Chapter Text
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Sisyphus was dead.
He’d had his chance. He’d had his omegas, a wife and concubines aplenty. He’d had his earthly pleasures, and now it was time for him to atone.
This was where his path had led him, very literally chosen by the gods, and until now, his faith in it had never wavered.
The shade leaned against the frame of the stone door.
This was where Zagreus always entered from, and as he had become accustomed to happening just before the prince’s arrival, Sisyphus could hear the clashing and grunting of a fight on the other side. The difference, today, was the smell.
An omega was deep in heat on the other side of this door, and it was the prince, he could just smell it. The shade clenched his fists.
Damn it… damn it! Why is he out here? I’d come to blows with an alpha who let their omega wander through hell in heat. If this door doesn’t open for too long after the fight, I’m going to pry it open by hand, I will not leave him there to be raped by the first passing wretch that finds him. Why is he fighting? Where is his alpha? He should be at home, curled up in bed, being tended to. He is a prince, care should not be hard to come by.
Sisyphus was proud of exceptionally few things from his living days, but despite everything he still knew to take pride in the safety and health of his omegas. The weeks he would take away to tend to them, the great cold baths, the teas, the furs and silks and cushions he would fashion into nests for them, the gentle love he would make to them to satisfy their heat. The one thing he felt he’d done right. The one time he could ever remember being what a king should be. The one thing that came so easy, it was an outrage that a prince and a god might have no one to give him the same treatment.
On the other side of the door, the fight ended. All was silent, and Sisyphus took deep breaths, trying to quell the furious rush of blood in his ears to listen for the prince.
He counted silently. After a minute, if the door didn’t open, he would force his way through.
The locking mechanism groaned, and the door slowly began to rise. It stopped partway. Zagreus was breathing shakily on the other side. It slid open a bit more, and stilled again.
“… Sisyphus? That’s you, isn’t it?” The prince whimpered.
“I’m here, highness.”
“I- I can’t lift it, I’m… I’m hurt.”
The shade muscled the door open the rest of the way, holding it up.
Zagreus stood bleeding and shaking before him. Sisyphus reached out to him, holding the door with one hand. The prince limped forward, his sword clattering to the floor as he fell into the shade’s outstretched arm. Sisyphus swept his friend up bridally, letting the door fall shut as they retreated to the dilapidated stone stairs. Sisyphus sat first, taking the prince onto his lap. Peace overtook Zagreus’s pained expression as he leaned into Sisyphus’s chest, taking a fistful of his green tunic and breathing in the alpha’s warm, safe scent.
The shade held him close. It took everything in him to keep his touch clinical as he inspected the omega’s wounds.
The prince’s soft, pale skin was host to a considerable scatter of wounds, but as Sisyphus pulled away his skull pauldron for a clearer view it dawned on him that the one scar he expected to see was nowhere to be found.
The claiming bite mark that could be found on almost any omega of age was absent. Sisyphus’s heart leapt involuntarily to realize he was cradling an unclaimed omega in heat. He attempted to tamp down his lust, Zagreus always came through the chamber with a host of cuts and gashes, but never any scars. Chances were that his scars washed away when he died. In all likelihood, the prince was claimed, and he should belong to someone better than Sisyphus anyway.
It wasn’t working, the alpha’s blood was already rushing to stiffen his eager member.
“I’ve never seen you like this, before.” Sisyphus broached in a whisper.
The omega nodded.
“I don’t usually make it this far, in heat. I tend to die within the first few rooms and have to start over from square one. I set out, I’m dizzy and unfocused, I die instantly, I set out again.”
“Why are you here, highness? Why do you set out at all?” He stroked the prince’s back gently with an enormous hand. “You should be home, being cared for.”
Zagreus knotted his hands into the shade’s tunic. The prince wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“They- they don’t want me. My father told me to go, that no one needed or wanted me broadcasting my desire to everyone in the House. I’m a distraction.”
“What about your alpha?”
“I don’t… have one.” Zagreus whispered, barely audible. “I’ve ruined my chances with all the alphas that aren’t family. Achilles is like a father to me, Meg and Than, they don’t want me anymore. No one wants me.”
“Now, that isn’t true.” Sisyphus took one of the omega’s hands in his own, dwarfing it dramatically. Zagreus held his arm to his chest. The shade tried to silence the selfish voice inside himself asking why his friend never came to him. Am I his last choice? Really?
It was only when Sisyphus felt a drop land on his wrist that he realized the prince was crying.
