His Defiant Omega (The Royal Omegas Book 2)

by Kristen Strassel

  Charolet shrugged. “I don’t know you.” But I noticed the change in her demeanor. Omega was responding to alpha, and the air around them was getting real uncomfortable.

  “That’s right, omega. You don’t.” Cassian took a step forward, eyes practically stripping her bare. “But if you’re not careful, you might just get a crash course in the way I work.”

  I needed to stop this.

  “The way you work,” Charolet murmured, eyes glazing over. “I doubt it’s different from any other alpha.”

  “Keep it up…” Cassian warned, and his alpha growl erupted from his chest.

  I cleared my throat loudly to cover it. “Food. Tavia needs food.” This got Charolet’s attention and she jerked her gaze to me.

  “Of course. Yes, she needs to eat. Her body is expending double the energy right now just with the heat fever.”

  “The leftover supplies are stored under the truck,” Cassian said distractedly. “Give her my rations.”

  “You’ll need yours,” Charolet argued. “Give her mine.”

  “Good fuck, woman. Do you have to challenge everything I say?”

  “Maybe! Why? Does it make you feel small?” She pinched her thumb and forefinger together and lined it up like she was measuring his dick.

  “Nothing makes me feel small…”

  I backed away slowly. Whatever this was, they could handle it. I needed to get back to my mate.

  At the vehicle, I dug the supplies out of the storage compartments and rifled through, finding the choicest foods for Tavia. I didn’t know what she liked exactly, but I knew what tasted best, and that’s what she was getting. She could have mine, Charolet’s, and Cassian’s. If they got hungry, maybe they’d eat each other and save us all a headache.

  A guttural moan had me pausing my search. The sound was my needy omega, and my wolf took instant notice. Behind my zipper, my cock went steel hard, ready to knot her again. Ready for more of that sweet, slick squeeze that felt like home. My chest rumbled with a growl.

  Take care of mate.

  Quickly, I piled the food in my arms and collected some water. I also found extra blankets to make our nest cozier for her.

  “Mmm… Dagger!”

  Her wanton voice was like a bell in my head. I needed inside that vehicle. Inside her. Pleasure and sate. It was my only purpose in that moment.

  I ripped the door back, and the scent of her arousal assaulted me. My omega smelled so sweet, but I had yet to taste her. I would do that now.

  I climbed in the back, and slammed the door behind me. Forgetting about the food, I let it land on the floor where it may. Tavia lay on her back, legs spread wide and ready for me, but I couldn’t move yet. My gaze was riveted on the way her slender hand dipped between her legs, sliding furiously along her wet, swollen folds.

  “Need you,” she whimpered, her finger thrusting in and out of her tight hole. But it wasn’t enough. I knew it by the crazed look in her eyes. The desperate look that lasered in on my groin. Fuck. I wanted her to look at me like that every night.

  I was already free of my pants without fully knowing how, and I crawled up her legs, licking a path to that sweet spot where her fingers played. I was going to get my taste, but not straight from the fount. Not when she needed my cock this badly.

  “Dagger… please.” The sound of her animal whining behind her voice made me feel feral. I nipped at her thigh and her hips bucked.

  Shackling my hand around her wrist, I pulled her insistent hand from her pussy, replacing it with the swollen head of my cock. I brought her hand to my face, inhaling her sugary scent, and then sucked her honey coated fingers into my mouth.

  “Mmm…” Mine.

  With a hard thrust, I pushed inside her slit, deep enough to steal her breath. The resulting scream of pleasure had my animal roaring on the inside. Mine. My mate. Always and forever.

  “Yes, yes!” Tavia groaned as if she could hear my thoughts. I knew she couldn’t but her agreement made my hips swing faster, my mouth suck harder at her fingers.

  When she tightened on me, her inner walls fluttering with release, I pushed my swelling knot as deep as it would go, lodging it against her womb. I wasn’t thinking of consequences. I was fully under the control of my beast… or hers. And they both wanted to mate. To mark. To make this permanent.

