Chapter 2 #2
Ken’s eyes went wide, his artificial pheromones sputtering into something that smelled like genuine fear. Good. Fear was honest. Fear didn’t try to manipulate him into bad decisions by pretending to be something it wasn’t.
“I said we’re done.” Riot’s voice came out low and rough. “That means we’re done. No contracts, no reunions, no walks down memory lane. You don’t contact us, you don’t look for us, you don’t mention our names to anyone asking questions.”
“Us,” Ken wheezed, his hands scrabbling uselessly at Riot’s grip. “So the whole team’s still together. Good to know.”
Riot squeezed harder, watching Ken’s face turn interesting colors. “That’s not information you want to have.”
“People will come looking eventually. The Syndicate doesn’t just let assets walk away—”
“Then the Syndicate can learn what happens when they push.” Riot leaned in close, letting Ken see exactly how thin his control was right now.
“I’m not the same scared kid you recruited out of Gensyn’s reject pile.
Neither are they. Send someone after us and you’ll be explaining to your bosses why their retrieval team came back in pieces. ”
He held Ken there for another few seconds, letting the message sink in, then released him. Ken crumpled against the container, gasping and clutching his throat.
“You fucking psycho,” Ken rasped. “You know what your problem is? You actually believe you’re better than the rest of us. Like being too good for the Syndicate makes you some kind of hero instead of just another broken experiment with delusions of—”
Riot hit him once, precisely, in the temple. Ken’s eyes rolled back and he slid down the container to land in an undignified heap.
I should have done that two years ago, Riot thought, shaking out his hand. The knuckles the kid had bandaged were bleeding again, which felt like some kind of cosmic joke. I should have done a lot of things differently.
He left Ken unconscious in the industrial district and headed for the pharmacy. The encounter had burned off some of his restless energy, but it hadn’t done anything to quiet the part of his brain still fixated on caramel and cinnamon and wide hazel eyes.
Get the suppressants, get your chemistry under control, forget the princess exists.
It was a simple plan. He’d executed harder missions.
The pharmacy’s bulletin board held nothing but bad news.
“Supply chain delay,” the clerk explained with the casual indifference of someone who’d delivered this speech a hundred times. “Berserker-grade suppressants aren’t priority shipping. Two days minimum, maybe three.”
Two days. Riot could feel his control fraying already, worn thin by weeks of split doses and one very inconvenient encounter with an Omega who smelled like everything he’d ever wanted.
“I’ve got basic Alpha suppressants in stock,” the clerk offered. “It might take the edge off.”
“Those don’t work for modified.” For people whose biology got rewritten by corporate scientists playing god. “Just the order I placed.”
“Two days, then. You want me to hold it?”
“Yeah.” Riot paid for a reservation and headed back into the street.
The smart move would be to leave the Neutral Zone entirely. Head back to the settlement, ride out the shortage surrounded by Nulls who didn’t trigger his responses. He could lock himself in his quarters and wait for the chemistry to stabilize.
Instead, he found himself walking toward the market district, telling himself he was just looking for food, just killing time, definitely not hoping to catch another glimpse of golden hair in the crowd.
His hindbrain had apparently decided that two days without suppressants was the perfect time to develop a stalking habit, and his higher reasoning was putting up only token resistance.
You’re pathetic, he told himself, scanning the evening crowd for a face he had no business looking for. Thirty-two years old, you survived Gensyn’s experimental program, you survived years in the Syndicate, and you’re going to lose your shit over a missionary who cried near you.
The self-mockery didn’t help. Nothing helped.
Every blonde head made his pulse spike, every trace of sweetness in the air made him turn like a compass needle seeking north.
This was what happened when a Berserker ran on fumes and the universe dangled an attractive Omega in front of him—all the careful control he’d built over the past seven months crumbled like wet paper.
Princess, he reminded himself. Untouchable. Too innocent to know what you’d be asking for, too sheltered to understand what saying yes would mean.
Except he could teach him. God, he could teach the Elysian so many things. Those delicate wrists pinned above his head. That long hair wrapped around Riot’s fist. The confused, overwhelmed expression shifting into something darker as Riot showed him exactly what his body was built for—
Fuck.
Riot stopped walking, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes until he saw stars. This was getting out of control. He needed to find somewhere to hole up until his order came in, somewhere far from crowds and compatible scents and the constant temptation to do something he’d regret.
There were cheap hotels near the market district. Anonymous places that didn’t ask questions. He picked one at random, paid for three nights, and locked himself in a room with good sight lines and a chair wedged under the door handle.
Two days, he told himself, sitting on the bed. Just ride it out. You’ve done harder things than not jerking off to thoughts of ruining an Elysian missionary.
