Actions

Work Header

You Burn First

Summary:

Rey is kidnapped to be a slave for the ruthless Kylo Ren in exchange for the protection of her people. The post-apocalyptic world she lives in is brutal, but he might be worse.

Notes:

  • Translation into Русский available: [Restricted Work] by (Log in to access.)

this will contain graphic depictions of non-consensual sexual acts/rape and A/B/O elements. you have been warned. mind the tags. do not expect kylo ren to ever be nice.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

 “You have an Omega here. Where is she?”

Sweat beaded on my hairline as heavy boots clunked above my head. The crawlspace hadn’t been cleaned—we never thought I’d be found—and it was hard to breathe in the musty darkness. My eyes widened, struggling to adjust, just in time to watch a black spider creep across the worn trapdoor overhead.

Finn stammered. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s illegal.”

 “Yet here we are,” drawled the intruder. He took a few more steps in Finn’s direction. “One our scouts saw her enter your home, and they have no reason to lie. So, unless you’d like us to burn your miserable little village to the ground, I suggest you hand her over.”

A scout? I didn’t remember seeing anyone out of place in the last few weeks. We never let anyone in or out unless they’d been cleared through Amilyn, and she could spot spies a mile away. I frowned and kept a careful eyes on the spider now creeping closer to me. Only Kylo Ren’s enforcers could breach the wall whenever they pleased.

Furniture clattered. I winced at the sound of flesh on flesh and Finn’s yelp of pain. Fuck; I couldn’t just here and let them beat the hell out of my friend. I reached for the rail to push open the trapdoor and couldn’t hold in a shocked squeal when the spider dashed for my fingers.

The commotion overhead stopped. I clapped my hands over my mouth and shrank back as Finn coughed at the men to stop. Boots scuffed and tapped on the floor, listening for the echo of my hiding place. My pulse roared in my ears.

 “There you are.”

An axe tore through the wood, splitting it open and pouring light in from the bedroom. This time I screamed and fell back into a pile of moldy blankets, scattering centipedes across the floor. Finn pleaded with them to stop, but the axe ripped free and swung down again.

 “You’ll be compensated with protection,” another man said lazily, “which this miserable little outpost could certainly use.”

A gaping hole split through the door. Two men peered through at me, both brown-haired and blue eyed, and both smiled. I stared back at them, silently begging for mercy that I knew they wouldn’t give me.

They dragged me out by my ankles, kicking and screaming. The edge of the hiding place caught my stomach and scraped hard enough to draw blood. It pooled through my nightgown as they pulled me away from Finn’s frantic bargaining.

 “Please!” he croaked. “I promised her parents I wouldn’t let anything—”

The leader slapped Finn hard enough to knock him to the floor. He turned his bright green eyes on me, hands clasped behind his back, not a single red hair out of place. I knew exactly who I was looking at—and spat at him.

Hux raised an eyebrow. He wore the same garb from the last time I’d seen him, before I presented and had to go into hiding: a gray jacket, jeans, and a black shirt. His gun hung out in the open on his hip, close to his silver belt buckle.

 “You should be happy, little bitch.” He nodded, and the two goons handcuffed my wrists behind my back. “If the government found you, they’d kill you instead.”

 “I’d rather fucking die!” I snarled.

He smiled. “Already? Ren hasn’t even gotten his hands on you yet.”

Finn struggled to his feet as the men pulled me out of our small cabin into the sticky summer night. A small crowd gathered around Amilyn’s home to watch and whisper while I screamed like a banshee and thrashed in the dirt. No one was stupid enough to intervene.

Hux pulled his gun and whipped one of the goons across the back of his head, scowling.

 “Get her off the ground, you fucking morons. Which one of you made her bleed?!”

Finn followed us out into the darkness, still begging them to leave me. Blood poured from his nose and dripped off his chin, staining his white shirt bright red. He’d just come home from helping Amilyn patch her roof when we got the warning about Hux.

I resisted as the men dragged me to my feet toward the back of their old truck. The gun cocked behind us.

 “You’re beginning to piss me off, Johnson,” Hux hissed.

Terrified, I ripped an arm free and whirled around to face Finn. He was on his knees with both hands up and his eyes closed, refusing to give up. I dug my heels into the soft mud and gritted my teeth.

 “Finn, stop!” I shouted. I squirmed away from the bigger goon. “Stop! It’s not worth your life!”

 “Enough, Finn.”

Amilyn’s calm, clear voice cut through the din. She emerged from her home, long hands gracefully knit before her, shrouded in a long purple gown. It hung around her feet in a liquid pool and obscured her entire tall body from her clavicle down.

Hux smirked when he saw her. “Hello, Amilyn. It’s been a while.”

She descended the stairs to the last step and inclined her head politely. Nothing ruffled her. Every strand of her purple hair hung in place even though she’d just woken up like the rest of us.

 “Armitage,” she said. “I see you’ve found what your master wants—rest assured, no one here was aware of her presence. She would’ve been promptly delivered.”

I swallowed hard at the bold-faced lie. It had to happen. The whole village could be punished for hiding me, but this way… At least they’d have protection from the government. We couldn’t withstand another raid.

Hux holstered his weapon. “Of course. I can take the word of a former comrade.” He gestured toward Finn with a sneer. “This one needs a Xanax and a shower, it seems. See to it that he doesn’t respond this way when the militia arrives.”

 “I will, General.” Amilyn waved a graceful hand and two of our own men rushed over to help Finn to his feet. “We’ll scour the village for more holdouts for Lord Ren. We appreciate the offer of protection.”

Finn sobbed and kept screaming as they yanked open the rear doors of the truck. I panted in fear and met Amilyn’s eyes just as they dragged me inside. She offered a small wave and a sad smile, the only two gestures that would go unnoticed. They couldn’t risk starting a scuffle. More men would come and they’d level the town.

I collapsed on the cold metal floor and the doors slammed shut behind me.

Chapter 2: I said, "Cover me, if there is a fire

Notes:

alright demons here u go

Chapter Text

The long drive gave me too much time to think.

It’d been years since the last invasion, and that came from the government, not Kylo Ren’s sect of savages. My parents were still alive back then and I didn’t learn about it until I came home from playing in the woods with Finn. There was no threat back then because I hadn’t presented.

An ominous black cloud hovered over me on the very first day of my very first heat. It struck when I was fourteen and tortured me every month for the past three years with no medication to help. I’d hole up in my bedroom and caterwaul like a wild animal for a week while poor Finn had to listen.

But all the Alpha males flocked to Kylo Ren so I had no relief. I didn’t want it, anyway—they were all fucking beasts.

I thrashed in the metal cage, screaming as loud as I could and kicking the walls until my feet bled. The truck jostled me plenty, too. We drove over bumps and through ditches, navigating the dangerous terrain to whatever hellish compound Ren was in.

Amilyn said he’d been just as ruthless when he served as a general during the War as he was now—one of the many reasons she declined to hang around after the War.

The truck came to a stop. I swallowed hard and squeezed my eyes shut as the doors opened. He’s an Alpha male. I know what he wants.

Hux stood by to watch the two goons yank me out, promptly spilling me on the hard ground. He snapped at them and I felt a pinch in my upper arm with the cold squelch of fluid under my skin. I screeched and rolled in the mud, seeping dirt in the abrasion on my stomach. The world spun in a haze of green trees and looming men.

 “Inept—” Hux yanked me to my feet and I swayed into his chest, moaning. “Can’t control this slip of a girl?! Fucking worthless morons.” He wiped a hand down my cheek and flung mud to the ground. “We’ll see what Ren chooses do to with you for bringing her to him in this state!”

 “She’s strong,” huffed one.

 “We can wash her first,” suggested the other. He shifted, eyeing me with unmistakable hunger. “She smells good.”

Hux backhanded him without a moment’s hesitation. “Hold your tongue, Felix.”

The drug kept me from fighting back, even as he strapped a collar around my neck. It led to a jangling chain that Hux twisted around his wrist and used to drag me along behind him. My brown hair hung in a tangle around my face and tears streamed down my dirty cheeks. I couldn’t stop moving or the collar choked me.

Hux’s goons led the way through the dark forest. I didn’t bother looking up to take in my surroundings or the faces of the men watching me stumbling by. My feet slapped through puddles and across old broken cobblestone until I grew too dizzy to keep walking straight. I collapsed to my knees on stone steps, coughing as the collar pulled and clenched on my throat.

Hux sighed. “What did I give her? Valium?”

 “…Fentanyl, sir.”

 “Fentanyl?!

The gun cocked and a shot rang out. I watched through lidded eyes as one goon collapsed with a thud a couple feet away from me. He didn’t move.

Hux scooped me off the ground bridal style, crooking his elbow to support my head on his arm. I caught sight of the man on the ground and the bullet hole in the center of his forehead. His wide blue eyes had already glassed over with death.

I whimpered and Hux patted my thigh as we walked again.

 “Don’t fret, little one. He won’t kill you.” He laughed. “Probably.”

We walked across a mossy courtyard to a set of enormous wooden doors. Two men stood guard outside with rifles and they inched closer to get a look at me. A strange taste hung in my mouth, like I’d just eaten something spicy. Finn said Alphas sometimes gave off a ‘scent.’

One man pounded on the door. “He’s been pissy as hell waiting for you to get back. The other Omega died last night.”

 “Of what?” Hux asked, like it bored him.

 “What do you think? Miscarriage. Bled out.” He patted his chest, protected by a bulletproof vest. “Shot the doctor, he was so pissed.”

Hux turned to regard his goon. “Hear that, Elliott? He’s already homicidal. I hope you kissed your wife goodbye before we left.”

The door groaned open and I lolled limply in Hux’s arms as we walked through.

Boisterous laughter and chatter echoed through the room at first, but quickly died out. They were all men. Women stayed in the homes and rarely came out, even though every single one was a Beta. Omegas went to the wealthy.

I couldn’t see much. Firelight complimented the poor fluorescent lighting and cast an eerie glow across the enormous hall. Long wooden tables lined the edge of the torn red carpet that muffled Hux’s footsteps, and he pointedly ignored the stares of the other men. Some slowly rose to their feet, abandoning mugs of beer or plates of food. Chairs scraped. I could feel the tension humming higher in the room—I was a meaty bone in a den of starving dogs.

Hux stopped. He bent down to lay me on something soft and squishy, then rose with the chain around his wrist. My eyes roamed blindly to another set of stairs leading up to black boots and I shifted, trying to cover my legs with my gown. One boot tapped on the floor.

 “Dameron was correct,” Hux said. “Holdo’s outpost has been hiding this girl in a crawlspace. We found her in Finn Johnson’s home.”

Silence ensued. My breathing seemed to be the loudest thing in the room, save for a few vague murmurs. The boot kept tapping.

 “She’s filthy,” droned The Boot’s deep, unsettling voice.

 “Elliott and Felix managed to drop her at every turn.” Hux huffed. “I already shot Felix—he gave me fucking fentanyl to calm her down.”

 “Fentanyl,” echoed The Boot. Fingers tapped on stone. “He gave her… fentanyl?”

Goon Two spoke up in a nervous voice. “Sir, when we pulled her from the crawlspace, her stomach caught on the edge. She’s strong.

My gaze slowly traveled up the man’s legs, clad in dark jeans, up and up a ridiculous stone throne. His black T-shirt clung to pale muscles and broad shoulders all leading to an impassive, long face. He lounged in the throne, clearly at his leisure there, hiding most his mouth with his fingers. Black hair hung down to his shoulders, drawn back at the top in a small ponytail.

I blinked at him and it drew a smile to the corner of his lips. He was huge. Tall and big and broad. The tingling in my mouth got worse the longer I looked at him and I twisted my wrists in the cuffs. Alpha male—imposing enough to make me squirm.

He gazed at me while he spoke. “This little thing was too much for you—a two-hundred fifty pound Alpha male?”

 “My Lord—”

Kylo rolled his eyes and drew a pistol. I flinched as a shot echoed though the hall, followed by a loud thud. No one spoke.

He twisted the pistol around his index finger, still assessing me lazily. I huffed in fear, squirming on what I assumed was a dog bed, and watched him holster the gun again. Black tattoos smattered his pale skin down his forearms, all lined with hard muscles and veins and tendons.

Kylo drummed his fingers on the arm of the throne. “Age?”

 “Seventeen. Her name is Rey.”

He tilted his head, smiling down at me. “Rey. Pretty.” His eyes flickered up to Hux. “How many men are we sending to the outpost in return for her? Twenty?”

 “They’ll need additional supplies to support a militia that size, but it sounds fair.” Hux tugged the chain a bit, drawing a gasp from me. “We could send more, depending on her quality, of course. Amilyn is too useful to lose.”

 “That she is.” Kylo clicked his tongue thoughtfully, shifting his weight in the throne. “Bring this Finn back to me when the troops are sent. I’d like to kill him myself.”

I groaned and shook my head, struggling to get up. He raised his eyebrows and watched.

 “No,” I rasped. I rolled on my back and fought tears as they ran down my cheeks. “Please…”

Kylo rose from the throne in one slow, fluid motion, drawing up to his full, intimidating height. He reached under his shirt and withdrew a serrated knife that glinted bright silver in the gloom. My heart pounded frantically.

 “What?” he murmured. He took one languid step down. “Please what?”

I shivered miserably and tried to collect myself. “He’s—he’s my best—” My voice cracked as I broke down into sobs. “He’s like my brother!”

Low laughter reverberated through the hall. Kylo cracked a wider smile as he carried on down the stairs toward me, never averting his eyes. They were impossibly dark, drawing me in even though I wanted to look the hell away.

He heaved a sigh as he came to stand over me. Hux smirked and handed him the chain, then drew back with a polite nod of his head. Kylo wrapped it around his wrist and gave a gentle pull.

 “I like when you beg, Rey.” He flipped the knife in his grasp. “Beg more.”

The collar tightened. My spine arched, breath escaping me in a soft rasp, and my heels dug in to the plush bed. He raised his eyebrows again while I fought to breathe and form another ‘please.’ I choked on a frustrated sob, too dizzy and terrified to do anything else.

Kylo released and I fell back, wheezing and coughing. The knife glinted and he leaned down to seize the front of my nightgown and slash it straight down the middle. The other men jeered, drowning out my strangled screams.

