2
Scott surfaced with a wet, broken gasp, his back bowing off the pelts as the heat drove a fresh spike of agony through his belly.
He was spread open in a nest that smelled of pine smoke and old leather and the deep, grounding musk of an alpha who had slept here for decades.
The scent wrapped around him, and his body recognized it even before his mind caught up.
His cock lay rigid against his stomach, leaking a steady stream of clear fluid that pooled in the hollow of his navel.
His hole clenched around nothing in rhythmic, desperate pulses that made white sparks dance at the edges of his vision.
The air felt too thick to breathe, heavy with his own honey-and-moonflower scent and the sharp tang of his terror.
He tried to remember the life he had built.
Quiet mornings. A girl's soft laugh. The simple, straight future he had promised himself since he was old enough to understand what wanting someone meant.
He closed his eyes and summoned Hope's face with desperate focus, picturing the sunlit fall of her hair and the gentle curve of her mouth and the way she looked at him sometimes like he might become someone worth waiting for.
He clung to the image and pressed his palms flat against the pelts beneath him.
The door opened.
Rukheim filled the threshold, bare to the waist. Scars mapped pale, raised lines across the heavy muscle of his chest and shoulders, old marks from battles fought long before Scott was born.
He didn't look at Scott with tenderness or hunger or anything soft at all.
His gaze was flat and assessing, the same look a field medic gives a soldier bleeding out on the table, already measuring how much time he has left.
"The healer's orders are clear," Rukheim said, his voice carrying easily across the quiet room.
He stepped closer, boots silent on the thick pelts.
"Prime omega first heat. Your body will cook itself from the inside if an alpha doesn't take the edge off.
Organs start failing around hour six. Liver, kidneys, heart.
You're somewhere past hour four, judging by how hard you're shaking.
" He stopped at the edge of the nest and looked down at Scott's trembling, sweat-soaked body.
"The emergency protocol for an unbound omega in fatal heat requires an alpha to provide release without penetration.
I'm not breeding you. I will not knot you.
I'm going to put my hands and mouth on you until the fever breaks enough that you stop dying.
Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Scott's answer came out as a broken, high-pitched sound that wasn't words. His hips rolled of their own accord, seeking friction that wasn't there. The heat had stripped away every layer of control he'd ever had, leaving nothing but raw, animal need.
Rukheim knelt between his spread thighs.
Big hands, calloused and warm, pushed Scott's knees wider until the stretch in his hips burned.
The first brush of those fingers over the slick-soaked skin of his entrance made Scott's entire body seize.
He was so wet that the sound was obscene, a soft, wet noise every time he clenched around empty air.
The pelts beneath him were already dark with a spreading circle of moisture.
"You're already open for it," Rukheim observed, his tone never shifting from its calm, medical register. Two thick fingers pressed in without ceremony, sinking to the second knuckle in one smooth, relentless push.
Scott's back arched hard, and the stretch burned in a way that was too much and exactly what his body had been screaming for.
His inner muscles clamped down around the intrusion and then fluttered helplessly, trying to pull those fingers deeper.
Rukheim curled them immediately, finding the swollen, sensitive place inside with the precision of someone who had done this before and knew exactly what he was looking for.
He rubbed in firm, deliberate circles while Scott thrashed beneath him.
The first orgasm hit on the third stroke.
Scott came with a shattered cry, his cock pulsing untouched and striping his own stomach and chest in thick, hot ropes.
The pleasure tore through him so violently it felt like dying.
It didn't ease the heat at all. The relief lasted maybe three heartbeats before the fire came roaring back, sharper and hungrier than before, and his hole clamped down hard around Rukheim's fingers, trying to pull them deeper.
Rukheim didn't pause. He worked a third finger in while Scott was still shaking through the aftershocks, scissoring him open with slow, methodical pressure.
The wet sounds of it filled the quiet room.
When Scott's second climax ripped through him, faster and meaner and almost painful in its intensity, Rukheim leaned down and took the head of Scott's cock into his mouth.
The suction was hot and wet and ruthless.
The alpha's tongue pressed flat against the sensitive underside while those three fingers kept pumping into him in the same relentless rhythm, curling against that swollen spot on every inward thrust. Scott's mind made one last desperate grab for Hope's face, the soft curve of her mouth, anything gentle and safe and normal.
A low, vibrating growl rolled around his cock, and the image scattered.
Rukheim's free hand came up and settled around Scott's throat.
Not choking. Just holding. The thumb rested heavy over the frantic pulse point, and the pressure was pure dominance, a biological claim that bypassed every defense Scott had left.
His third orgasm hit hard and fast. He sobbed through it, body convulsing enough to make the nest shift beneath him.
