Chapter Text
He had never heard her make this sound.
Both of his alphas, when they were fucking him, were like wild animals. They were a symphony of growling, snarling, groaning sex. Sure, they seemed to enjoy it, but this sound, this sound was different. This was distinctly feminine, human, euphoric moaning, escalating in intensity. This was setting his nerve endings on fire and filling him with jealous arousal.
This was Vi getting fucked.
The bed above him, sturdily built, rocked ever so slightly, rhythmically. The intimately familiar sound of Caitlyn pumping herself into him reached his ears. But it wasn’t him this time, it was Vi, and she was making that sound.
Is that what he sounded like when they were fucking him? Surely not. That was a heavenly sound, the sound of a woman unravelling. It was almost enough to bring him out from under the bed. He wanted to watch it happen, his alphas fucking each other, the way they usually fucked him.
He listened to Vi as she climaxed and quieted, the bed stilling. Was that… were they giggling? They never giggled. He thought he heard his name, but he couldn’t quite tell, the mattress insulating their quieter conversation from his ears. After a couple minutes of silence, a mop of pink hair lowered into his view, followed by Vi’s upside-down face. They regarded each other through the darkness under the bed. She was smiling. He was hidden deep in shadow.
“Are you ready to play, Puppy?”
He wasn’t. He looked at her face and wondered what it looked like when she was making that sound. When she was fucking him, it was all knit brows, or snarling mask, sometimes it was teasing, smiling, even. He tried to imagine her eyes closed, mouth open, moaning as she was being filled. The way she was usually filling him. He couldn’t see it. He wanted to.
When he didn’t respond, she rose up out of his view, and there was movement on the bed. It was irregular, the occasional thump, there was growling and the sound of Caitlyn protesting, and then she was making the sound.
It was different, of course, her voice less raspy, more like bells chiming. It found a higher pitch, punctuated by panting and a helpless sort of whimpering, and when she came she seemed to find a register not audible to humans, a moment of silence that he knew was not truly silent, and when he heard her again, it was a high pitched gasping, slowly calming, her voice gradually returning to the low, controlled sound he was used to.
He trembled with desire. His body was ready, he had put it off long enough. He moved a foot closer to the slot of light that shone at the edge of the bed, and waited. He knew his alphas. They wouldn’t want him to come crawling out on his own, they would want to –“
A hand wrapped around his ankle and pulled.
As he was yanked out from under the bed, Vi flipped him over, and he was squinting in the light with his hands shielding his face. Vi crouched over him, grinning. “Time to come out. Caitlyn’s been missing you.”
As Fox adjusted to the light, he listened to his memory, matching the sound to the face, Vi screaming in pleasure with Caitlyn’s cock inside her. He smiled back.
“Seemed like you two were having a good time.”
“Oh, we were. But your break is over.”
Fox stood slowly to his feet, and looked out the window. The sun glared in shallow lines from the west, the day would be over soon. He looked at Caitlyn, sitting against the pillows in the center of the bed, her eyes fixed on him, hungry. He made her wait while he took in her face, and thought about her getting fucked by Vi. He imagined being in Vi’s place, between her legs, forcing those sounds from her throat. He wanted to… but he couldn’t. Anyway, that’s not what she wanted from him.
He climbed onto the bed and into her lap, felt her hands grip his hips, allowed himself to fall into those fathomless blue eyes, dark with rut. He was starting to feel like he was learning to swim.
“What do you want, Alpha?” he asked, invoking the title to let her know his intent, to submit.
“You know what I want.”
He smiled, “Yeah, but I won’t see you like this for a while. So how do you want it.”
Her answering smile was devious. “I want you on your hands and knees. Waiting for your punishment.”
“My punishment.”
“Hiding under the bed. Making me wait.”
Making her wait had been the name of the game, slowing his alphas down had been the primary goal all day, and every time they’d caught him, it had been a punishment. There was no reason this should be any different. The day was nearly over, and though he was bruised and sore, it was nothing compared to their last rut. He could take one more punishment.
Fox kissed her tenderly, hoping to take some of the fire from her, remind her of the game, and then forced himself to ease off her lap. His heat was clawing at him, begging for release after the time spent under the bed listening to his alphas scream. He turned around and stood on his hands and knees, shivering in anticipation, and waited for her to descend on him, hurt him in whatever way she needed, prepared to take pleasure from it.
The mattress dipped and shifted. He heard her move behind him, and then silence. He turned his head. She was walking to the bathroom. He turned the other way to look at Vi, who had her head tilted as she observed his posture and his obvious impatience.
“Don’t you hate to be left waiting?” She asked, sarcastically, and he scrunched up his face. Yes, he did.
