I cried out, trying to tell him I wanted more, how good it made me feel, and about the sweet, sweet relief he gave me, but I was beyond words now. He kept one hand on my throat. The other pinched my nipple, and he nodded with satisfaction as I whined.

  The intensity grew with each thrust. His shaft swelled inside me, bulging until his knot was tight against my opening, locked into place, and he groaned as his balls hitched.

  I gasped at the first hit of hot spray, coating my inner walls. They pulsed wildly, milking his shaft for more, more, more. The heat was unbearable as I lost all control, crying out in unison with the king.

  We stayed locked together until he was drained. I felt a little sad as his knot subsided and he pulled out of me.

  He had yet to catch his breath, sitting with his head in his hands.

  I pulled myself up to a sitting position and dared to put my head on his shoulder. Usually, this was the line he would not let me cross, when we went from omega and alpha to something we couldn’t define. But this time, he didn’t push me away.

  He put his arm around me, tucking me close, and shook out, “What have I done?”

  Chapter Nine

  Adalai

  I’d given her my seed. An omega who was fertile and ready to grow with my child inside her. I knew what I was doing, and did it anyway. Why?

  Not because I was out of my mind with lust, though I had been. Wanting to knot her to completion like nothing else in this world.

  Not because I had forgotten who I was or who she was, though the line between us was blurring to nonexistence.

  No, I had emptied myself deep inside Zelene because I wanted to claim her as mine. No one had ever called to me the way this omega did. No one made me wish I was someone else just so I could have her. And it wasn’t only the heat making me feel this way. I’d known she was mine the moment I first spotted her in the ballroom.

  I held Zelene in the dark, my fingers digging into her flesh. And I knew it was too hard, but the animal inside me was desperate to keep her.

  Keep her.

  That’s what I intended to do wasn’t it? I didn’t know how, but it was my priority now.

  You make the rules. You can change them. She’d said those words and she believed them. As if I could just snap my fingers and change the omega laws. As if I could abolish The Division altogether. But it wasn’t so simple. Leading never was.

  I pressed a hard kiss to her forehead and stood, making my way through the darkness to the sink that sat against one wall. My hand shook as I twisted the faucet to hot. A small shelf above it held a stack of folded cloths. Pulling one down, I wet it under the warm stream before returning to the bed.

  “Lie back.”

  Zelene frowned but scooted backward. “What are you doing?”

  “Shh. Just obey me, omega.” My voice barely worked, but she listened, and I crawled up the mattress until I was on my knees before her.

  On my knees truly, for the first time.

  Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t be the last.

  Starting with her forehead, I ran the cloth over her skin, washing away the dust and sweat.

  “What are you doing?” She whispered the question again.

  “Taking care of you.”

  I dragged the warm cloth down her neck and over her shoulders.

  “There’s no need.” Her voice was so soft. Like I’d shocked her. Touched her. Affected her. Good. “I’m fine, my King.”

  King. I didn’t want her calling me that anymore. We were past formalities. I was willing to die for her. She could damn well call me by my name.

  “I’m not your king.” I glanced up to see her frown. “I’m more than that now.”

  She swallowed hard as I smoothed the cloth across her tits, nipples perking in reaction.

  “What should I call you then?” A whimper escaped her throat as I did a second pass over her sensitive nipples just to torture her. “Judge? Executioner?”

  She was still worried I’d punish her, when the mere idea of causing her harm sickened me.

  “Defender,” I corrected, “but Adalai is fine.”

  Zelene went stiff beneath my hands and I stopped washing to find her scowling at me through the dark. “Defender?” she croaked.

  What was it about that word that petrified her?

  “Defender,” she tried again. “Are you being cruel?”

  “Cruel,” I scoffed. “By offering my protection?”

  Quick as a blink, she slipped out of the bed and began pacing the small bunker. “Why would you offer me protection? Protection when you should be punishing me,” she muttered, almost to herself. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Come back to bed,” I ordered. “You need to be cleaned. And we need food.”

  Her gaze snapped to me. “Food? You won’t find any here.”

  I frowned. “The omegas would refuse their king away from his castle.”

  “No. Not refuse you.” She resumed pacing. “They would likely give you their last crumb for fear of being punished if they don’t. But that’s all you would get. A crumb. Because out here, no one brings us meat on a platter or bread with sweet butter in a tiny pot on the side or wine in fancy goblets. Out here, we are starving.”

  Her words were like a punch in the gut. It was like I was just now opening my eyes to all the injustices a third of our shifter population endured. How could I have been so blind? One night I went to bed believing the omegas deserved their lot. And after twenty-four hours with Zelene, I was convinced the royals—specifically, I—was the villain in her story.

  The wolf inside me wouldn’t stand for this. I wouldn’t stand for this.

  “You’ve suffered too much, my rose. I won’t let it continue. I promise you this.”

  Her eyes went wide as she shook her head. “No, no, no. You’re not supposed to care. You’re the king. The one who enforces the laws that keep omegas set apart. The laws that keep us confined to this dried up desert.”

  She was clearly upset, but hell if I knew why. Because I realized things within our pack weren’t right? Because I was revealing a vulnerability in caring?

