Chapter 7
The smell of horny omega was heavy in the air, and Kian unabashedly took a deep inhale of it.
“Who the hell are you?” Sky was staring at him like he was a stranger, and in many ways, Kian supposed he was.
He’d always known about the omega's crush, but it’d been the thing of childhood fantasies. Puppy love. As tangible as cotton candy when wet. That, their age gap, and the fact Sky still hadn’t presented before Kian had left four years ago were the reasons that’d kept him from making a claim.
Seeing Sky with another alpha had done something to him, unleashed an inner possessiveness he’d thus far succeeded in burying deep.
There were ways to trap an omega. To place a claim on them to warn off others. To guarantee they were left no escape. The bite was one way, putting a baby in them was another. Since Sky was so opposed to the second option, it was off the table.
Honestly, that was for the best. Kian’s relationship with both sets of parents was…strained to put it lightly. Toxic would be a better descriptor. What did he know about being a good father? Bringing a child into his world would be beyond selfish, it’d be downright criminal.
Which was sort of ironic, considering he already was a criminal.
“Not such a nice guy now, am I?” he mocked. “Last night you were into it.”
“I was in heat!”
“Now that you’ve brought it up, it’s a bit odd that you aren’t still. A single night? Knotted by a piece of plastic? That’s strange, don’t you agree? It usually takes more than that to soothe an omega.”
Sky pursed his lips and seemed to be considering that. “Maybe it’s because I wasn’t meant to get my heat this early? Or the blockers helped cut it short?”
“Or,” Kian smirked, “maybe it’s all thanks to my pheromones. You know, the ones you keep telling me to hold back?”
To emphasize his point, Kian let off a stronger wave, this time targeting Sky’s lust. The second the omega burst into full-blown arousal was obvious by the thickening scent in the air.
“Careful,” he teased. “You’ll dirty your spare pair of pants if you keep this up.”
“You’re the one doing this to me!” Sky snapped, squeezing his eyes shut in a poor attempt to get control of himself. “Cut the shit, Kian. I already said no. I get you’re pissed I took advantage of you last night, but—”
His bark of laughter cut the omega off, and he shook his head at him when Sky frowned. “Do you really believe that’s what happened? Don’t you recall asking me to go and my refusal? I stayed because I wanted to. I’m still here because I want to be.”
Well, that and because even he couldn’t brave the flood outside, but that was beside the point.
“Were you always this self-deprecating, Sky?” He hummed. “The naivete I remember, but the rest of it…You didn’t wave your feelings around, but you weren’t embarrassed by them either.”
Elm and Sky used to follow him around like puppies.
Kian had been nice to them at first only because he knew keeping his brother happy meant keeping their parents off his back.
He’d held little to no interest in his brother’s best friend in the beginning, but as soon as Kian had presented as an alpha, that had drastically changed.
That was the truth. He’d kept his distance to keep himself in check. When they’d been younger, he’d held little to no interest in his brother’s best friend, but as soon as he’d presented as an alpha, that had changed.
One weekend, he’d come home well past midnight.
Kian had snuck into the house, bleeding from some injury he’d gotten doing something dumb and probably illegal with the twins.
Everyone else had been fast asleep, but Sky had been over, and he’d come out of Elm’s room at just the right moment to catch sight of Kian.
Instead of cowering away like he typically did, always too shy to look Kian in the eye during the light of day, Sky had taken one look at his bleeding hand and shot into action.
He’d tugged Kian to the bathroom and was halfway through the process of bandaging his wound before Kian had come to his senses and realized what was happening.
Throughout the entire process, Sky didn’t speak.
He didn’t ask how it’d happened or why. Didn’t ask if it hurt.
He’d simply bandaged him up, like that was the most sensible thing to do.
Like he wasn’t thirteen, taking care of a sixteen-year-old who was clearly capable of putting on a bandage on his own.
The whole process had maybe taken fifteen minutes max, but by the end of it, Kian’s entire perspective of Sky Tancredi had shifted. He was no longer just Elm’s quiet best friend.
