“You hate him!” he shouted, shaking me again hard enough to make my teeth clatter. “He took advantage of you while you were out of your mind with heat! But fine—if that’s how you need it, that’s how you’re getting it!”
Roughly he threw me on the bed. I landed on my stomach, and before I managed to turn back around, he was on me.
The heavy press of his body kept me pinned to the mattress despite how frantically I fought to free myself. That undeniable tingle of excitement I’d come to know too well since Modi first took me crawled up my hamstrings and mixed with my anger.
Panting grunts in my ear had my heart pounding against my ribs and my ass arching up in invitation without my consent. He reached down to open his jeans, followed by the instant press of his hard alpha cock nestling in against my lips.
“No!” My protest was breathy, unconvincing even to my own ears. That aching tug behind my ribs thrashed in protest, but my body was still under the thrall of my heat. Mindlessly I spread my legs wider for the alpha whose mere presence promised to sate me.
“Yes!” Bjarni hissed, followed by a blazing stretch between my thighs that took my breath away. My pussy swallowed his cock with little resistance, my channel slick and eager, and he bottomed out inside of me with a pleasure-roughened groan.
“Gods! Annabel!” Despite the note of elation, of worship in his shout, Bjarni didn’t pause to savor me this time. Where he’d been gentle and generous before, now…
Now he was anything but.
He grabbed my hips covered in finger-shaped bruises, the ache of being filled blending with the soreness in my exhausted body as he used his full strength to yank me down on his cock over and over again.
“This is how you like it, omega? Forced?” he gritted between harsh pants, thrusting his hips so hard and fast I couldn’t even breathe to scream.
“You’ve been mine since you were born—mine. I’ve been patient, Annabel. So. Fucking. Patient. No more. I’m done. Done! From now on, you take my cock whenever I shove it into your pretty little cunt. You take it, and if you don’t like it, I don’t give a shit! You hear me? This is how you want your alpha to treat you? Then by the fucking gods, this is how I’ll treat you!”
He was everywhere, filling me up and caging me in, his aggression painful and exactly what I craved on the most primal of levels. I cried for my injured mate, shrieked like I had for Modi before he'd claimed me and eased the thrashing bonds protesting the mounting from an alpha who wasn’t mine.
Before, both with Bjarni and Modi, I’d been able to suffer through the wrongness of submitting to a man who wasn’t my mate, knowing deep down it was the only way. But now, with Modi injured on the floor?
Surrendering my weeping core was still bliss—and it was torture.
Bjarni didn’t give me a chance to fight my heat and come to Modi’s aid. He kept me in place on my hands and knees, fucking me ever rougher no matter how much I screamed and cursed him.
In a way, I was grateful. My bonds may have protested at my submission, but this time it wasn’t my choice—and in the end, all there was left for me to do was surrender my body and let Bjarni rut me through my heat.
His knot came with little warning.
One minute I was coming for the umpteenth time, my channel so oversexed it was more agony than bliss, and the next he roared like a wounded beast, the bottom of his already thick member swelling hard.
I whimpered but stayed put, tightening my fingers in the already shredded bedding, lost on endorphins and my traitorous body’s need for that unyielding tie.
“Mine!” Bjarni clamped his teeth around my nape, tearing into my skin and ripping the sore flesh still scabbed from Modi’s claim.
I shrieked, instincts making me fight it until his strong jaw dug into the pressure points meant to keep an omega compliant.
I collapsed onto the bed, my body boneless and my breathing haggard. It hurt worse than any of my previous claims, his bite half-covering the still-fresh wound from Modi’s.
“Bjarni.” My throat was too tight to produce more than a hoarse croak. “Bjarni.”
Ancient biology, older than humans—older than gods—penetrated my cells with every frantic pulse of my blood, forever altering my essence, my very DNA. His name turned sweet on my tongue as emotions that weren’t my own flooded my system, bathing me in bone-deep satisfaction and raw ecstasy.
The giant alpha kept my neck locked in the grip of his jaw until his thick cock had deposited every drop of his seed deep in my body, thumbing my clit to wring another orgasm from my exhausted pussy.
Only when he had no more left to give did he release my neck and slide his hand from my clit to my hip. He peppered my shoulders with kisses, his beard tickling my skin as he murmured my name over and over.
Pleasure sang in my mind and in my chest, a sharp contrast to the unpleasant throb where Modi’s bond was anchored. Behind that was the constant anguish from the mate bonds tying me to the men I'd left in Valhalla.
“Annabel.” It was a soft rumble—so intimate it clutched at my quivering heart.
Love, raw and pure, welled up from that fresh bond dug deep into my chest.
Love.
Bjarni loved me, and as I lay tied to him by his knot and this new bond, there was nothing either of us could do to hide that fact.
This was how a mating bond was supposed to work, only instead of elation, instead of comfort, his love only brought into sharp, agonizing distinction how my three other claimings had been nothing like this. How even in the arms of a man who loved me, I’d never be whole again.
I sobbed before I could stop myself, sorrow and hurt drowning out the pleasure of Bjarni’s embrace.
“Annabel? Annabel!” Shock colored my alpha’s voice and throbbed in our bond. He wound his arms underneath me, pulling me in tight against his chest. “Shh, please, don’t cry. Please, please, don’t cry.”
And then… then our bond flooded with the worst sensation of them all: regret.
“I’m sorry. Sweetie, I’m so, so sorry,” he whispered, voice trembling against my ear. “Oh, gods, what have I done?”
Nineteen
Modi
I was pulled from unconsciousness by the most unpleasant yank from something tender and unyielding anchored in my chest.
Groaning, I fought gravity to force my eyelids open. My vision was blurry and took a moment to refocus.
I stared up into a cracked ceiling, and I was lying on some form of hard surface.
A floor, Modi. If you’re staring at a ceiling, it’s probably a floor.
My nose throbbed, as did the rest of my head, and I groaned again, wanting nothing more than to sink back into sweet oblivion.
A woman's sobbing broke through the low hum in my ears, pushing away any and all thoughts of passing out as that awful thing in my chest spasmed again, shooting a bolt of adrenaline right to my brain.
“Annabel, please, please stop crying.” A male voice laced with desperation mixed with the sobs.
Bjarni.
I bolted upright, cursing my vision momentarily blurred again. When it faded, my heart skipped several beats.
On the bed only a few feet from where I sat, Bjarni lay curled on top of a stained mattress as if he was protecting something precious. Or someone.