  Fuck that.

  “A king shouldn’t care about all his people?” I thundered, angry now.

  “More like why do you care now?”

  I stood, meaning to block her path. Her pacing was getting on my nerves. But instead, her body jolted in a new heat spasm. I felt the seductive waves of it even several feet away. And her scent flooded my senses again, making my cock stand to attention and my hips jut forward.

  Mine. Mate. Breed.

  “No, stay back!” Zelene held out a hand to ward me off. And I had half a mind to ignore it and pull her against me anyways. But then she added, “I need to figure this out. If you touch me, I’ll lose all sense. My head will fill with hopes and fantasies of how things could be. Of a future I can’t possibly have. So just… stay back. Because I need… I need to understand you.”

  I had the feeling it would take many, many years for us to understand each other. She’d lived a different life than me. But if it was clarity she wanted, I would fucking give it to her.

  “My mother was an omega.”

  Zelene lifted her head to stare at me. “I know. Everyone knows the Queen was omega. But that was before The Division.”

  “Yes. But you don’t know how she died.”

  “Sure, I do. She grew sick and couldn’t be healed. Even with new technology available.”

  I shook my head. Zelene knew what the pack had been told about the queen’s death. But that story wasn’t the truth.

  I swallowed the ache in my throat.

  “A lie. My father ordered that no one ou
tside the two of us ever know the truth.” And until now, I had kept this secret. “My mother was murdered during the Omega Wars.”

  “Just like mine,” Zelene breathed.

  “Her murderer, Garreth…” I spat his name like poison “… was an omega of power. My father’s closest adviser and also my matron uncle.”

  “The queen was murdered by her own brother?” The horror in Zelene’s voice echoed the feeling I’d kept in my heart all these years.

  “I was only a youngling in my seventh year. Sometimes I try to remember what she looked like, but it was so long ago.”

  Zelene’s hand fluttered to her throat while the other arm wrapped around her middle clenching in pain. Her heat was merciless, but she needed to hear this. Wanted to. And I wouldn’t deny her.

  “Garreth wanted unity with the humans. He thought diversity would make us a stronger people. And maybe he was right. But my father disagreed. He feared the humans only wanted us for our technology. They were desperate to survive after the Great Dust Storm. He thought when they discovered we were shifters, we’d be wiped out for being different.” The humans have a king of their own, his name is fear, my father used to say. And he wasn’t wrong. “Garreth was ordered to stand down. Instead, he betrayed our pack. He went to the humans and revealed what we are. The humans couldn’t resist the allure of controlling beings who were part animal, and used Garreth to get close enough to launch a clandestine attack on the castle.”

  “The attack that started the Omega Wars. The very first.”

  I nodded. “They intended to take my father, knowing enough about our ways to understand the pack would scatter without their alpha. But instead, they found my mother alone in bed and took her hostage.”

  “Adalai…” The first time her lips uttered my name and it sounded like pure agony.

  “They didn’t make it past the castle guards. Garreth realized the mistake he’d made trusting the humans, but it was too late. My father’s wolf tore the humans apart. All but one. The one who held a knife to my mother’s throat.”

  I looked at Zelene, her eyes welling with tears for what she knew was coming. She was omega. And I’d spent a lot of my life calling her kind traitors. Betrayers. Spent a lifetime hating them. But in that moment, I couldn’t hate her.

  I couldn’t hate any of them.

  If Garreth had been a beta, it would be betas in the Badlands. If he’d been an Alpha, perhaps we’d have no king at all. Perhaps it would be me starving in the desert.

  “My mother didn’t make it. And neither did Garreth. The only survivor of that incident was my father. And you know what happened next.”

  “He declared war on the omegas.”

  I nodded. The first civil war of our kind. It had turned our best qualities into our worst. It separated us, made us enemies and lords. We called it a pack, but Zelene was right. We had become something else.

  She shuddered out a breath. “Now, here you are, trapped with a woman you hate.”

  “Hate?” I drew her scent into my lungs feeling like it could make me invincible. “I don’t hate you, Zelene.” I took a step forward, backing her against the wall. Touch, taste, prove. My inner wolf pawed at my chest, bending me to its desires.

  “You hate what I am.”

  My arm darted out, pulling her fast against my body as I pinned her to the wall with my hips, my hard cock sliding against her belly in warning.

  “Maybe I did once upon a time.”

  She whimpered, fresh sweat coating her heat-riddled body, and writhed against me. Yessss.

  “But now… now it’s something else. Something stronger than hate. Stronger than me or my will. My father created The Division out of hate. I am going to tear it down, out of love.”

  I watched her expression crumple like a wall falling, brick by brick, to reveal a hidden garden, lush and vibrant with feeling. And it was there, that desire she talked about to have better, be better. Want better. There was so much love in her, hidden behind that wall. I wanted just a piece of it to be mine.

  But she shook her head, an aching moan slipping from her lips as her nails dug into my shoulder.

  “It’s my heat.”

  I licked a path up her neck, stopping at her delicate ear to nip. “What about it?”

  “It’s causing you to say things you don’t mean.”