He’d become Kian’s obsession. It hadn’t been sexual then. Kian had just wanted to take care of him in a similar fashion to how he imagined one might a favored pet.
They attended the same high school, and Kian noticed quickly that Sky was lonely. Aside from Elm, no one else ever paid him any attention. Kian himself was popular thanks to his looks and relationship with the Imperial Heirs, so it was easy enough to convince people to talk to Sky, to befriend him.
At the time, Kian’s intentions had merely been to return the favor. He didn’t like feeling indebted to anyone, and helping the guy develop a social life and social skills was something he could do with little effort.
By the time Kian had gone off to college, Sky had been arguably as popular as he was.
The separation of being at different schools had prevented him from keeping close tabs on the omega, but Kian would make excuses to visit home two or three times a month, always during the times he knew Sky would be there hanging with Elm.
He’d check up on him, but they never conversed.
He didn’t get close to him, didn’t let on that he had any sort of interest at all.
Then his obsession started to change, twist. At some point, Sky stopped being another little brother figure and started becoming something more.
Something inexplicably his.
And why shouldn’t he be? Kian had lifted him up, given him friends and a sense of belonging. Of community. Everything good in Sky’s life, all the attention and praise, had bloomed from the seed Kian had planted.
Even before Sky had presented, potential mates had flocked to him.
Alphas, omegas, and betas. They started swarming like locusts, waiting with bated breath, hoping for a taste of forbidden fruit.
Sky might have become popular, but he was still that shy kid on the inside.
He would have welcomed just about anyone into his arms if asked, possibly out of curiosity, maybe just because he didn’t want to hurt them.
All of those hovering alphas, omegas, and betas? He’d give them a chance.
Kian couldn’t have that.
Even the twins had been clueless when it came to Kian’s interest in Sky. They’d only found out after that night of the party, and that was only because they’d smelled Sky’s fresh omega pheromones on him.
These past years, he’d kept tabs, but nothing more than the occasional location search and social media stalking.
Kian knew he practiced martial arts, but he didn’t know how far along he was in his lessons.
Knew the guy made plates and bowls and stuff, but hadn’t known his dream of opening his own shop to sell them.
He didn’t know if Sky had spent his last heat alone, or with a toy similar to the one still taunting him from the counter.
Didn’t know if Sky still picked the chunks of tomato off his pizza or if he’d grown out of that phase.
Enough time had passed that the omega standing before him, trembling as his body was forced into arousal, could very well be a stranger.
But that didn’t matter. Kian had still known Sky his entire life. Alphas had chosen mates after a single glance before.
If Sky was a brat, he would correct his behavior.
If he was too meek, he’d teach him to be strong.
And if he already had a crush on someone else, Kian would slit that alpha’s throat and narrow down Sky’s options.
It was fairly cut and dry.
But it was still too soon to go that route.
“I’m starting my own business,” Kian said suddenly.
The original plan had been to get settled on planet, make sure all of his shit was in order, and then approach Sky.
Since that had all gone to hell, he might as well get straight to it.
They didn’t know each other yet? They would.
“It’s up and running, but there’s still a lot to be done. Things that need my attention.”
Sky frowned at him. “A business? What are you talking about? Aren’t you in the agency?”
Years into his schooling at university, Kian’s parents had discovered his origins. Their solution had been to demand he drop out and enroll at the Academy. They’d foolishly hoped that structure and the promise of entering law enforcement would be enough to cut him off from his other family.
They hadn’t been entirely wrong.
Which was why Kian had never gone.
“I’ve never attended the Academy,” Kian confessed, and it felt good to say. Dropping that disguise.
“What do you mean? Where have you been all this time then?”
“I was on Synastry, with Arbor and Avi.”
“I don’t understand.” If Sky noticed that Kian had finally stopped pumping his pheromones in the air, he didn’t show it. He was clearly too distracted by this turn of events to note that the pressure in his lower region was dissipating.
