They brought Damian and me to a house somewhere in Vegas and hustled me inside under the cover of darkness.

“Down here,” Oscar said, leading us to a door at the back. Damian nodded to the human sitting in the kitchen and only then did I notice the one standing casually in the door to the living room, like he’d been there the whole time. It kind of spooked me, but Damian seemed to know him as well and I realized this was the team he worked with, which led to the realization that these were the humans who, three days earlier, were going to take him out into the desert and shoot him. I filed that information away to think about later, because it was just a little too big to handle now.

The door opened onto a set of stairs, at the bottom of which was another door and an apartment, one with no windows and gray concrete for walls.

“Safe house,” Damian explained. “Super safe, super soundproofed. No one will know we’re here, but you can’t leave until you’ve had the pup.”

“Yeah, I get that.” I wandered away to explore this place I would be living in until we’d had our baby. It was long and narrow, the door giving onto the living room, which blended seamlessly into a rough kitchen with a mismatched dining set pulling double duty as a place to eat and a countertop to work on. The bedroom door was right across from the kitchen sink, with a bathroom just beyond it and then another room with computers and screens and racks of shelves filled with cryptically labeled boxes.

I heard the bathroom door close and turned to find that Damian had followed me down the hall. “Just Oscar, cleaning up,” he said, reading my thoughts.

I nodded. “What was that, out at the cars?”

He shrugged. “Something to do with Oscar’s part in the program I’m with, and coming into the Alpha’s squad to poach shifters. I don’t think the Alpha approves of this,” he explained, with a wave of his hand that took in everything—the house, the men upstairs, the smell of weapons that filled the air.

“Ah.” I moved past him to look in the cupboards. Practically bare.

“Make a list,” Damian said. “I’ll go for groceries.”

“It’s almost curfew,” I said.

He reached out and pulled the tabs off my collar. “You won’t need these anymore. And curfew doesn’t exist for us now.”

Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Somehow that seemed a bigger thing to get used to than everything else that had happened.

Damian dug around in a drawer and handed me a small notebook and a pencil. “Whatever you want.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “This isn’t the enclave.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the bathroom door, then pulled me close. “I swear that nothing bad will happen to you. On my life and on my mother’s ashes. I made Oscar swear too and I believe he means it.”

I didn’t say it, but I couldn’t help thinking that it didn’t matter if we believed him, only if Oscar could be trusted.

He laughed at me, a sudden happy sound. “Your face…” He shook his head, then cupped my face in his hands. “Will you trust me on this? I know I fucked it up pretty badly with you, but I knew what he was going to do each step of the way. I just…” He shook his head. “Without pack—without you—I didn’t care enough to try that hard to stay alive.”

I leaned against him and raised my mouth for a kiss. He gave me one, and for some reason, my heart gave a funny skip and jump, like it had just realized Damian was mine. “Fine. But if you want to keep him safe from me, then you need to keep him in line.”

“Ha,” he said, and chased my mouth with his. “I don’t know. I kind of enjoy watching you two spar with each other. Breaks the monotony, you know?”

“God, Damian, you really are a sucker for punishment, aren’t you?” Oscar said from the bathroom door. “Thought you guys kept your omegas under your thumbs. Or paws. Whatever.”

I snorted. “Maybe in Montana Border. But he brought home a Nevada Ashes boy. It’s a totally different wolf.”

“So I’ve been informed,” Oscar said, waving his phone about. “Quin just gave me the same warning. Like I didn’t figure that out in the whorehouse.”

I don’t know what Damian saw in my face, but he spun me around and pointed me at the cupboards. “List, now. You,” he pointed at Oscar. “Either go upstairs or stop poking the omega.”

“You do realize I’m your superior officer, right?”

“In this, I’m your specialist. Just stop, okay?”

“Okay.” And just like that, Oscar…stopped and wandered off into the living room where I heard the creak of the springs in the old couch as he sat on it, and then the television came on.

“List, Salem,” Damian reminded me.

“Grouch,” I complained, but did as he asked. We’d both be hungry in the morning; I should do something to prepare for that. They were going to let him stay for a while, right? I hadn’t even asked. “I don’t know if this is enough,” I told him as I handed him my hasty estimate of things we needed. “I don’t even know what you like to eat.”

“I can get more later.” He hesitated, then leaned in to kiss me again, as if he couldn’t quite believe he had the right. I’d have to do something about that later, I supposed. “You rest,” he murmured, stroking the hair back away from my face. “I’ll probably be a couple of hours. The guys will leave your stuff down at the bottom of the stairs, but they won’t come in here.”

