Page 92 of The Gift
“If an alpha dies and the pack isn’t strong enough to hold the omega as theirs, it might be a simple process to swap alphas,” Reno adds more information, probably detail I should know, but I’ve been purposely ignoring everything to do with pack and bonds for a reason.
“He would have made whatever he did impossible to break.” I say, without betraying how much saying it aloud adds to my fear.
And there is no need to clarify the ‘he’ in this. Regalo still fucking lingers in my life like a bad smell.
“He would have made it hard, but not impossible.” Henley’s face is full of everything that is the opposite of what Ashton is trying to shield me from when he uses his sweet touches and silly smiles to soften a heavy topic.
Someone goes to say something, but I interrupt them, dropping my eyes and my voice. “Don’t let him take any more from me, please. You have to do whatever it takes. I mean it, whatever it takes.”
Ashton his lips ghosting over my shoulder, his finger tracing down a scar making me shiver. “Let us show you what we mean first, Bailey? A show of how what we’re talking about might help.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Have you ever responded to an alpha?”
I stop, and really think about Henley’s question. I’ve been in plenty of situations and places where alphas have been and I’ve always felt their influence, at Jenna’s cottage is the most recent but I’m also incredibly anal about not being in that position.
“We think you have a repressed bond attachment,” Reno adds, massaging my calf. All of us in different stages of undress, sadly the mood is currently not where it should be, given the goods on display. The way my mind copes, similar in ways to how Ashton uses humour, provides what I need to deal with things I really don’t want to think about, but it’s those sparkles in the bleakness that gives me my hope.
“What did you find out?” I push, keen to keep this moving.
“I think he made everyone in the lab a part of his pack. He insinuated it in some ways, in others you could misconstrue what he meant. I suspect he offered truths and purposely painted horrors to fuck with people more. I don’t know if he knows exactly who you are, but there is a part of me who knows that’s me not wanting to face that he does. He was specific and detailed, purposely mentioning the way he assaulted and sampled the omegas, which…” Henley’s eyes drop under the weight of the high probability of what happened.
“No,” I hiss stopping him, an anger blasting out of me, making me get up in his face. “Do not fucking sully what we have, and what we’re doing with that. I deal for me, I have been, I will keep doing what I’m doing. I’m not ready to go back to then and to figure it out, but I am ready to be here with you and your pack!”
His hands on my hips pull me down from standing to kneeling, so his eyes are level with mine, “What if I slide my cock in you, go to knot you and all of a sudden you’re back in those cages, and your mind splinters?”
“Then you better fuck the goddamn demons out of me, Henley. I’m not talking about what happened, I’m not being the victim anymore, and I haven’t been one for a long time. You take me like this, or you don’t take me at all.” I push against him, shoving him hard but he’s unmoving. His eyes locked on mine and their full of fiery determination.
“Oh, no you must be mistaking our intention. We lost you once, Bailey and that will never happen again. We’d take you and your cracks over never being with you, but...”
“I’m not broken,” I whisper urgently.
His finger goes up under my chin, “Don’t you get it? Do you really think we would have let you bring us here if we didn’t think you weren’t strong enough for us? You’re not broken, baby, but I am going to have to break you.”
“What?” I ask, leaning into his hold. His body is poised to strike, and fight.
“Henley has to alpha you. He’s going to have to make you submit to obliterate the repressed bond. Willingly or unwillingly he will take your submission,” Reno says quietly. “It’s going to be rough, okay, really fucking rough. Henley’s been talking with as many alphas as he could, darling, and he’s going to smash Regalo’s hold on you. We’re trading his influence with ours. Terrible times first before we chase all that shit away and lock it way, way, way in the past. If we can’t make you ours, you might not even be able to take their knots.”
“Because of what he did?”
Reno pulls a face like he’s hurt. But it’s Henley who answers. “It’s fucked, Bailey, okay, but to make you pack, to do this, we have to do this, if that makes sense. It’s probably why I keep pitching a fucking hissy fit but one of the other alphas explained it better. Regalo made you pack and his claim on you pushes me away, making me insane with rage.”
“How do you know?”
“We don’t, not for sure. The only way to tell will be able to get you to submit, hopefully it happens easy. Then it’s a sign we got it wrong and we got caught in another of Regalo’s lies. Either way, to make you pack I have to have your submission.”
“I promise I want that. I really do want everything we’ve talked about. Everything that happens between the four of us is consensual. I want my future, and you guys need to be the ones with me when I do that.”
I stand up and put my back to him. Giving him the power, while holding all the control.
The nest suddenly feels like a brewing storm, a clash of emotions, a building of pressure. All their scents change to match the mood, not tart, but tinged with stress and anxiety.
I make sure I look at each of them individually, starting with Henley then going around to them all before I flick my head over my shoulder and tease him softly. “I want to submit to you. Show me what you’ve got, big man.”
I turn back around and squeeze my eyes shut, praying ardently like the devil is making a play for a soul, maybe he is. The clock ticks for long drawn out minutes and I think I’ve got it wrong for a few of them, but in the same breath I know I don’t. Pack Bailey and I are connected by more than name.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