Vi laughed and returned to the food table, turned sideways so she could keep an eye on him, her cock standing out in profile, teasing him. He turned his face down, focused on the bed, breathing through the cramp taking over his torso. They would fuck him, he reminded himself. They wanted to, needed to. He was being punished, but ultimately all three of them wanted the same thing, and they would not pass up the chance for one more rut-fueled breeding.
The door to the bathroom opened and Caitlyn strode across the room, pointedly ignoring him, and joined Vi, popping a grape in her mouth. She looked over at Fox just in time to see his ass lowering to the bed.
“Ah ah,” she corrected, and he raised it up again, with difficulty. His arms were starting to shake. The fever was starting, the cramp having spread to his whole aching body, and he felt hot and sweaty.
“Please, Alpha, I’m sorry,” he tried. If begging was what she wanted, he could beg. “I’m yours. I shouldn’t have made you wait.”
She sneered at him. “Do you think I’m a fool?”
“No, Alpha.”
“Do you think you can lie to me, manipulate me so that I’ll please you?”
“No, Alpha.”
“You are my omega, and I am in rut. You will submit to me.”
“Yes. Please. I’ll submit, I promise.”
“Submit by waiting.”
He gritted his teeth. He would take any other punishment, with joy, and they knew it. He was so hot, steam must be rising from his spine, his clit felt painfully swollen, his cunt throbbed with unmet need. A low whine was emanating from him, he couldn’t control it. His alphas were speaking quietly to one another so he couldn’t hear. They looked at him, and a musical chuckle came from Caitlyn.
Finally, they walked toward him. Vi stood on her knees right in front of him, her cock beside his face, his nose at her mound, the scent of her so overwhelming his arms nearly buckled. He felt the mattress move behind him, Caitlyn’s hands on his ass, her cock between his legs, just barely touching him.
He instinctively lowered himself to press against it, and received a slap on his ass in correction.
“You know,” she said conversationally, “We’ve probably bred you enough. I could be as happy fucking Vi until my rut passes.”
“Please, I need you.”
“Where was this need when you were under the bed, hmm? That plan has backfired magnificently, hasn’t it?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again. I’ll do anything. I’m your omega.”
“That’s right.” She pressed her cock against him, the pressure on his clit sending sparks through his abdomen. He quivered in anticipation. “You’re my omega.” She spread his slick on her cock, pressed the tip against his entrance. “You’ll give me what I want.”
“Anything,” he whispered into Vi’s bush, beside himself with need.
“Three children.” The head of her cock entered him, and he groaned loudly.
He hesitated. Three pregnancies seemed like a lot, but… “Yes.”
“But you lie when you’re in heat,” she reminded him, not moving, not fucking him.
“Please, Caitlyn. Three children, I swear it, anything. Please, just – “
She pushed all the way in, holding his hips steady, pressing herself against him, and he moaned with relief, nearly collapsing. Vi held him up by the shoulders as Caitlyn took him from behind. It seemed as though she had hardly begun when she pulled out of him, and he whined in protest. She pushed him over and wasted no time, entering him again with a long deep stroke, and he groaned loudly, reaching for her with grasping fingers, pulling her down on top of him.
She allowed him to cling to her as she moved inside him, before pushing up and away from him, holding his clutching hands to the mattress so she could fuck into him harder as Vi held his head, stroking his face and playing with his hair. When Caitlyn finally separated from him, he was a puddle, blood leaking from her bite in his neck, cum leaking from his cunt, but he forced his eyes open when he felt Vi’s hands on his thighs, meeting her gaze through his exhaustion.
“You’re almost done, Puppy,” she said to him, and it brought him back. But this time, as she entered him, he didn’t have fear or rage for her, there was only desire, and as she finished with her knot inside him, he listened to the slowly calming thump of his heart in his chest and smiled into her neck.
There was the sound of running water, and he was home.
--
Like last time, Vi lifted him from the bed and lowered him into Caitlyn’s arms, hot water soothing his fatigued muscles and dissolving the sweat and tension from his body. Like last time, they washed him as he dozed, smelling their honeysuckle and citrus scents, the lifting of their rut. He hummed contentedly and tipped his head back to nuzzle his face into Caitlyn’s throat, heard her chuckle and squeeze her arms as they wrapped around his body.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she whispered.
He opened his eyes. Vi was in front of him, looking sated and relaxed, and she smiled at him.
“How are you feeling, Puppy?”
He thought about it. He was sore, inside and out. He knew he was bruised from the more aggressive moments during the hunt. Both sides of his neck stung where he’d been bitten, repeatedly.
“I’m great. How are you?”
Vi leaned forward in the tub, so she could brace her hands on the sides and kiss him. “I didn’t know a rut could feel like that,” she responded. She looked over his head at Caitlyn. “What about you, Cupcake?”