Interesting.
“Are you that curious about me?” Kian found himself asking.
Sky seemed to remember himself and cleared his throat, but he didn’t deny it.
“My mother found me.” He hadn’t told a soul this, aside from the twins. His family had already known before he’d gotten the chance to even decide whether or not he wanted them informed, though Elm had been left in the dark.
It took Sky a second to follow, but he got there eventually. “Like, your bio mom?”
It was no secret that Kian was adopted. He’d always known growing up. That was one thing he had to hand to his parents—the ones who had raised him. They’d never lied about his origins. But they also hadn’t known, and after the truth had come out…
“She’s not a nice person either,” Kian said with a dark chuckle. “Go figure.”
“You spent all this time with her,” Sky pointed out. “She can’t be all that bad, right?”
She was worse, actually. Much, much worse, but it was too early in the getting to know each other stage for Kian to be completely honest about his lineage. Sure, he planned on forcing Sky if he had to, but ideally, he’d like to try and win him over as much as possible before it came to that.
They’d been apart for too long, and it was clear Sky’s crush had mostly died down. But there was still a spark there that Kian could take advantage of, and he fully intended to fan the flames to the best of his ability.
Which meant not revealing that his mother had been the leader of one of the galaxy's largest criminal organizations.
Or that he’d since taken control of said organization with the intention of integrating his rule with the Imperial family’s.
“She was dying,” Kian divulged, watching a range of emotions play across Sky’s face.
The omega went from being angry and confused to feeling bad for him in a flash.
So Sky was still empathetic.
He supposed one of them should be.
“I spent the rest of her life with her and my siblings.” At the thought of them, Kian smiled.
They’d fled from their mother at a young age and hadn’t been raised by her either.
That had, unfortunately, left them soft and vulnerable.
Unlike Kian, neither had gotten any of their mother’s psychopathy.
They were weak. They needed him. “They’re also twins. You’ll like them.”
Good thing Shiloh and Sloane were both omega, otherwise Kian might consider keeping them apart until Sky was bitten. If Elm had presented as anything other than a beta, he would have done the same.
Kian didn’t want to alienate Sky—he’d gone through too much trouble helping him make friends, after all—but that didn’t mean he’d leave any potential threats lingering in his life.
This was going to take more effort than he’d hoped; he didn’t need to add pointless competition to the list of things he needed to get in order before he took his mate.
“They came back to Glyph with me,” he continued. “They’re a year younger than you and Elm, but they’ll wait until next year to start university.”
The semester was almost over, so it hadn’t made sense to enroll them now. They’d both attended Spark University on Synastry, up until Shiloh had been kidnapped and sold to Loving, the leader of the ring Kian and the Eumia had since dismantled.
Kian’s hands tightened into fists, and he fought against the wave of fury that threatened to darken his mood.
He couldn’t expose that side of himself to Sky yet.
The last time he’d allowed his demons to get the best of him, he’d forced a presentation on the unwitting omega and fucked him like an animal in a bathroom.
“So you’re back?” Sky asked, and it was impossible to tell what he was feeling. “For good?”
“Thought I was going to fly in and out?” Kian clicked his tongue. “Sorry to disappoint, little omega. But you won’t be getting rid of me that easily.”
“That’s not…” Sky’s brow furrowed. “It’s really starting to sound like you’re hitting on me.”
“I spent a heat with you,” Kian reminded.
“And? That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Try and hold onto that mindset, I dare you.” Because for all his plans to ease Sky into things, the fucked up part of himself that relished in bending people to his whim enjoyed the idea of pushing his omega to the brink.
“You know I’m not the type of person who does something for no reason.
You’ve spied on me enough times to have gleaned that much. ”
Sky’s cheeks turned pink, but he managed to hold Kian’s gaze this time. “You knew about that? Is that why you’re acting like this now? Are you punishing me?”
“You’ll know when I punish you,” he warned. “And no. People are allowed to crush on whoever they want. You were allowed to before as well.”