Weaving Fate - Nora Ash Page 0,43

brother waiting for you back home!”

She was breathing hard as if my words only fueled her desire. “He wants you to,” she said, voice rough and so filled with need my dick throbbed at the sound of it. “Magni wants you to mate me. But even if you didn’t—do you really think he’d want you to let me suffer like this? Do you have any idea how much it hurts? How much I ache? You promised to care for me in his place!”

Annabel slid off the bed, approaching my chair. She moved stiffly, her agonized pleas ringing true, but even so…

My eyes followed the sway of her hips, then wandered up her sweat-covered blouse that clung to her breasts tightly enough to allow her peaked nipples to show. Hazy thoughts of closing my mouth around one of those little buds made me grip the chair’s arms tighter.

Fucking hormones!

When she sank to her knees in front of me, a picture-perfect image of submission, I nearly lost myself. Oh, how easy it would be… She was so willing—she needed me. And Magni…

She was right—he had asked me to care for her, to make sure she was well-tended. Wouldn’t he rather I rutted her than Bjarni?

“Modi… Modi, please.” She looked up at me, and instead of fury, desperation danced in her eyes. “I don’t want this either. It’s so… so humiliating to beg an alpha I barely know for sex. But it hurts. Please, it hurts.”

The flash of pity I had felt for her last night returned. There was nothing but honesty in her gaze. Honesty and agony.

Shit.

She was further into her heat than I had thought. Most omegas in her situation would have stripped bare and attempted to pleasure themselves to alleviate the discomfort until an alpha could tend to them, and she hadn’t yet. I had mistakenly assumed she was still in the early stages, that the process was dragging out.

She was not.

Her pupils were blown wide, her hands trembling as she placed them on my knees. “Please. I’ll do anything. Anything, Alpha.”

Alpha.

Though I knew little of Annabel, I did know that she was a proud woman, independent, and strong. The way she handled herself around alphas, even her own mates, it was obvious she would never fall into the submissive omega role.

Except now she was kneeling prettily in front of me, calling me Alpha as she pleaded for my help.

How humbling, how humiliating it must be for a woman like her to be rendered so helpless by her own biology.

“Annabel,” I said, softer than I had ever addressed her before. “I cannot.”

“Why?” It was a pitiful moan.

I took a deep breath, hesitating as I stared at the trembling omega. My own instincts were roaring for me to fucking do something, my cock aching for her. It would be so easy.

But…

“I don’t want to father a child out of wedlock.”

I had never told a soul. I had never shared this fear with anyone, and yet as Annabel stared silently up at me, her breathing still too fast but her gaze free of judgement, it all came spilling out like a boil that had finally burst.

“Magni… he was given a shitty lot. His mother was an omega. She was in heat when my father came across her. He rutted her through her heat, and then he left her. He was only forced to confess his infidelity when the omega showed up at Valhalla demanding restitution.

“My mother…. She forgave my father. But she never forgave Magni. When my father allowed him to move in with us to get him out of Jotunheim, my mother could not get past the daily reminder of her husband’s betrayal. She treated him terribly. Still does. He will never admit it out loud, but he struggles with not feeling wanted to this day.

“I have seen his pain. I feel it in my gut every day since I learned of his existence. I cannot… I cannot do that to a child. I will not risk bringing a life into this world, especially not with Ragnarök at our doorstep.”

Annabel stared at me in silence for a long breath, but I saw understanding break behind her glazed eyes. And… empathy.

Even in the depths of her own agony, she was capable of empathy.

“I can’t believe the one time I actually think you’re a half-decent person, it’s because you leave me to suffer.” Her attempt at joking cut off with a pained groan. She keeled over, her hands slipping from my knees to