Caitlyn sighed contentedly behind him, and kissed Fox’s temple. “It was indeed my favorite rut of all my ruts,” she started with an amused lilt to her voice, “but next time, I want to try the back door.” She delivered a gentle hip thrust to Fox as she said it, and if he wasn’t already flushed from the hot water, he might have turned red.
Vi laughed at the consternation on Fox’s face. “We’ve got at least another day before gets all ornery again.”
“I hate you both,” Fox grumbled, trying not to smile.
The warm water made it hard to hold to hold a grudge. He allowed Caitlyn’s arms to hold him in place, and he relaxed back against her, inhibition seeping out of his body. “One day, I’m gonna fuck you,” he said sleepily. “Both of you. I’m gonna find a way to tie you down, and then I’m gonna fuck you with a strap.” His eyes were closed, but he knew they were both looking at him. Just in case they weren’t understanding him, he added, “like, a disproportionately large strap.” He opened his eyes. Vi’s expression was one of perplexed shock.
“See how you like it.” He finished. He smiled to himself as he imagined them making those sounds on his cock. He felt the hand that was wrapped around his stomach move between his legs, cup him, press firmly against his clit.
“Try it,” Caitlyn whispered in his ear, “see what happens.” He shivered despite the warmth of the water. He would take whatever she dished out, to try it once.
He felt his heat rise at the same time they smelled it. Caitlyn shifted him in her lap until she could enter him, and then held him against her and moved inside him with slow, languid swells. He leaned his head back on her shoulder and welcomed Vi’s lips as she hovered above him, kissing first him, then Caitlyn, her hand under the water on his clit. He closed his eyes as his alphas took care of him, and came to a soft warm orgasm with both of them sucking and kissing on their marks on his neck.
She didn’t need to, but Vi insisted on carrying him back to bed, and he fell asleep wrapped up in both of them, not a shred of tension left in his body or mind.
He was running.
Stumbling over slippery cobblestones, his hands swiping the stone in a momentary four-legged stride as he regained his feet, gasping for breath. All he could hear was snarling, growling, wet hungry mouths eager to devour him.
He took a chance and looked over his shoulder. A midnight-colored wolf, so black it shone blue, snapped at his heels, cerulean eyes burning hot and rabid. Just behind it bristled a deep magenta wolf, steel blue eyes like magnets, pulling him back. He turned his head, he ran.
Up. He needed to go up. There was a ladder. He ran up a wall to grab the lowest rung, and climbed, his breath tearing through his lungs painfully, until he spilled over the parapet of a rooftop, laid on his back, gulping for air.
Somehow, the wolves were here, the low rumble of their throats infused the air, their eyes mesmerizing, consuming him.
He was running.
He leapt into the darkness at the edge of the roof, extended his legs, welcomed the new roof with a fast crouch, rolled away, and kept running. Still, they were there, right behind him. He could smell them, intoxicating, honeysuckle and citrus. He turned to look, and found himself enthralled, drowning in an azure ocean. The pink one snapped her jaws, and he heard her in his mind.
Stop running, Puppy.
He shook his head, stepped back, his heel catching on the curb at the roof edge. He felt himself losing his balance slowly, the world trapped in molasses, the blue one crouching and then exploding forward in a lazy, gravity defying leap, her jaws open and dripping. He was falling slowly backwards, untethered in the darkness, as teeth sank into his neck, searing pain lancing down his spine, a burning pressure inside him, confusing, disorienting.
You’re mine.
He was falling.
His eyes snapped open and he spasmed in an attempt to sit up, but his body wouldn’t move. The piercing pain in his neck persisted. The low rumbling growl vibrated through him, almost like the purring of a giant cat. His hands were trapped near his hips, and there was a weight holding him down.
“Shhh…” a second sound, eyes that came into view, steel blue, paralyzing. The pink one was so close. He attempted to roll away from her, but couldn’t move, the pain in his neck intensifying, the growling growing louder. Inside him, the pressure shifted, pushing on him. The blue one, he realized, she was inside him, on top of him, all around him.
Fingertips stroked his cheek, a sweet smell…
Soft lips that landed on his mouth, pressing, soft tongue stroking his. A fog descending in his mind, fear melting away, something else rising up. The pink one was kissing him, and he was falling.
Vi. Her name is Vi, his mouth remembered before he did, lips pressing back against her, tongue reaching for hers. She is mine.
She pulled away from him and whispered, “You’re safe. Relax.”
The blue one rocked herself again inside him, driving a whimper from his throat.
Still, his heart was racing, a frantic beating against his ribs. He forced his breathing to slow, inhaling the sweet scent that surrounded him like mist.
These are my alphas. I am theirs, and they are mine.
