5
Scott found the river because his feet remembered the path even when his mind was too tangled to choose a direction.
The water moved slow and dark between the rocks, carrying the last of the spring melt downstream, and the air smelled of wet stone and the first wildflowers pushing up through the mud.
He sat down hard on the bank, drew his knees up to his chest, and pressed his face into his arms the way he used to do when he was small and the world had become too loud.
The position didn't help. Nothing helped.
He had left the longhall without speaking to anyone.
He had walked past Troy's worried questions and Fynn's empty plate and Hope's bright, terrible smile, and he had kept walking until the sounds of the pack faded into birdsong and running water.
Now the silence pressed in on him from all sides, and he couldn't stop hearing his own voice saying I can't, I'm sorry, I can't do this, the words he'd thrown at Norrix like a shield when the truth was that he didn't know what he was anymore. He didn't know anything.
The crunch of boots on gravel reached him a moment before the scent did. Clean sweat. Leather. The faint, familiar musk of an alpha who had been part of his life for so long that Scott could have picked him out of a crowd blindfolded. He didn't lift his head.
Norrix sat down beside him on the bank, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, and for a long time he didn't speak.
He just sat there with his forearms resting on his knees and his gaze fixed on the dark water, waiting.
The silence between them was heavy but not uncomfortable.
It was the kind of silence that came from years of knowing someone well enough that words weren't always necessary.
Scott broke first.
"It started in the longhall," he said, his voice muffled against his arms. "The heat.
You were there. You saw." He swallowed hard and forced himself to keep going.
"Rukheim took me to his quarters. He said I'd die without alpha intervention, that my organs would fail, and he put his hands on me and his mouth on me and I came so many times I lost count.
Then the second wave came and he called me back and this time he said he wanted me, and he knotted me and I told him I loved it.
" The words were falling out of him now, and he couldn't stop them.
"I loved it, Norrix. His hands and his mouth and his knot inside me, and then you kissed me against the wall and I kissed you back and I wanted that too, I wanted it so much I scared myself, and then at dinner I saw Hope touching your arm and I felt like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed, and I don't know what that means.
I don't know if I was jealous of her or jealous of you or just losing my mind.
And Fynn." His voice cracked on the name.
"Fynn was sitting on my porch at dawn with his eyes all red and I lied to him.
I told him I'd been at the healer's. I couldn't tell him the truth because if I tell him the truth he'll look at me differently and I can't lose him.
He's the only thing that still makes sense. "
The confession hung in the air between them. Scott's throat was raw. His eyes burned but no tears came.
Norrix didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice was rough and low and nothing like the teasing tone he usually used.
"I've loved you for years. I told myself it was duty.
Protection. You were Troy's little brother and you needed someone to watch your back, and that was all it was supposed to be.
" He turned his head, and Scott finally lifted his face enough to meet his eyes.
"But it was never just duty. I watched you grow up and I watched you build this careful idea of yourself, this straight boy who wanted a simple life, and I stayed quiet because I thought it was what you needed. I'm done staying quiet."
Scott stared at him. His heart was beating too fast and his hands were cold despite the spring sun.
He didn't burn with sudden desire. He was too exhausted for that, too hollowed out by everything that had happened in the past few days.
But his omega instincts were screaming for comfort, for an anchor that wouldn't demand or claim or terrify him.
Norrix was here. Norrix had always been here.
"I don't know what I want," Scott said, and his voice came out small and broken.
"Everything I thought I knew about myself is gone.
I thought I wanted Hope. I thought I wanted a simple life with a girl and a cabin and children.
Now I don't know if any of that was real or just what I thought I was supposed to want.
" He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
"I kissed you back this morning because I wanted to.
I pushed you away because I was scared. Not of you. Of what it means about me."
Norrix was quiet for a moment. Then his hand settled on Scott's shoulder, warm and solid.
"You don't have to figure it all out tonight.
You don't have to figure it out alone." His thumb rubbed a slow circle against Scott's shoulder blade.