“It is true.” Zagreus whispered. “And now I’m gonna die out here, again, without even leaving Tartarus. I’m so much better than this, I just-“ the omega buried his face in his hands. “I can’t think, Sisyphus, I can’t even think. My head is- is swimming constantly. I feel so sensitive and hot and distracted and my stomach hurts so much. I feel so pathetic.”
“You’re not, you’re not pathetic, my prince. You just deserve better. You shouldn’t be out here, fighting in hell, you should be in bed. You’re not in any kind of condition for combat, no one could blame you for being hurt, and no one could make it as far as you have.”
The prince sniffled, drying his eyes on the shade’s tunic. It didn’t escape Sisyphus’s notice that the omega stalled with the cloth to inhale deeply, stunned briefly by the stench of potent alpha sweat.
“Th- thank you.” He whispered.
Sisyphus squeezed his hand gently, and pulled him closer, wrapping himself around the prince. Whether or not Zagreus wanted him in the intimate sense, he would be calmed by the warmth and scent of an alpha. Trying to put his arousal aside, Sisyphus held in his mind only the goal to provide safety and comfort to his friend.
Now, only to hold him in a way that he might not notice the shade’s aching erection.
Sisyphus burned with shame for it. The stubborn thing had stood relentlessly at attention even through the prince’s tears. Whether Zagreus realized it, he was utterly flooding Sisyphus’s senses with pheromones.
The omega felt so vulnerable, so small cradled against him. All Sisyphus wanted was to lower the prince into a great, cold bath. To clean his wounds, his sweat, wash his hair, cool him down. He wanted to lay the prince back against cool tile and take him, with gentle words contrasting his violent thrusts as he gave the poor omega what his panging body really needed most.
Zagreus shifted in his lap, brushing against the aching tent in Sisyphus’s robe. The alpha pitched forward, clenching his fingers around the prince with a gasp. The sudden intake of pure, potent pheromones sent Sisyphus reeling and panting. He clenched his teeth, trying to quell the lewd fantasies and images that flashed behind his eyes. Something deep and primal in him wanted nothing more than to lift the omega unceremoniously onto his cock right now and knot him full of seed.
“Si- Sisyphus?”
The alpha opened his eyes, Zagreus was staring wide-eyed up at him, his heterochromatic gaze dark, blown-out and clouded with lust.
No. I can’t have him. Sisyphus’s brows furrowed. He’s not mine. The wretched, washed-out shade of a tyrant is nowhere near a mate fit for a god-prince.
“…Sisyphus?” Zagreus broached again. There was something else in his gaze, something the alpha tried to assure himself wasn’t fear. Did the prince think Sisyphus would rape him?
“I’m sorry, highness.” Sisyphus choked out. He lifted the omega from his lap to stand him up, trying to ignore Zagreus’s gasp of arousal at the show of strength. In his desperate fear to get his hands off the omega before he could do anything rash, he dropped the prince before him. Zagreus landed on his feet, but dizzy with lust and injury he fell backwards onto the bricks. Sensitive in his heat, the omega’s eyes welled with tears anew. With a stab of guilt, Sisyphus spotted rapidly fading white fingerprints where he had been cradling the prince, clenching his hands in arousal. The blood flow only now was beginning to return to those veins.
“It’s the heat.” Sisyphus burst. “It’s just the heat, the hormones. I’m so sorry, I won’t… take you.” He reassured the omega, stepping away onto the stairs.
Zagreus stood shakily, wrapping his arms around himself.
“Let’s get you something to heal with.” Sisyphus coughed, changing the subject. He held his arm to his chest, allowing his cuff chain to obscure his erection.
The prince shook his head. His tears hissed into steam as they fell on his burning feet. “There’s no point. Thank you, but… it would be a waste. I won’t make it far. I never do, in this state. I’ve never even made it to Asphodel like this before.”
“I can’t imagine it would be pleasant, anyway. The climate.” Sisyphus reflected, shaking his head. “Not in heat.”
“It would be better than here. The bloodless have no sense of smell, and no… no genitalia, anyway. It would be a great improvement. It’s surprising how much you can miss wretches trying to kill you, but it’s leagues better than wretches trying to subdue and… use you.”
The omega went quiet. Sisyphus’s unbeating heart wrenched for the prince. He really had nothing. Nothing at all of what he needed and deserved. Sisyphus couldn’t stand the thought of the poor omega bleeding out somewhere, ripped away by the Styx, returning home, only to be swiftly driven away again into the grasp of the worst, most sadistic sinners mortalkind had to offer. Doomed to repeat, time after time.
“I don’t want this for you.” Sisyphus fretted. He craned his head down and met Zagreus’s gaze. The omega stepped closer, reflexively placing himself in the alpha’s shadow. Sisyphus offered his broad hand, and the prince took it. The shade stroked a calloused thumb over the hand cradled in his, watching Zagreus close his eyes and melt into the gesture.