Slowly, he remembered. This was the part where he had been caught, claimed. Now he was supposed to submit. He couldn’t remember how he got here. There had been a bathtub. The pink one, Vi, had carried him to bed. He had fallen asleep with the blue one’s hair tickling his nose, her hand resting on his abdomen, fingers gently stroking the soft skin below his belly button.
Her name was Caitlyn. She rumbled on top of him, the sound vibrating in his ribs, soothing him.
Caitlyn and Vi. His alphas.
He took stock again. Vi’s eyes were sleepy, concerned. It was just light enough for him to recognize the tousled mane of pink that fell over one side of her face. His body was held down by Caitlyn’s, she was biting his neck, as she always did after she knotted him. That was the pressure inside, her knot, her cock, and her seed. She had bred him as he slept. Her hands were gripping his wrists, pressing them to the mattress. The sound she was making was new. It was making him feel sleepy and soft.
He let himself melt. He clenched himself on her knot, to let her know he was back, with her, and in response she released his wrists. He moved one arm around her waist, the other hand lifting to hold her head against his neck. He closed his eyes and waited for her teeth to withdraw, replaced by the kissing and sucking that always followed, along with the sensation of safety, belonging, bliss.
When she finally pulled out of him, he was nearly asleep again, no longer dreaming of being hunted, content in having been caught.
“Tell me about your dame.”
Fox was laying on his back with his hands behind his head, eyes half closed as he stared at the ceiling. Caitlyn had rolled off of him just minutes before, and was laying on her side, tracing the tattoos on his chest. The alphas had dedicated the day to meeting Fox’s needs as gently as possible, his body not nearly as battered as it had been after their last rut, but still in need of care. Caitlyn had woken up in the dark hours of the early morning to the sound of him whimpering in his sleep, and given him what she knew he needed, but he’d woken up in a panic. There was a fear in him that had persisted for the better part of the morning, a consistent look of unease on his face, a hesitancy that he hadn’t expressed since his first days in this house, months before.
When asked, he hadn’t been willing to share the dream that had bothered him so much. Caitlyn was relieved to see his face as unlined as it was now, as though he had finally shaken the memory of whatever had terrified him.
“My dame? His name was Tobias. He died shortly after my mother.” The absence of her parents was a burden she carried every day, lighter as the years went by. It wasn’t something she brought up often, bearing their absence with the stoicism her mother had instilled in her.
“How did they die?” People didn’t ask Caitlyn about her parents, stepping around the ghosts of Cassandra and Tobias Kiramman with awkward segues and vague references, but Fox had not received the memo, and he was no longer afraid of the Sheriff of Piltover. Caitlyn glanced from an intricately detailed crow on his skin to his face, his dark eyebrows slightly furrowed. He turned his head, and his wide brown eyes looked at her, open, curious.
“My mother was killed in a terrorist attack,” Caitlyn paused. She didn’t want to tell him the next part, what her mother’s mark had done to Tobias, what it sometimes meant to be a mated omega. “My father, well, their bond was broken. He couldn’t recover.” She couldn’t face his eyes, and turned back to his body, dragging a fingernail along the outline of a crow’s wing. “I miss him every day.”
She could feel Fox’s eyes on her, this intimacy so different than the near constant sex of the past two days. She avoided his gaze, engrossed in the black ink on his skin, feathers and beaks and talons.
“What was he like?” He was whispering, the question wrapped with tissue paper, as though the memory might break if not handled with care. Caitlyn finally found the courage to look back at him, and saw a need in his eyes that she didn’t understand, but resolved she would meet.
“He was really smart. He could have been a doctor, or a surgeon, if he had not been omega. He took all the exams and passed every class. He was compassionate and open, intuitive. My mother was so stiff, strict. She kept everything buttoned up, composed, but he was her counterpart. He was kind, and comforting. I could always talk to him.”
Fox listened with rapt attention. She had allowed her eyes to drift as she spoke, unfocused, but now she smiled at him. “He would have liked you, I think. He would have disapproved of how you came to be here, though.”
Fox snorted. “Me too,” but he was smiling. “How did your parents get together?”
“Oh,” she chuckled, “if the stories are to be believed, she won him in a poker game.”
“Seriously?”
“My mother had an excellent poker face.” Caitlyn had accepted the story, thinking it a perfectly acceptable way to acquire an omega mate, even thinking it romantic. “However it started, they loved each other. My mother was so soft with him, when it was just the three of us, behind closed doors, and he was utterly devoted to her.” She allowed her fingers to travel from his clavicle, where they were touching an outstretched flight feather, to her mark on his neck, letting her fingertips brush lightly over the fresh punctures. She watched his eyelashes flutter as she did.
“Now I wonder.”