He tore it wide open with his bare hand and the pink slivers of cotton fell apart. He licked his lips and his eyebrows flashed up in surprise. I had nothing on except my white panties.

 “Let’s send them whatever they’d like, Hux.” Kylo slipped the knife back in its sheath, staring down at me. “This is very high quality.”

The laughter picked up around the room until I couldn’t hear anything else. He rolled his shoulders before bending over again, scooping me off the bed bridal style. I had no strength to fight back and just shuddered in his arms with my eyes half open. He was warm, at least. I felt cold despite it being the middle of July.

Kylo carried me down dark hallways I hardly noticed. It grew harder and harder to stay awake, especially with my intermittent sobbing. I had to focus on the pain in my stomach to keep from fainting. I didn’t want to wake up to him… doing things to me.

We walked up some stairs in a circle and I realized he was bringing me to a tower. He’d settled in an old part of the forest, full of towering redwoods and craggy old castles. Amilyn said it was half for defense and half because he liked the drama of it.

A light flicked on. Rain drummed on the glass, casting eerie blue moonlight across the shadowy room. I caught a glimpse of iron rings drilled into the stone floor. My stomach turned.

 “It’s the middle of July, kitten. Why so much trembling, hm?” Kylo turned on another light, patting my thigh. “Are you nervous?”

 “N—no,” I puffed, tensing up. “No.”

He laughed. It rumbled through his chest under my fingertips.

 “You should be.”

We were in a bathroom, just as dark as the rest of the damn castle. Kylo set me down in an empty claw foot tub and pulled up my wrists to unlock my manacles. I flopped on my side, writhing like a dying snake, and squealed when cold water rained down on my face.

He maneuvered me however he needed to. I limply let him raise my jaw and push me forward so he could rinse my hair and wash off my back. His hands felt just as rough as the rest of him.

The mud and grime washed down the drain in a black and brown swirl. My blood joined when Kylo reached my stomach and washed off the dried crust forming over my wound. I cried and covered my face, drawing murmurs from him.

 “Aren’t you a whiny little creature?” He yanked off my panties with one huge hand. “When was your last heat?”

 ”I… I…”

He hung up the shower head and knelt beside the tub. I yelped as long fingers tangled in my hair and he pulled hard to expose the curve of my jaw. Kylo leaned in, drawing the tip of his nose along my skin and breathing in through his mouth.

 “Not long,” he mused. “Judging by the scent. Did your friend Finn help you?”

 “No.” I stared across the bathroom, eyes wide with fear. “He never touched me.”

The cold water made my teeth chatter, but having Kylo so close to my throat played a role, too. I breathed hard through my nose to keep from tasting the tingling scent of him on the roof of my mouth, terrified of the way it made my head spin. He drew another deep breath.

Then he rose, fetching a brown towel to drape around my shivering form. I huffed as he lifted me out of the bathtub and we went back out to the dimly lit bedroom. A rain-scented breeze wafted in through one of the open windows.

The bed sat in the dead center of the room, wrought iron headboard stark against the gray stone walls. I struggled a bit as Kylo gently placed me under red sheets and watched him loop the chain link leash behind the headboard. It snapped it with a resounding click.

He turned away for a moment, casually peeling his shirt off. “One of the men will likely intrude tonight to attempt to take you from me. Don’t bother me unless you’re being raped.”

I shifted in the warm sheets as Kylo continued stripping, stepping out of his boots, but averted my eyes when he unbuckled his belt. I didn’t fucking want anyone touching me.

A drawer opened. “Sleeping in the bed is a privilege you can lose. There’s plenty of room on the floor for you.”

 “Thanks,” I croaked, aiming for sarcasm but hitting a solid ‘pathetic’ instead.

The mattress moved and I squeaked as one thick arm wound around my waist. Kylo moved closer until he was flush against my back, adjusting his hips in a an obvious, suggestive way near my ass. I reddened, huffing uncomfortably at his huge body curled possessively around mine. The bare skin of his chest was ridiculously hot.

He yawned, exhaling in my hair. “By the by—if you try to kill me in my sleep, at least make the effort worth the punishment I’ll inflict when you fail. Strangling me with the leash won’t work. Be creative.”

I blinked into the gloomy darkness, listening to the rain patter on the windows; scared of falling asleep. But the bed felt warm and the drug dragged me down until I finally couldn’t resurface.

Chapter 3: 'Cause I want you

Notes:

OKAY apparently there was a high demand for ABO noncon jesus CHRISTMAS
as always i love your comments but my responses are strange so i love u all

Chapter Text

The next morning, I woke up alone in the big bed. My stomach twisted painfully from the drug as I startled under the heavy red sheets, forgetting where I was for a minute. But the collar around my throat quickly dragged me back to the awful predicament I’d landed in.

Whimpering, I blinked and stretched to feel out how much room I had, and traced the chain link leash behind the headboard. I didn’t feel like I’d been touched or anything during the night, just sore and nauseous from the trip.

The bedroom felt colder, thick with humidity and the earthy smell after a rainstorm. Shivering, I propped myself up in bed, gathering the blankets around my naked body, and rubbed my eyes. Still alive—that was good. Always good to be alive.

I’d been too wasted to pay much attention to the room the night before, but I could see it fine in the hazy morning light. It looked like a fucking dungeon: big red carpet, torches to augment the weak fluorescent lighting, and mismatched old furniture scattered around the round room. I brushed a hand through my hair to work out the tangles and swallowed hard. Okay. Horror movie.

The wooden bathroom door opened in the next moment and Kylo emerged with a towel around his waist. His black hair hung in a wet mess near his shoulders, chest still beaded with water, and I couldn’t help but stare at the rippled scars on his skin. He smiled faintly.

 “Phasma is coming to give you a physical.” He tugged off the towel and I averted my eyes as fast as I could. “Check for infections, assess your capacity to carry and bear pups. My last bitch died two nights ago—hemorrhage.”

I kept my eyes covered, humiliated. “I have the virus, if that’s what you’re asking.”

 “We’ll see.” Kylo yawned, cracking his joints. “If you can carry a pregnancy without issue, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

An Omega-specific virus caused severe weakness of the uterine lining and made us highly likely to bleed to death during pregnancy. It triggered the War in the first place, as Betas fought to kill us off before the virus spread to Beta women, and Alphas fought to keep us alive. No one really won and the virus never spread, but millions died.

Kylo suddenly ripped my hands away from my face, standing stark naked at the side of the bed. He stepped closer, smiling at my petrified expression when my eyes flickered down to his dick. Jesus Christ.

 “Have you ever seen a cock, little one?” he asked, amused.

I had, because Finn and I took baths together when we were kids, but the one hovering a foot in front of me did not look like Finn’s. My blank stare must’ve spoken volumes.

Kylo laughed at my embarrassment and tugged my wrists toward him so my fingertips brushed his half-hard penis. He clasped my hands over it with his and I winced at the weird heat and thin, soft skin. My fingers managed to meet around the girth of it and blood pumped it harder.

 “It won’t bite you, Rey.” He cupped my face gently in both huge hands, casually ignoring my quivering hands wrapped around his cock. Dark eyes met mine. “Be a good girl and lick up my precum.”

I shook my head, scrambling back on the bed, and twisted over on my stomach. The leash pulled and tightened around my throat, arching my spine as it took my breath. Fingers clawed at the soft sheets looking for an escape as Kylo dragged me back to him by one of my ankles.

He flipped me on my back and I screamed when I saw his cock way too close to my mouth. He ignored my thrashing legs hanging off the edge of the bed and yanked hard on my hair to keep me from turning my head away. I burst into tears, pawing frantically at the fingers in my hair.

Kylo palmed his cock with his other hand, stroking in languid, wet motions. “And just where do you think you’re going?” He edged closer and dragged me upright by my hair. “You were told to lick up my precum—so do it.”

 “NO!” I shrieked. I clawed at his fingers like a lunatic. “Let me GO!”

 “Medical consult, sir.”

We froze at the bored voice of another woman. She stood near the door with a red bag, already snapping on purple nitrile gloves. Her blonde hair slicked back across her head and I was struck by how tall she was, even rivaling Kylo’s height. She raised her eyes expectantly.

Kylo slapped my thigh for good measure as he straightened. “Phasma—thank you for coming so quickly. This one needs the usual tests and perhaps some Xanax.”

She didn’t seem ruffled by him being naked with an erection, and I realized on my next breath that she was an Alpha, too.

Kylo put on a pair of gray sweatpants as Phasma approached with her bag. She didn’t greet me or meet my eyes much, just unzipped it and took out supplies to draw blood. I struggled to get upright and move away from the big needle.

 “Can’t have benzos if you want pups,” she said dully. She pricked my thigh with a tiny device like a hole puncher. “And she’s negative for the virus, so you’ll want to keep her healthy.”

Fuck. I didn’t meet Kylo’s amused glance. I thought lying might help my situation. Fuck.

 “Is she now?” he murmured. “Well, that’s a nice surprise.”

He stood beside Phasma with his arms folded and watched her draw my blood from my elbow. I stared up at the ceiling and held back tears the entire time, determined to keep my dignity. That grew harder as the exam went on and she stuck her fingers in my mouth and up my vagina.

Phasma pushed down on my lower abdomen and rolled gently. “I don’t feel any masses, so she should be in good working order for pregnancy. A bit young and thin, though. Maybe wait a few months before trying for pups—let her fill out.”

 “Yes, she’s a tiny little thing.” Kylo smiled down at me and raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t you?”

I wanted to spit in his face.

The awkward, invasive exam ended and Phasma left with my blood to check for disease and predict my next heat cycle. It’d be a few weeks—I could tell. I learned to read the subtle changes in my body that popped up just before another punishing round of heat.

Kylo approached me, long face impassive. My breath caught and I began moving back on my elbows, but he seized my throat in a huge hand and yanked me upright. The other pushed down his sweatpants and freed his cock, now angry red and throbbing, glistening with precum.

I growled and turned my head away, but his long fingers locked around my jaw to keep me in place. He spit in his hand and casually jerked himself back to full hardness in front of me. His dark eyes flickered back but he didn’t make a sound, save for a stifled groan. The slick sound of him stroking his cock filled the cavernous room.

It was so humiliating and strange that I could only huff my protests and squirm. Kylo dug his fingertips into my cheeks the longer he went on, until he grunted as he came all over my face.

I squealed in shock and he hooked his fingers on my lower jaw, prying it open to squirt some cum in my mouth. It drooled over my tongue, sticky and hot, and I coughed and grabbed his wrist, eyes watering. Kylo growled a warning in his chest.

The rest coated my face all the way up to my hairline and down my chin. I gagged, struggling to spit out his salty cum, but he pushed my jaw shut and forced me to look up at him.

 “Swallow it,” Kylo snapped. He pinched my nose between two fingers, still pushing up on my lower jaw. “Swallow it.

I couldn’t breathe, so I had to do it. I grimaced as it ran down my throat, not used to the strange texture and taste. He watched my throat bob and let go a moment later to tuck his cock back in his pants. I sagged forward, trembling with rage.

 “One little lick would’ve saved you from this punishment.” He jammed two fingers in my mouth without warning and I coughed. “Now you can have cum for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs.”

Instinctively, I bit down.

Kylo yanked hard on the leash to make me let go, then unhooked it near the collar as I gasped for air. He dragged me out of bed by my hair, over to one of the iron rings bolted to the floor, and I tripped over the carpet along the way.

 “Let go!” I hissed. “Let me GO!”

He shoved me to the cold floor and stepped on the side of my head when I tried to get up. It smooshed my cheek in a painful, dizzying way, smearing the cum up in my hair. I watched with wide eyes as Kylo leaned over to hook me to a six inch chain attached to the ring.

 “If you can’t behave, you can spend the day on the floor.” He let off my head and turned away, ambivalent to my hissing and spitting. “Maybe you’ll reconsider disobeying me, pet.”

The chain didn’t leave me enough room to do anything except writhe on the floor—I couldn’t even sit up. I screamed, now furious instead of terrified, and quickly became covered in dirt.

Kylo didn’t pay me much attention. He ambled around the room getting dressed; camo pants, a white T-shirt, and a green bomber jacket. I grew too tired to keep screaming and he smiled at me while lacing up his black combat boots. He’d drawn his hair back in a half ponytail again. He looked like a fucking asshole.

 “I’ll be back,” he said. He rose, collecting his gun and knife. “Your outpost is in need of provisions and troops. I’ll station a guard to watch the door.”

 “Fuck you.”

 “Soon,” Kylo replied without missing a beat. He tilted his head, smiling. “You’re so aggressive today, little one. But you’ll learn to obey, I’m sure. You’re an Omega—you were born to obey me.”

I swallowed as he walked out the door with another smug smirk and shut it softly behind him. Slowly but surely, the prickling Alpha taste swelled in my mouth again, and my bravado faded into uncontrollable sobs.

Chapter 4: To burn first."

Notes:

eh not my best noncon scene but w/e
ok i need to update another WIP now

Chapter Text

Laughter floated up the long corridor to Kylo’s tower some time after he left me.

Night had fallen, another sticky summer evening, and I was grateful to have my cheek pressed to the cool stone. I’d wiped off the cum I could reach with my free hands and now rattled my chain at the sound of men jeering together. My pulse quickened—something bad was about to happen.

Kylo came in first, pale cheeks tinted pink, rubbing the tip of his long nose. He had a bottle of Jack Daniels in the other hand and chatted with Hux, who trailed behind with his own bottle. Behind him, on a leash, was a short girl with black hair.

She seemed to know to keep close. Her dark eyes stayed down as she followed a step behind Hux in her pink gown and slippers.

 “—Never even seen a cock,” Kylo laughed, finishing up relaying how inexperienced I was.

I huffed and glowered as they came to stand over me, both obviously wasted. Their glassy booze-riddled gazes followed me squirming around in the dirt. The girl behind Hux didn’t look up.

Kylo bent over and freed me from the iron ring. I scrambled on my hands and knees to get away, but he seized my hair and dragged me to my feet.

 “Filthy little thing,” Hux drawled.

 “Mm. She’s been very difficult today.” Kylo guided me toward the bathroom, whiskey breath on my neck. “Did you miss me, little one?”

My skin crawled and I wanted to tell him to stick it, but I didn’t want him jizzing on my face again. I bit back my pride and nodded tersely. Pissing off a drunk Alpha male wouldn’t end well for me.