  “Give it to me,” she snarled, her claws digging into my shoulder. “Give me what I need.”

  Her eyes flashed with heat and desire and something softer that didn’t have a name yet. That was the thing I wanted to own the most. That small, unsure piece of her that no one else could ever access.

  It was mine. Whether she meant for it to be or not.

  “Fuck.” With a roar, I emptied myself inside my omega mate, soaking her with my seed.

  When I was spent, my knot remained inside. I gathered her limp body in my arms and fell to the platform beside her. She snuggled close and in minutes, she was fast asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tavia

  I startled awake to someone banging on the door. For a moment, I thought I was back in the Badlands, in my hard, narrow bed, sweating in the hot desert night as the guards came to demand information, payment, or worse. The fear had taken root deep in my bones.

  I’d been having the strange fever dreams that came every heat cycle. This time, they starred Dagger. We were running together as wolves, but we weren’t in the dreary desert. We raced through a lush land that had never known hunger. Land that had never known division. Yet I wanted desperately to go home.

  Did I not think I deserved better than the Badlands? Was that the real reason I hadn’t wanted Zelene to go the castle party? The reason I fought Dagger at the beginning of this mission? Was I subconsciously sabotaging our success?

  I tucked it away to think about later.

  Lying here in Dagger’s strong arms, I didn’t care about anything. My heat was quelled, for now at least.

  “Tavia!” Charolet’s voice was as sharp as the rap of her knuckles on the glass. I lifted my head to peer through the window. “The wolves are coming.”

  She looked like a nightmare, with desert dust and soot smeared across her forehead and a ripped piece of cloth over the lower half of her face to filter the smoky air.

  Dagger growled as he stretched awake. He was still human. He hadn’t shifted yet, and I wondered if he’d be able to.

  “What the fuck?” He sat up and opened the door. “Where’s Cassian?”

  “He headed to Luxoria with Tavia’s clothes to throw the wolves off the scent, but it didn’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” she repeated, backing away from the truck a step. “Because the wolves saw our entire battalion leave the human keep. He’s alone. They know Tavia is somewhere else, and she’s got two days left of her heat.”

  “Is she always impossible?” Dagger grunted.

  “She’s amazing.” I winked at Charolet before she ripped Dagger’s head off. She had no time for alpha bullshit and she wasn’t about to start making it now. So I’d defuse this little Char-bomb before we got into a situation we couldn’t fix. “What about the fires?”

  She shrugged. “It was worth a try, but it seems to have drawn the wolves to us instead of scaring them away. With Cassian and the betas gone, they only have to get through me to get to you.”

  “And me,” Dagger growled as he pulled his pants over his legs.

  Charolet rolled her eyes and motioned at us. “The collective you. Doesn’t matter though, it’s three of us versus who knows how many of them, and Tavia’s still in heat. She can’t fight. I came to warn you before it was too late to take action.”

  “Thank you.” Dagger raked his hand through his hair as he climbed out of the truck. He turned to me. “Stay.”

  “She’s not a dog.”

  “Char, save some of the rage for these wolves.” My clothes felt awful as I pulled them on. My body was not ready for this. It needed Dagger. It needed food and water. I
t did not need a pack of angry wolves trying to get their nasty knots inside me.

  “Don’t worry, I have plenty of rage to go around.” She turned to Dagger. “What do we do?”

  I coughed as he surveyed the desert. Smoke was thick in the air, and the fires were so close. I hadn’t been in my right mind to notice anything before. If the wind changed direction, the fire could engulf this truck. Burn us alive. We had to get out.

  “You shift at will?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Can you?”

  “Yeah. Adalai shifted after he mated.”

  Charolet lifted the cloth that covered the bottom half of her face and mouthed, “mated?”

  Dagger really was my mate if her disgust could make me giddy in the middle of this latest crisis. “Yeah.”

  “You’ll be a target. More than King Adalai was with the omegas. These are mutant wolves, and you’re the alpha who pissed off their leader. So I’m hoping you have a plan that’s a little more robust than crossing your fingers that you sprout some fur.”

