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Zoey never really thought that Mira or Rumi would have a problem with her heats.
She knew that if she told them the truth and asked them to take care of her, they would.
Maybe not in the way she wanted (carnally), but, at the very least, they would check up on her and bring her food and water and make sure she was okay if she let them. She knew that.
That was never what stopped her.
It was never really about them.
Every few months, when that time rolled around, Zoey would cross her fingers, hope she’d scheduled right, and hop on a plane to “visit family.”
Which, to her credit, she did do; she’d arrive, have dinner, maybe play some board games or watch some TV with her mother… and then, she’d retreat into her childhood bedroom, surrounded by the ugly seafoam green paint she’d chosen as a nine year old, and ride out her heat alone.
It was routine, planned, practiced. Second nature, ever since the very first day she’d met the girls she would end up spending so much of her life with.
Celine had known from the start, of course, because she had to. Not being able to take heat suppressants should have disqualified Zoey immediately from being an idol, so it came up quickly.
But they weren’t a traditional group by any means. They didn’t have to follow the usual standards. And, apparently, the fated-to-be-a-demon-hunter thing completely trumped all of the ways that Zoey was an inconvenience.
But when Celine asked if she could tell Zoey’s new groupmates that she wasn’t on any suppressants… Zoey had immediately shot out a no. She didn’t want them to know at all. And it couldn’t be that hard, right? To just pretend she was on meds like every other celebrity omega?
Plus, back when she was a teenager, the idea of her new friends knowing that she went into heats… it was much too mortifying.
So with Celine and Bobby’s help, she’d hidden it. They’d (awkwardly) covered it all up with carefully-scheduled visits home, and it all went smoothly, for the most part.
At first, she was comfortable in the lie. For once, it made her feel normal, and the other girls—who were both stunning, actually—didn’t need to know that she occasionally spent a week whining their names into her bedsheets as her body betrayed her.
But as she grew older, other feelings started to creep in. The weight of what being an omega meant has settled around her at last, and with it, some terrible realizations.
To start: Every day, when she walked out into the public eye, her scent surrounded her like a cloud. Everyone instantly knew what she was. She was an omega, always an omega. Omega idol. Omega celebrity. Omega customer, omega stranger, omega girl. Whether or not she wanted it to be, everything she did was omega.
In public, in the light of day, it never let up. Rumi and Mira would go to bat for her, would fend off the questions and bite back at the criticisms wherever they could, but they could never fully shield her from the weight of omega. Especially not when they couldn’t always see it.
The way voices pitched when talking to her, the way people leaned down, the way eyes softened or rolled or glazed over when Zoey spoke—they were all things she could never call out directly. She knew why they did it, knew that it was because she was an omega, but that understanding came from all the years of living as one, and she’d never be able to truly put her discomfort with it into words.
At night, when she’d lay in her bed away from it all, she’d end up scrolling through posts about her—and be struck by strangers’ opinions on if she was good enough. Their arguments over if she was quiet and submissive enough to be a perfect little omega, or rebellious and revolutionary enough to be a figurehead for a cause. And either way, she was always a bad role model to someone.
She never got to just be.
So in heat, when she was everything people thought omegas were—desperate, clingy, needy, useless, something that needed taken care of—it always just felt like proving them right.
She wasn’t just embarrassed about her heats anymore—she was ashamed of them.
And she never wanted her friends to see that side of her.
…But she really hated lying to them. It was selfish, to keep something so important a secret, and it nagged her; she often thought of blurting it out in any lengthy silence between the three of them.
I can’t take suppressants. I’ve never taken them, I’ve lied to you about not having heats, I am a terrible awful liar and if you don’t want to be friends with me anymore, I understand.
She didn’t say it, though.
Instead, during every heat, while tucked away in her childhood bedroom, Zoey did her best to ignore the guilt eating away at her—a terrible thing, gnawing its way through her stomach, fighting with the insatiable need in her core for the crown of Worst Feeling Ever.
She hated lying to them, yet she kept doing it.
Even when both Rumi and Mira proved again and again that they would go to the ends of the earth for her.
When Rumi got dragged by shitty news outlets for months after calling out a particularly nasty article about omega celebrities, she’d earned the truth. When an alpha whistled at Zoey on the street, and instantly Mira was growling, ready to attack, and practically had to be dragged away by her pigtails… she’d earned it, too.
But for some reason, Zoey knowing she should, and that they deserved the truth, hadn’t been enough to get her to actually tell them.