Thankfully he turned away and busied himself with starting the shower while I used the toilet. I washed my hands and brushed my teeth, which was a relief, then ran a comb through my hair. Everything was laid out neatly on the gray granite countertop, including two orange pill bottles.

The bathroom vanity had an enormous cracked mirror and I stared at my broken reflection in it, absentmindedly brushing my hair. Maybe I’d be better off dead.

Kylo suddenly scooped me up and dumped me in the tub like he had the night before. Spluttering, I pawed at the rim of the bath while he hosed me down like a dog that got sprayed by a skunk. At least the temperature was better.

 “You want to look nice for dinner, don’t you?” Kylo taunted, spraying me in the face. “I have to plump you up a bit before you can give me pups, so I hope you’re hungry.”

He dried me off and tugged one of his black T-shirt’s over my head, which draped down almost to my knees. I caught a glimpse of Hux all over the other girl in the corner, kissing her neck and pinning her to the wall. Kylo gave me gray slippers to wear and peered over his shoulder at them.

 “Rose has the virus,” he said as he took another swig of whiskey. “No touching her.”

The leash went on and I stumbled forward as Kylo dragged me from the room like a prized broodmare. Hux put Rose over his shoulder and she swayed there, dark eyes unseeing.

We walked through narrow corridors, last crumbling old rooms, until we reached the great hall where I was first brought in. Male voices mingled and flooded the place with laughter and shouting, quickening my pulse. How stupid could they all be when they were drunk?

Kylo pulled me to the remains of the throne, where a table had been set up with all kinds of food on it. My mouth watered at the sight: meats and cheese, plates piled with vegetables I hadn’t seen in years. The pitchers were full of beer and wine and water and I wanted all of it.

He sat down and gathered me in his lap. I didn’t have panties or a bra on and felt very exposed in front of the huge group of men eating at the tables further down the hall.

I leaned over our small deep brown table, practically drooling over the spread. Kylo drew a worn green plate over and kissed my temple. He set down his bottle of Jack near a big cut of ham, curling an arm around my stomach.

 “Your blood work is all clean,” he whispered, spearing a slab of ham. “So eat up, little one—you’ll need your strength for tonight.”

I stared at the plate as he piled it with food. “…But I’m not in heat.”

Kylo laughed lightly and offered me a piece of ham with his fingertips. “I’m still going to fuck you.”

The common sense urge to bite him and run away warred with my instinct to obey what he said. He pushed the ham in my mouth and offered me a fork so I could at least feed myself. I dripped tears on my plate while I ate, listening to the din of male voices around me, and Kylo brushed his lips across the arch of my jaw.

He hummed, sliding his huge hands inside my thighs. “That’s my good girl.” His tongue teased my skin as it traced a tingling line down my throat, making me shiver. “Eat up.”

 “I don’t want to do this,” I mumbled. My mouth prickled again as Kylo gently kissed my pulse. He was uncomfortably close to the gland under my jaw, not that biting it would do anything.

Plates rattled down the hall and I looked up to see Hux bending Rose over the table. The other faceless men hooted and hollered and I quickly averted my eyes when I realized he was having sex with her. It made my cheeks flush with embarrassment and my stomach turn in disgust.

Fingers drifted between my legs, past the hem of the shirt. I squirmed and whimpered as his middle finger drew slowly up my slit, where I’d only touched myself during heat. The prickling in my mouth buzzed up to my head. I felt dizzy.

 “No?” Kylo nudged my jaw with his nose and kissed my neck. His finger idly dipped deeper, stroking through my folds. “Don’t you want to be an obedient little Omega for your Alpha?”

I shuddered. I’d never been exposed to an Alpha like this and I had no clue what was happening to me. I managed to eat another bite of carrots and nodded stiffly, shivering again as Kylo rolled my skin through his teeth. It made me squirm in his lap until I felt his cock press on my butt.

He drew his finger up through my slit to the apex, slipping through wet flesh, and rubbed my clit in small circles. My thoughts crawled to a sluggish halt and I whimpered, resisting a strange desire to lean back on his chest and let him do whatever he wanted to me. Pleasure tightened in my stomach.

His hungry mouth roamed to my gland. I clenched my fork and the edge of the table, pulse roaring in my ears as Kylo licked the flat of his tongue across the spot. He growled in warning when I tried shifting off his lap to the floor and gave a rough tug with the arm around my stomach.

 “Stop moving,” he grunted. His lips closed around my gland and sucked, bobbing it in his wet mouth. A groan rumbled in his chest.

The room grew hazy and I could hardly hear the men cheering Hux on. They were getting louder though, and the shatter of glass snapped me free of my reverie for a minute. Kylo had his middle finger buried inside me, pumping gently, but he paused and snarled like a wild animal. I could sense a strange tension in the room, strangling the breath from me and making my heart pound.

Kylo withdrew his finger and popped it in his mouth. “Stay here—don’t move.” He snapped his fingers. “Phasma, watch the girl.”

Then he rose and settled me in the throne, kissing my forehead, and strode down the steps toward the other men. They were throwing and smashing things now; chairs and glasses and plates, and Rose cowered under one of the benches. I curled into a tight ball as Phasma approached, standing beside the throne with her hands on her hips.

She smirked down at me. “The other Omega must be going into heat. Rut is starting.”

Kylo seized Rose by the arm and dragged her a few feet before Hux tried to stop him. Rose scrambled away, rushing for the ‘safety’ of the throne, and Hux snapped something at Kylo. He was promptly punched in the face and went down in a heartbeat—and the other men closed in.

It devolved into a brawl. Phasma snatched Rose by the worst when she got close enough and watched the fighting unfold for a minute. I winced as someone managed to punch Kylo in the stomach, but he knocked down the other man with one swing. They howled like animals and he stalked around the circle forming around him, wiping blood from his mouth. Things were quickly spiking up to a fever pitch and dread bloomed in my belly.

Phasma huffed and snapped her fingers at me.

 “Come!” she spat. “This is getting out of hand.”

Another man emerged from the group to challenge Kylo with a huge serrated knife. Kylo snarled and used his bare hands in the fight, twisting the guy’s wrist until a loud crack echoed through the hall. Phasma had to throw me over her shoulder because I froze to the throne in fear. I could feel the violent animal energy.

The sounds of the brawl faded as Phasma hurried Rose and me down the corridors. Rose cried softly during the walk and was still inconsolable after Phasma tied me off to the headboard in Kylo’s room. I watched them go until the door shut.

 “Fuck this!” I hissed.

I yanked desperately on the chain, struggling to get it loose or choke myself trying. The leash rattled and the headboard groaned but I couldn’t get it off no matter how hard I tried. I turned my attention to the collar instead, clawing desperately at the strip of leather.

It wouldn’t come free. I panted in terrified puffs as I yanked open the nightstand drawer for a knife or scissors to slice off the collar. My fingers blindly rummaged through paper and plastic parts and something jangled, then cut my finger.

I yanked an old knife from the drawer and hurriedly sat up to saw off my collar, finger dripping blood in my lap. My hands trembled so much I thought I might accidentally kill myself, but I managed to cut through and was suddenly, blissfully free.

Adrenaline gave me the quick jolt I needed to stumble out of bed. Head spinning, I stuck my feet in a pair of Kylo’s huge boots and grabbed a jacket hanging on the wall. I needed some protection but I also couldn’t hang around to collect a lot of supplies. I had to get the fuck out.

I flung the door open and raced down the winding stairs, praying I didn’t waste too much time already. My sliced finger throbbed, so I stuck it in my mouth to keep from leaving a blood trail. Almost there, almost—

At the very bottom of the stairs, I bumped into Kylo’s broad chest.

His dark eyes shone with violent, ravenous hunger, and he wiped a smear of blood off his cheek. He breathed hard enough to make his stained shirt rise and fall and raised his eyebrows when I took a frantic step back. The knife in his hand glowed red in the near-darkness.

The Alpha scent hung heavy on him. He’d gotten his fill of physical violence and now he wanted to take out the rest of his urges on me.

 “Don’t you look adorable?” he whispered, breaking into a wide smile. He wiped the blade on his shirt, smearing it with more blood. “I wish you waited for me to play dress-up.”

I stumbled back another step. “Stay—stay away from me!” The knife quivered in my grasp but I waved it at Kylo, anyway. “I mean it!”

 “Why? What are you going to do?” He sheathed his own knife and slowly followed me up the steps, licking his lips. He’d taken a few punches but only had a trickle of blood from his mouth. “You think you can stab me, little one?”

 “Yes!” I stammered. “I’ll do it!”

He shrugged out of his jacket. My threat meant nothing and we were slowly backtracking to his bedroom. I swallowed hard, staggering over another step, and wiped away hot tears. This was fucking hopeless.

Kylo dropped his jacket and clicked his tongue, frowning sympathetically. The torchlight caught the contours of his long face, highlighting his bestial expression.

 “You’re not meant to do such things,” he murmured. “You’re meant to make little nests and carry pups for me, and I’m meant to keep you safe and warm—so be a good girl and lie on your belly in the bed.”

 “You’re not keeping me safe!” I retorted. “You chained me to the floor and choked me!”

He cocked his head. “We can argue the semantics of safety later on, but right now, I need you to do what I say and go lie down.” His shirt came off next, cast to the stairs. “Now, Rey.”

I hesitated, struggling to think of my next step, then decide to throw the knife at Kylo’s chest.

It clattered to the ground and I was already off running. I tripped over the huge boots, then quickly kicked them off and stumbled back into the bedroom. Before I could dart for the bathroom to hide, Kylo grabbed me by the back of the jacket.

I shrieked as he threw me on the bed and crawled between my thighs. He dipped his lips to my gland and the hazy confusion set it, slowing my struggling to weak slaps on his ribs. The scratchy jacket hung loose on my arms as I panted and squirmed under Kylo’s weight.

 “Were you trying to get away from me?” he whispered against my skin. He tore my arms free of the jacket and leaned up to cast it away, then spread my knees with his huge hands. “Look at this—look at this. What a pretty little pussy.”

 “Get AWAY FROM ME!” I screamed.

The shirt hiked up to my hipbones as Kylo sank down lower in the bed and seized my hips. He licked along my slit with the tip of his tongue, cooing to calm my crying. He knitted his fingers through mine to keep me from fighting back and groaned whenever I tightened my thighs.

Then he buried his face between my legs, alternating humming and flicking his tongue, and my sobs lilted into sniffles. I clenched his hands with mine and gave my hips a small wriggle at the first tingle of pleasure. My mind twisted my loathing as best it could, torn between complying and resisting.

Kylo gently introduced his middle finger inside me, lingering his lips near my clit. I took a sharp breath and jerked away, but he held firm and shushed my resistance. It felt like two of my own fingers and reminded me of frantic nights spent masturbating during heat. I did whatever made it stop.

Then he added a second finger and I writhed and cried softly. It felt good—it wasn’t supposed to.

 “You taste so sweet,” he mumbled. His dark eyes lazily drifted up to mine. “You’re going to give me big strong pups, aren’t you?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded fast. Kylo kept thrusting his fingers gently until I twisted my neck, desperate to escape the mounting pressure in my cunt. He sucked on my clit and drew his fingertips along my upper wall in a way that forced a gasp from me. I writhed and resisted but my body betrayed me.

A painful, intense orgasm rippled through me, tensing the muscles in my lower back, and fluttered around Kylo’s fingers. I winced and moaned during it, bucking my hips, and he grunted his approval.

Then he crept up my body while I panted and twitched afterwards with weak whimpers. Kylo shushed me and stripped off his pants before tugging his shirt over my head. He brushed my hair from my face as he settled his weight between my hips, and I whimpered again.

 “Please stop,” I begged in a whisper.

 “Shh, shh.” Kylo nuzzled into my neck and licked across my gland. “Be good, little one.”

My eyes widened when I felt the pressure of his cock near my entrance. I took frenzied breaths and writhed as he penetrated me, grunting into my neck like he was trying to hold back. Then I screamed, because I didn’t want him to fuck me, and the sensation of him splitting me open hurt.

He sucked on my gland to make me calm down but I raked my nails down his broad back and kept screaming. Kylo groaned, thrusting erratically, moving too fast too soon. Every inch of flesh tensed in silent protest and he forced his way through, puffing on my shoulder.

 “Fuck, that’s good,” he grunted. He struggled closer, reaching blindly for the iron headboard. “So tight—sweet little Omega, nice and tight for me.” He raised his chest to look at my pained expression. “Mine—mine.

I had to lie there under his heavy weight while he did what he wanted with me. Kylo kept licking my gland to keep me from outright screaming. The bed creaked with each thrust, but only he made any sounds of pleasure. I did my best to hate it.

Then he turned me over on my stomach and dragged my hips up to his. I coughed as he drove inside me again from the new angle and slapped my ass before he set a punishing rhythm. Wet skin slapped together and his low breaths keyed up to deep, satisfied grunts. I closed my eyes.

Fingertips dug into my hips, straining me closer with each penetrating thrust up to the hilt. Kylo huffed and swore and I felt him twitching and pulsing inside me. He had to be pent-up from the brawl downstairs.

 “This is where you’re meant to be,” he snapped. “On your fucking hands and knees.”

I wailed into the pillow as he finally came with a deep growl. Kylo yanked me closer when I struggled against his jerky thrusts, terrified of having his cum in me, but he bore down on my hips to squeeze out every last drop. I couldn’t get away. I buried my face in my pillow and heaved while he groaned and swore, working my hips up and down his twitching cock.

It ended when Kylo’s hips stilled. We panted, both trying to work through everything, and he slapped my ass again with a low laugh.

 “That’s my girl.” He leaned across my back to suck on my gland, sighing. “That’s my girl.”

I sobbed helplessly and tried to slap him when he turned me on my back. He kissed me full on the lips, dipping his tongue in my mouth, and ignored my nails down his back.

Maybe I should’ve let the knife slip on my throat.

Chapter 5: She screamed at me, "I want to be desired"

Notes:

here u go evil children

Chapter Text

Wandering hands woke me in the middle of the night to pitch blackness. I groggily resisted at first, thinking it was part of a dream, but the painful throb between my legs reminded me that everything around me was very, very real.

