Cora stared at the cream canvas ceiling of the tent from her unexpected place in the bed of the most dominant alpha she had ever met. She swallowed hard and looked toward the tent’s entrance in anticipation of the Fireheart alpha’s return.

No, not the Fireheart alpha, not even her soon-to-be-king but...Zehr.

A shiver ran through Cora at the barest thought of the blond’s name. All she wanted was the alpha to return and to fill the space with his presence, with his alluring scent of cloves and coffee.

Before today there were several truths Cora knew beyond a doubt: First, never trust an alpha. Second, true mates were nonsense. Lastly, her biology could be overridden by sheer will. And until today, all three rules had held true, but then Zehr had happened, and from the first, Cora had wanted him.

Wanted him to be her alpha.

"Alpha..." she whispered, testing the word. A blush bloomed over her cheeks at the utterance, and she turned her face into the soft pillows beneath her with a muffled groan. All-Mother, how she was grateful no one had heard her.

"It's only natural," Cora said to herself, fingers clenching on the pillow she clutched. It was all a part of her heat.

Her first heat.

It was nature pushing her to want Zehr, her body operating as designed by biology. She winced, remembering how her blood had sung, her mouth practically watering, clit throbbing at the sudden appearance of the blond alpha. She had been using what magic she knew to hold her heat at bay, but Zehr had rendered her magic useless.

And now here she was, presently trying to navigate her very first heat in his bed. After so many years of waiting, of contempt and ridicule from the less understanding members of the Moonwater Clan, she had hoped to experience her heat in the company of other omegas she trusted. Who could show her the way and, with loving hands, gentle words, and sweet kisses, help her ride out of the entire ordeal. Without the assistance of an alpha, heats were...painful.

Extremely painful.

Cora grimaced as a fresh wave of achiness swept up her body. Already she was sweating profusely and battling the urge to strip herself of her jeans and plain tank top.

The choice of clothing had seemed sensible for a day spent on her feet as she helped set up the Moonwater tents. They had arrived late to the gathering, and as there was little chivalry among the clan alphas, the unmated omegas were given the least appealing work. Cora had been taking a much-needed break from the tiring work of setting up the tents when the first twinges of her heat had warmed her skin. Thinking she was just overheated from her work, Cora had paid it no mind, but that didn’t mean an alpha from her clan had done the same.

Her lips pursed at the memory of him following her, of how he had tried to force a bonding bite on her against her will. She all but snarled at the recollection, and she stopped herself before she uttered his name. His name wasn’t worth remembering, or worth repeating.

Cora twisted angrily on the bed, forcing all thoughts of her attacker from her mind. She had never allowed him to get her down during her time with the Moonwater Clan, not ever, not even when she had been under his thumb as an unmated omega, and Cora would be damned if she did it now, especially given her present place in Zehr’s bed.

So what if he was currently missing from the scene? He would return soon. Wouldn’t he?

No sooner had the thought formed in her mind than the tent’s flap pulled back to reveal Zehr. Cora swallowed past the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat and drank in the sight of the alpha. He was so big, his presence instantly charging the room with a physicality that had Cora wanting.

“Hi,” she croaked, and almost growled in annoyance at how feeble her voice sounded to her ears. She was an omega, yes, but she wasn’t that omega. She’d always been bolder than expected, a little more wild than was acceptable, but that was the way the All-Mother made her.

Or so she told herself when her clan’s alphas sought to put her in her place, which had happened more than she liked to think about.

At least the other omegas in her clan had offered her a welcome respite. It was a small kindness to an orphaned omega. Her parents had been a love match gone wrong, a bruja and a shifter, an unthinkable pairing by their world’s standards.

Magic and shifters did not mix. Not ever.

The inflexible boundaries that divided their world into two halves, of magic and not, led to the discovery of their union. They had been taken before a Moonwater tribunal, which had found them guilty of desecration.

Their crime?

Love.

Her parents' punishment for such an offense?

Death.

Though Cora's parents had lost their lives, it hadn't been before the doomed couple had conceived a daughter and seen to her safety, hiding her away from her father's clan with her mother's people. Her parents' efforts to protect her had mostly worked with her mother's coven, a strong group of brujas from the south in possession of old magic, who saw to her upbringing.

Those had been happy years of learning magic, of singing life into the world around her. She had been free then and completely unaware of the particulars surrounding her birth. Her happy ignorance had been allowed by the coven’s older women, but all of that had crashed down around them when she had suddenly shifted on her thirteenth birthday.

Humans had no idea how right they were about the unlucky nature of thirteen. For Cora, it had been more than a bad omen—more like a horror with the chain of events that first shift had set into motion.

What should have been elation at her first run as a wolf had dissolved into a pure nightmare because the Moonwater elders had been watching and waiting.