It was just… easier not to.
They didn’t need to know.
And it was a harmless lie, really.
Right?
“Tell me about what inspired this album, Comeback.” The interviewer smiled, gesturing at Rumi, who lit up and nodded before quickly launching into the rehearsed spiel.
“It’s really a story about authenticity. Being yourself, no matter how terrifying that is, and trusting that the people who love you will love all of it. About wearing your heart on your sleeve, or well, skin—” Rumi laughed softly, and if Zoey hadn’t known any better, she would’ve believed that the joke wasn’t part of the script, too.
Rumi was sparkling under the stage lights as she spoke, her patterns—a soft, shimmering, hot iridescence—on full display. She looked beautiful. Hot, even. Seriously. Zoey almost wished they could go back to Rumi covering up, because it was impossible to pay attention when Rumi’s arms and shoulders looked like that. Most importantly, though, Rumi seemed relaxed and happy, like letting out the truth had truly dissipated all the stress she’d let build up inside of her over the years.
Seeing it made something sulfuric and vile curl up inside of Zoey’s chest. Jealousy, the kind that came packaged with the complementary guilt and shame of knowing she was being ridiculous. She quickly shoved it down, deep, chastising herself for feeling such terrible things about her friend finally getting to be happy.
The wake of Rumi’s demon transformation had been rough, to put it lightly. The water churned at the surface for weeks, anger and shame and betrayal bubbling up again and again until there was nothing left besides tears and apologies and I love yous—but Zoey was silently grateful for the way it hid everything of hers that had been simultaneously dredged up from the seafloor and now lurked just beneath the waves.
Rumi’s coming clean just made Zoey’s own pitiful lies feel that much more cruel. Rumi was a demon, the very thing they had been trained to kill on sight—and ultimately, that fact had changed nothing about how Zoey and Mira saw her.
Rumi had never had any other choice; Celine had raised her to keep it hidden, had never offered her any other option. And it made sense to hide, didn’t it? She had every reason to believe Zoey and Mira would react poorly… and, well, she’d been right.
Rumi'd had good reasons. Unlike her.
Zoey’s lie was just stupid.
The interview flowed on smoothly. Questions drifted past Zoey like background noise—about Rumi’s leadership, about choreography, about their upcoming break. As usual, most of them weren’t for her. They rarely were.
She could never tell what exactly it was that prompted it in people—her age? her gender? omega?
Probably the terrible combination of all three.
When the host finally shifted his attention towards her, it was with a look Zoey could only describe as pitying. Paternalistic. Affectionate infantilization.
Zoey tried to brace herself.
“Zoey,” he said, voice warm, “you’re the main lyricist for the group. And let me say, you did an amazing job on this album, really, but it’s definitely very different from your past work—was that a challenge for you?”
It caught her off guard.
She wasn't used to such interest in her actual work.
She perked up. “Yes! It was a challenge,” she started, and did her best to keep her excited ramblings about her process mostly contained. Tried to stick to the highlights—that this was an album about them, who they really were, not just the image they projected.
And she did good. She managed to keep it short (enough) and sweet, and her heart warmed as she caught Mira’s soft expression and Rumi’s pride in her peripheral vision.
“Sounds like a lot of hard work!” The host nodded. “And it really paid off. You must be exhausted. Have any fun plans for your break?”
She did not.
“Just visiting family back home,” she lied. Again. “It’ll be Thanksgiving back in the States, so I’ll be there celebrating.” At least there was a convenient holiday this time around.
“You travel home often, don’t you? Your family must be important to you,” the interviewer said, and Zoey’s stomach twisted.
“Of course,” she said with the best smile she could manage. “I love them.”
The conversation turned away from her again—probably a good thing, because she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to take anything else without doing something career-ending.
But it also left her to fester on it.
The question wasn’t about her being an omega. Not really.
She wished it had been.
At least when it was about being an omega, she could point to why she hated it. But this? This was just a reasonable followup.
And family was important to her. She didn’t mind that part of it. She was open to talking about it, and she would have loved it if they asked her why—but they never did.
They just assumed, because she was an omega.
After the interview wrapped up, all through dinner, into the evening, it itched in the back of her mind. An inescapable burr clinging no matter how hard she tried to shake it.
She just couldn’t let it go.
She wanted to. She tried to distract herself with anything, everything she could think of, but it stuck with her regardless.