Kylo had already rolled over halfway across my back and started penetrating me from behind. My eyes widened and I took frantic breaths as he rolled his hips, groaning right in my ear. His fingers dug into my hip to keep it up at the angle he needed and they tightened when I gave a nervous shudder.

 “Don’t move,” he grunted.

I clung to the bed sheets, wincing as he pushed deeper past my resisting muscles, and he gave me an absentminded kiss on the temple. It fucking hurt—I couldn’t resist jerking away again. He slapped my ass then grabbed my jaw.

 “Don’t move,” Kylo hissed, threatening this time.

 “It hurts,” I mumbled into my pillow.

He thrusted hard, sinking to the hilt, and I cried out in pain. Kylo panted in my hair and rolled his hips for a minute in that spot like he was stretching me out, or maybe just enjoying my little gulps for air. Either way, my complaint about being uncomfortable fell on deaf ears.

It felt a lot like being suffocated. Kylo’s huge body caged over mine and he refused to let go of my hip, driving as deep as he could with each punishing thrust. My stilted breaths were lost in my musty pillow and I thought for a minute that I might fold in on myself completely.

A dying star. Maybe that was what I felt like.

 “Nice tight pussy,” Kylo grunted entirely to himself. His abdominal muscles rippled across my lower back, punctuated by wet, rhythmic slaps of skin. “Who does this pussy belong to?”

 “Y-you,” I stammered.

He smacked my ass again, sharp and hard. “Say my fucking name, Omega.”

 “Kylo—Kylo?”

It came out as a question for some reason, but he just laughed breathlessly and kept pumping. His hand roughly palmed a breast, squeezing and thumbing my nipple, and he nosed around in my hair. He huffed in surprise when my walls clenched and his cock twitched inside me.

 “Trying to make me come?” Kylo whispered against my scalp. He gathered as much of my ass as he could in one hand, then slapped my outer thigh. “Naughty girl.”

The intoxicating scent of him made my head spin—Alpha, powerful and dominating. I kept my mouth firmly closed to avoid tasting him on my tongue, but his presence was too overwhelming to ignore. Low pressure curled between my hip bones as Kylo got on his knees behind me.

He grasped my hips, yanking me up along his length, and sank into a steady rhythm without saying much else. He’d grunt every once in a while in the cold silence, but the only other sound was the lewd, wet joining of our bodies. I closed my eyes and let the Alpha take control like he was meant to.

Kylo’s thrusts quickened jerkily as sunlight poured into the room. He arched across my back, hot breath on the back of my head, and his hips rolled and snapped twice more. I swallowed hard and waited for him to pulse and finish, but just felt more pressure than before. My toes curled.

 “Gonna breed you,” he said gruffly. Kylo pushed on the side of my head with one big hand, and his thrusts slowed to slight teasing strokes. He breathed raggedly through his teeth. “Tie you up on my—fucking knot—”

Then I realized what was happening as the pressure abruptly filled me up near my entrance. I scrambled to escape even as the knot locked me to Kylo. He snarled as he emptied inside me, cock throbbing, spitting cum deep—I could feel his knot tense with each swell of it.

I wailed, squirming my head under his palm, faint with fear. He let up and gave another sharp thrust as he rumbled a pleased sigh. The Omega in me shivered with equal pleasure. Big fat knot.

It wasn’t going anywhere—not for at least fifteen minutes. We’d be bound together until the knot shrank and Kylo would slip out of me with a torrent of cum. I’d be used. Spent.

He wrapped a big arm under my stomach and turned on his side, settling me in with him under the covers. My lower lip trembled but I held back tears as he slung a lazy arm over my ribs and yawned into my hair. The other arm crooked under my head, bending back to brush my hair from my neck. I flinched away from him mouthing at my gland but he grunted and shifted closer.

Kylo’s hand flattened across my stomach, pressing and rolling like he was trying to feel his cock inside me, then continued on between my legs. He gathered some cum that managed to leak around the knot and lubed up his middle finger. I cried softly as he teased around my clit.

He clicked his tongue, placing tender kisses on my throat. “Don’t give me those crocodile tears, little one. You’re still getting fucked.”

The knot chose that exact moment to throb with another unnecessary load of cum, and Kylo broke a sharp breath on my jaw. He rubbed insistently, suppressing my squirming legs with his elbow. I resolved to keep my mouth shut. Speaking up made him worse, and he probably enjoyed listening to me whimper and beg.

 “We could always lie here in sullen silence instead,” he mumbled near my collarbone. “I’m flexible—you already served your purpose.”

I didn’t reply. Kylo sighed and his hand skated up my body, lightly tracing my skin and ribs, until he cupped a breast. He yawned again.

Knocking disturbed the moment of quiet.

 “Lord Ren?”

A small woman peered inside the room, slowly edging a cart past the door jamb. She was old and had her wispy gray hair tucked in a red bandana. Her huge glasses settled on me and she quickly averted her eyes to the floor.

Kylo growled, leaning over half across my back protectively. He tugged the sheet over my head to hide me, as if the woman couldn’t see my trembling body under his. I swallowed hard, eyes wide under the stuffy red sheet.

 “We’re a bit busy, Maz,” he snapped. “Leave it by the bed. Keep your eyes down.”

  “Sir.”

Kylo kept his glare on Maz—I could feel it—and his huge body tensed around mine. A cart rattled across the floor and the smell of eggs and bacon almost made me groan. A low growl rumbled in his chest until the bedroom door creaked.

 “Tell the others to stay away.” He reached out for something. “I’ll treat any visitors as a threat.”

  “Yes, sir.”

The door clicked shut.

Kylo wrapped his arm around my stomach and turned a bit, then we were suddenly sitting up. I blinked in surprise, teetering in his lap, and flinched as he twitched inside me. He pulled the blanket over us and I shifted, trying to adjust to the weird new angle.

A tray of food beside us distracted me from my discomfort. Bacon, eggs, home fries, bagels, and fruit—my mouth watered, and I hardly noticed Kylo groaning on my shoulder as he throbbed and spilled inside me again. I reached out for bacon first, but he slapped my hand down and pinned it to my thigh until he stopped pulsing.

He grunted, spearing eggs on a steel fork. “Eggs first. No bacon.”

I wanted fucking bacon. Petulant, I turned my face away when he offered the food, and Kylo grabbed my jaw and pried it open. He shoved the first forkful on my tongue and went back for another. I chewed with a scowl.

 “Have you gone mute?” he drawled. “You were very vocal about stabbing me last night.”

I didn’t reply.

Kylo continued feeding me without another word. He ate as well when I was finished, and I found myself leaning sleepily on his chest, dozing off with a full stomach. The arm around me shifted, then he dipped his hand between my legs again.

A long whine warbled from my lips and I pawed at his wrist with both hands; kitten swipes at a tiger. It felt good, like warmth and tingling, but I was determined to defeat my own biology. Kylo casually continued eating behind me while gently stroking along my slit to where he was still buried inside me.

 “No need to be an obstinate bitch,” he said. “I’m well aware of how unhappy you are being here. But you’re not going anywhere, so you might as well enjoy captivity.”

So he set to trying to make me come. I resisted at first, because it was the right thing to do, but soon grabbed his hand and rolled my hips into his fingertips. Kylo abandoned the tray to kiss my neck instead, tugging my gland through his teeth, sucking in rhythmic, gentle ministrations.

It was hard to resist the urge to climax with an Alpha male knotted inside me and mouthing at my gland. I arched against his chest and he pinned me to him by my throat, refusing to let up when I whimpered. The knot tugged whenever I canted my hips and it made Kylo swear under his breath. We shifted together in the bed, rattling the tray.

I bit down on my lip as my climax peaked, but he was well aware of what was happening. He swore and grabbed my hips in both hands and I kept biting myself until I drew blood. It felt fucking good, like an answer to all my heats spent wailing and shrieking for an Alpha. My body clenched and rippled around his and I did moan, much louder than I wanted to.

The knot faded a minute or two after. Kylo leaned forward to put me on all fours before he pulled out, but a ridiculous amount of cum still spilled from me. He slapped my ass as he got out of bed. I shuddered, face buried in the comforter. My cunt ached from the loss of him.

 “I think we’ll stay here today.” He stretched his long arms toward the ceiling and yawned. “Work out the last of my rut—or whatever this is. Alphas aren’t meant to be in close quarters like this.”

They really weren’t. Amilyn said it made them even more aggressive, especially with no Omegas to balance things out. They fought constantly and always needed an outlet for their natural urge to dominate, which unfortunately fell on some Betas. But there was strength in numbers and Kylo was a powerful leader, so they stuck together.

I hesitantly sat up, grimacing from the pain and the sensation of cum pouring out of me. Good. I hoped it ruined his stupid fucking bedspread.

He scooped me up in the next moment and threw me over his shoulder. I squeaked in surprise, scrambling my fingers on his bare back as he walked into the bathroom.

Kylo set me on my feet in one swift motion, throwing me around like a rag doll. I squealed when the shower started, dumping cold water on my head, but he wrapped an arm around my waist to hold me to his chest. He craned his head under the stream and scrubbed his scalp.

 “It’s like fucking a chew toy,” Kylo mused. He pinched my butt and I squeaked again, drawing a laugh from him.

 “Cut it out!” I snapped.

He gasped as he reached for the shower wand. “She speaks! How are you today, little one?”

I shrugged, lapsing back into silence.

Kylo washed both of us with the wand until I was admittedly feeling a bit better. He dried me off first and dressed me in a huge gray T-shirt that draped down to my knees. I folded my arms and shivered while he stepped into sweatpants.

Back in the bedroom, he peeled the sheets and replaced them. I glanced at the door once or twice, debating if it was worth attempting another escape. He’d catch me in ten seconds flat and it’d just piss him off. Plus, I didn’t want to wear the awful collar again.

Kylo approached when he was done. He smiled as he pushed down on my shoulder, forcing me to my knees, and slipped his cock free of his sweatpants. I jerked back but he tangled his fingers in my hair to keep me in place.

 “If you’re not going to speak,” he murmured, “I’ll find other uses for your pretty mouth. Open up.”

I stared at his stiffening cock with abject terror and shook my head as fast as I could. He sighed, tracing the weeping head of it across my lips, cooing to me to open my mouth.

 “I’ll—I’ll talk!” I stammered. I flinched away from him, fighting back tears for the hundredth time. “I don’t know what to say—I’m afraid I’ll say the wrong thing—”

Kylo lingered for another moment, then slowly released my hair. He tucked himself back in his pants and heaved a sigh.

 “Let’s rest,” he said. “If I come again it’s going to hurt like a bitch.”

I blurted ‘yes, sir’ in the weirdest voice possible and followed him to the bed. I couldn’t keep living like this—I had to figure something out. Maybe the Maz woman could help me…

Chapter 6: I said, "Easy girl,

Notes:

LOL WHAT

Chapter Text

Sleeping beside Kylo felt like waiting for a bomb to go off. Every small shift beside me or subtle breath against my scalp made my spine prickle nervously. When would he wake up and explode again?

Someone knocked on the door after I’d been lying there for at least an hour trying not to breathe. I squeezed my eyes shut as I caught a glimpse of Hux edging into the room with his hands behind his back. He cleared his throat.

Kylo idly rolled his rough thumb around my nipple. “I hope whatever news you have is worth risking your life, Hux.”

 “Sir, Dameron has returned from scouting another outpost. He’s brought a defector.”

 “And?” Kylo prompted, irritated.

 “Wouldn’t you like to deal with him?”

My heart pattered like a skittish bunny as Kylo heaved a sigh behind me, broad chest rising with a hollow sound. He nuzzled in my hair, inhaling and humming, and it drew out into pleased rumbling purrs. My lower lip quivered.

 “I trust you know how to fire a gun, General?” Kylo asked, punctuating the title with heavy sarcasm. “Or did you disturb me for some other reason?”

Hux tapped his boot. “Yes, but—”

Kylo suddenly sat up and I tightened into a ball instinctively. The sheets fluttered around us as the retching gasp of choking cut off the last of Hux’s words. I peered from under the covers.

Kylo had an arm extended over me, long fingers curled in a cruel, menacing claw, aimed toward Hux. The latter had his skinny hands clinging his throat, pale face rapidly turning purple, and hovered a few inches off the floor. I blinked in shock and glanced at Kylo’s expression over my shoulder: calm like always, but giving away hints of rage. His left eye twitched, jaw muscles working from side to side. The extended arm quivered.

 “Then why,” Kylo hissed, “have you ignored my express order to piss off, and come here just to ask me to dispatch a nameless traitor?” The fingers tightened. “Were you hoping to catch me unawares?”

Hux shook his head, twitching desperately, and I shrieked as Kylo threw him into the wall. I covered the back of my head and laid flat, face buried in the pillows. How… what?!

He snapped another order and Hux scrambled out of the bedroom. The door slammed shut.

Kylo chuffed, grumbling like a grizzly bear, and settled under the covers with me again. He pawed at my hands to unwind them from the back of my head, but I clung fast and refused to move. I was rolled over in a ball to face him, eyes squeezed shut. I had no idea what he’d just done, but I didn’t want him doing it to me.

He pushed me side to side. “You look like a dead spider.”

 “…Sorry?” I ventured.

Kylo silently dragged me underneath him, clearly intending on fucking me again, but I managed to squirm away. He watched with vague curiosity as I rolled across the bed and fell in a graceless pile on the hard floor.

I scrambled away, brandishing a pillow over my head, kneeling on the ground. He cocked his head. I felt a bit like a mouse being observed by a cat. It knew it could kill me, but figured it’d get a bit of entertainment first.

 “Don’t—use that voodoo stuff on me!” I warned.

Kylo raised an eyebrow. “Voodoo?”

I nodded emphatically and hoped I didn’t look as terrified as I felt. He smiled, lips twisting like he wanted to laugh, and made a lazy motion with his wrist.

The pillow ripped away from my hands and flew across the room. I blinked once before it circled back and smacked me in the back of the head.

I spluttered in shock and tried getting to my feet, but a strange sensation overcame me, like liquid electricity up my legs. It locked me to the floor. I couldn’t move a muscle at all—until I felt something else flicker to life in the back of my head, like a spark in a rainstorm.

Kylo didn’t notice. He rested his chin in his palm, one hand frozen in motion toward me, and yawned.

 “It isn’t voodoo,” he said, “but it does have its uses. Though—I don’t need it to restrain you.

