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But Sheppard slung an arm over my shoulders and waved him off. “We’re on our way. My omega needs to keep up his strength.”

Before I could summon any reaction at all, he was gone and I was flush against my alpha’s body. His cock was a firm bulge against my lower belly. “Unless you’d rather I lock the door now?”

I struggled to get free, my cheeks flaming, but he tightened his grip. “They think I’m exhausted from having sex with you all night?”

Sheppard’s grin stretched wide. “Yep.” “And so the whole time I was asleep…” “Snoring.” He chuckled.

“Oh my gods tell me no. I never snore, and in front of your betas, I…I want to die.”

He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “You weren’t snoring. I was

teasing. But you were out like a light, and I was taking a fair amount of teasing for wearing you out.” His hands slid down my back to cup my ass cheeks and bring me tighter against him. My cock, despite my utter mortification, pressed into the zipper of my jeans, seeking freedom.

“I can’t believe I embarrassed you like that.” Day one as the alpha’s omega…shot to hell because I had to take a nappy poo. “I’ll tell them the truth, okay? I’ll stand up at lunch and tell them all I was just a little tired from the excitement lately and apologize for my rudeness in falling asleep.”

A sharp smack on my left butt cheek sent me up on tiptoe. “Don’t you do that unless you want to spend the afternoon over my lap getting a lot more of these.”

“Wh-why not? I don’t want them to think you…you…”

“You don’t want them to think I made love to you all night and left you too tired to keep your eyes open?”

“Well no, of course not, I —”

He ground into me, and my knees went weak. “Think, omega.”

“I can’t with your cock distracting me.” He didn’t take the hint, and I wondered what he’d do if I dropped to my knees and unzipped him then took it in my mouth and—

“Okay.” He stepped back, and I wobbled until he steadied me, holding my arms, but the foot or so between us felt like a chasm. “Then let me help you out. My betas just headed for the dining room to tell everyone there that the alpha is a stud who is able to fuck all night and work all day.”

Gaping again. “And…that’s good.”

He gave me a hug. “Well, let’s try that tonight, and you tell me.”

We strolled into the dining room with his arm over my shoulders again, something I could get very happily used to. My lips were swollen from the kiss he’d planted on them before guiding me out of the room, and my mind was swollen from ideas about him fucking me all night.

Tonight. Holy hell. Maybe I needed an afternoon nap as well. Fortunately or unfortunately, after watching my alpha eat a hearty lunch that no doubt added to the idea he’d been burning a lot of energy, and after he ordered me in the sexiest of ways to eat mine to keep up my strength, we returned to his office for an afternoon session of planning that I did have a part in.

“Omega, pull up a chair because we are going to discuss the evening plans of some of the other pack members to visit that other bar. I would like to hear your ideas about how we can ensure not only that we nip it in the bud, but that we make them far less enthusiastic about defying me and shaming their pack in the townships around here.”

I didn’t think I could offer much help, but he asked me some questions about my previous pack and how discipline worked or didn’t and before I knew it, the afternoon was gone, the plan was in place, dinner hour passed, and it was time to put the alpha’s ideas, and those of the rest of us, into play.

Me? I went to take a long bath and a short nap, since he refused to take me with him.

Chapter Twenty-One

Sheppard

I knew better than to go into the bar in the next town with guns blazing while the omegas were there. So, the plan we’d come up with was to intercept them before they could do much damage. Toklo had told me they were betting on the fact that the bar owner was human, but what they didn’t know was he was only half human. And while his shifter family wasn’t part of the pack, still, he saw me coming from a mile away.

I’d known his father, and, as one of the alphas around here, it was my job to keep tabs.

“Sheppard.” He nodded a bit, not a full baring of the neck, but something close. I’d just come in the door with Ren and Holt and looked around the place, hoping we weren’t too late.

We weren’t. There wasn’t a member of my pack in sight, but I knew from the tips from both Fred and Toklo that they would be here soon.

“Pope, we’re gonna take a seat over there in the corner.”

“Good deal,” he said and continued to wipe down clean glasses with a white towel while another one was slung over his shoulder. “What can I get you?”

“Snakebites all around,” I called back as the three of us made our way to the booth that sat below a single lamp that waved a little with the fan’s moving the air.

We slid into the booth, and Holt crossed his arms over his chest. “What time are they supposed to be here?”

