I was Thor’s son! I was born to fight, not wait around patiently for another alpha to return with the enemy we needed to capture!
I glanced at the dark-haired girl still curled up on the bed. She was looking worse, sweat pearling on her forehead and her cheeks flushed a deep pink.
Bjarni needed to get his ass back, stat.
Though as soon as I had the thought, reluctance rose in my throat, acrid on my tongue. If he walked in the door right now, I was pretty sure I would punch him in the face just to relieve some of my pent-up frustration.
I looked at Annabel again, wetting my dry lips. There had to be something I could do for her, some way I could alleviate her discomfort—
My thoughts came to an abrupt halt when her face screwed up in a tight grimace and she keeled over, clutching her midriff.
“Ooooh!” Her low, anguished whimper rang through the apartment like a bell, seizing every muscle in my body and rendering me rigid. A rush of emotions rampaged through my blood, heating it to the point of boiling: concern, battle lust, victory… excitement.
The throb from my fully hard cock finally clicked the pieces into place.
“You are in heat!” It was an accusation, but it came out as a throaty growl.
She turned her head to look at me, eyes still glazed, pink lips parted with her soft panting. She didn’t respond, but she didn’t need to.
I could have slapped myself. How had I not recognized the signs earlier? How hadn’t she?
Anger flared, doing little to dampen my riled-up hormones. “You’re in heat! Why the fuck didn’t you say anything?”
“I… didn’t know how fast it would come,” she croaked. “Last time it was much slower. I’d hoped… I'd hoped Bjarni…”
She’d hoped Bjarni would be back in time to take care of her.
I stared at her, my fists clenching without my consent. Instincts I’d done my best to suppress since I presented as alpha roared at the idea of another man seeing her through her heat, but I gritted my teeth against them.
This was exactly why I had never wanted anything to do with omegas. She was my brother’s mate, and here I was, hard and ready to screw her into oblivion as if I had any right to her sweetly-scented snatch.
I growled when I didn’t stop myself from inhaling deeply at that thought, and the most delicate smell of omega heat touched my nostrils.
Stars above, she smelled like thyme and honey and woman.
“I… I don’t think I’ll be able to make it until he’s back,” she said. “You’ll have to…”
She trailed off once again, but what she'd left unsaid hung thick between us. She wanted me to rut her through her heat.
“No.” Despite the ache in my dick at the thought of bending her over and shoving myself inside of her, I knew I’d never be able to do that. If I did, if I surrendered to the instincts fighting to take control, I would be lost.
She was my brother’s mate. I was not going to split our family apart, not for a piece of ass.
Her eyes widened at my denial. Not that I could blame her—I was pretty sure no alpha in history had turned down an offer to fuck an omega in heat.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” she croaked, outrage subsuming her shock. “I can’t do this on my own!”
“You will have to,” I growled, finally finding the will to look away from her pink lips. With strength I didn’t know I possessed, I turned and walked to the wingback by the dead hearth, letting myself collapse into it. I had to grip the armrests to stay seated when she let out another whine.
“You can’t be fucking serious!” It was a snarl this time. “I thought your brother was an asshole, but you—you’re useless!”
I gritted my teeth, my temper even more volatile than usual. But I knew she was just baiting me, wanting me to engage so she could lure me into abandoning the principles that had kept me going for all these years.
“I need you, and you’re just going to sit there? What a horrible excuse for an alpha you are! No wonder Magni thinks you need his help to secure a mate!”
Hot, red anger sparked in my brain, and I snapped my head around to stare at her. She was crouched on the bed like a tigress ready to strike, eyes glazed with need and fury and blunt teeth bared in challenge.
“I do not need a mate, nor do I want one,” I snapped at her. “You think if I fuck you, I will claim you like the other idiots vying for their spot in some power-hungry Norn’s web? What you are begging for is a rough rutting—to be forced into submission and taken like the whore you are. You want sex—dirty, filthy, brutal sex—not love. And you don’t give a shit if you tear apart my family in the process. Isn’t that right, omega? So long as you get your cunt stuffed, to hell with my brother waiting for you back home!”
She was breathing hard as if my words only fueled her desire. “He wants you to,” she said, voice rough and so filled with need my dick throbbed at the sound of it. “Magni wants you to mate me. But even if you didn’t—do you really think he’d want you to let me suffer like this? Do you have any idea how much it hurts? How much I ache? You promised to care for me in his place!”
Annabel slid off the bed, approaching my chair. She moved stiffly, her agonized pleas ringing true, but even so…
My eyes followed the sway of her hips, then wandered up her sweat-covered blouse that clung to her breasts tightly enough to allow her peaked nipples to show. Hazy thoughts of closing my mouth around one of those little buds made me grip the chair’s arms tighter.
Fucking hormones!
When she sank to her knees in front of me, a picture-perfect image of submission, I nearly lost myself. Oh, how easy it would be… She was so willing—she needed me. And Magni…
She was right—he had asked me to care for her, to make sure she was well-tended. Wouldn’t he rather I rutted her than Bjarni?
“Modi… Modi, please.” She looked up at me, and instead of fury, desperation danced in her eyes. “I don’t want this either. It’s so… so humiliating to beg an alpha I barely know for sex. But it hurts. Please, it hurts.”
The flash of pity I had felt for her last night returned. There was nothing but honesty in her gaze. Honesty and agony.
Shit.
She was further into her heat than I had thought. Most omegas in her situation would have stripped bare and attempted to pleasure themselves to alleviate the discomfort until an alpha could tend to them, and she hadn’t yet. I had mistakenly assumed she was still in the early stages, that the process was dragging out.
She was not.
Her pupils were blown wide, her hands trembling as she placed them on my knees. “Please. I’ll do anything. Anything, Alpha.”
Alpha.
Though I knew little of Annabel, I did know that she was a proud woman, independent, and strong. The way she handled herself around alphas, even her own mates, it was obvious she would never fall into the submissive omega role.
Except now she was kneeling prettily in front of me, calling me Alpha as she pleaded for my help.
How humbling, how humiliating it must be for a woman like her to be rendered so helpless by her own biology.
“Annabel,” I said, softer than I had ever addressed her before. “I cannot.”
“Why?” It was a pitiful moan.