Whatever it was pushed back against him and the tingling in my limbs disappeared, but then it just kept pushing further.

I blinked owlishly as Kylo’s calm demeanor showed a crack. He ground his jaw, brow furrowed, and tried to force the weird electrical voodoo thing across my body again. It flickered and buzzed, then rebounded.

The invisible force threw him clear off the bed. Kylo rolled into some piece of furniture and I took the golden opportunity to get the fuck out of there.

This time I didn’t bother with shoes or anything like that. Weird energy thrummed in my veins, urging me down the circular stairwell in my white nightgown toward the sweet freedom awaiting me outside. I panted in terror. I had no fucking clue what was happening, but I’d take the chance to escape. I’d take any chance.

A random man surprised me in one of the dark hallways and I shrieked in surprise. The heat in my veins lashed out toward him and blew him down the hallway into the far wall. I hesitated, trembling and staring at my hands. What the fuck?!

But the strange energy faded as suddenly as it had appeared. I waved my hands to make it come back. Come on, voodoo—come on!

 “How did you do that?”

I spun around and found Kylo looming a few feet away, dressed in his sweatpants with the collar dangling from his fingers. He scowled and reached toward me and the power surged and rebounded right back, knocking him off his feet.

 “How did you do it?!” I retorted.

He tried to get up and I knocked him over again. Kylo snarled from the floor, collar jangling in his hand, dark eyes riveted on me. I backpedaled down the hall and stumbled over my own two feet before I turned tail and ran again.

Get away get away get away—

 “Rey, STOP!”

The Alpha voice came this time and my instincts pulled me in the wrong direction. I staggered to a half, dripping sweat and trembling, and tried to force my legs to cooperate. But Kylo called my name again in the same tone and I felt physically sick at the thought of ignoring him.

Tremors wracked my whole body. I kept my eyes wide as he approached, resisting the urge to walk towards him but unable to move forward.

Kylo circled to my front, eyes unreadable. He locked the collar around my throat and seized my jaw so our gazes met.

 “I’ll ask you again,” he said coldly. “How did you do that?”

 “I don’t know!” I hissed. “I’ve never done anything like that before! After you did it to me, it bounced back. Let go or I’ll do it again!”

We glared at each other, both too stubborn to give in, then Kylo snatched me around the waist. He threw me over his shoulder like a sack of feathers and ignored me pounding on his back. I raked my nails down his pale skin, desperate, but he blew me off. We stepped over the unconscious man I threw.

Kylo carried me back up the spiral staircase to the tower I’d just escaped from. He dropped me on the bed, seizing my ankle when I tried to squirm away, and opened the nightstand drawer.

 “Let go!” I snapped, pushing on his wrist with my other foot.

I clawed toward the other side of the bed and happened to glance over my shoulder. Kylo brandished a small needle in his huge fingers and I caught the letters on the barrel: XV-10. It was used to trigger early heat cycles.

A surge of adrenaline gave me the strength to kick away from him. The strange power hummed in my veins as he lashed out at me with it, but rebounded like it did all the other times he tried. Kylo dragged me to the floor with him and we landed in a tangle of limbs.

I screamed and thrashed, watching the needle with wide eyes as I wrestled for control. We kept pushing back on each other and the rebound met in a simmering stalemate that neither of us could overpower. I slapped Kylo across the face and flipped on my stomach to crawl away, but he pinned me by my neck.

The needle pricked my upper arm. I wailed, more furious than sad, and scrambled away when Kylo leaned back. He watched me from a few feet away on his knees.

 “Fuck you!” I spat, too pissed to care about ingratiating myself to him.

Then he rose, towering over me, and followed my skittering across the cold floor.

 “I’ve never met someone outside my family who could use that power.” He tilted his head. “So we’re going to make this arrangement permanent.”

I kept going, edging into a part of the room I hadn’t seen before. My hands groped on thin air and I fell on my back as I tumbled over a short ledge onto soft beige carpet.

This room had shelves of blankets and pillows and other soft things in all different colors. It wasn’t very big—it felt kind of cramped—and the lights weren’t on, casting shadows across the small space. Kylo quietly pulled shut two doors hidden in the wall and we were cut off from the rest of the bedroom.

He flicked a switch and warm, low light bathed the room. I swallowed hard and looked around for another way out.

 “You’ll be safe here,” Kylo murmured. He gestured toward the wall of blankets. “You can use these to make your nest.”

Nest? What the hell was that? I glared up at him, waiting for an attack, but he calmly sank to the floor and sat by the door. He was waiting for the drug to kick in and force my heat to start. Is no idea why, since he already overpowered me twice before.

But Kylo’s scent mingled in the air, thick and heavy, and I felt the first prickling of my heat in my lower abdomen. My lips parted to draw the heady mix of pheromones across the roof of my mouth and I shivered with pleasure. Alpha.

I tried to distract myself. I crawled to a corner and curled up in a ball, trembling, willing my body to resist the drug. But Kylo’s scent grew more potent as time passed and soon my thoughts became hard to control. They drifted off into fantasies of mating and babies, things I didn’t normally consider during heat. Usually I just wanted someone to fuck me silly.

He watched me through the soft light, silent. I wouldn’t beg him to fuck me—I’d find a way to ignore the screaming need humming under my skin; fight back against the things etched in my genetics. Somehow, begging and giving in would be even worse than him holding me down.

An odd urge tugged the back of my mind. I shifted in the corner, frowning. I wanted something… soft.

Kylo broke into a wide smile. “You’ve never felt this instinct, have you?”

The tugging turned frantic. I winced, clutching my head in both hands as my mind spun off into chanting the same word over and over:

 nest nest nest nest nest

I wedged into the corner, terrified by the insistence of the urge, and shook my head. A chill shivered up my spine as I broke out in a cold sweat. This wasn’t normal—this wasn’t how heat usually happened.

The telltale curl of warmth settled in my gut, pulsing and tight. My ears rang as it throbbed in my head, overpowering my common sense like it always did, but shadowed by a need to find soft things and swaddle myself in them. Every time I tasted Kylo’s scent, the need intensified, hissing about pups and warmth and safety.

 “What’s wrong, little one?”

I peered through my fingers and saw Kylo crouched a foot away from me. He smiled, rubbing a gray blanket along the underside of his jaw. My mouth watered.

 “I don’t know what’s happening,” I admitted, staring at the blanket.

 “No?” He offered it to me and my heart pattered. “I’ll help you.”

I snatched the blanket in the blink of an eye. Pleasure flushed through me as I pushed the soft cotton on my face, inhaling the scent of Kylo. Oh… god. I squirmed in the corner and wrapped my arms around the blanket.

He brought me more blankets and pillows, and something animalistic took over. I ripped open a couple pillows to get to the down feathers inside, and padded the corner with feathers and blankets. Kylo watched from afar, not unsettled like I was, and I couldn’t stop myself.

 perfect—perfect—safe—

Frenzied, I ripped down as many blankets as I could from the wall until I felt Kylo looming behind me. He slipped a long arm around my waist and nosed in my hair, sighing.

 “Poor little Omega.” An arm reached up for another red blanket. “You’re so busy making a nice little nest.”

I shuddered. “I—I don’t know why.”

 “For our pups, little one,” Kylo cooed in my ear. “It’s only natural. You want them warm and safe, hm?” His breath ghosted across my ear. “I can give you strong, healthy pups.”

No. No.

I gathered my new blankets and wriggled away from him to carry on. He smirked while he watched me rearranging and moving things how I wanted them, obeying some nagging voice in my head. My hands trembled as I worked. I couldn’t stop. It had to be perfect—it had to be right.

The nest slowly came together in tandem with the growing pressure between my hip bones. I tried to ignore the latter, desperately adjusting the pillows and blankets to keep my need for Kylo at bay, but it steadily hummed to a scream in my veins.

I whimpered and crawled to the further corner of my nest, curling up under a blanket with one of the pillows I didn’t tear open. It smelled nice, like home and safety…

Kylo crouched beside me, forearms on his thighs. “I’ll let you adjust for a bit.” His head tilted and he smiled. “I’m sure you’ll be wailing for me soon enough.”

I shrank under the blanket up to my eyes. Kylo rose and stalked from the room without a second glance back at me.

I shuddered, wracked with chills. I didn’t need him. I’d—I’d be fine.

Chapter 7: I know it hurts."

Notes:

no fuckin joke i wrote 3/4 of this in 1 hour so forgive me if it blows

Chapter Text

The heat didn’t feel right.

Chills shivered through me, drawing my body from hot to cold and back again—nothing like the usual monthly visits. I gathered my pillows and fixed up my nest. My brain commanded it. Make it nice. Make it nice.

This was a fever. I shuddered miserably while I worked, pacing the room with my arms folded across my chest. Don’t give in. I couldn’t give in to him. He wanted me to grovel and beg for his help and I wasn’t going to fucking do it. I’d die from the fever before I gave in.

Delirium set in soon after, warping the room. I carried on arranging the nest and biting my lip until it bled to hold in wails. I’d make this as difficult for Kylo as I possibly could.

But it hurt. Cramps brought me to my knees as my body betrayed me, producing enough slick to soak through a damn mattress. I refused to let it out, screaming in pain, curled up in the nest under a blanket. I could smell Kylo. Everything reeked of him.

I had to get away.

Sobbing, I staggered to my feet and swayed toward the door. My vision swam. Help me… Finn? Amilyn? Someone help me…

Wet warmth drizzled down my thighs, leaving behind a sticky trail thick with my pheromones. The smell of Kylo brought on more slick than usual and I had no water to replenish the fluid loss. I pawed open the door and prayed he’d gone somewhere else—anywhere.

 “And where do you think you’re going, little one?”

His shadow eclipsed me, dark eyes alight with the same hunger from the first night he attacked me. Kylo raised his eyebrows imploringly and his expression melted to a pitying pout when I broke into sobs. He glanced at the slick sticking to my quivering thighs and I wished I could disappear.

 “You can’t leave,” he cooed. “It’s not safe.” His fingertip trailed along my inner thigh, gathering slick, and he licked the glistening fluid off.

 “I want to go home…” I wobbled, fighting to ignore the urge to lean into his chest.

Kylo took a step forward and I teetered back into the small room. He nosed around my hair, one long arm curled around my waist, and pulled the door shut with his free hand.

 “You’re already home.” The tip of his nose wandered lower, under my jaw to the throbbing gland. “Silly girl.”

He guided me back to my nest and murmured compliments in my ear about how nice it looked. The Omega in me preened, proud to satisfy an Alpha, but it made my stomach turn. I hated him. I didn’t want to feel this way.

I cried as I stared at the mound of pillows and blankets with Kylo’s hands on my shoulders. He mumbled against my neck and idly reached down for the hem of my shirt, but I stumbled out of his grasp. I tripped and fell in the pile, drawing a gravelly laugh from him.

 burrow burrow burrow burrow burrow

My brain kicked back into overdrive, urging me to construct a small den of blankets, but I clutched my head and screamed instead. Get out of my head!

Kylo ripped my hands away from my head, holding my wrists apart. I shuddered. His dark eyes felt like they’d swallow me whole. If I didn’t look away, I’d tumble in and never climb out again.

He smiled as he studied my face. “Remember what I told you before? You were born to obey me—so stop making such a fuss.”

I jerked free of his grasp, which was only because he let me do so. Kylo cupped my jaw and yanked me to my knees. His long fingers kept a tight grip even as I whimpered and resisted at the sight of his cock.

My mind shivered with pleasure as he guided me closer. big fat cock—

 “Shh…” Kylo rubbed my jaw with his thumb. “Open your mouth for me. You’ll like the taste.”

No matter how much I twisted and whimpered, he refused to let go. He idly stroked his cock and gently brushed the weeping head of it across my lips. I huffed in fear and my tongue darted out to taste the sticky residue.

I slackened. My tongue roamed further, grazing the warm head of Kylo’s cock, and he cooed his approval. It tasted good. A pleasant haze settled over my mind as I licked along his length. Salt.

 alpha male

He released my jaw and brushed my hair back from my face, smiling down at me. I felt another sick sense of satisfaction knowing I was impressing him. Fuck him. He was a fucking asshole. I’d kill him when I got the chance.

Kylo peeled off his shirt and stripped out of his pants and I forgot what I was mad about. He guided me into the furthest corner of the nest, where it was dark and warm and no one could see us. I watched him lean into a pile of pillows.

He cupped my jaw, leading me back to his cock. I followed all too willingly.

 “My little Rey has made such a lovely nest,” Kylo murmured. “So soft and warm. Open up for me. I want to feel that sweet mouth.”

My mind came back to me for a split second and I jerked away, but he held fast. I tasted another sticky bead of precum and whined as I licked my lips, parting them to let him in. It tasted so good. I’d never been high or drunk, but I imagined this was what it felt like.

Kylo groaned, chest rumbling. “Very good. Very good.”

Thankfully he moved slow. He ended up changing positions so I was lying in the pillows with him looming over me, one arm braced on the wall and the other petting me. I sucked his cock in a daze, eyes hooded, saliva spilling down my chin. My brain shut off.

Sometimes he’d push back too far and I’d gag a little, but he’d whisper and keep going. The slick pooled between my thighs, soaking into the nest and filling the small space with pheromones that just made me crazier. I whined and pawed at Kylo’s thighs.

He leaned his forehead on the wall, dark eyes hungry. “Look at you mewling for me.” His long fingers cupped my jaw again, smearing saliva. “Right where you belong.”

 “Please—” Tears pricked in my eyes. “Pl—”

 “What? You want me to knot you, little Omega?” Kylo slipped free of my mouth, roughly jerking my chin to make me look at him. “Mm… I think you do. Nice big pupils.” He smiled. “Beg me.”

So I did. I whined and wheedled and pleaded in the softest voice I could muster. The ache inside me had grown painful and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed him—just for now.

Kylo turned me on my stomach. I arched my lower back, assuming the instinctual position, and he growled. He slapped my ass and leaned across my back, hands hooked on my hips.

 “Right where you belong,” he whispered in my ear. I wailed as he pressed inside me, answering years of agonizing heats. “Begging me on your hands and knees.”

He paused halfway in and pinned down my wrists until he was satisfied with how loudly I yowled for more. It was all to put me in my place for ever refusing him at all. I knew that much, at least, but it didn’t change the fact that I needed it more than anything. More than air.