I checked my watch. “Any minute now. But knowing them, they’ll be late, even to their own night out.”

Ren shifted in his seat. “All that will change soon…with the pack omega.

Things are changing. There’s already talk.”

“Talk?” I leaned forward while Pope slid three small glasses onto the table, each one capped with a lime wedge. I didn’t drink much, but since we were using this man’s place of business for pack business of sorts, I didn’t want to leave a sour taste in his mouth, like these drinks would.

Pope left without a word and went back behind the bar.

“Yeah, Mom is already talking about the attitudes calming down. It’s like everyone in the pack had restless leg syndrome all the fucking time, then Toklo came in, and now that he’s mated to you, there’s peace and rest. It’s weird how our animals need two instead of one to be okay.”

“What about you?” I asked Holt, but all of us kept our stares on the door. I elbowed him to let him know I was talking to him.

“Well, I’m the genius who got him here, so yeah, I’m good.” He stayed still with a smug grin on his face as I growled. But then all three of us cracked up. It was hard to be grouchy with my omega waiting for me.

“The most fucked-up way to find an omega in the history of shifters, I

might add. But I’m grateful. I know I came down hard on you for what you did, but damn, he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Holt held up his hands. “See? You’re a big ole softy already.”

I shoved his shoulder then took a bracing sip of my strong drink when the door to the bar opened. The wind brought in their scents, the same ones that flowed through our pack lands.

My pack was here.

I couldn’t fucking wait for them to see us.

The door whooshed closed behind them, and, as a group, they were approaching the bar when every one of their gazes landed on us and stuck.

I leaned back and waited to see what they would do. It was one thing that they had planned to disobey me, but to openly defy me in public? Well, that would be a whole other issue.

The one in front, Derrick, kept my gaze a little longer than I’d expected, but eventually dropped his eyes toward the floor and said something over his shoulder. The rest of them nodded, turned on their heels, and were out of the bar before Pope could dry another glass.

“That was less dramatic than I’d expected,” I mused.

Holt and Ren’s hackles were still up, brows tense and shoulders rigid. “Calm down, boys. Show’s over. Damn, you two need omegas like mine.”

Not that there were any others like mine. Toklo was a one of a kind.

I looked away, hiding my grin, knowing they were probably shooting me the most fierce stink eye they could muster.

“Let’s get out of here. I have an omega to tend to.” I downed my drink in one swallow. We got out of the booth and I slapped three hundreds on the bar in front of Pope. “This should make up for some of the business I took from you tonight.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Shep.”

I left the others to park the car and took the stairs two at a time, eager as fuck to get to my mate. From the hallway, I smelled lavender and honey in the air and heard the soft sound of water swishing. He was still taking a bath. He must be pruney by now.

“I thought you were taking a bath and then a nap,” I called as I stepped inside our bedroom and pulled off my shoes before shutting the door and locking it just in case. I shucked my shirt and laid it over the chair that already held a week’s worth of my shirts.

I received no answer, so I went into the bathroom and pushed the door open all the way. What I found there took the breath from my lungs. Toklo lay in the tub, his head against the porcelain rim, and his eyes were closed. He was asleep.

Again.

It was my fault, too. He came here for me, and what did I do? I put him on the hardest labor possible like a big overbearing oaf. Then yanked him off it and propped him in my office to try to figure out all the things I did, which were

mind numbing most days.

I knelt next to the tub and reached between his feet to pull the plug. Not even the glugs of the water draining roused him.

When the last of the water swirled away, I surveyed his body. He was thin, but what he lacked in bulk, he made up for in raw, chiseled muscle. I lifted him from the tub and dried him off the best I could before putting him into our bed. I’d just covered him with a sheet when he reached out and grabbed on to my wrist.

“Sheppard,” he said, and my knees almost gave out. He could break me with one word. Everything in me was attached to him, and each day the threads got thicker.

“Yes, omega mine?” I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled my fingers along his scalp as he closed his eyes again.

“I need you tonight. Don’t make me wait,” he whispered, but the closed lids of his eyes caused me to think otherwise.

“You’re exhausted, omega.”

He smiled. “You smell like whiskey and lime. Do I need to ask?”

“You can ask anything you want. I had one drink. Thought it was polite since I used Pope’s bar for pack business.”

He nodded. “You’re not going to mate me tonight, are you?” I hated the desperation in his voice, but the alpha, his alpha inside me, was currently putting his needs before my own. His exhaustion was even seeping into my bones and it preceded anything else.