"Whatever you are, whatever you want, I'm still here. That part doesn't change."
Scott lowered his hands and looked at him. The knot in his chest loosened slightly. He leaned forward and kissed him.
It was clumsy and desperate and tasted of river water and the salt of tears that hadn't fallen yet.
Norrix made a low sound and kissed him back, one hand coming up to cup the back of Scott's head, the other settling on his waist. The kiss deepened, and Scott's body responded the way it had learned to respond, his cock stirring and his hole beginning to slick, but underneath the physical response was something quieter.
Relief. The simple, profound relief of being held by someone who knew him.
They barely made it off the bank.
Norrix backed him against the broad trunk of an old oak, its bark rough through Scott's thin shirt.
His hands were already under the fabric, shoving it up and out of the way, and his mouth found Scott's throat.
He sucked hard enough to leave marks, and Scott's head fell back against the tree with a broken sound.
Cool air hit his bare skin, and then Norrix's palm was dragging down his chest and stomach, fingers curling around his half-hard cock with a firm, steady pressure that made Scott's hips jerk forward.
"I've got you," Norrix said against his throat. "I've always got you."
Clothing was shoved aside just enough. Scott's trousers were pushed down to mid-thigh, and Norrix opened his own with quick, rough movements.
He spit into his palm and slicked himself, then pressed two fingers into Scott's hole.
Scott was still wet, his body remembering how to yield, and the stretch made him gasp against Norrix's mouth.
Norrix worked him open with deliberate care, three fingers curling and scissoring while his other hand kept stroking Scott's cock in the same rhythm.
The dual sensation pulled soft, helpless noises out of Scott that he tried and failed to swallow.
Then Norrix turned him around.
Scott's chest pressed against the rough bark, and Norrix's body covered his back, warm and solid. The blunt head of Norrix's cock pressed against his slick entrance. Norrix stilled, his breath hot against Scott's ear.
"Tell me you want this," Norrix said, his voice strained. "Tell me now."
Scott's fingers dug into the bark. "I want it. Please."
Norrix pushed inside in one long, urgent thrust that made Scott cry out.
The stretch was different from Rukheim, thicker in a way that forced him to adjust all over again, but his body welcomed it anyway.
His hole fluttered and clenched around the thick length filling him, and Norrix held still for a moment, breathing hard against the back of Scott's neck.
"Okay?" Norrix asked.
Scott nodded, his forehead pressed to the tree. "Okay."
Norrix started to move.
The thrusts were hard and deep, driving Scott forward against the tree with every impact.
One hand came up and covered Scott's mouth, muffling the sobs that tore out of him.
The other gripped his hip hard enough to bruise, holding him steady while Norrix fucked him in a relentless rhythm.
The wet sound of it filled the quiet riverside air.
Scott's cock rubbed against the rough bark with every thrust, the friction building into its own overwhelming edge, and precome smeared across the wood in shiny streaks.
Norrix's breath was hot against his ear, low growls and broken words spilling out between thrusts.
How long he had wanted this. How good Scott felt around him.
How he would keep him safe. How he would never let him face another heat alone.
Scott's answering sounds were muffled against Norrix's palm, high and desperate.
Tears streaked his face, and he couldn't stop them.
Every deep stroke dragged over the swollen place inside him that made his vision spark white, and his body was already climbing toward release.
Norrix shifted the angle, his hand sliding around to stroke Scott's cock in time with his thrusts.
Scott came hard, cock pulsing against the tree and Norrix's fist, his hole clamping down rhythmically around the thick length inside him.
Norrix groaned and fucked him through it without slowing, chasing his own release, the thrusts turning shorter and harder as his knot began to swell.
Scott felt the growing pressure on every outward drag.
The thick base caught at his rim, stretching him wider with each withdrawal.
A flicker of panic shot through him before the pure biological need for it overrode everything else.
Norrix pushed in deep and held there, hips grinding in short, powerful circles.