That was something of a relief. “Do you think I could take a shower?” I asked him. I still felt like a guest in his home, or someone’s home. Not mine, yet.

“Your home,” he reminded me, as if he could read my thought. “You do as you please.” He kissed me again, deeper this time, then pulled back with a sigh. “If I don’t go, I’ll never get back. I’ll try not to be too long.”

I let him go, watching as he punched Oscar in the shoulder and immediately went for the door, with his team leader on his heels. And then I was alone, in this cement box, with a million and one things to do, and no idea where to start.

I had my shower and wrapped my robe around me to go back to the bedroom. It felt colder there without Damian in it, which was strange. It wasn’t like we knew each other at all, but that wasn’t unusual for omegas to mate someone they’d only just met. Maybe it was a little less than usual for Nevada Ashes, but that was because most of the packs held themselves aloof from us to a certain extent.

It was weirdly quiet, like the walls were so thick that the normal noises couldn’t get through them. I’d thought it would be restful, but it felt like the silence itself was pressing on my ears. I dug through my bag and found my phone, plugged it in and set it to play some soft music in the background. As soon as I did, that oppressive stillness disappeared and I was able to breathe again.

The bed wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t up to being a long-term mated bed. I sighed and pounded the pillows into a semblance of comfort and hoped Damian would be back soon. Maybe I should have taken Holland up on his offer to stay there until the baby came. I bet he made sure everyone had good mattresses. He seemed like the type.

I was half-drowsing against the pillows when I heard the door from upstairs open and close, and the soft sound of feet on the stairs. Funny how I already knew what his footsteps sounded like. He dropped some things off in the little kitchen—I heard the bags rustle and the sound of glass clinking, then crept down the hallway toward the bedroom.

“Oh, you’re awake.” He stopped in the doorway, as if afraid to come in.

“Mostly,” I said, and then embarrassed myself with a huge yawn.

“I got some better pillows. I read somewhere that pregnant people like to pack pillows around them. And I found this blanket.” He held up a couple of massive plastic bags, one stuffed full of pillows, the other overflowing with the softest-looking knitted blanket I’d ever seen. “Here.” He held them out at the ends of his fingertips, and I had a sudden hilarious vision of him inching into the bedroom, trying to appease the cranky, pregnant omega monster.

“Thank you,” I said, and reached out to take the bags. “They’re beautiful.”

“The blanket reminded me of your eyes,” he admitted.

I glanced up at that, startled. Was he blushing? He was! Just a little, but he definitely looked like a teenager courting his first omega. “That’s sweet.” I ran my hand over the blanket and sighed. “This will feel wonderful to sleep under.”

“I thought I’d better get started on this mated thing, since I missed the first five months.”

I laughed at him and pulled everything out of the bags to arrange on the bed. But as I worked away at this homely little task, his scent started to fill the room and I remembered that we were technically mated now. Our mating contract was still in that little envelope, tucked carefully in with the rest of our papers. And it hit me in that moment that it was okay for me to want him and to act on that. Because we were properly mated, both in the old style and the modern one.

And it wasn’t like he could get me pregnant now, was it?

He had started to step out into the hallway when I slipped off the side of the bed closest to him to straighten the blanket and I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Where are you going?”

“I thought I’d let you get some sleep.” He looked down, for all the world like he was the omega and I was the alpha.

“It’s our mating night.” I sidled up to him and eased myself in under his arm. It closed around me, his hand spreading itself out over my waist, and he scented me with a rough, primal-sounding intake of air. “Yes, your nose isn’t lying.” Four months of faking it and all it took was for him to be in the same room as me and my priorities completely changed. “Come make it official.” I pulled his head down to mine and kissed him like it was the beginning of a date and I wanted him to stay all night.

Except that I miscalculated and whatever it was that had been between us that first night, it rose up like the moon and the sun combined and I was moaning, my hands shoving at his clothing trying to get to his skin, and I was going to shift and shred the damn things if I couldn’t get them off him. He didn’t help—his arms came around me like the branches of an old juniper, strong and unrelenting, pinning me against his chest while his kisses made my head spin.

“You’re sure?” he asked when the kiss finally ended. He was panting, his chest rising and falling like a startled bird’s beneath my hands.

I took a step back, though my body protested, and put his hands on the collar of my robe. It was half off me anyway, the left side of my chest and that shoulder already bare to his sight. “Yes.”

He licked his lips, his eyes dark and intent. Something of the fighter in him glided through them and it made me shiver, though I’d never been one of the ones that liked to be overwhelmed by my partner. I was always about control, but maybe that could be my gift to him tonight, to give him me without strings, without limits.