How they had discovered her existence she never knew, and no one had shared the details with her over the decade-plus years she had been with them. That night when she had shifted back, trembling with excitement and confusion, the Moonwater elders had used the promise of an all-out war to rip her the only family she had known, her long-dead mother’s coven, and dropped into the hard life of an omega of the Moonwater Clan.

The coven leaders had promised to find her. To bring her home. But it had been so long that Cora had given up all hope of them finding her. She supposed her life as an omega could have been better; after all, omegas were the rarest shifter designation. A union between omega and alpha was the only way to continue producing alphas.

Alphas were important, no matter which clan one hailed from, and that should have been enough reason to give omegas some measure of comfort.

Too bad the Moonwater Clan was of a different opinion, and the clan never missed an opportunity to remind Cora that she was alone and that she would remain so with her half-blood parentage.

The arrangement suited her just as fine as she had no inclination to trust any of the eligible alphas. The betas were alright, but it was the omegas who gave her support. They understood how difficult life could be under the rule of alphas who made themselves bigger by holding others down. It didn’t matter that shifter society was founded on the cornerstone of honoring omegas, a decree issued as the All-Mother had been an omega herself, and from her all shifter life had sprung.

Omegas needed alphas to love, protect, and honor them, and their very biology existed for the continuation of the shifter population. Yet that didn’t mean that all clans honored the decree, and there were some places where omega life was difficult, the Moonwater Clan being one such place.

Thank god the Fireheart Clan was of a different opinion.

All shifters knew of their continued reverence for the All-Mother, of their honoring the old ways, and how the strength showed in their blood.

All Fireheart Clan alphas were made from a different mold. They shaped the shifter world, anchored it with their presence, and moved through life with a gravitas lacking in the other clans.

Now, their soon-to-be king, the most powerful shifter she had ever encountered, was standing in the same room as her, his eyes hot on her. She was in his bed in the early stages of her heat, and all she had to offer him was a weak “hey.”

Life could be strange, and this was one such instance. Perhaps the All-Mother was having a joke at her expense. It wouldn't be the first time the omega had felt slighted by her fate. She didn't belong here, and the longer the stayed, the more she wanted to burrow down into the soft blankets and pillows of Zehr's bed.

That was a dangerous want. Almost even more dangerous than her wish for her mother's people to find her.

Cora's eyes followed Zehr as he gave her a slight nod of acknowledgment and continued moving forward. She barely had time to register that his hands were full before he was depositing food and drink at the foot of the bed. Pushing herself up, she backed away and leaned into the pillows at her back as Zehr dropped a large bag stuffed with pillows and extra bedding at her feet.

Cora bit her lip at the gesture and swallowed hard.

It was then Cora learned erotic a thing it could be to witness an alpha returning with supplies—heat supplies. She was lucky she didn't pitch right over into the heat haze that was beckoning to her ever more enticingly with each moment that passed.

All-Mother help her.

Watching an alpha as powerful as Zehr was doing an untold number of things for Cora's current state of arousal and need. She lowered her eyes from the tantalizing view of the big blond alpha, who was all flexing muscles as he continued to unpack the additional pillows and blankets that would help her nest.

“How are you?” he asked, not looking up from the bag.

Cora peeked up at him and cleared her throat. “I’m, ah, okay.” Her voice sounded thin, even to her own ears, so she opened her mouth to remedy the situation, but Zehr was already speaking again.

“You don’t smell fine.” He paused in his work and considered her. “What else can I do for you?”

Give me your teeth and your cock, Cora thought and then blushed, shaking her head jerkily, the flush in her cheeks deepening at having such a thought while she stared Zehr in the eye.

She didn’t even want to think about how long it was going to be before she wasn't just thinking such things, but also actively giving voice to them. Would she beg him? Ask him for his knot while lost in her heat? Cora shivered at the idea.

All-Mother, she hoped she did.

“Nothing. You’ve already done so much already. I should... I should go back to my clan and—”

“You aren’t leaving this bed.”

“I—what?”

Zehr dropped the now empty bag on the floor beside the bed and began to arrange the sports drinks and bars that Cora recognized as heat bars, bricks of sugar sweetness calorically dense enough to sustain an omega in heat, on the bedside table.

“You aren’t going any damn place. You’re staying where I can see you.”

“But my clan w—”

Zehr’s eyes flashed, now more amber than not. “Shouldn't have let you wander the woods in the first place. They are going to have me to answer to when this is all over.”

Cora’s eyes widened in surprise. “What?”

He didn’t answer right away, strong hands moving to quickly finish his work of finishing putting away the heat supplies. He lifted his eyes to Cora, and she went still at the intensity of the alpha's stare on her.