“You need to rest. I want you at full strength when I mate you and mark you.”

And then he completely broke me in half as a lone tear fell from each eye and onto the pillow behind his head. “Okay.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you. You know that. I’ve shown you.” “Then come snuggle me when I sleep. I missed you tonight.”

I pulled my jeans and boxers off while he scooted over to make room for me. His skin was chilled since the water in his bath had gone cold, and as I spooned my warmer one against his, he shivered.

“Toklo, you’ve changed my life, and tomorrow, I’m going to show you how much that means to me.”

But as I whispered the sentiment, he sank into the soft breaths of sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Toklo

From deep in dreams, I slowly surfaced into the moonglow of our room. It was ours, wasn’t it? Not just the alpha’s.

I lay in his arms, his front spooned against my back, and although he was relaxed, clearly in deep sleep, one part of him was nudged in my crack and ready to go at the least suggestion.

Testing that, I wiggled my butt, very, very slightly, and he went from semi to a long, hard weapon poking me. I stilled, but the low chuckle over my shoulder let me know I wasn’t the only one awake.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you,” I murmured, squeezing my eyes closed as if I was pretending to be asleep. I don’t know why.

“Does that feel like you’re bothering me?” He grazed his lips over the side of my neck.

“No?”

The arm wrapped around my waist tugged me backward, closer to him, and his cock nestled deeper and closer to my hole. “No. Not bothered—well, maybe hot and bothered. But you need your rest, omega.”

“I-umm, I didn’t get a chance to ask you how it went at the bar.”

He palmed my belly, moving lower until he was right above my cock, the tip a whisper away. “It went fine. Just as we discussed. Holt and Ren and I sat and had a drink, and when the miscreants showed up, they took one look, turned, and left.”

Despite my cock scraping the sheets in its rigidity, I laughed. “I’d have paid to see that.”

“You may be able to. Both the betas had their phone out, and I think at least one filmed the action.” He shifted his hips back then forward again, the tip bumping my slick opening. “Do you really want to talk about this now?” He closed his fist over my jutting cock. “Because if you do, I’ll lose faith in my sex appeal.”

“No. I don’t want to talk about the others. I want to do the other thing we discussed.”

“You want me to fuck you all night long?”

I let out a groan and rocked my hips forward, desperate for him to stroke me with that fist. “Yeah, that.”

Sheppard nibbled on the side of my neck. “And mark you?” “Do you want to…do you want me forever?”

He scraped his teeth, not marking permanently, but it would leave a red mark. “My bear believes you are my mate. I’m inclined to agree with him.”

“Oh okay.” He sounded so serious, as if it were an accomplished thing and not something with emotional background. Could I survive that? A relationship fated but without heart? “I guess that’s all right, then.”

He released my dick and spun me to face him so fast I reeled back, shocked.

“Okay? It’s all right? You’re doing nothing for my ego. Omega, if you don’t want me with your whole heart, I understand. I’ve never felt a connection like I do with you. When we’re apart, I have a hard time focusing on whatever I’m doing. Why do you think I want you in the office all day?”

“To help you in any way I can?”

He studied my face, searching for I knew not what. “Well, I do want your help. You’ve proven yourself a hard worker, avoider of drama—which can’t be easy sometimes around here—and you put the pack’s needs first. I’ve seen it in the short time you’ve been here.”

I opened my mouth to say something else, but he continued.

“You’re not only my missing piece, but that of the entire pack. Now I understand how that works because I’ve seen it for myself. Before you arrived, we were a mess. Nothing working as it should. It’s almost magical, the way things came together.”

“A missing piece?” I still wasn’t clear how much that related to having an actual relationship. So his having a mate was good for the pack. I wanted that for them all.

“My missing piece, remember. Omega, you bring me happiness and peace of mind.”

“Wow.” I rested my hand on his chest. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but when you aren’t nearby, I feel the lack. Like an ache deep in my heart.”

“That’s it, omega.” His smile was bright in the moonlight, white in his tanned face. “I am not good with expressing emotions. But I’m trying.”

“I love you, too, alpha.” I tipped my face upward, and he kissed me, lips caressing mine with passion that left no doubt that he shared my love. I’d come here looking for a new home, hoping the app’s promise of such a strong match might prove true, might give me more than just a place to live. But as he rolled me onto my back and pressed my knees to my chest, I knew we lacked only that physical joining to make us one.

