But before she could draw her next breath, everything changed again. The initial jolt gave way to an awakening, a lighting up inside her like nothing she'd ever experienced.
It felt like…rebirth. Every moment she'd spent with Vonn, every word that had passed between them, suddenly took on layers of meaning that surpassed her prior capacity for understanding. Her desire deepened into an overwhelming yearning at the deepest, most primal level.
It was a force of nature—her nature—undeniable, inescapable, beyond mortal control.
Stacy needed to be closer to Vonn. Surrounding and being surrounded. Devouring and being devoured. Feeling all of him at once.
Before she could tell him, she found herself swept up into his arms, his chest rumbling against her body, and she knew that he felt it too. They were caught up in the same storm.
"Yes!" The possessive force of Vonn's roar sparked something inside Stacy, an unfurling like the opening of a tight bud into a flower. She gasped as a gush of slick—omega slick—coursed from between her legs, soaking her jeans.
Vonn responded like a man possessed, ripping her clothes off her body. Then he lifted her as if she were weightless and, holding her aloft in his strong arms, buried his face between her legs and devoured her.
The sensation of his tongue against Stacy's clit wasn't new, but this time it felt like it had been magnified a hundredfold, wracking her body with waves of pleasure and need. As shockingly intense as the sensations were, they weren't enough. She needed more.
Stacy clawed at Vonn, raking her hands through his hair, scratching his skin, panting and snarling. But she wasn't fighting him now; she was fighting for more of him.
If she didn't get what she needed—to be filled by him, to be taken, to be branded by his touch in a way no man could ever deny—Stacy thought she might die.
"I need you, Vonn," she stammered, speech a distraction she didn't want. "I need you inside me. Now."
She howled when he set her down long enough to rip off his clothes and was ready when he lifted her again. He wasn't gentle. The fire in his eyes raged as she wrapped her legs around him, and when he drove inside her in one mighty thrust, she threw back her head and screamed.
Vonn had never been so deep inside her before. This feeling of being filled completely, of not knowing where one of them ended and the other began, made Stacy understand why Vonn had searched so tirelessly. She could never return to her old life now, not with the knowledge of what she would be missing.
"More," she demanded.
Vonn took her at her word, pounding her harder than her beta body would ever have been able to endure.
Because Stacy was an omega now.
No one had to tell her that the transition that had been activated was rapidly changing every cell in her body, that she would never be the same again. Her old beliefs and fears shattered and turned into dust. There was no need for them now. No place for them here.
The sounds they made, the motions of their bodies, all of it fell away as the first orgasm seized Stacy and shook her like an earthquake. There was no time to recover before another approached, and another.
Soon she lost track, the peaks becoming indistinct in her euphoria, individual moments lost to the cascade of release.
She was shivering with exhaustion when Vonn finally let loose with a triumphant roar of completion loud enough to shake the ground. Birds escaped from the trees as a final, overwhelming orgasm carried her to the crest of his wave. He stiffened, and Stacy cried out, only to feel a new kind of pressure building.
Oh God, his knot.
It filled her past her comprehension of what was possible, locking their bodies together, binding them forever.
The certainty that this was how it was supposed to be was like the sun melting the darkness from the deepest corners of Stacy's soul. This was her destiny.
And now, no one could take it away.
Chapter Nineteen
"Sir, Stacy Clarke's signal has gone dead."
Fulmer took note of the panic in the voice of the technician tasked with monitoring the incoming data. He knew why the technician was panicked—failure was not tolerated in his lab, and the consequences were harsh by design.
Fulmer stared rigidly ahead at his own screen, absorbing this new complication and its implications for the mission, considering how to handle it internally. He did not care who was responsible for the failure. Punishing everyone in the line of a mistake delivered a consistent and clear message that kept the entire staff on their toes.
The technician knew that as well.
"D-Dr. Fulmer?...did you hear what I said?"
At that, Fulmer stood up, aware that everyone in the lab was listening, though they all pretended to be consumed with their work.
"Of course I heard you, Bolton. The people across the border in Kansas heard you. Did lab protocols somehow slip your mind?"
"Sorry, sir," Bolton mumbled, crestfallen. A relatively new hire with a master's degree from one of the top engineering programs in the country, he was nervously picking at non-existent threads at his sleeves, his face white with fear. He was close to thirty, yet resembled a spotty-faced sophomore in high school.
"Then turn the fuck around and get back to work."
Fulmer didn't stick around to make sure Bolton did as told. It didn't matter—he'd be gone by the end of the day. The Alpha Control Division's "severance package" was extreme for a reason: the work they did here went beyond confidential, the details screened even from the highest reaches of government—so there was likely to be an accident or disappearance.
But Fulmer had a more urgent concern to take care of before he gave the orders to what served as his HR department, and his wingtips made a satisfying sound on the industrial flooring as he strode to the private office of his Director of Security. Shielded