She felt his eyes as though they were hands, pulling aside curtains, brushing away cobwebs. She wondered if her father had been frightened, having been gambled away to a stranger, to be taken away from his home in Ionia. Had he loved her from the start, or had he been defiant and angry, as Fox had been? What had her mother needed to do, to turn him into the ardent companion he had been.
She cleared her throat, “Tell me about your mother, Fox.”
He retreated, eyes releasing her. Her fingers were still circling her mark on his neck, and now she moved them, trailed them down his sternum, to a black beak, open in a silent call. The skin there shivered, and it was a long moment before he spoke.
“I don’t remember her very well. I remember when it was the two of us, she was always laughing. Holding me, and laughing, as though everything was funny, and nothing in the world could touch us. When my father was around…” He trailed off. Caitlyn watched his jaw clench and release, his brow tighten, and regretted chasing away his tranquility with unhappy memories. When he spoke again, his voice was gravely, holding back some difficult emotion. “He was not soft with her.”
Fox breathed deeply, and though she couldn’t say how, she knew that he wanted, needed her touch. She abandoned the feather soft tracings of her fingertips and spread her hand on his chest, pressing over his heart.
“I spent so many years, after she died, wondering why she didn’t take me away, why we couldn’t just run away together.” His voice caught, and he closed his mouth on whatever he was about to say next. He closed his eyes and blew his breath out loudly, puffing his cheeks out, and rolled his head as though stretching out his neck after a workout. “I guess now I know why. It helps, I think, to know it wasn’t her fault.”
Caitlyn watched him battle his memories, recalled hunting him in his undercity apartment, sparse but for the stuffed bunny, Greta’s zine, a pulp paperback novel about two omegas who spurned the advances of any alphas. The smiling woman in the photograph. She thought about that first moment he’d looked into her eyes, having been commanded to do so, his gaze full of such defiance and resentment.
He was a bird in flight, and she had caged him.
“Will you tell me what you were dreaming about this morning?” She should let him rest, but she couldn’t.
He turned to her as the bedroom door opened, and Vi walked in, quietly, as though she hadn’t been sure whether they’d be sleeping or fucking, and seemed surprised to see that they were talking. She got into bed beside Fox, laid a hand on his belly, and kissed the side of his face. “What’d I miss?”
“I was just asking him about his dream.”
Vi’s demeanor instantly shifted to match the gravity of the moment. Fox looked back and forth between the two alphas, and for a moment, Caitlyn wasn’t sure he’d answer.
“There must be a corner of my brain your pheromones haven’t soaked into,” he mused. “It wanted to remind me to be afraid.”
“You don’t need to be afraid of us, Fox.” Caitlyn had thought they were past this.
“Not anymore. Not while I’m compliant.” He smiled at her, taking the bite from statement, making the truth feel less loathsome. “What would you have done, if I had said no to children?”
She didn’t respond, she couldn’t. The truth was despicable, she knew. She didn’t want to tell him about the room in the basement that he would never escape, that she would rut into his unprotected body until he was pregnant, that he would be her captive until he gave birth.
He seemed to know already.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “You’re alpha. You didn’t have to choose me in that holding cell, but once you did, the rest was inevitable. I’m omega. I can’t run from it.”
Caitlyn’s hand was still resting on his chest. He rested one hand on each of theirs. “In my dream I was running, and you caught me. Not because I slowed down and let you catch up, not because I gave up my location. Wherever I ran, there you were. You caught me because you’ll always catch me.”
“You slow down to let us catch up?” Vi interjected, aghast. Fox chuckled, turned his face to her, gazed at her with such affection that Caitlyn’s heart caught in her throat. “Vi, if I hadn’t wanted you to catch me, I would be in Ixtal by now.”
Caitlyn laughed, despite herself. She had been too consumed by her rut, his audacity, to notice his casual jog, the way he paused at the garden gate, as though waiting for her, looking over his shoulder to gauge her distance, making sure she could grab him at the last moment.
Fox looked back at the ceiling, thoughtful again. “I used to think you filled me with pheromones to control me, make me think I love you, make it so I’ll never leave. And yeah, you did, but now I think it’s a kindness. A forgiveness. I don’t have to be ashamed of how I feel, or what I am. What my body wants.”
Caitlyn hadn’t thought about it that way. She had caged him, she thought. Trapped his mind so that even while his body walked free, he would always come back to her. It hadn’t occurred to her that in so doing, she had freed him from an older cage, one he’d grown up inside. He could never change the fact that he was omega, just as she couldn’t fight her alpha urges. Why should either of them feel guilt about what came naturally to them?
She watched him squirm a little under their hands, the almost imperceptible movement of his hips, the tensing of his ass. He breathed deeply and his head tilted back slightly, a scintillating scent rising from his bruised and pierced neck.