She was helpless to look away and her wolf howled, demanding that she get closer, that she let him take care of her in a way that only he could, that she give in and just slide her hair back, bare her neck to him, and beg for his teeth. It would all be so simple, and she could find relief from the discomfort of her heat, she could find pleasure instead of pain and...and...and—

“Cora?”

She blinked and bit her lip. “Sorry?”

Zehr’s lips pursed but he said nothing, studying her silently for another moment before he moved again, this time toward her. Cora's fingers tightened on the blanket beneath her as he approached her in slow, measured steps.

“Get settled,” he told her, voice gruff, and at the tone, Cora deflated slightly, her arousal dampening.

Omegas liked kindness and sweetness, and she bit her lip, wondering if the alpha was capable of providing the gentleness Cora would need.

A heat, especially a first heat, would be so much smoother in the company of omegas she knew, whom she trusted, and whom she was positive would help ease her discomfort. She held no illusions that shifter royalty would deign to give her, a half-magic omega of no consequence, their knot. Which meant her heat would be rough.

As loath as she was to admit it, she needed to return to the Moonwater Clan, and she needed to do it now. Cora sucked in a deep breath and squared her shoulders, the brief thought of challenging the alpha just taking form—but no sooner had it begun than Zehr let out a soothing rumble.

And that was all it took for her to go compliant and soft-eyed. That one low, gentle, nearly crooning sound from Zehr had Cora letting out a breathy sigh as another wave of heat licked up her body from the tips of her toes to the tops of her ears.

Oh, he was good.

Cora gave him a begrudging look as she settled back and began to arrange the pillows and blankets to her liking. She tried not to notice how she had made room for two in her nest. Not when the only other soul here was Zehr.

“I’m going to give you what you need, sweets.”

She cautioned a sidelong look him to see the alpha’s unusual eyes now seemed to be entirely shot through with the amber hue Cora had noted earlier.

Zehr's eyes didn’t just resemble a feral shifter. He was feral. He had to be for them to be shining with amber as they were. A second later Cora's observation clicked into placeand she scrambled back on her hands until there was nowhere left for her to go.

He wasn't feral. He was under the influence of a heat haze, which to be fair highly resembled feral. Logic and sense were all but foreign concepts to shifters in a heat haze. Afflicted shifters operated purely off instinct and want.

And right now all it took was one look at the alpha’s nearly glowing amber eyes to see that what he wanted was Cora.

Zehr’s lips pursed but he said nothing, studying her for another moment before he moved again, this time toward her. Cora's fingers tightened on the blanket beneath her as he approached her in slow, measured steps.

Cora went still, eyes widening at the unmasked arousal in Zehr’s voice. She cautioned a sidelong look him to see the alpha’s unusual eyes now seemed to be entirely shot through with the amber hue she had noted earlier.

He had gone into a rut.

Cora scooted further away from the alpha even as her body screamed at her to stop retreating. It wanted him. Just where the hell did she think she was going? After all, there was a virile, available alpha inches away from her. Just what her heat needed to be successful.

Though success in the most basic sense of her biology meant a belly full of pups, and that couldn’t happen. Not with the Fireheart Clan alpha. She could already hear the gossip about her purposefully tempting an alpha as powerful as him.

She had to resist. It wasn't right.

Cora licked her lips. “You need to go.” She put the pillow down in front of her, between them, for emphasis. "Now."

Zehr didn’t react to her words, just gave her a grunt and kept advancing slowly toward her, each move eating up the space separating them until a second later his knee hit the bed and Cora had to suppress the muffled whine that caught in her throat.

“Be good for me, omega. Don’t you want to be good for me?”

“I—I…” Cora stammered, fighting against the urge to say that yes, she did, she wanted to be whatever the gorgeous alpha wanted her to be. Instead, she remained silent and licked her lips again, a movement she instantly regretted when she watched Zehr’s eyes dilate in response.

“I have to go.” She gave a jerk of her hand toward the tent entrance. Turning quickly, she almost tumbled from the bed when she tried to stand. It seemed her legs had other ideas and had somehow, in the course of a few minutes, forgotten how to operate.

All-Mother help her, why wasn't she moving? She had to leave! This was no place for her heat. Not at all.

Still emanating the soothing purr that shot through Cora straight to her toes, Zehr shook his head.

“Can’t have you leaving, sweets.”

“This can’t happen.” Cora pointed between them with a frantic gesture as she tried to ignore the fine sheen of sweat rapidly appearing on her skin. Her hands clenched and unclenched at the heat steadily growing harder to ignore.

Her skin prickled and chafed from the rough material of her clothes. She needed to get out of them. Now. But she had to get somewhere safe to do that.

From the wild look in Zehr's eyes, Cora was suddenly filled with worry.

"Zehr, I can't be here. It's not right," she whispered, and finally forced herself to meet his eyes. "You know that you can't. Not with me—not with the magic."