And that night, alone in her bed, in the endless wisdom that only comes from being a little hormonal, a lot tired, and pretty stupid—she went online.
Omega Zoey strikes again, someone had posted. Love her to death, but she’s so omega.
She couldn't scroll further after that. Just dropped her phone next to her pillow and turned to face the ceiling.
They were right.
She couldn’t be upset that people just expected omega from her all the time. Because that’s what she was. And she did act like one.
Every time she’d tried to be subversive, to turn her soft bits into sharp edges and come off as anything else… she’d just been lying. And everyone could tell.
She was just an omega, destined to always be exactly what everyone expected that to mean.
No matter how much she tried to hide any part of it.
Infuriatingly, the anger and frustration were still with her in the morning.
They had a break coming up, sure, but they weren’t there yet—so they all woke up bright and early for another rehearsal. Nothing new, just refreshing some choreo they were bringing back for their next round of shows.
Unfortunately, it was just old enough that Zoey’s muscles had started to forget, and it took every ounce of concentration (that she didn’t have) to follow along properly.
She stumbled again… and again… and again.
“Stupid turn,” she muttered, angry at herself for messing it up. She knew it.
“Zoey?” Mira asked, and her words were braided with a care and concern that should have been comforting, but that Zoey could only interpret as patronizing and condescending.
Zoey knew better. She knew that’s not what Mira meant. But it rubbed her wrong all the same.
Which just made her feel more guilty.
Maybe she was just hormonal. She wasn’t due for another week, but maybe this was preheat hormones anyways. That was why she felt like everyone was picking at her, babying her. Yeah. That was it.
“What’s going on with you?” Mira asked, voice increasing in intensity.
“Nothing. I’m fine, really,” Zoey insisted, dropping her water bottle back down and taking the starting position once more. “I’ll get it next time. Just run it again.”
“I’m not talking about your dancing, Zoey,” Mira warned. “You’ve been weird ever since the interview yesterday. What’s going on?” She was pressing again, doing that thing she always did, where she couldn’t just let it go.
Zoey didn’t answer. She didn’t know how to answer, because she was being unreasonable and stupid, and it’s not like that was Mira’s fault.
Mira kept going. “I don’t like seeing you like this. Clearly something’s up. Did I—we—did we do something? Was it the interview? Should we have—”
“It’s not you,” Zoey said quickly, shaking her head. It was never them. They were literally perfect. Zoey was the one always fucking everything up.
Even after Rumi had gone through hell with her own secrets, and followed it up by spilling out every tiny thing she’d ever withheld… Zoey was still clinging to her own stupid lie like it was all she had.
“What is it, then? What aren’t you saying?”
“It’s nothing, really,” Zoey said, quieter this time. It was a losing game. Mira could sniff out problems like a bloodhound and drag them to the surface, revealing everything someone felt whether they wanted her to or not.
Usually Zoey was grateful for that. It kept her from locking up too much, from building up stress and resentment inside of her until she couldn’t hold it back anymore and everything fell apart.
But right now… it was just too much. Mira was pressing too hard.
Normally, she’d have shrunk away from it. Given non-answers until Mira finally gave up out of frustration.
But maybe her heat was coming on earlier than expected, because instead, she started crying.
Mira wrapped her up in a hug, and Zoey buried her face into her shirt, clinging to her as sobs wracked her body.
It was pathetic. She was pathetic, a whining, crying omega because somebody said something normal that she was overreacting to, and really she just wanted to crawl in a hole somewhere and never come out.
Mira started to say something, but seemed to think better of it, and settled for rubbing broad circles onto Zoey’s back.
She didn’t know how to explain.
I’m an omega. I’m always an omega, and it’s all anybody ever sees and I fucking hate it.
It was stupid. And she really didn’t want to be annoying about it.
“It’s nothing, really,” she said instead. “I’m just hormonal.”
“Hormonal?” Rumi asked, confused, and Zoey realized what she’d done.
They didn’t know she was hormonal. They didn’t know why.
Because they didn’t know she still had heats.
She started crying again.
“Let’s go sit down,” Mira said, not a request. “Can you make it downstairs?”
Zoey gave a small nod into her shirt, then disentangled herself from the hug and made her way down to the living room. She didn’t look at them. She couldn’t look at them.
Couch time started with a few minutes of silence. Zoey sat in the middle, fists tightened around the edge of the couch cushions, sniffles and hiccups occasionally shaking their way free.