Kylo groaned gutturally as he bottomed out inside me. He took hold of one hip and set a punishing pace that filled the room with wet slapping sounds. I zoned out in my pillows, mouth open. This was good. This was what I needed.

I’d grown tighter than normal—I could tell by the way my body clenched around Kylo each time he drew back to thrust. He swore and just fucked me harder, punctuating small gasps from my lips whenever he sank up to the hilt. I squirmed and pushed into him.

 “I don’t think I should let you come,” he snapped. “You’ve been a very difficult bitch.”

Neither of us had much of a choice. I bit my pillow and screamed into it, both from pleasure and anguish, as my body betrayed both of us. Kylo tried to draw back but my cunt spasmed and clenched down while I came hard.

It dragged him over the edge with me. Kylo kept swearing and grunted into my hair as his climax began with a twitch, then he wrenched my head to expose my neck. I squealed and thrashed but it was no use.

Teeth scraped skin. He bit down.

The bond took hold in seconds, threading us together like an invisible rope near the heart. Kylo kept pumping through his orgasm as our minds and emotions forcibly knitted together, and all of a sudden, I could feel far too much.

I cried. The first load of cum finished spurting inside me and the knot swelled and locked us together. Kylo huffed and layered kisses along my head. My crying turned into screaming.

 “Fuck, Rey.” He rolled over on his side, gathering blankets to cover us. “Shh, shh. Hush. It’s done.”

But I refused to stop. I could feel how pleased he was with what he’d done to me and how little he cared about my terror. He thought this was how it should be—an Alpha dominating and taking whatever he wanted from a small Omega. This was normal to him.

Kylo growled, now drowsy and eager to sleep. He held me close to his chest and presently I felt the soft vibrations of him purring.

“NO!” I shrieked. “N-NO!”

It had the intended effect. Omega brain was at the controls in the end, and purring from an Alpha forced her to relax. Quivering, I quieted in my new mate’s arms and relaxed. He shifted closer to lick up blood oozing from my fresh mating mark. We only needed one.

 “Don’t be afraid,” Kylo whispered. “I’ll take good care of you.”

Everything smelled like us. His scent tainted my nest; the safe place I worked so hard to make. But my feelings of utter hatred dampened under the influence of our new mating bond, and I couldn’t bring myself to truly hate him.

He kept purring, sated and sleepy. The knot pulsed and Kylo moaned as he throbbed and spilled more cum inside me. Lazy fingers drifted to my clit, rubbing a small circle. I squirmed.

 “Still so nervous.” He nuzzled my temple. “Come for me, little one. You’ll feel better. Then we can rest for a bit before we mate again.”

 “I don’t—I don’t want to.”

He found a sensitive spot and I keened, writhing under our blanket. The knot tugged.

 “You will,” Kylo whispered.

Emotion flowed freely across the bond between us and I sobbed from the ferocity of his. He kept on purring contently while I climaxed again, pumping more cum from his cock. The bond felt like a jagged sickness in my chest.

But I had nowhere to run—nowhere to go. I couldn’t pry myself off the knot and he’d catch me before I got out the door.

Kylo thrummed behind me, lulling me into the same drowsiness he felt. His lips drifted to the fresh mating mark and sucked gently. At least he was trying to make me calm down—even if it was coerced by biology I couldn’t control.

Shuddering, I eased into his embrace, getting lost in the comforting purrs and tender licks along my sore gland. I had nowhere to go, except right back to Kylo Ren.

Chapter 8: So I'll give thanks

Chapter Text

Dark warmth greeted me when I woke.

I gasped, immediately descending into fitful trembling, and my eyes widened with terror. Kylo had his arm slung around my waist, snoring into my hair. We were all wrapped up in blankets and I had sweat beading across my back. I wanted to get the fuck away from him.

The torment of heat came back and I couldn’t restrain a pained whimper. I clawed out of the blankets, crawled across the nest, and staggered to my feet. Get out get out get out…

My brain yanked back. STAY. STAY. NEST. I bit back tears and fought the shrieking instinct to return to my new mate, because my body didn’t give a shit about what I wanted. I swayed toward the door, vision swimming—maybe Maz would help me… or Phasma… or Rose…

Purring brought me to a dead stop. My legs stopped cooperating.

 “Little one—come back to our nest.”

Kylo’s gruesome emotions buzzed across the bond between us like an angry hornet. He felt calm and content, and amused watching me trying to escape again. A prickle of sadistic pleasure oozed across his mind.

I hyperventilated. My legs shook so badly that my knees knocked together. He was going to wait for me to get desperate again. He enjoyed watching me beg.

Blankets rustled behind me. I stood stone still as he rose from the nest and padded across the floor to stand right at my back. He wrapped his arms around my waist, still purring as I jumped in fear. His breath tickled the aching mark.

 “Shh…” Kylo traced the tip of his tongue along my jugular, drawing shivers from me. “You’re okay. I won’t hurt my sweet mate.”

 “Please… I need water.”

 “Mm—I think you want my knot again.”

Fingertips brushed down my stomach between my legs and I took a sharp breath. He gently parted my folds with his middle finger and dipped inside me. I was already wet and some slick drizzled down my thighs.

He cooed appreciatively. “Ah, you do.”

 “N-No, I need—” I sank my nails in his forearms as he began tenderly stroking along my front wall. More slick followed. “I’m—I—”

Kylo groaned as the slick dripped on his knuckles. “Fuck—that’s my good girl.” His cock hardened on my lower back and I squeezed my eyes shut. “Come back to the nest, Rey. It’s where you’re meant to be.”

His emotions ran in one direction, the same way his blood was currently rushing. Rut interfered with his judgment beyond my worst nightmare. He’d end up accidentally killing me.

I didn’t know what the fuck to do, so I pretended to faint.

Kylo caught my weight when I went slack in his arms and panic thrust through his hazy lust. It broke his thoughts enough that he realized I wasn’t begging for water just for shits and giggles. He carried me back to the mess of blankets and settled me in before heading out of the room for my goddamn water.

Fear skittered along the bond like a nervous spider. It gave me a sick sense of satisfaction. Good. Be afraid your new toy might die.

My mate returned with water in a metal canteen. I snatched it from his hands and drank greedily, spilling some down my chin, while he stroked my hair and purred. He liked watching me slobber and gulp like an animal.

Kylo curled a tendril of my hair around his index finger. “You’ll be much more content when you’re a mother. I feel how nervous you are.” He cupped a hand under my jaw to wipe the water away. “Don’t fret. It’s the natural order of things.”

Unfortunately, my body was in heavy agreement. Kylo drew me to him by my jaw and kissed me on the lips, gentle, and desire pooled hot in my belly. I huffed against his mouth as he rolled over on top of me, pulling a blanket with him to swaddle us in darkness again. He purred, long and rhythmic vibrations in his chest.

 submit

Trembling, I angled my jaw to the side, exposing the sore mark on my throat. My mate cooed his praise and dipped his lips to the spot, sucking tenderly as his hips shifted between my sticky thighs. It forced me to relax like he’d injected me with fentanyl.

Kylo eased his way inside me. He groaned into my neck, feeling along our bond for my emotional reaction. My calves shivered around his hips, body defying mind, and I hid my face in the crook of his shoulder. I felt gross. I felt like a marionette dancing for some sick voyeur holding the strings.

 “Good girl,” he murmured.

Omega Rey preened. good good rey is good

The purring stopped for a moment as Kylo was overcome by a haze of pleasure. My muscles tightened with fear and I breathed faster as he took his time, moving lazily inside me. Heavy; he was heavy, and he smelled like overpowering burning pheromones, and I needed to get away. But I didn’t want to go. The dissonance made me sick to my stomach.

I pushed against his hips, whining nervously. “Please—I feel n-nauseous!”

Kylo hummed and raised his head to gaze down at me. His hooded dark eyes stayed riveted on mine as he began purring again, instantly overriding my emotion, transforming me back into a puppet. He smiled, cupping my cheek.

 “Such a timid creature.” His eyes roamed lower down my neck and he adjusted his hips. A hand traveled along my thigh, pulling to angle him deeper. “I don’t mind. I know you like my purring. Do you like my cock?”

I could only nod emphatically. Kylo’s smile widened and he rested his forehead on mine.

 “I know you do,” he whispered, “because you’re a good, obedient little bitch.” He kept his slow rhythm, warm breath drifting along my cheek to my ear. “And you’re never getting away from me.”

I wanted to scream and rip his throat out, but my body wouldn’t comply. Each thrust punctuated soft moans from my own throat and I curled closer to Kylo, desperate to contort myself around him. He cradled the back of my head, chest still thrumming with purrs, and pressed tender kisses along my temple.

It was worse than him shoving me down and getting it over with.

I had to stop freaking out when he fucked me, because there really wasn’t anywhere for me to run and I couldn’t stand being reduced to his fucktoy. If I had my agency maybe I could use it to manipulate him. Maybe.

Kylo’s emotions frayed again. The purring stopped and his breathing picked up with his pace. Excitement jittered along our bond.

 “Isn’t this much easier when you comply?” He threaded his fingers through my hair and yanked, forcing me to arch my spine. “Lying on your back with your legs open for me, waiting for my cum. And that’s how I want you every night. I’ll be nice and gentle if you do what I say—but I’ll have you either way.”

I boiled with rage. Kylo could sense it and he fucked me harder, trying to drag it out of me. He growled when I bared my teeth and seized my jaw. I kicked my feet and grabbed his wrist with both hands.

 “Fuck you!” I spat.

 “Don’t bare your teeth at me.” He squeezed until I winced. “You belong to me.”

 “Go shove it up your—”

Kylo wrenched my jaw to the side and latched on to my mating mark. I hardly had time to take a breath before he rolled my skin through his teeth and my muscles went slack again, tingling and relaxed. He pinned my wrists next to my head, purring to add insult to injury, still thrusting hard inside me.

But what I wanted didn’t matter. Heat swelled in my belly and I swallowed when I realized my body was once again betraying me. Kylo throbbed and the first hints of his knot forming drew strong, pleasurable contractions. I didn’t want to—I didn’t want to—

I whimpered and curled my fingers over his. He squeezed back, letting me know he was right there with me, and let off my mark to pant in my ear. Fuck… fuck… no…

 “That’s my Rey.” Kylo took a sharp breath. “You’re going to come for me. I can feel it.” I shook my head and he clicked his tongue. “Yes you are, little one. You’re getting even tighter and wetter. My sweet mate.”

 “I’m—I’m not!”

He stroked the base of my palms. “Mhm… yes you are. Dripping slick for me like a good girl.” His purrs deepened into rumbling growls. “Fuck. Fuck—you’re quivering all over my cock. Come for me. Don’t resist it.”

My calves wrapped over his, twining our bodies together, and I shook my head fiercely. Kylo cradled my head in both hands and cooed for me to look at him, and I had to, because whatever was written in my DNA commanded it. His dark eyes held mine and he smiled.

I came undone. Whimpering, I arched off the soft blankets as the pleasure ebbed through me, beginning with strong contractions. Kylo’s eyes rolled back and he groaned and huffed, watching my grimacing. I clung to his broad chest and wailed as my body betrayed me again, reduced to a vessel of nerves and hormones.

 “Christ,” Kylo grunted. He kissed my lips and pressed his forehead to mine. “Good girl. Good girl. Come for me.”

The rhythmic pulsing triggered him to come, too. He held my head still and looked in my eyes again as the knot bloomed inside me, swelling with blood and lust, and I whimpered and stared back at him. We were climaxing together. Fuck that.

He gave a few more jerky thrusts until the knot reached full size and locked our bodies together. It felt amazing. My cunt spasmed and clenched along Kylo’s length as he spilled inside it, forcing borderline pained growls from his throat. He arched and rocked against me while I moaned and twitched underneath him.

Satisfaction trickled across the bond to my chest. He liked watching me enjoying it.

My orgasm finally tapered to an end and I struggled to catch my breath. Kylo kissed and nibbled my jaw as he rolled to his back, pulling me along, and settled me on top of him. The knot tugged a bit.

 “Jesus, Rey.” He rubbed his face, one arm slung around my waist, and groaned. “Feels fucking amazing.”

Kylo pulled a blanket over us. He kissed my temple, humming for a moment before resuming his purring. It rolled through my bones, easing my anxiety, forcing me to relax with his cock buried inside my body. He nuzzled into my neck and heaved a sigh.

Sleepy and content. The Alpha was pleased and the Omega in me basked in the afterglow. I’d done what I was supposed to do.

He traced patterns along my back, ignorant to the sticky mess between my thighs. I listened to his heart beating slow and steady under my ear; embraced the sensation of his cock pulsing with another thick load of cum. Kylo groaned softly and rolled his hips.

 “Gonna knock you up,” he mumbled. Fingers clenched around my butt. “You’ll be a good mother. You’ll make it.”

Then something new prickled from him, cold like ice. Grief.

My eyes popped open. I followed the emotion, curious and stunned, and found I could link to the memory. Grief… not for the dead Omega, but the unborn child lost when she died.

I pressed on, digging deeper. Kylo stiffened underneath me and growled. He’d been abandoned by his parents—he wanted a family—he was afraid of being abandoned again—afraid of being alone?

He seized my jaw and glared into my eyes. I blinked back at him in shock.

 “Stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong,” Kylo hissed. His jaw clenched. “Or else.”

We rolled on our sides and went to sleep. I stared at the arch of his throat for a long time in shocked silence. Intimacy hurt.

Chapter 9: That I am a liar

Notes:

CONTENT WARNING: DESCRIPTIONS OF MISCARRIAGE AND STILLBIRTH (DECEASED BABIES/FETUSES)

i will warn you that this fic will discuss these topics at length in the future. i know this is a hard no for a lot of people, so i'm just warning you now.

Chapter Text

In the middle of the night, in a heat-induced daze, I decided to go for a walk. I wasn’t sure why, but I woke up under the dark sheets with Kylo beside me, and I crawled out of them on my hands and knees. Bad idea.

He followed without speaking a word. Sticky cum had dried on my inner thighs again and I had a feeling Kylo wouldn’t let me clean it off. Thankfully the heat was tapering to an end—I’d gotten through the worst of it—but he would squeeze out every ounce of me.