“Sisyphus, I-“ the prince hesitated, frowning, “I need… to clear my head… it scares me so much to even ask this of you, but if I could only think straight I… I might-“
Sisyphus’s eyes widened as he registered where the omega was going with this.
“Prince Z., I deeply wish that I could but… I am just not suitably fit to be your alpha. A shade can’t even… our mortal days are our chance to- to reproduce. I couldn’t provide- …You should have someone else, Prince Z.”
Zagreus squeezed the shade’s hand, furrowing his brow. He wouldn’t open his eyes.
“I understand.” He sniffled, and cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean that you should be my alpha. Not if you don’t want to. I only meant to offer that if- if you wanted to… help me, just this once, it would clear my head, at least for a while. That could make a world of difference. But it’s fully up to you.”
The alpha weighed his options. The primal part of him rattled its bars, desperate to indulge an unclaimed, willing omega. More than willing, begging. It couldn’t imagine letting the chance slide.
But he also cared deeply about the prince. Another part of the shade didn’t want this to be how it happened, but did that matter, if it shouldn’t happen at all?
Perhaps this is the closest he could ever be to Zagreus.
No one was caring for him.
All the shade had to do was keep his teeth off of the omega, and someone worthier could still step in at any time to claim him.
If Sisyphus had the opportunity to give the prince even a fraction of the treatment he deserved, it would be only imbecilic to decline.
“Are you sure, my prince?” Sisyphus asked. He closed in on Zagreus, resting his errant hand on the omega’s hip. The ecstatic smile that bloomed across the prince’s face warmed Sisyphus to his core. He swept Zagreus up into his arms, and the omega placed his hands on the shade’s shoulders, holding his face inches from the alpha’s own.
“I’m far beyond sure, Sisyphus. I want this desperately.”
“Well, then, how could I say no?”
Not wanting to lay the omega against cold, dirty stone, Sisyphus cradled the prince against his chest as he undressed him. The shade pulled at the ties of the omega’s skeletal knee guards, pausing in brief concern as his fingers came up wet. A tidal wave of lust washed over him as he realized it wasn’t blood. In sitting on his lap and breathing in his scent, Zagreus’s slick had soaked through his leggings and was making its way down his shins now. The shade raised his dripping fingers to his face, sending himself into a daze with the salty scent of the omega’s desperation.
Zagreus wrestled with his belt, discarding it swiftly and tearing away his robe. Sisyphus made quick work of the prince’s drenched leggings, and was now admiring the pale, bare body in his hands, awestruck.
The prince ground impatiently down against the palm supporting him, whimpering away and soaking the alpha’s hand.
Sisyphus was surprised at the sight of raised, white tissue pockmarking one of the prince’s thighs. The mark of enormous, feral fangs.
“So you can scar.” Sisyphus remarked, tracing a finger down the line, a constellation of two canines. Goosebumps raised the scattering of soft hair beneath the alpha’s gentle fingers.
“It’s a story for another time, Sisyphus. Please. Don’t tease me, I need you so badly.”
“I wouldn’t dream of teasing you.” Sisyphus promised.
He took a seat on one of the steps, easily turning Zagreus around in his lap, holding the prince’s back tight against his chest. One-handedly the alpha reached around the prince, beneath his own tunic and leggings, to let his aching erection spring free. The omega in his lap gasped hungrily at the sight of it. Sisyphus slid his hands beneath the prince, lifting him by the thighs and spreading his legs over his knotted cock.
“Are you ready, highness?”
“YES. Gods, yes, please. I’m ready. PLEASE!”
Sisyphus lowered the omega, his stiff, flushed length easily violating the prince's puffed, eager folds. Zagreus wailed with pleasure at the penetration, bucking fruitlessly in the alpha’s hands. Drips of slick and precum raced the prince to Sisyphus’s knotted base. As the shade bottomed out in Zagreus’s warm, omega cunt, it became abundantly clear that his knot wouldn’t fit.
Not yet.
It had been an eternity since the alpha had felt the ecstasy of burying himself into a mate. He furrowed his eyebrows, trying to fill his mind and distract himself from the omega bouncing and whimpering on top of him, at least until the initial overstimulation passed. It was too early, if the shade spent himself now, he could never give Zagreus what he needed.
Sisyphus seized the prince by the hips, stilling him. The omega whined at the loss of stimulation.
“You’re tired, and hurt. Let me take care of you, sweet prince. Hold still.” Sisyphus whispered into the prince’s neck.
