Alpha for the Pack: M/M/M/M/M/M Dark Romance Mpreg (The stars of the pack Book 2) Read online

  Alpha for the Pack

  The Stars of the Pack - Book II

  N.J. Lysk

  Copyright 2017

  [Second Edition]

  [Adult Reading Material]

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Other books by N.J. Lysk:

  The Mating Habits of Werewolves – Excerpt

  Caveat lector: this story contains dark elements, including non-consensual sex, and graphic violence. It is only suitable for adults.

  Preface

  Even with six of them, five newborns were a handful. But Ray, Josh and Gabriel had experience with kids and Alec had been through a paediatric internship as part of his degree. And Sergi and Iesu were, in one word, devoted. Once, at the very beginning, Ray had started to explain about diaper rash—it went away quickly in werewolves, but babies would still make a fuss about it—and Sergi had stopped him and asked for a minute to go get pen and paper.

  Ray waited, but mostly not to argue when they were all so tired already. Ray had finished secondary school a year ago, and dropped off college two weeks after starting when he’d presented. And Sergi thought he should take notes when he spoke. Given, it was about the babies and Ray had four younger siblings he had helped raise but… He had finished his explanation before cornering his mate. “There’s books about this kind of thing, you know?”

  Instead of excited, Sergi had looked guilty. “Fuck, of course there are, I should have—”

  “No!” Ray took hold of his arm to keep him from running off, probably to drive to the nearest bookshop. “That’s not what I meant. I just…” He gestured at the notebook Sergi still held. “If you are writing down my advice…”

  Sergi’s dark eyes softened, it made Ray want to look away. He was almost unrecognizable from the boy who’d teased Ray so cruelly less than a year ago.

  “Hey,” he said, smile soft like a caress, but he didn’t touch Ray back. Not casually like Gabriel did, like they were the kind of lovers who’d asked each other for permission too many times already. Ray liked it, that he didn’t assume he had a right. But he didn’t know how to tell him he wanted to be touched sometimes, that he wanted the tenderness he saw on Sergi’s face on his skin. “You give very good advice. Could write a book all of your own.”

  Ray snorted, smiling despite himself. “Fuck off,” he told Sergi, so softly the words sounded a little absurd, and Sergi laughed too.

  &

  He went to Alec himself when the third full moon passed with just some running. So unlike the first full moon after the pups had been born—when the alphas had barely been able to keep their hands off him—and even the passionate sex of the second, that Ray couldn’t help but worry. He had to worry because the other choice was to hope. And he couldn’t afford to hope to spend many full moons with his pups and his mates, running around, taking turns keeping them corralled and away from danger. Chasing but just in play, catching some rabbits, and teaching the pups where the tender spots were.

  It had felt… It had been nice, but Ray knew it couldn’t last.

  “It’s been three months.” He flopped down on Alec’s bed. There was no point beating around the bush. He had no time for it anyway; he still was breastfeeding only twice a day, even though they were already starting the babies on solid food. Thank god for werewolf metabolism; Ray couldn’t imagine what it’d have been like to keep them on a liquid diet for half a year or more. Of course, if he wasn’t a werewolf… Still, he was grateful for small mercies.

  Alec looked up from his computer. He had told Ray to come in, but he hadn’t looked at him until now. “Yes,” he agreed a little tentatively. He looked ethereal with the late afternoon sun illuminating his light copper hair from behind. His soft features and big eyes made him look younger than he was, younger than Ray felt—despite being five years Alec’s junior. Alec had put off mating for as long as he’d been able to, just like Gabriel, because he wasn’t attracted to women.

  “So will it happen on next full moon? Last week was great, but you said..." Ray tugged at the blankets on Alec’s bed, fixing very little since he was still on top of them.

  “I don’t really know, Ray,” Alec said. “I figured there might be some signs right before, but right now… Well, last week the pups were there, and it was the first time. I haven’t talked to the others, but for me… I don’t think I could, not anywhere near them, even if they don’t understand.”

  Ray sighed. “Thank the goddess for that, at least. But wouldn’t that mean that if they run with us…?"

  "I—No," Alec said, sounding so pained all Ray could do was look away. "Mated wolves run with the pack, but they find a secluded space for… If you were in heat, we would have to. And they’re starting on solid food, even if they still like milk.”

  Ray knew well what that meant: what little protection his own body offered him while his pups were young enough to need his full attention was wearing out. He shifted in place, hunching over his still swollen tits. It’d become so normal for him that he managed to forget about it most of the time, but talking about it always made him self-conscious.

  “Is there anything I can do?” he asked. Sometimes he thought all he could do was take it, whatever happened. He had worked so hard to be okay with this, with the alphas and the babies and most of all himself, and now...

  “Yeah!” Alec sounded desperate to offer some good news. He stood from his desk as if he meant to approach, then simply leaned back against it. Ray saw his hands were digging into the wooden surface, he wanted to tell him it wasn’t necessary. But it was, if Alec touched him then… Alec’s voice was even. “I mean; I think it’ll work like any heat. If we do it before and get it out of our systems when you’re not… I think that would help bring things down a notch.”

