Merricks Book - The 12 Sectors - Redeeming Her Alpha (authors rough cut)

Chapter 33

Zinn

HEAT

She couldn't see, couldn't watch this. They smelled so good, so impossibly good that it must be wrong. Everything was wrong. Unreal. Out of sync with all her expectations and assumptions. Two powerful males, fighting over the right to knot her. The hot arousal boiling up from her center spilled over, slicking down the secret recesses of her thighs.

Bracing herself against a tree, she rubbed her sweaty palms down her body, weak arm trembling as she forced it to move, desperate to rub the feeling away.

There was no clearing where they'd stopped, but Mer and Blaze were making one. Mer jumped at the older alpha, dragging him down, fists moving in a blur of powerful blows. Their fight was a noisy crash of muscle and bone thumping. His violence was a slash of white teeth and wrath that took Blaze over the brush, short trees, and viny thorns. Had Zinn been closer, blood spray from their hits would have splashed her cheeks.

And she wanted that. Wanted the blood of the loser on her face and hands. Wanted proof that her alpha desired her enough to kill for her.

What was wrong with her? Where had that come from? Was she enjoying this animal display of muscle and will?

Damage held Gemma, who was crying. Kinnery pulled Petar back from the fray when he got too close. The younger alpha looked at Zinn over her boy's head, his gaze savage.

I don't have a place. I don't have a nest.

Everything was wrong. This place was wrong. New. Uncomfortable. Zinn had no idea how to do anything here, with four adult alphas and no safe space. It felt like her first heat, nothing but pain and dreadful uncertainty. Danger could come from any angle including above, attacking her at her weakest. She had to get away from the oppressive eye of the giant blue sky. She had to find a place where every break in the grass wasn't a path leading predators directly to her defenseless need.

She had to hide. Needed a place. A bed. Something.

Blindly, Zinn broke through the trees, searching for a way to make a nest.

Someone came noisily after her. Zinn turned, baring her teeth, ready to defend herself.

A large bedroll of cloth and animal skins, full of familiar smells, was pressed into her arms. She grabbed the person close, her vision clouded, and smelled the back of his neck. Petar. Brother. She gently pushed the boy away.

She was empty, and she needed to be filled. She needed the right male, the right cock, the right smell, and she needed it now. Of all the times she'd been forced to suffer a dry heat, this was by far the worst—because the male she wanted, had to have, was right here. Fighting for her. But she wasn't ready. It wasn't safe. It wasn't right. She had to make everything right.

Growing up in the warren, Zinn knew how to make a nest from nothing. Between the breaks in the human-made rock floor, she and the other omegas would dig softer, smoother beds in the chamber where they endured their heats alone. Although it wasn't comfortable, they filled their estrus nests with whatever they could find. Sometimes that was nothing at all. Zinn had languished in the dirt, her slick making a disgusting mud, more times than she cared to remember. But at least the thick rock ceiling provided a low protection, and there was only one entrance. She'd never once been tempted to leave the warren during her heat and go outside.

She found a place where three trees crowded close together, their limbs intertwined, creating a shelter beneath the bony spines of their branches. On her hands and knees, she crawled beneath them, in the dirt like an animal. Wild, she shoved at dead leaves, pulled at grasses, discarded the thorny vines, threw out sticks and all the rocks. She built herself a safe place.