Zoey hated the way they waited. Hated how gentle they were being.
“So,” Mira finally said, low and steady. “What’s going on?”
Zoey sniffed again, rubbing her sleeve under her nose. She felt like a small child again, which only made everything worse, really. “I didn’t mean to say that,” she said quietly.
“Say what?” Rumi asked.
“Hormonal.” Zoey swallowed. Was she really about to commit further to this lie?
Mira’s brow furrowed slightly. “Well… are you? Hormonal?”
Zoey looked her in the eyes for half a second, and crumbled. She couldn’t lie anymore. “Yeah.”
Neither of them reacted in horror, and Zoey slowly realized that actually they had no clue what she was implying.
“I didn’t want this to be a whole thing,” she said, badly starting an explanation.
Rumi scooted a little closer, their knees brushing. “You’re crying on the couch, Zoey… it’s already kind of a thing.”
That earned a tiny laugh from Zoey before her eyes started to fill with tears again. “I just…” she dug her fingernails deeper into the cushions. “I don’t want to ruin anything.”
Mira’s voice softened. “You won’t ruin things,” she said, with a subtle glance to Rumi, who dipped her head bashfully.
Zoey squeezed her eyes shut.
“I think I’m going to go into heat. Like, soon. Maybe today or tomorrow. And I’m… tired of running away about it.”
The room went very still.
Rumi blinked. “Heat… as in—?”
Zoey nodded, miserably. “Yeah.”
Mira didn’t react right away. She just watched Zoey, gaze intent, expression unreadable.
“But,” Rumi said slowly, confusion creeping in, “you’re on suppressants. Aren’t you?”
Zoey looked down at her hands.
There it was. They’d figured it out.
“No.” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed hard.
Silence again.
“I’ve never been,” she whispered. “I can’t take them.”
Rumi’s eyes widened. “Zoey—”
“I know,” Zoey rushed, panicking. “I know, I should have told you, and I meant to tell you, so many times, but I just didn’t because I thought I could handle it and it wouldn’t matter and—”
“Hey,” Mira said, firm. She placed a hand over Zoey’s clenched fist, gently sliding her fingers underneath to lift Zoey’s out of their clawed positions. “Slow down.”
Zoey sucked in a very shaky breath.
“I’ve been lying to you about it,” she said, quieter. “Like… since we first met.”
Rumi looked stunned, even hurt—but it wasn’t what Zoey expected. It wasn’t angry, it was just... soft. Sad.
“Is that what all the trips home are about?” Rumi asked. “Are they to cover it up?”
Zoey nodded. “Yeah. I go home. And I lock myself in my old room, and I just… wait it out.”
“Alone?” Rumi just sounded even sadder.
Another nod.
Mira’s jaw tightened. “Zoey, you know you don’t have to do that.”
“I didn’t want you to see me like that,” Zoey said quickly, words tumbling out now that she’d gotten started. “I didn’t want you to have to deal with it. To deal with me. Because everyone already sees me as—” she gestured at herself. “Like this.”
“Like what?” Rumi tilted her head slightly, puzzled.
“An omega,” Zoey said bitterly. “Someone who can’t take care of herself. Who needs things. A burden.”
“You know that’s not—” Mira started.
“I know,” Zoey said, tears spilling down her face again. “I know you don’t think that. But I do. And every time I go into heat it just gets so much worse. I’m just proving everyone right.”
“You’re not proving anything, Zoey. It’s natural,” Mira said. “And this isn’t really news to me. I knew.”
“What?” Zoey asked, horrified.
“I mean… it was kind of obvious. You had these periodic trips home, but never really had much to say about what you did on them… you’re not exactly a great liar.”
The hilarity of Mira, the one who couldn’t smell any of it, being the one who had figured it out, caught Zoey off guard, and she laughed. “You’re kidding me!”
Mira shook her head. “I just… figured it wasn’t any of my business. And if you didn’t want to talk about it… I wasn’t gonna push it.”
Rumi said nothing.
“Rumi? Did you not know?” Mira asked, incredulous.
“Okay, I was a little busy,” Rumi said, petulant.
Mira laughed.
It made Zoey smile a little. Neither of them seemed mad at her, at all, somehow. Even though they really should’ve been at least a little upset.
“I just wished you didn’t think you needed to leave. It’s not something you need to hide. I would have been fine with you sticking around here. I mean, Rumi does it.”
