Vengeful Bonds, page 41
“Fine?” Seth echoed.
Saint caressed his cheek. “It’s clear I can’t trust you to stay put. Now, you have no choice.”
“What?” Seth gasped even though he’d heard him just fine.
Saint gave him a patient smile that made him look insane given the glint in his unfocused gaze. “You have no idea how you smell right now, do you?” he muttered, agitation rolling off him in waves. “Every alpha in this house can smell how fertile you are. They all want to fuck you. I can’t trust that you won’t do something stupid, that they won’t do something stupid.”
“Saint—”
“Don’t worry,” he cooed, petting Seth’s hair off his forehead. “You don’t need them. You have me. I’ll give you what you need.”
“What I need?”
“Our pups. That’s what you want, right? Our baby. My baby. I’ll knot you over and over until it takes. No matter how long it takes. And you’ll just lie there and be good for me. Right? You can do that. Right, little one? You’re always so good for me.”
Was Seth dreaming? Was he caught in some kind of nightmare? No. This was happening. But it was fine. They had protocols in place for that reason.
“Don’t forget…I-I have to check in with the others or they’ll think there’s something wrong.” He gave his mate what he hoped looked like a genuine smile. “Remember?”
The smile Saint gave him in return was like an anvil in Seth’s stomach. “I already did.”
“Did what?”
Saint gave him a look like he was silly. “I checked in with Fen. I told him I was fine…well, that you were fine.”
Seth frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I used your phone to text him…to let him know you were perfectly fine.” He leaned in close and kissed his lips. “And you are…right?” Seth started to shake as the warmth bled from his mate’s eyes, replaced by a darkness he didn’t think him capable of. “Right?” he ground out.
Seth gave a stilted nod. “Y-Yeah, of course, baby. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Saint’s smile returned. “That’s what I thought. Are you hungry?”
Seth would rather swallow broken glass than eat. “Sure,” he said faintly. “Starving.”
Questions swirled in Seth’s head as he watched Saint go to the bag with their provisions. Was this the drug? Was this Saint gone feral? Had some combination of the two Frankenstein’d Seth’s perfect alpha into a fucking monster? More importantly…
What the fuck was he supposed to do about it?
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NOLAH HARKER lives in North Carolina with her daughter, her daughter-in-law, son-in-law, and a menagerie of animals, both good and evil. Harker splits her time between writing M/M romance and mainlining dangerous levels of caffeine and attempting to maintain her ever-slipping sanity.
When not at her desk, you can find her whining about how much writing she has to do while avoiding said writing by binge-watching unhealthy amounts of television and doom scrolling on social media. She loves true crime documentaries, anti-heroes, and writing kinky, snarky books about morally gray men who fall in love with other men.
NOLAH HARKER is the pen name of M/M romance author ONLEY JAMES.
Find her online at:
WWW.ONLEYJAMES.COM
Onley James, Vengeful Bonds