Curiosity buzzed along our bond. I crawled to the door before Kylo casually mounted me from behind in the darkness, bearing down his weight between my shoulder blades. My hips arched into his and he nuzzled my temple. Purrs rumbled in his chest, pleasure flickering in his mind.

He dipped a hand between my legs. “Going somewhere?”

 “Lord Ren?”

The door opened in the bedroom. Kylo stiffened behind me, snarling, and rose to his feet. His shirt and sweatpants flew to him and he slipped them on before leaving me behind in the heat room.

Anger raged across our bond.

 “What do you want, Hux?” Kylo snapped.

“Sir—we’ve collected the prisoner. Finn Johnson.”

Finn? I raised my head and whimpered. They caught Finn? I had to help him…

Kylo huffed. “Very well. Bring him to the dungeon. I’ll decide his punishment later.”

 “No,” I rasped. I reached up but couldn’t grab the door handle. “No… please…”

The strange power flickered to life without warning, twisting the door handle for me. Then it vanished, drawn back to whatever place it came from, and I was too worried about Finn to care. I nudged the door open with my shoulder.

Hux and Kylo continued talking. I staggered to my feet, mumbling to myself, and swayed in their direction. I wouldn’t let them hurt Finn. Ever.

Hux caught sight of me first. He raised an eyebrow as Kylo turned and smiled. Smug satisfaction radiated across our bond. He was proud of himself; pleased with how I looked.

I swallowed. “Please don’t hurt Finn.”

Kylo cocked his head, smile widening. Hux averted his eyes for a moment until he decided it was safer to turn around. I didn’t have a slip of clothing on. Naked, in more ways than one.

My mate sauntered closer with his hands in his pockets. “Why shouldn’t I?”

 “Because I’m begging you not to.”

 “Begging?” he echoed. “This isn’t begging, little one. I can make you beg if I want to.” He circled me once, heaving a sigh. “Though I suppose I owe you a wedding gift… This one is a bit pricey.”

I watched him round back in front of me with a smarmy smirk on his mouth and realized that no amount of begging would ever change his mind. He was used to people begging him—for their lives, or their lovers’ lives, or their kids’ lives. Pleading with Kylo to spare one more life would never work. He didn’t care.

Fuming, I clenched my hands into fists and fixated him with a cold glare. He raised his eyebrows, amused, but interested. Anything was better than casual indifference.

 “I insist,” I said coldly.

Hux peered over his shoulder to catch Kylo’s reaction. I didn’t flinch, keeping my eyes trained on Kylo’s, and Hux glanced between the two of us. He’d never take me seriously if I begged and rolled over and did what he wanted, but he’d keep testing me.

Kylo shrugged. “Very well. But he stays in the dungeon.”

Relief flooded me and I knew it washed right across our bond. He gave me an eerie knowing smile before turning and barking at Hux to get lost. Okay. Finn was safe.

And the power had surfaced in me again, this time without Kylo using it on me first. That was something I had to explore in private. I’d wait until I knew how to use it before trying anything with it. It wouldn’t help if I couldn’t control it.

We went to take a bath. He didn’t spray me with the shower head like before and joined me in the soapy hot water instead. My heat had almost waned off and I was back to being one-hundred percent uninterested in fucking him. Not that he cared.

Kylo quietly washed me. I drooped forward so I didn’t have to lean against his chest, stubborn even though the bathroom was kind of cold, but he didn’t comment. He cleaned my thighs and back and armpits with a surprisingly gentle hand—I might’ve dozed off if I wasn’t scared out of my wits.

 “Still so tense,” he noted in a gravelly tone.

His hands were on my back. Thumbs circled inward, massaging my wet skin. I shrugged and shivered.

 “You’ve been torturing me for days,” I rasped. “Forgive me for being a little uneasy.”

 “Torture is such a harsh word. I did make you come multiple times—didn’t that make for a more pleasant experience?” He traced the tip of his nose along my jugular. “Your heat is almost over, though. Then you’ll have a week for respite and we’ll try again and again until I make you a mother.”

 “That lady told you I’m too sick.”

The same chill of grief whispered in his mind. He lifted one of my arms to wash and pretended to ignore it, but I could feel how raw the wound still was. I didn’t pry. It would be rude to pick things out of his brain that he didn’t want me seeing.

Then again… he did kidnap and rape me.

I tried to follow the emotion up into Kylo’s mind again. It threaded to a thought like the one a few hours earlier—vague, but definitely there. He kept washing my arm and didn’t notice me intruding.

He’d lost more than one baby, though I couldn’t discern the exact number. It was enough to make him desperate; desperate enough to gamble with my life to have one live. My heart pounded as I glimpsed memories of burying tiny stillborns, some almost big enough to survive outside the womb, all curled into tight little balls. They could’ve been sleeping.

Blankets—he’d get blankets to swaddle them in. He’d wash them, too. I could feel the sticky blood on my hands, and the emotion dragged me deeper into Kylo’s mind, through mind-numbing pain and grief, to scrubbing his hands until they bled. I’d weave in to the memories like a thread of light; a soft, warm glow in the darkness.

Guilt boiled deeper, pushed down by necessity. But he felt guilty, even if it was tainted by sadistic Alpha pleasure drawn from domination and subjugation, and something else I couldn’t quite reach that gave off such an awful sickly cold—

I jerked forward with a gasp, spilling water on the floor. My chest grew too tight; I couldn’t breathe, and my eyes burned with tears. Holy shit—what the fuck?!

Kylo growled. “Were you poking around again, little one?”

 “No!” I blurted. I shook my head, gulping for air. “I—some heat thing. I don’t know.”

He didn’t seem convinced, but didn’t push the issue. Thank god.

Still, the awful memories stuck in my brain. I wished I’d never looked. I couldn’t look him in the eyes now. I drank water he offered me and stared at the floor. He should be easier to hate.

We didn’t go back to the heat room. Kylo led me to his bed instead, obviously intending on taking full advantage of things, and tried pushing me down on my stomach. My belly lurched at the prospect of him condescending to me again the entire time we had sex, and I twisted my hips so I was on my back.

He laughed. “Turn over.”

I tried to make him turn on his back, but he laughed again and forced me on my stomach.

The attempt did something to Kylo, though. He felt surprised and curious, and planting that small seed of intrigue made it much easier to tolerate him fucking me.

Chapter 10: Cause I got a feeling

Notes:

ANGST

Chapter Text

 “Let me see Finn.”

The time to strike came after Kylo was through fucking me. He rose from the bed, stretching until his arms and hips cracked, and ignored me completely. I sat up with the sheets wound around my naked body and hoped I sounded intent enough to force him to reply.

Kylo tilted his head as he rummaged through a dresser drawer. He didn’t look at me.

 “So soon, little one? He’s probably a gory mess.”

 “I don’t care. I want to see him.”

My mate peered over his shoulder and smiled. I didn’t. I glared back, struggling to maintain my composure. That seemed the right way to get under Kylo’s skin.

He shrugged. “Very well. If you insist.”

Good. Good.

I slipped out of bed and Kylo approached with a green dress that draped down to the floor. He helped me into it, sleeves draping down past my elbows, and fretted over my hair.

I flinched away from his hands. “I’m going to trip over this thing.”

 “Mm. Keeps you from running away from me.” He smiled and kept working on my hair. “I’ll allow a few minutes with your friend, then you’ll come to the main hall with me. I’ve things to do.”

 “Okay.”

Kylo raised his eyebrows. “That’s it? No snarling from my kitten? I’m surprised.”

I shrugged, struggling to conceal my anger. “There’s no point.”

Pleasure emanated from him, warm and tingly. He nodded in agreement but didn’t speak.

When he was satisfied with my hair, Kylo licked his thumb and rubbed the corner of my cheek. I grunted in distaste and tried to jerk away. He grabbed my upper arm like a snake snapping at a fleeing mouse and dragged me right back.

He grasped the crux of my neck and shoulder, pressing his thumb to the mark and rubbing in rough circles. I hissed and he seized me around the waist. We pushed together; hips to stomach. My arms went weak on his chest as the tingling from the mark spread and subjugated me.

Kylo clenched his jaw and tried to pretend he wasn’t jealous—but I could feel it. He was annoyed: he figured I didn’t mind Finn touching me. I laughed.

 “What’s wrong?” I taunted. “Don’t like competition?”

 “I don’t like other men playing with my things.”

I wanted to make another snarky comment, but bit my lower lip and shut up instead. The wave of jealousy passed and Kylo shoved me on the bed to wait while he dressed. It was just as well—my limbs prickled and I didn’t think I could walk.

He yanked me to my feet when he was ready, again in dark colors and boots, and motioned to a pair of slippers for me. I looked up at him, incredulous. He raised his eyebrows, clueless.

 “Do these look practical for shuffling around an old castle?” I asked, mirroring his expression.

 “You won’t be doing much shuffling, little one: mostly from my lap to our bed to your baths. You’ll do even less moving once you’re pregnant.”

 “Why don’t you just chop my legs off and carry me around in a sling?”

Kylo blinked, then burst out laughing. Warmth ebbed along our bond and I smiled despite how much I fucking hated him—and I couldn’t control it. My eye twitched.

He patted my back as I stepped into the slippers. “It would save me some trouble, but I do enjoy feeling you squirm while I fuck you.” His hand slipped lower, tracing down my spine to my ass, and he kissed my temple. “Kicking your skinny little legs, like it makes a difference.”

I gritted my teeth. Fuck you.

We finally left the bedroom and headed downstairs. Kylo led me by my hand through the dark corridors, long fingers knitted through mine. He opened a couple doors along the way and would guide me after he’d checked the coast was clear.

The reek of Alpha male hung thick in the air everywhere we walked. It made me nauseous and nervous and Omega brain pushed me closer to Kylo. He wasn’t affected by it. He felt calm and composed without a care in the world, just the icy stain of grief under his skin.

We went down to the dungeon where Finn was being held. Kylo scooped me up at the heavy steel door before we entered and I could see why.

The floor shimmered with puddles and mold clung to the corners, thriving in the damp, low light. I scowled as I looked around from the safety of Kylo’s arms and poked his jaw.

 “He’ll die down here!” I spat.

 “What do I care if a traitor dies?”

I bristled. Another do-or-die moment. I had to be careful with my approach.

 “He’s useful.”

Kylo raised an eyebrow. “Useful how?”

Okay—good. I tried not to think of Finn slowly dying alone in the dungeon. Useful… how was he useful? Ugh.

 “He can tolerate being around Omegas in heat,” I said suddenly. “I mean, he was around me my whole life and never tried anything. Maybe he can help supervise me and Rose when you and Hux are gone?”

We stopped.

I blinked up at Kylo, struggling to feel out his emotion to predict his reaction. Pensive. He tilted his head and exhaled through his teeth.

 “Fair point,” he murmured. “…And you say this man is like a sibling?”

 “Yes. And he promised my parents he’d protect me, which he obviously takes very seriously.”

 “Mm. He did hide you from me for a few years.” Kylo clicked his tongue and resumed walking. “I’ll consider it. Hux’s bitch has been moping around and it’s affecting her fertility. Maybe a new friend will cheer her up a bit.”

 “Yeah, maybe.”

I’d leave it at that. Kylo had such a huge ego that he needed to think he came up with the idea. I’d praise him and thank him and get my way.

We stopped outside the cell at the end of the chamber. Kylo carefully lowered me to my feet as I took in the sight of Finn, curled in a ball on a small cot, face bruised and bloodied. I tried to step forward and my mate grabbed my hips.

He nuzzled the back of my head. “He’s lucky I didn’t get to him first.”

 “Finn?” I called. I leaned forward and Kylo wrapped an arm around my waist and across my chest. He held my opposite shoulder and I clutched his huge forearm. “Finn?”

Kylo purred and kissed down my neck as Finn stirred. My friend opened his eyes and moaned in pain, but the initial horror faded away under the rhythmic purrs against my back. He wouldn’t even let me feel angry for what he’d done to Finn.

Tears rolled down my cheeks anyway. I sniffled and kept calling out, but Finn couldn’t stay conscious. Kylo squeezed my shoulder.

 “It looks like your Finn isn’t in a chatty mood,” he cooed. “Still tired from his beating.” His breath rolled across my collarbone. “You know… if I decide to let him babysit you… perhaps he should have the pleasure of watching me fuck you first. Just to test his resolve.”

 “Finn,” I rasped, “Finn!”

 “Let’s not bother him anymore, hm? He needs his rest.” Kylo moved, walking forward and pulling me with him. “I want to smear my little Rey with my scent before she makes her first public appearance as my mate.”

He yanked open a cell two doors down from Finn’s and pulled me inside. It was so dark I couldn’t see two feet in front of me, I could only feel Kylo’s breath on my neck and his arousal burning over the constant frigid sadness, blocking it out.

He shoved me on the cot; it smelled like mildew and the sheets rustled and cracked as I tried to adjust. Freed from the purring, I scrambled for the other end of the bed, but Kylo caught me around the hips and dragged me right back.

 “Ah, ah, ah,” he chastised. “Don’t misbehave, Rey. Just close your eyes and think of England.”

I breathed fast and hard through my nose, still struggling as he unzipped his pants and hiked my dress up. He made an obnoxious sucking sound and gently slipped one finger inside me. I screwed my eyes shut. I’d just lie here silently.

Kylo stood at the end of the cot, emotions blazing wildly as he pushed in, hot skin breaking skin. I winced and huffed through my teeth and he groaned and held my hips still. It hurt a bit. I wasn’t exactly turned on in a dark, dank dungeon.

The sheer breadth of emotion from him was staggering; the way he careened between them was dizzying. He’d settle on one and jump to the next like he was afraid of letting it wash over him. I felt him creep across our bond like a spider trying to find a place to hide from the maelstrom.

It made me nauseous. I didn’t want him using my mind for shelter. It was a bigger insult than him fucking me.

 “Stop!” I snapped, puffing as Kylo sank up to the hilt. I pushed a foot on his thigh.

 “Is Finn good with children?” Kylo spat. He seized a fistful of my hair and yanked, arching my spine, settling on anger. He knew I knew what he was doing and feeling—he was embarrassed and offended. “Would he make a good nanny?”

I tried to shut my mouth, but the opportunity was too tempting. “He’d make a good father!”