“I think this will be the last one,” he said, apologetically, but Vi was already nuzzling into his neck, kissing, her hand traveling to his center. Caitlyn kept her hand on his heart, feeling the beat of it wake from its rest. He would not go into heat again until after he gave birth, and she would miss this, the scent of it, the sweet yielding softness of him.
His hand squeezed hers, moved it up until she was holding his throat, pressing at his jaw so that his head was forced back. She kissed along his jaw, his ear, his cheek, his mouth, as she felt the mattress move. She sensed rather than saw Vi settle between his legs, spreading him, felt the hum he released vibrate in her hand around his throat, resonate in her mouth, as Vi’s tongue reached his center. His body arched and he reached for her, gripping her around the back of the neck, holding her mouth tightly to his, and his other hand found Vi’s hair, his hips easing back and forth.
She knew the sounds of him now, so that she didn’t have to look to know that Vi was licking long slow stripes from his center to his clit. She knew when Vi’s tongue entered him, when she had sucked his clit into her mouth, when her fingers curled into him. As his orgasm built, Vi slowed her movements, released his clit, removed her fingers, soothing him with her tongue, keeping him close but not letting him tip over the edge.
There was more shifting, and Caitlyn knew that Vi was ready. Fox moaned around Caitlyn’s tongue as Vi filled him, and Caitlyn released his mouth so that Vi could hear him, kissing instead around his throat, feeling the vibration of his ecstasy in her lips, adjusting to his movement as his body rocked with Vi’s gentle thrusting.
When Vi’s knot formed there was a reluctant pause before she delivered the thrust needed to push it into him. The two came together as she laid on top of him, their teeth in one another’s skin. Caitlyn gave Vi room, resting a hand on her back, and brought her mouth to her mark on Fox’s neck, kissing and soothing with her tongue as he rested underneath his alpha, his breathing slowing until it seemed he might be asleep.
Caitlyn waited for the moment his heat lifted, for the desperation in his clinging hands, the accusation in his eyes. She waited for him to beg them to soothe away his shame, but he was quiet and calm beneath Vi, and when she withdrew from him, he smiled sleepily at her. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, as though listening to some ethereal music, as Vi laid down beside him.
“How’s it sound in there?” Vi asked.
“It’s quiet,” he murmured a small smile curling his mouth.
“It’s nice.”
Vi sat in the garden sipping her coffee, relishing the cool breeze as it rustled through the climbing vines and tickled at her skin, smelling of low tide and carrying the cries of seagulls from the nearby channel. It was good to be outside, after days spent indoors, to feel the chill on her bare arms. She heard the door open, and turned to watch Caitlyn step out of the house, somehow looking regal even in a long thick house robe and fuzzy slippers. Her hair was loose and pulled forward over her shoulder, her face relaxed and rested. Vi saw a lot of Caitlyn at work, Caitlyn in charge, giving orders. Caitlyn in control. She was undeniably attracted to Caitlyn in all her forms, but this Caitlyn felt like home.
She sat across from Vi, crossing her legs and then pulling the robe back over them where it had fallen open, setting her tea on the table and sighing pleasantly.
“I’ll call the lawyer today,” she said quietly. “Have Fox instated as an equal heir.” She looked over at Vi and lifted her steaming cup to her lips, shrugged. “It’s a start.”
“You don’t want to wait until he delivers on the babies?”
“Whether he has babies or not, it’s the right thing to do.”
Vi sipped her coffee. They could treat Fox as an equal in their home, but that wouldn’t help him when he left the estate. Fortunately, that wouldn’t be for a while. She had smelled him as she eased out of bed, making sure he was warm and tucked in, and his scent had changed. They would have to wait to be sure, but she was pretty sure the breeding had taken, and a pregnant omega couldn’t be allowed to wander.
“I’ll go to his penthouse, make sure there’s nothing perishable in the fridge, bring back anything he might need,” She offered. He wouldn’t be back there until after he gave birth, but they’d keep it for him. Maybe hire someone to go over to dust, keep it fresh for him. “I was thinking, what if we moved his room across the hall, so it looks over the garden. We could put in a balcony and a stair. That way he could be outside without having to go through the whole house.”
“I’ll call the carpenter about it. We’ll want it done quickly. Fox won’t tolerate strangers in the house before long.”
They sat in silence, Caitlyn with her cup of tea cradled in both hands in front of her face, Vi sipping from her mug of coffee. The garden began to glow as the sun rose, and Caitlyn noticed the newspaper on the table, folded open to an article with Jayce Talis’ photo at the top. “What’s this?”
“Pretty boy has outdone himself. A hextech implant for omegas who want to be free of abusive alphas.” Vi was not surprised to see the alarm on Caitlyn’s face, cycling quickly to fear, and then to anger. “It uh, it replaces pheromones with a generic synthetic, and then slowly tapers off. Treats it like an addiction.”