  “Which wolves are coming for us?” I asked.

  Char furrowed her brow. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “In the Badlands, we always had to worry about wolves attacking us if we weren’t secure in the bunker during our heat. So are these the usual suspects, who knew something wasn’t right when the beta soldiers returned without us, or are there the wolves from the human keep, fighting for Renaldo. Why would they fight us? I’m still not sure they’re the enemy.”

  “Tavia.” Dagger sighed. “We’ve been dealing with the humans for years. They’re not after the omegas. They want our technology.”

  “But they have our omegas and our technology, while we’ve been busy destroying ourselves. Did you ever stop to think maybe that was their strategy all along?”

  “I can assure you, it’s not.” He reached for me, and I didn’t mean to flinch. But Dagger, with his wolf so close to the surface of his skin, didn’t miss it.

  I never expected it to hurt so bad when he pulled away.

  “What if they’re trying to keep us out of Luxoria?” Charolet asked. “What if Adalai decided he wants us out?”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” I said quickly. “Zelene wouldn’t let him.”

  Dagger pinched the bridge of his nose. “We need to get back to the city as quickly as possible.”

  He didn’t dispute Charolet’s claim as he pushed the leather pants off his legs and climbed out of the truck completely naked. Char’s eyebrows raised, and my wolf didn’t like that one bit. Dagger was mine. I trusted my best friend implicitly, but her heat had to be close. It wasn’t only me that we had to get safely back to the castle. A fresh heat and an omega with no mate would not fare well against any wolves.

  I scooted to the edge of the truck and slid out, coughing as the acrid air filled my nostrils. Char grabbed my bare arm. “Mate, huh?”

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t in the mood to verbally spar with her about it, either. My wolf wanted out. Over the years, I’d gotten too good at pushing it away. If I denied my true nature this time, I might not be able to call it back at will.

  And I had no plans of getting captured, dying, or doing anything else I didn’t want to do in this desert.

  “Something’s wrong, Tav. The alphas...they accepted us too easily. What if they mean to trap us out here in no man’s land, now that we know what the humans are really doing?”

  “We don’t know what the humans are doing.” But her claim made goosebumps rise on my skin, even in the fire and heat.

  “Jacoby didn’t want to come home.” She was right. He was healthy, happy, and scared for us. It was supposed to be the other way around.

  Dagger’s howl ripped the desert wide open. Charolet had been so busy questioning everything we believed that I missed his shift. I hoped it wasn’t my only chance to see it.

  He was a beautiful wolf. Gray with black peppered into his fur, and big dark eyes. Just like when he was human, they darted back and forth, making sure he didn’t miss a thing.

  Charolet might have doubts, but I would follow him anywhere.

  I fell to my knees as my temperature skyrocketed. This was a completely different kind of heat and this time, it was my animal that wouldn’t be denied. Fur blossomed, dissolving the surface of my skin. My fingers were replaced by claws, and my face like it split open to accommodate my snout.

  It had been too long since I’d felt myself as a wolf. Since I’d been allowed to honor my full strength and power. It felt amazing.

  “Oh hell.” Charolet ripped off her jacket. As she stepped out of her pants, I trotted over to Dagger.

  “Do you have a plan?” I asked, speaking with the telepathy afforded us in this form.

  “Stay near the lake,” he said, nodding to Charolet as she joined us in wolf form. “The mutants won’t be able to cross it.”

  He didn’t explain, and he didn’t wait for either of us to ask questions before he ran for the narrow opening in the ring of fire.

  One thing was certain. Dagger knew more than he was letting on, and as his mate, I would make damn sure he told me everything.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dagger

  Crossing over a finger of what remained of a small desert lake was enough to throw the wolves off our scent. Even if they could have followed our trail into the acrid water, they wouldn’t. The water was so polluted it burned my skin even through the fur of my animal.

  My animal.