We stood there until I thought I might scream with frustration and then, as if reading my mind, his hands moved down to the belt at my waist and he tugged it free and pushed the satiny fabric off my shoulders. It landed on the floor and I kicked it out into the hallway so we wouldn’t get tangled in it. “Now you,” I told him. “Let me see you.”

He nodded sharply and pulled his shirt off over his head. Then the jeans joined my robe in the hallway and he was naked before me and I was a very happy shifter.

Damian bent and scooped me up against his chest, carrying me into our bedroom like we were in some old-time romance. He laid me on the bed and climbed on beside me. The blanket was a soft as I’d thought it would be and my skin was a mass of sensation, from the velvet tickle of the blanket on my back to the warm solidity of his body against my front.

We kissed some more and I let my hands roam where they wanted to, which was everywhere. He was solid and reassuring and the promise of power in the corded muscles that covered him made me moan in delight as he teased my mouth with his, tracing my lips with his tongue or catching at the corners of my mouth with his teeth in the gentlest of dominance.

The baby was quiet for once, though impossible to ignore at this point in the pregnancy. It pushed Damian off to the side, his weight mostly on the mattress and not on me where I wanted it. My skin was desperate to take the feel of him and press it deep inside and I tangled my legs around his until we could hardly move.

His lips left mine, traveling over my jaw and down to my neck. I’d had dates want to kiss my neck before and never quite understood the attraction of it, but the feel of Damian’s mouth against my skin made me whimper and arch against him.

“You like that?” he whispered. “Tell me what you like, Salem. I want to do all those things for you.”

Later. I’d tell him later that no one had ever bothered to figure out what I liked, that I barely knew beyond the hunger the pheromones of an alpha woke in me. That I understood pleasure but not preference and I’d never before realized the difference between them. “I like you,” I whispered and thought starry-eyed of all the experimenting we could do now to figure out what it was that I preferred.

He growled and nipped at the side of my neck then gently bit the entire side in what we called the Alpha’s Bite back home. Half threat, half play, it made another shiver of excitement run over me, and when he thrust a well-muscled thigh between mine I unashamedly rode it like I was still a puppy, just learning the joy my own body could bring.

“How do we do this?” he whispered.

I lost my train of thought almost immediately, because he’d begun to tease the edge of my ear with his teeth. I dug my fingers into his back and squirmed harder beneath him.

“Salem?” he reminded me, then again made it impossible for me to answer, let alone think.

“Shut up and fuck me,” I growled back, thinking he’d laugh. Or maybe he’d just stop teasing. After four months of faking and forcing myself to respond, this was freedom.

“I don’t want to hurt the baby,” he said and rolled a little away from me.

Hurt the baby? “I don’t think you can, they’re pretty protected in there. At least, that’s what Ma always said.” I stroked his arm. He had a new scar, older than the bruises and scrapes he’d worn the night they brought him to me at Nevada Ashes.

Damian kissed me and spread his hand over the swell of my womb. “He’s pretty big.” He sounded impressed.

I laughed and let my eyes close. “Why do you think it’s a boy?” His thigh was still between mine and I casually began rocking against it again, the pleasure of the touch streaking out to wake every part of my body. It was a beautiful torture and if I hadn’t know that this was mine for as long as I wanted it, I might have tried to make it last. But, well, four months, right? I wiggled into a better position and locked my leg behind his.

“Just a figure of speech,” he told me and I could hear the smile in his voice even with my eyes closed. “Let’s try this then.” Gently, he disentangled us and turned me over so I faced the mattress, my hips up in the air to give my belly room.

Echoes of our first night danced through my memories as he stroked my spine, reached between my legs to run his fingers over my belly and my cock until every breath I took became a wordless howl demanding he perform his alpha duty. He kissed my hips and the small of my back and the inside of my thighs and I shivered and clutched at the pillow above me, wanting him to end my torment but enjoying myself far too much at the same time to suggest it.

And, remembering my gift to him, I stayed as he’d placed me and let him touch and taste until he’d had his fill and could move on without regret. Except he never stopped and his scent grew sharp with anxiety.

What was I doing wrong?

Too passive. I’d never been passive in my life, until I tried to do this for him. And somehow he knew that. “Damian,” I croaked, lifting my flushed and sweaty face from the pillow I’d buried it in. “Please. Now.” I reached back to him, met his hand reaching for me, and grabbed it tightly. “I want you.” It wasn’t a lie, and if I put some extra emphasis on the want, well… that wasn’t a lie either. “Fuck me.”

He kissed me again at the base of my spine, that sensitive bundle of nerves where my tail would sprout when I shifted. I’d never seen his wolf form—would he change for me tonight? Later, once we’d had our fill of each other?