“Why would he do this?” Caitlyn whispered, setting her tea down and lifting the paper, scanning the text with a furrowed brow.
“Some alphas mate omegas against their will.”
“Yes, but –“
“Think of what this would have meant for Fox, if his mother had been able to leave.”
“I am thinking of what it would mean to Fox. We mated him against his will.”
“Yeah.” They did. Vi couldn’t seem to access her sense of guilt about that, this morning. It didn’t feel real. Fox had come to them willingly for their rut, planned and executed a game to make it amazing, and submitted to their breeding. Fox was pliable in their hands, jealous of their attention, desperate for their touch. Their first moments together, his first reluctant submission to them in the holding cell, his refusal to even smell them, it all felt like a dream, so far away, not even real.
“What if he wants this implant?” It was a demand, more than a question, Caitlyn’s eyes flashing with agitation.
“He won’t.” Vi was certain. Fox was hers. She was his, as sure as the sun was rising.
“He might! He’s up in our room covered in bruises, pregnant, because our marks keep bringing him back. If this had been available to him when he ran away, we’d have never seen him again!” Caitlyn’s hand gestured with the paper still in it, a light fluttering accompanying the movement, “He can’t find out about this.”
“It’s big news, people will be talking about it. He’ll find out.”
“He’s pregnant. We’ll keep him in the house. He won’t be talking to people. We can control what he finds out about.”
Vi frowned. “And when he’s not pregnant anymore?”
“We breed him again.” Caitlyn’s arms crossed in front of her, eyes narrow, knowing she was being ridiculous but digging in anyway.
Vi chuckled. “How long can we keep him tucked away in his room, making babies.”
“A few years at least.”
“And then what? Let him go once he’s given us our three children?” Vi wasn’t worried. Fox would look at her with his big brown eyes, and she would relent. Fox would beg to go outside, or to see Greta, and Caitlyn would fold before his sad, watery gaze. The Sheriff of Piltover was no match for the diminutive thief.
“He’s mine.” Caitlyn raised her voice, a kneejerk response, nothing more. “I won’t let him go.”
“We have to tell him, Cait.”
Her eyes softened, slightly, and when she spoke it was gentler, laced with anxiety. “He’ll leave us.”
“No, I won’t.”
It didn’t get old.
Fox smiled crookedly at his alphas.
The pink one jumped and spilled some coffee on her lap, swearing. The blue one gave a tiny gasp but maintained her composure, glaring at Fox with one hand delicately touching her chest. He watched them both process his arrival, or rather, the realization that he had quietly arrived at some point.
“Janna, Fox. We really do need to get you a bell,” Vi complained. “How long have you been standing there.”
“Long enough to notice you didn’t make me any coffee.” He approached the table, but there were only two chairs, and both were occupied. “I like the balcony idea.” He sat down on Vi’s lap, reached over the table, and snatched the paper from Caitlyn’s hand, ignoring the noise of protest she made. He quickly moved it to the other arm, holding it away from the table when she tried to grab it back, and skimmed the article as Vi wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight against her warm body. She buried her face in his shoulder, breathing in his scent.
“This would have changed everything,” Fox allowed himself to be squeezed and nuzzled as he lost himself in his thoughts. “If she could have been convinced.” He dropped the paper on the table, and helped himself to a sip of Vi’s coffee, grimacing at the black bitterness of it. He looked at Caitlyn and saw an expression he hadn’t seen before, an anxious uncertainty that made him think of first dates and first breakups, her eyes wide and glistening, lips pursed tightly.
He tried to untangle himself from Vi’s arms, unsuccessfully, until he turned to meet her eyes, glanced to Caitlyn and back. She understood, and loosened her arms, but kept her hands on him until the last possible moment. These alphas were always so handsy. Were all alphas like this? Or did knowing they had stolen his affection make them insecure? He squeezed her fingers and walked around the table, straddling Caitlyn’s lap and holding her face in his hands. He kissed her gently on the lips, watched her eyelids flutter closed, and felt her hands land on his hips, slightly clutching at him as her lips opened.
He kissed her slowly, sweetly, until he felt her tension unwind and moisture on his thumbs where they stroked her cheekbones. He pulled back and saw that tears had fallen from the eyes of his vicious blue alpha, who only moments ago had proposed keeping him pregnant and imprisoned for years just so he couldn’t read a newspaper article. Six months ago, he hated her, feared her. Six months ago, she had closed her jaws around his neck, and was still afraid to open them, lest he come to life and dash away from her.
“I don’t want this implant for myself,” he told her, thumbs soothing her cheeks. “I’m yours.” He pinched the base of her neck, where his two teeth had punctured her skin, and she winced. “You’re mine.” He grinned impishly at her, and then soothed the spot with a kiss.