  It was still hard to believe I’d actually shifted. For the first time in my life, the wolf part of me was one with the man. It was like a key twisting in a lock. The missing piece that made me whole. And it couldn’t have happened without Tavia.

  Her wolf let out a whimper. I could sense her heat flaring again and her scent was growing stronger.

  “Her heat is worsening.” Charolet’s voice rang in my head. “We have to find shelter so she can shift. She can’t be in her wolf form like this.”

  I knew what she said was true. I remembered Zelene trying to make it to the city gates with Adalai before omega males could descend on her. Under the influence of heat, the desire to rut was almost unbearable and the wolf would take over, desperate for a male. I knew it back then, but Tavia’s response to me in the Humvee was proof. I couldn’t let her lose control out here.

  “We are nearing the Badlands. Where is the closest bunker?” I asked.

  “Near the eastern border. We won’t make it.”

  I growled, pushing ahead faster, my claws digging into the sand beneath me. “Yes. We will.”

  Tavia stayed with me even though I knew she was struggling. That’s right, my little firecracker. Nothing holds you down. Nothing. I forced the thought into her mind, not caring if Charolet heard it too.

  Soon, we were entering the Badlands with its dusty, dilapidated shacks pocking the horizon. I cut east, commanding Charolet to keep heading for Luxoria. Of course she didn’t listen. But by the time I noticed she was still hot on my trail, we were coming upon the hidden bunker. Tavia limped ahead of me, stopping behind a rickety water tank. In the next breath, she shifted to her human form, letting her pale fur fall away. She collapsed to the ground writhing with need, gasping for relief. I shifted too, and dropped to my knees beside her.

  “Tavia, we’re home. It’s going to be okay.”

  “Badlands,” she gasped.

  I nodded and brushed strands of hair from her damp face. “We’ll stay here until your heat breaks. Then we’ll approach the king.”

  “Get…” Her breath chugged and her skin was red from the poisonous water. “Get me inside. Hurry.”

  I shoved at the stack of sheet metal beside the water tower and revealed the opening to the bunker. A steel ladder lowered into pitch black darkness. It would be ominous if it wasn’t exactly what we needed to be safe.

  Tavia turned to Charolet. “Tell Zelene what we learned. Let her know I’m okay and I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  Charolet ducked her head.
“I’ll bring food. Stay safe.” She pegged me with a murderous stare, a growl slipping through her teeth. “Do not hurt her.”

  “On my life…” I didn’t finish and she didn’t wait for me to. She bounded off toward the city and with one arm, I pulled Tavia down onto the ladder.

  She moaned at my touch and pressed her lips to my neck, nuzzling my jaw.

  “Gotta get the hatch locked, omega. Then I’m yours.”

  “Hurry,” she whimpered.

  I flipped the lever and checked to make sure the seal was tight. Tavia’s scent wouldn’t escape the bunker. Relief swept over me like a cool breeze even in the sweltering space. I waited for her to climb down and then jumped from the ladder to the floor, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. The outline of a mattress was in the corner, and Tavia went straight over to it. But she didn’t lie down. Instead, she stripped the blankets and threw them in a pile beneath the ladder. Then she pulled new ones from a nearby shelf.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making a nest,” she grumbled.

  “A nest?”

  She paused, staring at me. “I don’t usually nest… I…” It was dark but I thought I could see fear flash behind her eyes. “We need a nest. I don’t know why. I just know my instincts are demanding it.”

  I picked up a blanket to help. “What’s a nest, mate?”

  “A space that’s ours. Or… or mine. It’s supposed to be mine, but… this time, it will be ours.” She nodded as if answering an unspoken question.

  I spread a blanket over the mattress.

  “No, not like that.” Tavia ruffled it up so it was messy.

  I stood back, watching as she hurriedly piled blankets and rearranged them to her satisfaction, changing things again and again, as if she was trying to achieve a certain aesthetic.

  “What does it mean?” I asked when she stood back for the last time, examining the bed.

  She looked at me and back to her creation. “I don’t know.” But I got the feeling she did.