He leaned back, held Zagreus’s hips firmly with both hands, and began to buck up into the omega’s desperate hole. Zagreus gasped dramatically for air.
Zagreus’s cunt was silken, drenched, and burning hot around Sisyphus’s cock, the stench of his slick discharge choked the alpha’s senses. With his hands curled around (all the way around) the tiny prince’s waist, the shade could feel his cock distending the base of the omega’s belly beneath his fingertips. This felt like a dream.
The omega gasped along in time with Sisyphus’s brutal thrusting. Sisyphus wished he could see the prince’s face, but knew that he would be desperate to kiss him, and he needed to keep his mouth as far from the omega’s skin as possible, or risk the temptation of biting him, claiming him, in an overwhelmed, pheromone-fueled, primal display of dominance and possessiveness.
“Oh, gods. Oh gods. Oh gods.” The omega whimpered, clutching for support at the shade’s legs.
Sisyphus was already getting close. It had felt like no time at all, but he found that as pent-up as he was, he couldn’t blame himself. He only had to hold out a little longer. The omega wasn’t satisfied yet, and wouldn’t be until he was filled with seed and plugged with a knot.
The chamber echoed with the slick, lewd noises of sex, with Zagreus’s choppy, jostled wailing, with the shade’s labored grunting and huffing as he held on by a thread.
Sisyphus palmed his way down the gasping prince’s belly, between his thighs, and delicately brushed a calloused finger across the omega’s hard, eager clit.
It was enough. Zagreus’s back arched, his shuddering voice raised to new heights, his legs shook, and his cunt clenched desperately at Sisyphus’s invading cock, drenching it as he came to climax.
Sisyphus stilled as the omega gasped for air, recovering. He stroked the prince’s sides, his hair, marveling at the softness.
“Is that…” Zagreus panted. “Are-are we finished?”
“Not yet, highness. Unless you want to be.”
“No, oh, blood and darkness. No. Please, don’t stop.”
The shade smiled. “In just a moment, my prince. You’re almost ready.”
“Almost?” The omega whined. “I’m ready now.”
Sisyphus canted his hips up once, twice, feeling the oversensitive Zagreus clench gently around him.
“You’re not ready. Just hold on a little bit longer, trust me.”
The prince whimpered, shaking. Provided a god’s heat was the same as that of Sisyphus’s mortal omegas, he knew the wait would be far beyond worth it. All Zagreus had to do was relax. The prince was already so wet, so loose in his arousal. Only a little looser and the alpha could give him what his body craved.
Sisyphus took deep breaths, rubbing comfortingly at the omega’s back. After a moment, the prince’s breath joined his own, reflexively synchronizing.
The alpha gave another gentle test thrust. Zagreus had relaxed, loosening around him. Sisyphus’s length moved in him against no resistance.
“You feel ready, now. Do you want me to continue?” The shade prompted.
“I am ready. Please, keep going.”
Sisyphus fucked into the prince, his pace strong, but steady as he worked his arousal back up, worked his knot up to size. He massaged the base of Zagreus’s neck, listening to the omega gasp as he pressed over the prince’s sensitive, swollen scent gland.
The alpha raised his fingers to his face, moaning involuntarily. His dilated eyes rolled back in his head at the sweet, thick stench of potent pheromones. The smell sent blood in surges to his throbbing length, and the shade buried his fingers in his mouth, sucking desperately.
His thrusts picked up. His cock twitched furiously with each pump, eager to finally plant its seed in a heated omega again, after all these years. Sisyphus was teetering on the precipice.
“You’re loose enough, prince.” The alpha groaned through gritted teeth. “You could take it. My knot, it would fit.”
“Yes, yes. Oh gods, fuck, PLEASE. I’m ready!” The omega gasped. He pushed down against the knot, weakly but desperately.
Sisyphus laid both hands on the omega’s waist once more, pulling him down and fucking up into him. The alpha clenched his teeth. He was so close. So close, so close, so close. He could hear the omega from what felt like a distance, moaning an endless string of cursing and pleading above him. Just a little bit more. Just a little bit further. That’s all it would take to satisfy the prince. If he could just tip over that edge…
“PLEASE!” The prince wailed, cutting into Sisyphus’s roiling thoughts. “HARDER! PLEASE, KNOT ME ALPHA PLEASE I NEED YOU TO BREED ME!”
Sisyphus surged upright, grabbing Zagreus’s neck roughly to drag his tongue over the omega’s pheromone gland.
Pure heat overwhelmed him. He threw an arm around the writhing omega, pulling him down, pushing his cock up, up, up, slowly stretching Zagreus’s pulsing cunt over his knot. When finally the rest forced its way inside with a pop, stars bloomed across the alpha’s vision. Rippling pins and needles overtook every inch of him as he rutted brutally into the omega, spilling forth one powerful spurt after the next of thick seed into the howling prince’s womb.