Rumi nodded. “Yeah, Mira’s right. You shouldn’t have to go overseas for a heat. It’s not that big of a deal.”
Zoey blinked. “You mean it? I can just… stay?”
Mira nodded. “That’s fine,” she said, slowly. Cautiously. Which was only fair, really. It was a lot to suddenly have someone’s heat dumped on her, even if she wouldn’t be able to smell it.
But Rumi seemed hesitant, too, and somehow that was even more scary.
“Rumi?” Zoey asked, and she wanted to scream over how small and terrified she sounded. “Is that… okay?”
Rumi panicked. “Of course! Yes, of course it is. It’s just…”
There it was. Zoey was too much, she needed to go somewhere else, she was an inconvenience and Rumi didn’t want to be around it, because of course she didn’t—
“I’ll just also be in rut,” Rumi finished softly. Like she was ashamed and nervous about it. Like she was the problem. Which made Zoey want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until the last of her insecurities fell out.
Wait.
Oh.
That was awful timing.
Zoey knew what it was like to be around a Rumi in rut. She’d experienced it a few times, back when they’d been much younger and Rumi too stubborn to realize that her working through her ruts was a terrible, terrible idea. She’d tried to cover up the smell with perfume, and Zoey, still new to the group and terrified of being too much, said nothing, even as all she could think of was how attractive Rumi was and how unbearably horny the smell made her.
Nowadays, Rumi kept her distance in rut, but Zoey still had never been able to quash the thoughts she had about how attractive Rumi was. And they were made all the worse by Rumi now running around in shirts that showed off her shoulders and collarbone and abs and—yeah, Zoey was basically dying constantly whenever Rumi was in the room with her.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine how Heat Zoey would feel about it. Even now, she was just imagining Rumi in her bed, touching her…
Maybe she should hop on a plane, as soon as possible.
“Would that be a problem?” Rumi asked, quiet, unsure.
“No,” Zoey said like an idiot. And then, “we could share it,” before she even got a chance to stop and filter.
It was supposed to be a joke—but it didn’t come out sounding like one. The words hung in the air for a minute before Zoey realized what she had just done, and she contemplated the ideal trajectory for throwing herself out the window at that moment.
“Joke,” she clarified, but the damage had already been done. Rumi had turned bright red, forming a unique contrast with her hair and her patterns. Zoey wondered how she would look when—
No. Bad Zoey.
“I…” Rumi was quiet.
“Forget. Please. Now. I didn’t say anything. Nuh-uh. No. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero.” She ran out of ways to deny that she had just done that. She started to stand up, so that she could run away and never be seen again.
“I would. If you wanted,” Rumi said, hiding her face.
“Really?” Too enthusiastic. Any fears Zoey’d had of them being upset with her for all the lying were completely gone now. She needed to be afraid of herself and her stupid mouth that she was clearly losing control of.
An old sketchy internet ad she’d seen for omega muzzles flashed through her mind. She needed one. Yesterday. So she could stop digging herself deeper into whatever fresh hell this was.
Zoey glanced over at Mira, who raised her eyebrows at them both and looked down at her phone, pretending to play a game on it. She said nothing, and Zoey wanted to shake her and scream help me out of this mess, please!
“Yes, really,” Rumi said, so softly Zoey could barely pick it up. She glanced over at Mira, who raised her eyebrows and made a go on gesture with her shoulder.
Zoey couldn’t really make heads or tails of it.
“I like you, a lot, Zoey. And if you really wanted to share a heat with me, then yeah. I’d love that.”
Mira gave a thumbs up, and Rumi shot her a glare.
But Mira had already looked away, and was holding her phone up, pretending to get a phone call—with absolutely no care for the fact both Rumi and Zoey could see her empty screen. “You two have fun with that,” she said, standing up and walking out with a wave and a poorly-suppressed laugh.
“You… want me,” Zoey said, slowly, like the words might break everything.
Rumi nodded once.
Zoey’s stomach fluttered.
“Do you. Want to go to my room, or...”
Great job, Zoey. Real sexy.
Rumi nodded, and her face was red again. It should not have been as hot as it was to see her so flustered.
Zoey turned and walked toward her room, suddenly aware of just how quickly her heart was beating. She still wasn’t in heat, but she was just on the cusp of it, really.
Rumi followed her, and Zoey jumped up onto her bed and sat.