He tested my slick and moaned into my mouth. I was ready for him, desperate for him. He guided his cock to my opening and broke our kiss long enough to murmur, “Grab your cock, omega, so we can ride this wave together.”

When I did as he asked, I thought I’d come on the first stroke and had to stop to gather my senses. Because he was penetrating me, filling me, plunging so deep, I hadn’t even known it was possible. His kisses on my lips, his cock in my body, formed a circle of energy that drove me nearly out of my mind with desire. Retreating and driving in again and again, he carried me with him, murmuring words that he hadn’t been able to before, words of love and promises

of a life together so much better than I’d ever dreamed of.

Finally, I dared move my hand a little, and on the third stroke, or maybe the fifth, I spurted my cum all over his chest and mine. His orgasm was right behind, the hot fluid pouring into me. I broke our kiss to breathe, to cry out his name, writhing under him.

His knot swelled at the exact moment he bit where my neck and shoulder

met, marking me as his, making me his omega in truth.

Binding us together forever.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sheppard.

“I need to talk to you,” Toklo said, coming out from brushing his teeth. He was shirtless, and his dark-washed jeans hung low on his hips, revealing that delicious V I’d had my mouth on more times than I could count.

“Then talk, my love.” I lifted my head to smile at him while putting on my socks but stopped when he didn’t continue.

He leaned against the wall and worked his lips between his teeth. He swallowed audibly while I watched his Adam’s apple bob. “I think I might be pregnant.”

The shoe in my hand clunked on the floor after I dropped it.

“How do you know? Have you been sick? Are you not feeling well? We’ve only been together a couple of months…”

He held out his hand. “Sheppard, settle, please.”

My bear and I immediately calmed, but worry still hovered. “Tell me, omega mine.”

He came to sit next to me and my heart fluttered. Could it be true? “Would you trust my word if I said that somehow I just knew?”

I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “I would believe you no matter what. But…we need to see a doctor. I mean, I don’t… I’ve been waiting… Shit. I can’t even say the words.”

He smiled softly. “I know. I’ve wished for it, too. Do you have time today to come with me to the doctor? I made the appointment yesterday. They were hesitant since I’m not very far along, but I insisted.”

“You don’t even have to ask. I would drop everything for you.”

“I know. The appointment is late morning. We’d have to leave soon after breakfast.”

I got up and pulled him to stand. “Then what are we waiting for? I’m all kinds of anxious to find out now.”

I began to walk toward the door, but Toklo cracked up. “Um, Shep?” He pointed at my feet.

“Oh, shoes. Right.” I jogged around, putting on my other shoe while he laughed at me.

My knee bounced while we waited for the nurse to call us, but my mate was calm as could be.

“Toklo Chase,” the nurse finally called coming out of the back.

“Here,” he called back, and I realized how troubling it was to me that we hadn’t gone through the mating ceremony and that he didn’t carry my last name. He reached for my hand, and as we walked through, they questioned his weight and height and other mundane things.

“Since you are so early along, we are going to do the urine test along with a blood test. We have an in-house lab, so it won’t take long. After that, we can

decide how to proceed.”

Toklo rolled up his sleeve and the nurse took a sample, and then he followed her into the restroom and she waited outside while presumably he peed on a stick.

“We’ll find out soon,” he whispered, trying to calm me even though I believed that was my job in this moment. He leaned into my side, and we stayed in silence until the nurse came back in.

“Told you it would be quick,” she quipped with a smile on her face. “And congratulations are in order, you two. You’re about five weeks along, so we want you to come in at twelve weeks and have an ultrasound and let us check the heartbeat. But until then, be happy, you’re going to be fathers.”

I pulled him into my embrace as the nurse left the room and told us she would call with the appointment time.

“You’ve made me the happiest man on the planet,” I whispered into his ear and kissed his forehead.

He pulled back with tears in his eyes. “We can’t tell anyone yet. It’s too soon.”

I felt my brow draw down. “What? Why? I want to shout it to everyone.

You’re having my babe. We’re a family now.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “But there’s still a chance of miscarriage. What if we get our hopes up and something happens?”

“You’re really afraid of this?” I cupped his face. “I am. Let’s just wait, please.”