Bite him, bite him, bite him. Claim him. My omega, mine, MINE. Sisyphus raised a hand to his mouth, biting down into it savagely. He drew blood, and the primal part of him cried out in dismay that it wasn’t Zagreus’s.
As his tingling climax faded, Sisyphus wiped the blood from his mouth and leaned back against the next stair, gasping for breath. The prince laid back, too, resting on the alpha’s chest, waiting for the knot to deflate.
Sisyphus laid his clean hand on Zagreus’s shoulder, stroking it delicately with his thumb.
“It won’t be too long, highness.” Sisyphus panted.
“It’s okay, this is… I like this.” Zagreus whispered.
“How are you feeling?”
“So, so much better.” The prince sighed contentedly. “Sated. I can think again.”
The shade nodded. “I’m so happy to hear it, Prince Z. You seem much more at ease.” He paused, considering. “I wish I had the means to clean you up. I wasn’t thinking ahead.”
Zagreus shook his head. “It’s okay. It’ll wash away when the Styx takes me home. And in the meantime, perhaps your scent will keep the wretches off of me.”
Sisyphus nodded. He lifted a tile from the stairs, retrieving a healing potion from his stash underneath and passing it to Zagreus. The prince took it without protest, tipping the bottle back. Sisyphus watched his wounds slowly but visibly knit shut.
They shared a comfortable moment of silence. The shade ran his fingers absently down the prince, finding the dots of raised skin that marked one of his thighs.
“You said there was a story behind this scar.” The alpha remarked. “Would it be okay if I asked it?”
“Oh, yes! It’s nothing horribly dramatic. When I die, my wounds wash away. My father wouldn’t stand for scars on me, so throughout all of my training, Achilles was under orders that all sparring must be to the death. When I became good enough to defeat Achilles, father would kill me himself.”
“That’s… that’s awful, my prince. I’m so sorry.” Nothing horribly dramatic?
“I thought so too, at first.” Zagreus shrugged. “But my father taught me that as gods, that’s just our lot in life. We fight each other, we kill each other, and if we’re lucky we get along sometimes. I became used to it…
“But this scar, this was from Cerberus. I knew from trial and error what would come of petting him wrong, so I angered him, and then hid the wound, out of spite for my father. Achilles helped cover for me, he wouldn’t spar with me, but would claim having succeeded against me in his reports. I stayed alive and let the wound heal and scar. It’s not some great rebellion, but it means a lot to me.”
Sisyphus wrapped his arms around the prince, holding him tight. His heart ached. Sisyphus had always known scars to be nothing more than evidence, evidence of some event or trauma that had befallen someone. When he ran his fingers over the canyons of his own scars he felt the story carved on his skin of every sin he had committed in his mortal days to earn them. He saw a pathetic shade that had doomed himself to his hill, his boulder, his lashes, for eternity. Sisyphus’s scars represented every ounce of hurt he’d earned from the ones he hated, who hated him, his hatred for himself.
But now he knew that the unmarked, porcelain expanse of the prince’s skin represented the same thing, and somehow the shade couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“I think I’m ready to get up.” Zagreus remarked.
Sisyphus cleared his throat. “Yes, of course highness. You certainly should be able to.”
The pair cleaned up the best they could. Zagreus got dressed once more, taking up the sword he had dropped at the entrance. Sisyphus noted how much more steadily the prince carried himself, and how much more himself he seemed.
“I hope this has helped. Prince Z. You seem to be feeling much better, I have every confidence in you.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m feeling confident too. I’ll think of you when I reach Asphodel.” Zagreus hesitated briefly. “Sisyphus, was this… a one-time thing? In the future, on the off chance that the Fates bring me to you during the thick of my heat… should I ask this of you again?”
Sisyphus smiled. “You may ask anytime, highness. It was my pleasure. I had an incredible time, and more than that, I always want to see you well. The circumstances you are under are a tragedy, I am deeply grateful to be given the opportunity to relieve… any of it, really. I only wish I had more to give.”
Zagreus embraced the shade, stunning him briefly before he returned the gesture, wrapping himself warmly around his friend.
“You don’t need to give anything more, Sisyphus. This was everything.”
“I know I don’t need to.” The alpha whispered into the prince’s hair. “I want to.”
The omega withdrew, trailing his hands down Sisyphus’s arms, squeezing the shade’s hands in his own before parting. He lifted the stone door on his own this time, turning back to smile at the alpha.
“Thank you.”