His hole clamped down tight around Rukheim's fingers, and the alpha made a quiet sound of satisfaction against his skin.
"Scott." Rukheim's voice was low and steady. "Breathe through it. The worst is passing."
Scott tried to answer, but only a whimper escaped. His hands fisted in the pelts, and his chest heaved as he dragged in air. The heat still burned, but Rukheim's voice gave him something to hold onto.
Rukheim pulled off with a wet sound and added a fourth finger without pause.
Scott's body accepted it with a guttural, broken noise that didn't sound like his own voice.
The stretch was devastating, forcing him open in a way that made his eyes roll back.
Rukheim's mouth returned, taking him deeper this time, throat working around the sensitive head while those four fingers pumped in and out in long, deliberate strokes.
Every inward push pressed hard against that place inside him.
Every outward drag left him empty and desperate and already aching for the next thrust.
Scott lost track of the orgasms. Each one left him more wrecked, more open, more aware of the truth settling into his bones.
The way his body sang for the rough pressure of a man's hand.
The low vibration of a male growl against his cock.
The heavy scent of alpha musk flooding his lungs until he could taste it on the back of his tongue.
He didn't know what any of it meant yet.
He only knew that his body wanted more, and that knowledge terrified him in a way the heat itself didn't.
Rukheim shifted, settling more fully between Scott's thighs.
He withdrew his fingers slowly, and Scott whimpered at the sudden emptiness.
Then the alpha's tongue replaced them. Broad and hot and relentless, licking into Scott's hole in long, filthy strokes, tasting the slick that poured out of him, growling low against the sensitive rim every time Scott clenched.
The vibration traveled straight up Scott's spine and shorted out whatever was left of his higher brain function.
One big hand wrapped around Scott's cock and stroked in the same rhythm as his tongue, thumb dragging over the wet head on every upstroke.
Scott came again, harder than before, vision going black for several long seconds.
When he surfaced, Rukheim was still there, still working him open with his mouth, still stroking him through the aftershocks until Scott was trembling and oversensitive and somehow hard again.
The heat refused to release him even after everything.
"One more," Rukheim said against his skin, his breath warm and his voice rough. "Let go. I have you."
The words broke something loose in Scott's chest. His hips snapped up, and he came with a raw, wordless cry, his body clenching and shaking through the longest climax yet.
Rukheim worked him through it, his mouth and hands steady, until Scott collapsed back into the nest, spent and gasping.
The fever receded in a slow, gradual wave, leaving behind exhaustion so deep that even blinking took effort.
Scott lay limp in the nest, covered in his own release and cooling slick, his hole still fluttering weakly around nothing.
Rukheim sat back on his heels. He wiped his mouth and chin with a clean cloth, movements brisk and efficient, then tossed the cloth aside. His expression hadn't changed. There was no softness in it, no affection, no trace of the raw physical intimacy they'd just shared.
"You're mine to protect now," he said, voice still flat and matter-of-fact. "Your body will keep calling for alphas until the bonds settle. I'm the one who answered it first. We'll deal with the rest as it comes."
Scott turned his face into the pelts. Fury rose up in his throat, hot and tight and tangled with a humiliation so deep he couldn't find the bottom of it.
His body had betrayed him in every possible way.
It had taken pleasure from a man's hands and a man's mouth and a man's low, commanding growl, and even now, even with the heat receded to a dull throb, some traitorous part of him wanted to crawl closer to the alpha's warmth and press his face against that scarred chest. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper.
Rukheim stood, apparently satisfied that Scott wasn't going to die in the next few minutes, and moved toward the door. "The healer will check on you. Don't try to leave the nest before then. Your body needs to stabilize."
The door closed behind him with a soft, final thud.
Scott lay alone in the quiet, breathing in the mingled scents of pine and sex and his own fading heat.
His communicator sat on the small table near the nest, its surface dark.
He stared at it for a long time, trying to summon the energy to move, to think, to do anything but lie there and feel the ache between his legs and the weight of Rukheim's words still fresh in his ears.
The communicator chimed.
Scott's hand shook as he reached for it. The screen lit up with a message preview, Hope's name soft and familiar and painfully normal.
I was so worried. I'm here if you need another omega to talk to.
He stared at the words until the screen dimmed.
His thumb hovered over the reply button, but he couldn't make it move.
What would he even say? The truth sat in his throat: that his body had just been wrung dry by a man's hands, that he had screamed and sobbed and come harder than he ever knew was possible, that the thought of Hope's gentle smile now felt like a photograph of someone else's life.
He let the communicator fall back onto the table and pressed his face into the pelts that still smelled like Rukheim, and he didn't cry, because crying would mean he understood what had happened to him well enough to mourn it, and he didn't understand anything at all.