I nodded in agreement, but when we got home, I went against my word to my mate. My pack was already gathered. Someone in the doctor’s office had leaked the information that we were there, and I couldn’t deny the expectations on their faces. I looked to Toklo, and he sighed. “Go ahead.”

Sweet omega, worried about nothing.

“Pack brothers and sisters, we have an announcement. My mate is expecting our child in about seven and a half months. Our pack is growing!”

But when I looked at Toklo, I knew his smile was surface deep. He was truly distressed, and gods help me I had no clue how to help him.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Toklo

I’d never been so sick in my entire life.

The doctor insisted I’d start feeling better by week twelve, but here we were, and I’d lost fifteen pounds and was still throwing up so often, it was all I could do to hold down crackers and ginger ale most days. None of this could be good for the baby, but I’d tried everything suggested by the doctor, the nurses, pack members who had been through this, and every link on the Internet that seemed at all sensible.

Ginger…might have worked, but in any form other than ginger ale it was too strong a scent and only made me feel worse. I tried eating small meals more often, but that just made me sick more often. I hid my vitamins for a couple of days before Shep caught me. They were just overwhelming to my senses.

As the days went by, I began to believe something was terribly wrong with the fetus. I didn’t say anything to Shep, but I saw him watching me worriedly. And that was why I didn’t want to tell him anything—the alpha had a whole pack to run. I didn’t want to be a burden to him. But as I got no better, all I could think of was the number of babies our pack back home had lost. Miscarriage was almost more common than successful live birth there.

The doctor didn’t seem worried as long as I wasn’t dehydrated, and I tried really hard not to let that happen. But when Shep found me semi-conscious on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, he wrapped me up in a blanket and carried me down to his car. I was sobbing and shivering and trying to tell him I’d failed.

“I didn’t stay hydrated,” I told him, unsure if my words were even coherent. “It’s my genetics. My old pack, so many pregnancies ended in miscarriage or still birth. I should have told you, but I thought…I hoped…”

“Omega mine, you’re overthinking this.” He belted me into the passenger seat with the blanket wrapped around me. “Just sit for one minute while I grab you a shirt.” Because I was going to the hospital in just a pair of shorts.

“Shoes!” I called after him in a voice I hoped would carry but was probably just a whisper. “I need shoes.”

Next thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm and a nurse fussing around me. I struggled to sit up, but she had no problem keeping me prone.

“Mr. Chase, don’t make me restrain you. You need to lie still a while longer after what you’ve been though.”

Horror settled deep in my bones, and I sagged in her grip. “No need to handcuff me to the headboard. I won’t fight you.” What did I have to fight for anymore?

She reeled back, eyes wide. “Handcuff you to the—”

Sheppard came running in the door, carrying a sandwich in a plastic box and a can of cola. “Toklo, are you still out of it? Nobody is going to handcuff anyone to a headboard. This isn’t that kind of hospital.” My voice must have

carried farther than I’d thought. “Didn’t the doc say he’d be better now that his levels are back to normal, Nurse?”

Normal levels: i.e. no pregnancy hormones. No wonder I felt different.

At the confirmation, I began to sob, tears flowing down my cheeks in a deluge.

Sheppard dropped his lunch on the stand beside the bed and grabbed my hand that wasn’t tethered to the IV. “Stop crying, omega. You’ll make yourself sick—dehydrate yourself again with all the tears.” He patted my fingers and brushed away some of the wetness on my cheeks. “Please, stop crying.”

While this went on, the nurse had stepped out. Not that I noticed her leaving through my blurry, soggy vision, but by the time she came back in, accompanied by a doctor, Shep had calmed me down enough to at least see clearly.

“So, what’s all this going on here, Mr. Chase?” The doctor, whose nametag read Sam Rashid, and whose salt-and-pepper hair held enough indication of age to make him seem like he had a lot of confidence-inducing experience, crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you have pain? Nausea? Dizziness?” He had a faint accent that, in ordinary circumstances, would have intrigued me enough to ask where he was from and lots of questions about his home country. I loved meeting people from other places.

But not today. Not with grief in every cell of my ineffective failure of a body.

I closed my eyes and tried to take internal stock. No pain, no dizziness, and the reason I felt different was the nausea of the past several weeks had completely abated. “None of that,” I said sadly. “But I guess it’s to be expected.” “Right.” He tapped busily on his tablet. “At least it was to be hoped for.