He lasted about twenty minutes before the fantasies started winning.
It wasn’t even the explicit stuff that got him.
It was the little details. The way Cass had trembled when their skin touched.
The hitch in his breath when Riot’s hands had been gentle instead of rough.
The complete lack of guile in those eyes, like the concept of ulterior motives was foreign to him.
Riot wondered if anyone had ever touched him properly.
Elysian was all about spiritual transcendence and harmonic alignment—they probably had some bullshit ritual around physical intimacy that stripped all the actual pleasure out of it.
The kid probably thought sex was supposed to be a meditation exercise, all controlled breathing and elevated consciousness and absolutely nothing like what Riot wanted to do to him.
What would it be like to be his first real experience?
The thought hit him like a punch to the gut.
Cass on his back, those wide eyes even wider as Riot took him apart with his hands and mouth and cock.
The sounds he’d make—confused at first, then desperate, then completely overwhelmed as his body learned what it was capable of feeling.
He’d be so responsive, so sensitive, and probably cum embarrassingly fast the first time and then Riot would just keep going, wring orgasm after orgasm out of him until he was sobbing and shaking and begging for—
Stop it. Stop it. You’re better than this.
Riot was on his feet and pacing before he realized he’d moved, his cock straining against his jeans and his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
This was wrong. This was so fucking wrong.
The kid was innocent in ways that went beyond just sexual inexperience—he’d been raised in a system designed to keep him pliable and trusting, and here Riot was fantasizing about exploiting all that vulnerability.
He’s not a child, his hindbrain repeated. He’s an adult who made his own choice to come out here.
He was raised in a sealed community that controls every aspect of its members’ development, Riot shot back. He doesn’t know enough about the world to make informed choices about anything, let alone about getting fucked by a Berserker who can’t keep his thoughts out of the gutter.
The argument went around in circles, desire warring with conscience, and neither side winning decisively. Riot ended up in the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face and avoiding his own reflection because he didn’t want to see what he looked like right now.
You’re a protector, he told himself firmly. If you have to think about him, think about protecting him. Not touching. Not tasting. Not finding out what sounds he makes when he cums. Just... keeping him safe.
It was a flimsy barrier, but it was better than nothing.
He spent the next several hours constructing elaborate mental scenarios in which he saved Cass from various dangers without ever laying a hand on him inappropriately.
It helped, marginally. The protective fantasies were easier to live with than the sexual ones, even if his body didn’t seem to appreciate the distinction.
Evening came slowly, the light through the window shifting from gray to darker gray to the orange-tinged darkness of the Neutral Zone at night. Riot hadn’t moved except to piss and drink water. His stomach was growling, but the thought of food made him nauseous, so he ignored it.
He was contemplating the merits of just knocking himself unconscious when the scent hit him through the window.
Not a memory this time. Real. Close.
Riot was at the window before he could talk himself out of it, scanning the street below. The Neutral Zone’s evening crowd was sparse, a few vendors closing up shop, some corporate refugees shuffling toward cheap accommodations, a group of kids running a dice game in an alley.
And there, walking toward the hotel entrance with hunched shoulders and a visible tremor in his hands: golden hair, flowing robes, and a posture that screamed exhaustion and defeat.
No. No fucking way.
But there was no denying the evidence of his own senses. Cass was here. At this hotel. The same cheap anonymous hotel that Riot had chosen at random out of a dozen identical options.
He watched Cass disappear through the entrance, and a few minutes later, watched a light come on in the window three doors down from his own room.
Three doors. Close enough that Riot could hear him if he cried out in the night. Close enough that his scent would seep through the thin walls, like a constant low-level torment for the next two days.
The universe is fucking with me, Riot thought. That’s the only explanation. Some cosmic entity looked at my life and decided it wasn’t hard enough.
He should leave. He should pack his shit, find another hotel, and put as much distance as possible between himself and the temptation three doors down. That was the smart move. The responsible move. The move that a decent person would make.
Riot stood at the window and watched the light in Cass’s room, and didn’t move.
Just tonight, he told himself. I’ll make sure he’s okay tonight—from a distance, without him knowing—and then tomorrow I’ll leave. I’ll find somewhere else to wait out the suppressant shortage. Somewhere I can’t smell him every time the wind shifts.
It was a terrible plan. It was barely even a plan at all. But it was the only thing standing between Riot and the overwhelming urge to knock on that door and offer the princess exactly the kind of protection he had no business providing.
He didn’t sleep that night. Just stood at the window, watching that square of light, and tried not to think about what Cass looked like when he dreamed.
He failed at that too.