I hoped so.

Then I felt him press against me and I groaned and pushed my hips backwards. I’d probably spoiled what was supposed to be a slow and teasing entry, but he’d just have to take his lumps for not having been around since the baby’s conception.

He hesitated for a moment, and I worried that I’d lost my bid to convince him to give in to his own passion, but then I felt it, like a gust of heated air, as he broke and all his control went to the Barrens.

He pushed roughly inside me, but I was more than ready and as his hips met mine I cried out with relief as the pressure and movement of him inside me eased the torment a little. And then it began to build again as he pulled away, his cock bumping along the back of my womb and sending up sparks and the looming sense of a tidal wave hovering on the horizon.

“Damian,” I whispered and chased him with my body so he couldn’t leave, so he’d have to stay buried deep inside me forever.

“I’ve got you,” Damian whispered back and thrust into me again a primal grunt. I moaned and bowed my head and wondered why I’d ever thought that artificial passion of the public houses was satisfying. I let him pound against me, begged him even for more, harder, faster, each sudden impact another spark that pushed me closer and closer to the edge. I was so close that nothing existed except my body and his, until Damian pulled me up so my back was against his chest and held me there, pinned on his cock by my own weight. His breath came hot and wild against the back of my neck and I shivered at the way it made me feel. And when he reached beneath me to wrap my cock up in his calloused palm, I yelled and beat at his arms because I was afraid of how big this all felt. It was too much and I was going to get lost in these feelings.

But he held me and bit gently at the side of my neck and gave me a shelter to come to and then I came and the world faded, my body gone almost fetal with the overwhelming sensations.

When I was near done, he shoved me back onto my knees again and thrust wildly into my body, his forehead pressed against the back of my shoulder, one hand holding onto my hip like it was a lifeline to sanity. I felt him swell against my womb and a different kind of pleasure washed over me, less intense but longer-lived and leaving behind it a sensation like it had never quite stopped even once I was certain it had.

I was crying when I could think again, Damian curled against my back in his own exhaustion. He kissed the nape of my neck and hugged me tightly, then separated us gently. I whined as he pulled himself out, though I certainly wasn’t in any state to do anything and he didn’t seem any better.

“Under the covers,” he whispered to me and rolled me toward him. “Hey, what’s this? I did hurt you!”

I shook my head and wiped at the stupid tears that wouldn’t stop. “No, you didn’t. I don’t know why I’m doing this.” I wiped my eyes again and complained, “Why won’t they stop?”

He frowned and helped me move up the bed, covering us with the old sheets and the new blanket. I curled myself up against his side and used his shoulder for a pillow, just like that first night in Nevada Ashes. But this time, I was in bed with my mate and, while I hadn’t had a hand in picking him, I wondered if my impromptu prayer to the Lady had brought him back into my life. Certainly, he wasn’t an ordinary alpha. I liked that; I was happy he was different. I was different too, and maybe that was why the Lady had brought us together, so our differences could be mated.

It took a while for the tears to stop, and I know it distressed him, but he made himself an oak for me to build a den beneath, something safe and solid while I put myself back together again.

“Better now?” he asked when it seemed the bouts of sobbing had finally ended.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

He kissed me and the world stopped again, just for that moment in time. “You sure you aren’t regretting this?”

“Not at all,” I told him and let him smell the truth in my scent. “I think, maybe, this was meant to be?”

He snorted and pulled me closer. “I don’t know if I believe in any of that stuff.”

“That’s okay,” I said, and yawned. “I can believe for both of us.”

Our talk drifted into silence, though I could tell he was still awake. His heart beat steadily under my ear, so strong and determined. I ran my hand over my belly and whispered to the pup, “You picked a good sire, you, even if your timing is shit.”

He snorted and I felt him press his cheek to the top of my head. “Go to sleep. I know you’re tired and I only have a day here before we head back out again.”

I raised my head in surprise. “You’re not staying?”

“I can’t.” He cupped the back of my neck and kissed me softly. “It’s not a job like any other one. And I gave my word.”

Right. I’d half forgotten that this was why we were in this mess in the first place. “Well, remind Oscar that he needs to bring you back in one piece or I’m going to stop being polite. And I want to see your wolf form before you go.” I put my head back down on his shoulder and closed my eyes firmly.

Damian made a little fizzing noise of laughter, but didn’t say anything. His arm tightened around me again briefly, then slowly loosened as he fell asleep.

And once I was sure he was asleep, I let myself relax into that restful dark as well, but my last thoughts as sleep finally took me were What have I gotten myself into?