She thought for a moment about reconsidering. About going hey, wait a minute, we’re friends, we’re in a k-pop group together, maybe we shouldn’t do this—and then Rumi walked in behind her, arms and shoulders exposed, as hot as always, and Zoey gave up on that because holy shit she was too pretty.
And every past version of herself would absolutely kill her if she fumbled this.
Rumi took a seat on the edge of Zoey’s bed.
“Is this a bad time to mention that I’ve, like. Never done any of this?” Zoey asked.
Rumi shook her head. “No… and me either.”
And that made sense, really. Up until a few months ago Rumi’d not even been able to show her arms to her closest friends… so of course she hadn’t.
Zoey’s excuse—that she had been too busy being down bad for her bandmates to care about anyone else—stayed tucked away inside.
“Can I kiss you?” Zoey said instead, shocking even herself.
Rumi nodded.
Zoey leaned over, hand sliding onto the side of Rumi’s face like it belonged there, and kissed her softly.
For about two seconds.
Just until Rumi kissed back, and Zoey lost herself in it. Rumi seemed equally overcome, lips interlocking again and again as the contact quickly became infinitely more important than oxygen.
Zoey smiled as her tongue brushed over the tips of Rumi’s fangs, brain instantly filling with a bevy of explicit thoughts about where she wanted them. Zoey ran a thumb down Rumi’s neck, and the shudder that ran through Rumi made her pull back instantly.
“Rumi,” Zoey said, looking into her eyes. Rumi’s cheeks were flushed as well—not quite as much as Zoey’s, but enough that it was obvious—and her eyes were glazed over with that look she always got when she was trying to suppress something. “Do you not want this?”
The thought broke Zoey’s heart a little, because she was a needy omega who needed attention right now, but there was truly nothing that could be worth asking Rumi to do something she wasn’t okay with.
“No, no, I do,” Rumi said, and her voice wavered slightly. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”
They should really put that line at the top of the list of things for alphas to say in porn, because it was just about the hottest thing Zoey’s ever heard.
Her underwear agreed, as the words struck directly at her core. She could feel her body releasing more slick in response.
She had known the bar was low, but damn.
“You won’t hurt me,” Zoey reassured her, but Rumi didn’t move. Zoey whined her name again, hoping it might be able to break Rumi’s (normally-endearing) supernatural restraint.
If Rumi wouldn’t take the lead…
Zoey let a devious smile hit her face.
“You’re sure you still want to have sex with me?” Zoey asked again, and it sounded awkward and stiff, but she couldn’t think of any better way to phrase it, and she needed it to be perfectly clear. She’d already forgotten the answer from before. No one could really blame her, though. Heat brain was kind of the ultimate excuse for being stupid.
Rumi nodded, and Zoey lunged forward to kiss her once more, flipping them around and carefully pushing Rumi down onto the bed.
None of their clothes were long for this world, as Zoey fumbled frantically with fabric, pulling off Rumi’s shirt, and then her own. Her own bra only took a moment, but she spent an embarrassing amount of time fumbling helplessly with Rumi’s before Rumi shook her head and did it herself.
Rumi was absolutely gorgeous.
Zoey traced down Rumi’s patterns with her mouth, soft licks and kisses drawing sweet sounds from Rumi. Hands nestled carefully in Zoey’s hair—not pressing, not gripping, just resting—and Zoey smiled. Even as she felt her body desperately clenching against nothing, she took her time, drawing out every moment with Rumi.
She followed one pattern down to Rumi’s chest, grazing it slightly with her teeth, laughing to herself at how Rumi gasped at it.
It was everything she’d dreamed of, getting to run her fingers over every inch of skin, underneath Rumi’s ribcage, over her waist. Kissing softly everywhere she could reach. She was distantly aware that Rumi might find it to be more infuriating teasing than foreplay, but she wasn’t the one in literal heat, and if she found it frustrating, she certainly wasn’t acting like it.
So Zoey relaxed a bit, and let herself have her fun.
There was something intoxicating about the way she got to turn her need into power like this. How she was able to flip everything she thought she knew on its head. To hold Rumi, an alpha, underneath her.
To need like an omega in heat, and yet not be at someone else’s mercy.
Rumi’s scent was warm as Zoey buried herself into it. It didn’t have any of the intensity of rut yet, just the familiar smell of Rumi that Zoey had gotten so comfortable with. That she’d imagined so many times while coming around a hunk of silicone. It was so much better in reality.
She could tell the effect her own pheromones were having on Rumi, too, as she dragged a hand down to the bulge in Rumi’s pants.