“Anyway, I looked it up. You two have been biting me way too much.” He had known they were trying to make it permanent, the first time, but their excessive biting had continued, leaving his neck and shoulders peppered with scars. “It’s a miracle I can form sentences, based on the literature. It’s probably not reversible. Or if it is, the cure’s probably worse than the disease.”
He closed his teeth on his mark, not enough to break her skin, just enough to hear her hiss, held her until her hand came up to the back of his head and he felt her surrender to the pain. His teeth released her, replaced by a hot sucking kiss, and she moaned, the fingers at the back of his head gripping his hair. She pulled his head back until she could look into his eyes, and the anxiety had gone, replaced by the alpha he knew and recognized, powerful, in control.
“How much are we supposed to bite you?” Caitlyn asked. She ran her free hand over his exposed arm, apparently decided he was cold, and released him, opening her robe and wrapping it around Fox, bundling him up inside with her.
“Once, maybe twice a cycle. It’s no wonder I’ve turned into such a sap.” He surrendered to her, warm inside her robe, resting his head on her shoulder.
“What else have you learned from the literature?”
Fox had read a lot of literature.
He had spent many an afternoon curled up in the wingback chair to the right of the fireplace, a fire burning in the hearth, learning about the biology of what had happened to him. He had learned about the arsenal of the alphas, the ways they could manipulate him, compel obedience with their voices and their fingertips and their scent. He understood the liquid pheromones injected into his blood by their mating fangs, their scent rising from their bites on his body, the chemical dependence of his mind on their essence. He knew that his body was designed to lose the battle against them.
Of course, he had already known this, in a general way. Known that alphas were strong, and he was weak. His father had made sure of it, his own pheromones threatening and foul, his hands used to hurt, rather than soothe. His voice inspired cowering, rather than quivering eager obedience.
What Fox hadn’t known, what no one had told him, was the way that his scent could soothe his alphas, the way his own voice could influence them. He hadn’t known, until he read about it, that their desire for him could be a tool, or that a pregnant omega could ask for anything their alpha was able to provide, and it would be given.
“Now that I’m pregnant, you’re supposed to coddle and spoil me and give me anything I want.”
“There’s already ice cream in the freezer,” Caitlyn teased, “what more could you possibly want?”
“Hmm… I want bacon for breakfast.”
She looked over to Vi, who considered whether they had any, and nodded. “Okay.”
“I want to see Greta every week.”
“I’ll send for her after breakfast.”
“I want to swim every day.”
“We’ll keep the pool warm.”
“I want us to fund the omega implant.”
Caitlyn balked at that one. “It’s controversial. A lot of people will be upset.”
“Please, Caitlyn,” he purred into her neck, his scent gland beneath her nose. “It’s important to me.”
Across the table, Vi was grinning at him, an incredulous shake of her head letting him know that she was on to him, and she was fine with it.
Caitlyn, whether she was on to him or not, was powerless to refuse. “I’ll invite Jayce over to discuss it.”
“We could set up a program, a place where people can go, where they’re safe.”
“Safe from rapey alphas?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s a good idea,” she murmured into his neck.
He was the newly minted King of Kiramman castle. It was the heist of the century. All it had cost him was everything.
It was enough for now. He had traded a shitty apartment, miserable heats, and a life of crime for posh living, two unbelievably beautiful alphas to meet his needs, and the power to leverage their considerable wealth against the abuse of omegas. He would think of something else to ask for tomorrow.
He was uncomfortably warm. Fox tried to extricate himself from Caitlyn’s robe, his eyes on Vi’s coffee, but she held him tight, rubbing her hands along his back, pressing her chin down over his shoulder to keep him locked in place.
There were worse things than this. He turned his head to look at Vi, her eyes bluer than usual, reflecting the sky. She smiled at him and lifted her coffee to her lips, disheveled hair and bare bulky arms inspiring a surge of affection, making him wish they were all back in bed, so he could hold them both.
You’re fucking insane if you think I’m going to willingly get into a bed with you.
He laughed out loud at the memory, and Caitlyn pulled her face back so she could see him. “What?”
Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you.
“Nothing.” He said.
Fox let himself fall into her eyes, so familiar now. He heard Vi moving, and then she was behind him, radiating heat, her hands coming to rest on the back of the chair. Now he had everything he wanted, Vi’s lips on the nape of his neck, Caitlyn’s breasts pressed against his chest, hands on his back. He was supposed to be disgusted by the warmth in his core, the flutter in his tummy as strong arms caged him, the tingling sensation where warm lips touched his skin. He was supposed to hate them, hate himself just a little bit more.
He was supposed to feel shame.
But he didn’t.