Faith & the Dead End Devils (Sweet Omegaverse, #8)(100)

"Tell me."

"I want to make it so you can never get rid of my scent in your bed," she whispered. "I want it so the next time you leave my nest, you come back here and you're still surrounded by me."

I stared at her, holding my breath, tying my own tongue to keep words I wasn't ready to commit to from falling from my lips. I gripped my length, squeezed my knot once, and then guided myself into her, just poised at her entrance.

"You want me obsessed with you, don't you, princess?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Say it."

"I want you obsessed with me. Thinking about me. Wanting me," she said, voice a little hoarse, face trying to hide in the bed.

"Look at me."

She turned her head, gaze wary.

"You've already won, princess," I said. Her eyes widened and then I thrust in to the hilt, my knot barely resisting. Her expression went slack for a moment and then tightened, a kind of tortured relief written in tense lines. Her eyes fell shut and mine followed suit as she bit at my knot, squeezing around me with an immediate release.

It was easier like this, blind to her beauty, pretending the pleasure was selfish, knowing I would give in to her every demand but one—at least for today. Resisting her was a series of battles won or lost one day at a time. Her score far outweighed mine, and I wasn't sure whether or not I was looking forward to the final surrender.





Bear's gaze was wary as he sat across my desk from me.

"You should get up to the nest," I said, going over the list once more. All the phone calls that needed to be made, all the new promises to offer, the favors to call in.

"Promised her I wouldn't leave you in your office all night," Bear said.

I smiled one second, grimaced the next. I was fucking tired. The party had gone late. In spite of spending most of the day fucking Faith in my bed, it'd been torture to avoid her in the crowd, to play dutiful king to the club rather than desperate supplicant to my princess.

"You know you're going to win the case, right?" Bear asked.

I blinked, lifting my head slowly as if it weighed a hundred pounds. It felt like it did these days.

"Sure, some of the guys are wobbling. They've had Rider in their ear more than you lately, and maybe you've faltered. But this club wants to follow you. You just have to renew their faith a bit," he said.

I flinched at her name, just the word.

"Good to hear," I said, the lie thick on my tongue.

Bear nodded, his hands resting on his stomach, body slouched in the chair. "You can squash Rider's temper tantrum, Prez."

I cleared my throat, nodded.

"Do you want to?"

The club was eerily silent. I'd made sure the alcohol was supplied liberally and brought back some of the girls we'd been missing—the easiest way to soothe rising tempers. Everyone was sleeping the party off now but me and Bear.

"Do I want to?" I asked, frowning.

"Do you want to win the case?" Bear asked. "Do you want to keep the crown?"

I don't know, I thought immediately.

I could tell Bear to fuck off, or go back to the nest with him, or go back to my now decadently perfumed room and probably fuck my fist just like Faith would've wanted. I could tell him the truth: that the likely cost of the crown was starting to feel too high to pay.

"You come from a pack?" I asked instead.

Bear shrugged and nodded.

"My parents were betas. I assumed I would be too, till puberty hit. But I knew the world they saw, the one built for packs. My dad bitched about the slack betas picked up for alphas and omegas. He took that resentment out on my mom. And I think she resented just being…left outside of that world too," I said. "I knew she did. She resented me, my dad, her life. I never understood why they acted like they couldn't build themselves something just as good as a pack. Why we had to be lesser-than."

"So you rebuilt the Devils," Bear said.

I nodded. "I meant for it to be as good as a pack—stronger than one, even. I thought it was, but I…went wrong somewhere."

"You didn't go wrong," Bear said. "You just don't understand that pack is more than omega and alphas and heats. I mean…I'm gonna be honest with you, King. The Devils are a pack, except we just don't say so. And there's probably too many alphas for good balance."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it doesn't take bondmarks to make a pack. We were a unit. We supported one another. The community keeps all of us alphas from going feral." Bear shrugged. "It was sort of a cold, toxic-masculinity version of a pack. It's gotten worse since Rider talked you into that big prospect crew a few years back." I glared at Bear, and he shifted and sat up, combing his hair back with thick fingers. "Right, so historically, like centuries ago, packs would grow steadily, add in more and more alphas to help protect the omega, until eventually tensions rose and they would split. Over time, omegas have become more common—still rare, but less impossibly so. Now packs tend to stay small."

"How do you know all this?"

"Pack history stuff gets passed down," Bear said. "You're what would be considered a new line, or a latent line, if there were alphas further back in your family tree. Your parents were right about the way our world is skewed, but that has more to do with alpha prevalence in leadership than it does with pack dynamics. A pack is just a family, whether it has bonds yet or not. I didn't stay here with the Devils because I wanted a life outside of a pack. I chose you as a kind of…pack leader."