  Ray sighed, disappointed. Alec had been right in the past: it did help to have sex with his alphas more frequently right before heat. It helped the alphas, at least. It wouldn’t help Ray when his wolf went into heat and dragged him along for the ride. It had been a year and he could still remember it, not just the general rush of the full moon but an actual heat.

  “But those heats, I was already…” He trailed off. He never said the word anymore, not even when speaking about other people. It was always ‘so and so are having a baby’, ‘expecting’ at the most. It was the same thing, of course, but the ‘p’ word set him on edge. It brought back the feeling of it for Ray: the fullness and discomfort, the alphas’ desperate need to claim him again and again.

  “Yes,” Alec agreed. “But I told you, the fact that you were pregnant made it worse. The wolves… It’s like they don’t believe it until they can feel it, and during the full moon…”

  Ray knew what he meant. He hadn’t gone into heat after the first time. At least not the kind of heat he had experienced right after presenting omega, when he had been so gone on hormones he had happily spread his legs for five alphas. But even after he’d conceived, the alphas had needed him just as badly.

  The full moon brought every one of the wolf’s needs to the forefront: sex and hunting became everything. With five alphas bent on having him, Ray’s body had burned with their desire. That was how omegas functioned: adapting to their alphas’ needs and desires down to their very biology.
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br />   Alec kept talking, "But for an alpha, well, fucking and knotting are different types of sex.”

  Ray straightened on the bed and gave himself a moment before asking, “You mean you didn’t have to...?” He couldn’t say it. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to know. He had thought they didn’t have a choice about knotting him during the full-moon, if they had and they still had done it to him... He didn’t want to be angry with them, or worse. He needed them too much for that. He had come to—

  “No!” Alec raised both hands and rushed to explain, “We had to! During a bonding heat? We had no bloody choice, even if it wasn’t required for bonding itself. But maybe, I don’t know, we might be able to stop ourselves from knotting during heat. When it comes back, I mean. The wolves know you are their mate now. It’s difficult because…” He swallowed, looking uncomfortable and flushed. “But alphas have done it. I asked around, and it’s possible. And we’ll try. We all want you to be happy, Ray. But it’d help a lot if we had sex before things get crazy. I mean, we don’t have to, I’m not—”

  “Like, the day before?” Ray interrupted before Alec could dig himself any deeper into a hole. He wasn’t telling Ray to do it, or at least he didn’t want to be, but he was presenting all the data that made having sex with him the only reasonable option Ray had. Ray could have asked somebody else about it, an omega, even. But he could hear Alec’s heartbeat, the accelerated rate revealed his nerves, but it hadn’t stuttered once while he spoke. He wasn’t lying.

  “I... I don’t really know,” Alec said, shrugging. He turned back to the computer and disconnected his USB drive for no reason Ray could see. He plugged it back in. “I’m—”

  “Alec, stop treating me like I’m fragile,” he demanded. He didn’t want to get angry at Alec—it wasn’t like he had any more control over the situation than Ray did—but all this talking around it really didn’t help. Not because he wasn’t fragile, he felt about to shatter into a million pieces, but because he had finally realised that the truth couldn’t be worse than what he had overheard and assumed—and at least it had the advantage of actually predicting reality. “Tell me.”

  “A week,” Alec blurted out, turning his way but keeping his gaze averted. “A week might be enough.”

  Ray exhaled, bending forward to put his hands on his knees. Alec didn’t say anything, and he knew he had understood correctly: to take the edge off enough so they didn’t feel the need to breed him during heat, he was going to have to put up with getting fucked by the five of them each night for a week. And that might do it, it also might not be enough.

  And he had to try. Not just for himself, really, he didn’t think they were ready to deal with even more chaos than five babies that could both crawl and run brought. Two days earlier, Maria had figured out she could shift without Ray doing it, and it wouldn’t be long before her siblings followed her example.

  He had a couple of weeks anyway. He could ease himself into it.

  It seemed like a good plan, even if it meant an end to the restful life he had gotten used to lately.

  So, of course, it went to hell in a hand basket as soon as they decided to put it into practice. Two days later, Ray was lying in bed with a book of reproductions Iesu had unearthed from somewhere when Josh came in to tell him they needed to talk to him.

  Ray hadn’t expected good news; he hadn’t had many of those since he presenting. Maybe excepting the fact that even if his alphas fucked him through heat, he probably wouldn’t get pregnant as long as the babies were feeding off him. Maybe not even that, the way his chest also hurt from werewolf babies’ early teething.

  He put the book down and waited for the all the alphas to fill in, feeling dread pooling in his stomach as the room got smaller with their presence. They all preferred if one of them was with the pups at all times, even if it was perfectly safe to leave them in another room for a few minutes.

  “We’ve had a request to join the pack,” Gabriel said formally. He had been right, from Gabriel that kind of stuffiness couldn’t be good news. “And we have got to put it to you, as first omega.”

  “We wouldn’t ask, Ray, but you know we need more pack members and nobody wants to join a new pack,” Josh sounded like the words pained him to say as much as it pained Ray to hear them. And Ray wasn’t even sure he was understood what he was being asked.