  I had the inescapable need to prove myself to her. Shifting my hips, I aligned my cock with her entrance, relishing her helpless moan at the contact our bodies made.

  “You’ll learn quickly, my rose, I never say things I don’t mean.”

  She shook her head, eyes landing everywhere except on me. “You won’t feel this way when it’s over.”

  “I will.”

  “You won’t. I know you won’t.”

  “How could you know?” I gripped her jaw to force her head against the wall and bring her gaze to mine. “How could you possibly know how I feel about you? How you’ve turned me inside out. How you’ve given me something to look forward to when things seemed bleak. You’ve given me hope. So, you go ahead, let your head fill with those fantasies of a better life. Because I’m going to give it to you. And you will give me the same.” Tears breached the rims of her eyelids to streak down her cheek and land on my fingers. “You’ll be fully mine before we leave this bunker, female. And nothing will change it. No law, no army. Nothing. You said it before… I am the fucking king. And I will have my queen.”

  With a hard thrust, I slammed into her as I took her lips, kissing her scream of relief away.

  And again, we were one.

  ***

  The darkness surrounded me in the bunker as I lay sprawled across the nest of blankets and pillows we’d used to rut upon. Zelene snored softly against my chest, her heat pangs sated for now.

  It had been a long, sweaty day of mating, of making sure her body took as much of my seed as possible, as much pleasure as possible. But if she woke now and needed me again, I’d fuck her like a fresh male just coming into his alpha year. She’d made me a slave to her, and I couldn’t remember what life was like before. Before the ballroom and the heat and this fucking bunker.

  I grinned at the invisible ceiling above, grateful she wasn’t awake to see me. Every single one of her pleasured moans and squeals was like a new dawn. We might as well have known each other a lifetime after this.

  My smile faded as my mind turned to what life would be like for us outside the bunker. When her heat was over. She thought I would change my mind about her, but reality was worse than that.

  I had to figure out a way to bring down The Division without causing another civil war. For all my promises, I didn’t have a clue how to make it happen. I only knew that I would, for her.

  For us.

  And for my baby that would be growing in her belly soon.

  Yesss, my wolf rumbled.

  While my mind grappled for a solution to our problems, the wind outside whipped at the hatch overhead and the whistle of air through a crack grabbed my attention. Tavia had brought food earlier, and I’d given the whole meager offering to Zelene. My animal would take care of me until her heat broke and I could get us proper food.

  But… the wind. Perhaps Tavia hadn’t shut the hatch properly. If wind was getting inside the bunker that meant my omega’s scent could escape and draw other males.

  As if on cue, the sound of a wolf howling sent a chill of warning down my spine. Carefully, I slid away from Zelene and she moaned at the movement, her legs twisting apart like she was ready for me again. “Shh, rose.”

  The howling drew closer and I tipped my head, listening to confirm what my wolf was trying to tell me. What the animal had been trying to tell me all along. They were shifted. Fully shifted werewolves. More than one.

  Wolves when there should be no wolves. Wolves who didn’t suffer the same handicap those of us from the city did.

  And they were coming for my queen.

  Wolves, when she so easily denied the ability to shift. I knew it was a li
e the moment it left her lips, but her secrets had to be earned.

  Protect mate. My animal bucked and clawed inside, tearing at my humanity until my vision turned hot white.

  The door to the bunker rattled and I sprung from the bed just in time to watch it fly open, the wind nearly ripping it from the hinges. Before I could find my weapons, the heavy form of a man dropped down from the entrance, landing with a grunt as his boots hit the floor before standing to his full height. Even in the darkness, something about the man was familiar, but I didn’t have time to figure it out. Another male was too fucking close to my naked mate. One who would hurt her. Another male was smelling her heat and wanting her and it was all too much.

  My turn, my wolf seethed inside. My turn to defend, to protect. To keep.

  No one would have her except me. And I would die before I let anyone hurt her.

  The roar that came from within me was like nothing I’d ever heard before. My body rattled and shook as my inner animal clawed free. Bones twisted and popped forming the beast I’d always known was part of me but had never experienced. Smooth skin became ruffled fur. Fingers became razor sharp claws as I fell to the floor on all fours, unleashing a snarl.

  Power. So much power flowed through me as my beast finally aligned with the man I’d always been. Lifting my head, I howled at the moon outside even though I couldn’t see it in the confines of the bunker.

  “A-Adalai,” Zelene whispered. And her voice was like an arrow to my heart. Mine. Mine.

  The intruder backed away, but made no move for the ladder.

  “What… what the fuck have you done?” the intruder growled.

  And that was when I recognized the man’s voice.

  Dagger.

  I snarled a warning in my mind, instinct telling me he would hear it. “Leave. Now. Before I kill you.”

  Before Dagger could backtrack out of the bunker, another form made its way down the ladder, jumping from the lower rungs to the floor. And then Tavia’s voice pierced the darkness.

  “You idiot,” she seethed. Through the dimness, I could see her angry scowl, narrowed on Dagger. “I told you, you couldn’t come here. You led the wolves right to them. What were you thinking? Stupid, stupid alphas. You never listen—”