“Zoey…” Rumi whined, hips bucking slightly as Zoey let one fingertip slip under the waistband of Rumi’s sweatpants. God. Zoey needed more. Immediately.
Still, a wave of anxiety hit her.
“You’re sure this is…?” She asked, worrying.
Rumi’s mouth cracked into a smile as she stifled a laugh. “Yes, Zoey, I’m sure. Please.”
So Zoey took a deep breath and pulled down Rumi’s pants.
Which just about broke her completely. Her brain lit up like a sparkler, thoughts flying everywhere all at once, but all centering around the fact that she was in heat and Rumi was hot as fuck and an alpha and in her bed.
“You’re really fucking hot,” Zoey breathed, finally giving up on having any filter at all.
“You are too, you know,” Rumi said, and Zoey was on her again instantly, digging her fingers into the gaps in her braid and kissing her with lips and teeth and tongue and she only realized that she had started grinding down on Rumi when she realized Rumi was gasping into her mouth.
Rumi pulled her face away for a moment, and Zoey whined, chasing her, desperate, lost in the haze of needing a knot inside of her.
Luckily, Rumi still had brain cells, and was busy reaching for a condom she had left on the nightstand. Some tiny heat-addled part of her brain wanted to protest, but she wasn’t that stupid.
Instead she watched as Rumi unwrapped it and rolled it down, and was she taking so long on purpose or did Zoey just feel like every second Rumi wasn’t in her was an eternity of torture? Impossible to say, really.
After Zoey bravely endured centuries of torment, Rumi finally looked up at her and nodded, and Zoey grinned.
She wasn’t an expert.
Well.
Okay.
She wasn’t even experienced. Like, at all.
But she’d used plenty of toys while suffering through heats alone for years, and it wasn’t exactly rocket science. And she was plenty lubricated.
So it didn’t take her long to get Rumi inside of her, laying down and looking up at her. Her braid was completely disheveled—hot—and she looked just as taken apart as her hair, really, as she looked up at Zoey with something that could only be described as awe.
Which wasn’t bad for Zoey’s ego or anything.
It took all of her resolve to hold herself still while Rumi shuffled around on the bed beneath her, getting comfortable. But she did her best to entertain herself, watching Rumi’s patterns, her toned arms, and totally not losing her shit over the way she could feel even the tiniest of Rumi’s movements inside of her.
And finally, when Rumi settled down at last, Zoey lost herself to it. Let her body take over, rocking forward, riding Rumi without any further thoughts because she needed it. She lost track of time, letting herself fall to the sensations rolling through every fiber of her being.
God.
Maybe this was the best thing ever. She was completely lost in Rumi, body responding to every movement like they belonged together.
She didn’t last very long—some combination of being a virgin, in heat, and touching one of the two hottest women ever, probably. She didn’t even get much of a warning, really—one of Rumi’s fangs scraped over a sensitive point on her neck and she came with a pathetic wail, digging her nails into Rumi’s shoulders and holding on for dear life.
Rumi finished only a few seconds later, with a few thrusts of her own, and Zoey moaned into Rumi’s neck as she felt the knot swelling inside of her, satisfying the feral thing inside of her that had been burning ever since her heat began.
Neither of them said anything for a minute, both too busy catching their breath, and Zoey flopped down onto Rumi.
“Alpha,” she said, jokingly, doing a funny voice like the most exaggerated porn ever, but Rumi didn’t even skip a beat before responding, “Zoey.” And only then, “omega.”
And maybe it was just the hormones. Maybe it was that Zoey had been such a mess for so long, that she was just overemotional and silly, but she teared up again at that. She didn’t even know what she’d expected, but Rumi calling her Zoey first, before omega… it did something to her.
Rumi’s eyes widened immediately. “Is that—is that okay?”
Zoey nodded, and smiled. “Yeah. Yeah. These are happy tears. Promise,” and that seemed to comfort Rumi, who gave a happy little sigh.
Zoey let herself get lost in the fog then, completely overtaken by her heat and the alpha—Rumi—that she was getting to spend it with.
Rumi’s fingers ran softly through her hair, and Zoey melted completely.
For the first time in a long time, she didn’t care what anybody else thought.
Sure.
She was an omega.
And she was needy and soft and maybe a little bit weak and fragile, too… but now, Rumi and Mira knew everything, and Rumi, at least, had seen her at her most vulnerable… and still called her Zoey.