  “What are you asking exactly?”

  “There’s six of them,” Gabriel explained, maybe as a kindness to Josh, maybe because he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible for all their sakes’. “They want to join us, but they want you to take their leader.”

  “As a mate?”

  “No!” Sergi sounded furious. “You are our mate.”

  Ray sighed, put upon by their vagueness. “What are you talking about then?”

  “A breeding,” Alec explained, failing miserably to sound professional as he added, “Just the once.”

  “You want me to let...” Ray trailed off, feeling oddly... hurt. He had thought they liked him, at least. Respected him as their mate, at the very minimum. And they were asking him to spread for a stranger, not just that, to...

  “We don’t,” Josh said fiercely. “But you’re the omega, it’s your decision who joins the pack. And you need to know what they are asking, so you can decide if you want to talk to them.”

  Ray stared, torn between laughing and crying. His decision?

  Chapter 1

  But in truth, it was his decision. Ray couldn’t choose what his body did, and he couldn’t settle disputes for territory. But as first omega of his pack he could tell them how far the territory extended, where every member of the pack was, and whether the pack needed more members.

  He wondered how omegas normally knew something like that, whether they sat with their mate and discussed it… For Ray, it was simple maths: he might avoid a pregnancy this full moon and the next, but he wouldn’t avoid it for much longer and then, less than a year in the future, he’d have a pack with ten kids under five. In two years it might be fifteen. And six adults.

  It just wouldn’t work. They needed other omegas and betas too, younger or older, just unencumbered by children of their own. But no beta would just join a new pack, and no omega could join a new pack that couldn’t provide an alpha for them. And it was only natural alphas would want children of their own.

  The visiting alphas were a group of twenty-somethings who’d left their own packs, cities away, to explore the land and find some adventure. It wasn’t surprising Ray’s small pack had attracted their attention. Ray knew he might owe their safety to his uncle’s large pack right across the river. If it hadn’t been for them, they have looked like a better target than ally...

  But he couldn’t afford to be thinking like that, not just before meeting their leader.

  The man was waiting in the main room of the house, large enough for a table where they could all eat together—although they’d probably need a separate kids’ table soon enough—and some sofas and a TV on the other end. They hadn’t wanted to waste space putting a wall in between so it was closer in size to a small school auditorium than a living room. And with just the strange alpha and Ray there, it felt echoingly empty.

  The man had been patiently watching the front door when Ray walked in. He had curly dark blonde hair and sharp features, not unattractive, Ray supposed, but nothing special. And then he stood up and revealed a set of shoulders Ray could have worked at a gym for half his life without achieving.

  He offered Ray his hand, tense but not nervous, polite but not condescending. Ray shook it. Many alphas wouldn’t have dared touch a claimed omega, even if that omega had the deciding vote on whether they were allowed into a pack. His grip was firm and brief, and even though he was affected by touching Ray, he didn’t let it show in his expression. “Raymond, right? I’m Nicholas.”

  Ray nodded. “Take a seat,” he ordered. Nicholas might have been an alpha, but he was in Ray’s territory, every inch of it like a part of Ray’s body, and Ray
was owed his respect for the honour.

  The alpha sat and tilted his head to look at Ray without any apparent discomfort at leaving his neck exposed. Not that he was really at risk, Ray knew he wasn’t capable of killing him—probably wouldn’t have been even before the draining experience of a pregnancy, childbirth, and hourly feedings. “Talk to me about your… pack.”

  “Never called ourselves that,” Nicholas said calmly, not rising to the bait. “No pack without an omega.”

  It couldn’t have been comfortable to have to look up at Ray, who wasn’t a giant like him but wasn’t small either, but he kept his posture relaxed and his eyes on Ray’s face. “And now you want one? Why did you leave your birth pack?”

  “It wasn’t that long ago, really. I was bored with the whole thing. Have you ever been to Manchester?” Ray shook his head. He’d been to London once, with school. And he’d wanted to visit other big cities, maybe even to live there for a while. He’d figured he had time, he’d finish school and then… But it turned out he didn’t. He’d run out of time to see the world the moment he’d become an omega, the moment he’d bonded not just to his alphas but to the land.

  Nicholas shrugged. “Well, it’s a little bit too industrialized for werewolves, but we make do and all. Except it’s getting more and more crowded, and the only way to live there is to stay human all the time—”

  “And that’s a problem?” Ray asked. It came out too sharp, but he’d heard of packs who’d gone feral and moved to a remote location to live off the land. It did not end well. They couldn’t be just wolves, just like they couldn’t be just humans.

  Nicholas looked up again. “Well, yeah. Obviously, I wouldn’t want to be a wolf full-time, either. But in the city finding the time to shift is like finding the time to go hiking, or on a holiday. I don’t think it should be like that. I like what you guys got here.” Ray was still watching him, thinking through it, when Nicholas spoke again, “Come on, don’t tell me you don’t like shifting whenever you like; why else do you live in the middle of nowhere?”