“Shh, shh. You’re going to be good for me,” Zehr said. Cora's eyes widened when she realized that no, he wasn’t just speaking, he was commanding, and she felt the breath whoosh from her lungs.

“Alpha…” Cora’s breath shuddered, voice pleading, but she stopped moving away from him.

“That’s my sweet omega. You’re so good to me.”

A happy thrill shot through Cora at his words. She could still sense the alpha tone just beneath the surface of Zehr’s sweet murmurings, but she didn’t care. She was obeying for her alpha, and damn, it felt good.

"Make your nest, sweets. Can you do that for me? Make a cozy place for you and me?"

"Yes, alpha." Cora bobbed her head, her hands already rushing to create the space. If her hands were occupied, then she was able to not think about the implication of what Zehr had said.

He was staying.

A glance at Zehr showed her that he was aware of his effect on her. A look of pure satisfaction suffused the alpha's expression, and he surprised her, rousing her slightly from her own heat haze when he lifted the pillows scattered on the bed in front of him and rubbed them against his wrists and neck, the major pulse points that would impart his scent. It was a touching gesture to an omega quickly being pulled under by her heat.

Zehr stripped off his shirt, and Cora felt her mouth go dry at the sight of the alpha’s toned and muscled physique. His blond hair was now free and hanging across his broad shoulders. Bold black lines of tattoos swirled across his sun-tanned skin, from the top of his left pec down and across the span of his sculpted abdomen. He reminded her of the ancient drawings inside the caves the brujas frequented during the full moon.

Beautiful.

Cora was possessed by the sudden urge to lick the lines of ink, but she held herself back. Barely.

“You should go," she said, fixing her eyes on her hands. She couldn't lick what she couldn't see, right? How she managed to get the words out, Cora didn’t know, but what she did know was if Zehr stayed she wasn’t exactly sure what her reaction would be. What she would say when she already wanted the alpha to push her down onto the bed and let her present for him.

Zehr tilted his head to the side. Glowing amber eyes moved over her, and before she could respond, he reached out and grazed his knuckles over her collarbone.

“That’s not what you need, is it, omega?” Once more his voice deepened to that commanding tone that had her body crying out for his touch. “Tell me what you need.”

“I just, I need...p-please.” She gasped at the single brush of his hand, and she reached for him hungrily.

“I’m sorry,” she groaned, nuzzling her face into his hand even as she clutched at it. It was so hard to think with him talking to her like that and making her sink into her haze at the speed of light. His effect was intoxicating, and there wasn’t an omega alive that could have resisted this alpha.

“Shh, little omega,” Zehr whispered, leaning toward her.

“I’m going to give you what you need. I promise.” His fingers skimmed the bottom of her tank top. “Let’s get you out of these clothes. They aren’t very comfortable. Are they, sweets?”

Cora almost wept with relief as he pulled the tank top off of her. “No.”

Zehr nuzzled her neck, big hands moving slowly down her sides, fingers burning a trail over her skin, and then he pulled her tank top up and off her.

She needed cock and teeth. She needed them now. And the alpha touching her was the one who was going to give them to her. Why was she fighting him when he could take away the pain and the want?

His lips trailed across the sensitive skin behind her ear, and he pressed a kiss there.

“I’m going to give you my knot. That’s what you need, isn’t it?”

“Alpha,” she breathed, fingers reaching and combing through his long blond hair. Leaning close, she buried her nose in his hair and breathed deep, the protective scent calming her somewhat while the alpha worked her jeans off. She frowned at the rough material and let her legs fall open once the jeans were gone.

Pushing her hips forward she ground them against the chiseled abs of the alpha now leaning into her. A moment later he pushed her back on the bed and crowded into her, his heavy weight on her body granting her a measure of comfort. She whimpered when the material of Zehr’s jeans brushed against her sensitized skin. Hooking her fingers into his jeans, Cora lifted her face and gave him a plaintive look.

He only drew away to free himself from his jeans and when he came back to her Cora let out a happy sigh. She wound her arms around his neck but winced when her shoulder flared in pain. Instantly, her alpha was there and moving her hand away gently as he slowly worked at redressing the wound.

Cora whined at the delay in having her alpha’s hands in more erogenous areas, but a warning growl from Zehr had her quieting.

“Hush, sweets. Just one more thing to do before I get to taste you.” Zehr leaned close, his lips claiming hers in a searing kiss, all lips, teeth, and sweet moans which her alpha thoroughly devoured. She forced herself to be patient.

She knew her alpha would reward her, would give her exactly what she needed, so she sat as still as she could be, and blessedly the alpha pulled her close once more.

If she was just a little more patient, she knew he’d give her the biggest reward of all.

His knot.