The fury in Kylo burned higher—but that was what he wanted and what he knew. He shoved my face into the cot and fucked me at a punishing pace, simmering with vitriol, too pissed off to even make another nasty comment. The cot creaked and we both panted and clung to our anger.

Maybe to add insult to injury, Kylo wormed a hand between my legs. I hissed and squirmed and he climbed in the cot to pin me down, still fucking me as his fingertips found their mark again. My hips rolled into his touch and I bit my lip until it bled. Fuck—motherfucker!

 “Good girl,” he whispered. He nosed in my hair and inhaled deeply. “Maybe I’ll have your friend fixed if you’re fantasizing about him—”

 “You’re just mad that I don’t want you in my head!” My eyes rolled back and I squirmed in his hand. “You’re awfully fucking sensitive for a war criminal.

Kylo growled in my ear, but didn’t say anything more. He burrowed into my neck and bit down on the mark and I snarled and kicked until my body refused to cooperate. I pressed my toes on the cot and whined as the tension built and broke rapidly, making me come like my mate wanted. He groaned and softened his biting to tender sucking while I squirmed underneath him, mewling.

His thrusts slowed. He buzzed with pleasure and focused on the fluttering of my muscles around him like it was proof I wanted him. Kylo huffed, reaching a hand back to slap my ass, and slithered into my mind to bask in the sticky pleasure he coerced from me.

 “Very good, little one,” he mumbled. He licked the mark, sighing. “I like this bond we have. Your mind is very relaxing.” His voice dropped to a guttural grunt. “Nice and soft like the rest of you.”

I started coming back, prickling with anger, and the purring began to temper it down. Kylo stroked his palms up my forearms and arched his hands over the top of mine to pin them above my head. He rocked his hips, tender and slow, slipping through my forced state of calm, feeding from it to calm himself. I dug my nails into the cot.

Excitement pulsed higher. He panted and kissed my hair.

 “The others will smell me all over you when we go upstairs.” His hips stuttered; he hesitated to keep from coming. “All mine—my little Omega sun drop full up with my seed; soft and sweet and…”

I couldn’t help but gasp as Kylo suddenly tipped over the edge. He squeezed my hands and groaned against the back of my head, giving short, hard thrusts as he spilled inside me. I followed close behind with another orgasm, body betraying mind, and he struggled closer. The twitching of his cock and knowing he was filling me with cum did weird things to me.

He puffed when he was through. I laid there under him, trembling as he withdrew, and whimpered as he pushed two fingers inside me instead. Kylo pumped gently and sighed.

 “Good girl,” he cooed, “that’s my good girl.”

Chapter 11: I just might get worse

Notes:

voyeurism

Chapter Text

Kylo dragged me upstairs to the enormous hall where I was first prostrated before him and humiliated in front of a jeering crowd of Alphas. This was worse. Now I reeked of him and had his essence seeping out of me like blood from a fresh wound.

I fought back tears. Focus on getting home, Rey.

We entered the hall. Less men were present than before, all sitting around a smaller table close to Kylo’s throne. We walked past a fluffy red dog bed with a collar resting stop it that connected to a chain in the wall. I felt nauseous at the sight of it.

The men argued amongst themselves while Kylo shoved me down on the bed. He latched the thick black leather collar around my throat and casually took his place in the throne, leaning down like he had the first time I saw him. I glowered from the dog bed, curling up in the center to hide from the curious Alpha eyes.

I couldn’t see Kylo very well, just his arm resting on the arm of the throne. The men lapsed into silence.

 “Proceed,” he called, voice calm and clear, deep enough to reverberate through the hall.

Hux cleared his throat. “My Lord, Galen refuses to send any of his own men to the outpost in return for your… mate.”

A bald man with tawny skin rose from the table, just as gnarled and angry-looking as all the others. Kylo drummed his fingers on the stone armrest. Amusement bubbled in his mind.

 “Your Omega is of no benefit to me,” Galen spat. “I refuse to sacrifice men and uproot their families for your little pet.”

The amusement flared into possessive fury and indignation. He didn’t like the word ‘pet.’ I shrank down in the bed, rattling my chain, and followed along Kylo’s emotional trail like bread crumbs. I was more than a ‘pet’; I was a mate, something far more valuable, and we were bound together, and he did not like the insult.

Kylo clicked his tongue, revealing nothing.

 “I see. So… you’re under the impression that my Rey is of no benefit to you.” His anger festered. “You… don’t see her value?”

 “None worth five of my men,” Galen snapped.

Another man shook his head, trying to be subtle, but the damage was done. The power Kylo and I had—the Force—swelled inside him, whipped into a righteous rage from the insults to his most coveted possession, and he let it flow down into his fingertips.

I sat up a bit. What, did he just kill everyone who questioned what he did? The guy had a point—he was being asked to move entire families all because Holdo was forced to hand me over. What did Galen care if Kylo ended up getting me pregnant?

They’d all just resent me if Kylo started killing them off for their insults. I’d have another target on my back that I didn’t need.

Panicked, I crawled from the dog bed on all fours to Kylo’s enormous black boot and tugged the side of his pant leg. His anger vanished, morphing into pleasured curiosity at the sight of me on my knees in front of him. He smiled, motioning for me to sit on his knee.

I crept up into his lap, chain jangling, and found I could sit pretty comfortably on his thigh with my legs spread. He draped a long arm around my waist and casually stroked my inner thigh with his fingertips. The other Alphas tried to look anywhere but in our direction.

Kylo nuzzled my temple, purring. “Were you lonely, little one?”

Galen sat back down after another man dragged him to his seat and they all shook their heads. Phew. Maybe that would come back and benefit me someday.

Admittedly, the purring felt nice. I leaned into Kylo’s chest and cuddled under his jaw as his fingers skated higher along my thigh. It was plainly obvious to the men sitting around the table and a tingly thrill ran through me. He was the biggest, strongest Alpha in the room, and he was touching me. I was desirable.

Kylo rested his chin on top of my head. “What other business is there?”

Hux prattled about other areas they could conquer. Galen gave me a pointed look, but drew his eyes elsewhere.

Kylo slipped his hand deep under the hem of my dress. His fingers casually stroked along my slit, teasing something more, and I shivered. He noticed—I felt his mind hum with satisfaction.

His touch drifted up until he brushed my clit. I took a sharp breath and he mumbled ‘shh’ into my hair. Fuck. I didn’t want to do this in front of an audience. But his chest thrummed with a low purr and I clutched with wrist with both hands, obediently rolling into his fingers.

 “What did Amilyn have to say?” Kylo called, deep voice interrupting the other men. His free hand toyed with the fabric of my gown, rubbing it between his fingertips. He felt relaxed. “About the traitor.”

 “She understood the severity of his crime,” Hux replied. “We didn’t encounter any resistance from her when he was collected.”

 “Good.” Kylo dipped a thick finger inside me. He watched the men for any sort of response—an excuse to kill one. “This… Finn… may be useful to us, Hux. He’s accustomed to being in close quarters with a bitch in heat. We may benefit from keeping him alive.”

Fuck. I squirmed on Kylo’s thigh, searching for more friction and shamelessly fucking myself on his finger. He nosed in my hair distractedly while Hux agreed Finn could be a useful babysitter. Arousal seeped across our bond, sticky and hot.

He suddenly removed his finger and I whined in distress. The group of men laughed and Kylo purred, nuzzling my temple. I peered up to find him sucking my juices from his finger, eyeing me with amusement and a raised eyebrow. My cunt pulsed with disappointment.

 “Go back to your bed, little one,” he murmured. He kissed my forehead. “I don’t want to share you with the whole room.”

I turned in his lap to face him, whimpering and curling to his side. Kylo wrapped an arm around my waist and gently guided my hips as I began rubbing against his thigh. He hummed, pleased with my insistence, and skated his fingertips down my back. The other Alphas talked amongst themselves.

 “Naughty kitten.” Kylo pressed his forehead to mine, gaze shifting to the hall. “You’re going to come for me in front of everyone, hm? Can’t you wait until I have you in our bed?”

Between the bond and his purring, I really couldn’t. I shook my head, burying my face in his chest and inhaling the scent of him—musky Alpha male, spicy and overwhelming. I clung to his shirt and huffed against it as pleasured pooled hot in my lower belly.

Kylo guided my hand down to his crotch. His breath was warm on my ear. He traced along my impending orgasm stretched taut through our bond, eager to feel it.

No one addressed him directly, but I could feel the tension rising in the room. Alpha males weren’t meant to live in close quarters. Kylo sensed it, too: he latched on to the growing sense of unrest and with a shift of fabric and pull of a zipper—

I squeaked as he penetrated me with one hard thrust. His hazy dark eyes watched mine, hands on my waist to move me up and down his cock in front of his subordinates. I was too excited to feel embarrassed. In fact, part of me liked them watching what was happening. I was desirable and none of them could touch me.

Kylo kissed me hard, already on the brink like I was. He fed off the frustration of the other Alpha males, proudly showing off who I belonged to, and that emotion alone was enough to push me over the edge. I panted into his mouth and squirmed in his lap and he grunted as he climaxed at the same time.

It clicked across our bond. I tried to keep quiet, but wailed, hiding my face in his neck, and Kylo snarled and bit the mating mark.

A chair clattered across the room. I slumped against my mate’s chest with him still inside me—not knotted—and felt the Force prickle up into his fingertips. He kissed the side of my head, one arm around my waist, and raised his other with a lazy motion.

Whoever was approaching was stopped dead in his tracks with horrible choking sounds. Kylo purred, licking up the blood on my neck, and I felt his arm twitch as he threw the man across the room. I was sated and sleepy on his cock, ready for a nap.

 “Go rest on your bed,” he whispered. “I have to kill Galen.”

 “…Okay.”

Drowsy, I slunk from Kylo’s lap back to the bed. He rose from the throne, adjusting his pants as I snuggled under a thick red blanket. I watched through lidded eyes as he proceeded down the steps to confront Galen, who was struggling to stand up.

I lazily trickled into Kylo’s mind and found he picked up on Galen intending to challenge his ownership of me. It pissed my mate off even more than the ‘pet’ insult. He would kill him this time.

Cum leaked onto my thigh. I watched Kylo bind his hair in a ponytail and bare his teeth to Galen, snarling, every bit a broad, bristling Alpha male. They came together in the middle of the room in a flurry of fists and I fell asleep beside the throne, oddly satisfied.

Chapter 12: Now there's nothing wrong with you

Notes:

so my tumblr was caught in the purge and I'm still trying to get it back, but with the holiday and how wide the deletions were, i'm not sure when or if i'll get it back (so far i've been waiting two days and received no response from tumblr)

in the meantime, if you guys have prompts for me, feel free to either hold on to them for now or send them to one of my friends (just let them know it's for me) so you can stay under anon. succubusybody can pass them along to me.

i'm going to hold off on making a new tumblr for now, since my handle hasn't been released yet.

Chapter Text

“Rey—Rey, wake up.”

A familiar voice brought me right out of my light nap in Kylo’s bed. I sat bolt upright, hardly daring to believe it until I saw Finn kneeling on the floor. He looked like hell—bruises and cuts and a black eye—but he was alive, and dressed in clean clothes. And here.

I squealed and flung my arms around his neck, almost teetering out of bed and falling in his lap, but he caught me and rose to his feet. We laughed and I pulled until he sat beside me on the edge of the bed. I’d just taken a nap at Kylo’s behest after the ‘stress’ of witnessing the drama in the Great Hall. Finn was already cleaned up.

It happened faster than I thought it would, or maybe I ended up sleeping longer than I intended to. Either way, Finn was here in one piece, arm in a sling, and that made me burst into tears.

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and rested his chin on top of my head. “Same, kid. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Okay. That was debatable.

We talked for a long time, apologizing back and forth and sometimes crying and hugging more. Finn was practically my brother; worrying about him being tormented or killed was… horrible. Now we were back together and we wouldn’t ever be far from each other again.

 “Poe Dameron was the mole,” Finn grumbled, scratching the back of his head. “Never would’ve guessed, honestly.”

 “I heard. Haven’t seen him around here, though. I’ve mostly been—”

The bedroom door banged open.

Kylo strode inside, tense and covered in blood that clearly wasn’t his own. His dark eyes flickered to Finn sitting cross-legged on the bed in front of me and his lip curled like a snarling dog. He kicked the door shut and wiped blood from his cheek with the back of his hand.

 “Get out, nanny,” he growled to Finn. Anger prickled up Kylo’s mind. “And you, woman—strip the sheets, now that you’ve covered them in bitch Beta scent.”

I stiffened, ready to retort as Kylo turned his back and headed for the bathroom, but Finn covered my mouth. The door slammed shut and we were left alone again.

 “You can’t let him talk to you like that!” I snapped as Finn got up.

 “What am I supposed to do? Argue with him?” Finn shook his head and kissed my forehead. “We’re both alive and we’re together. I’m not putting any of that at risk, Rey.”

 “He’s a fucking asshole.”

Finn dutifully peeled the sheets off the bed and piled them in a corner. I pouted for a minute before helping him out. He was right, but it didn’t change how much of an asshole Kylo was. I wouldn’t let him talk to Finn that way.

We were still fitting new sheets on the mattress when he emerged from the bathroom, stark naked and still dripping water. It was obviously deliberate to unsettle Finn but only served to embarrass me beyond belief. I quickly turned and hid my face in Finn’s upper arm.

My mate didn’t like that. If emotion had color, I imagined he was bright green with jealousy, and it turned in towards Finn.

 “Rey,” Kylo called. “Come.”

Ugh. I slipped away from Finn and kept my gaze down as I crossed the room to Kylo. The jealousy faded. He bubbled with pleasure instead as he gathered me to his chest, chin on top of my head, and made a show of running his hands along my bare arms. Finn’s scent must’ve lingered there—the Alpha pheromones overwhelmed it.

 “I was just helping Rey,” Finn said. “I’ll go now.”

 “You were told to leave once.” Kylo slid his hand down and squeezed my ass, pushing me against his cock. He nuzzled under my jaw. “I don’t like to repeat myself.”

 “He’s leaving,” I muttered. I tried yanking his huge hand off my butt but it wouldn’t budge.

Kylo kissed along my throat. “Mm. Well, if he’s here—since you like putting on a show—” He picked me up in one fluid motion, arm under my bottom, and took a few steps.

Finn took another step back as Kylo dropped me on the bed. I scrambled away and he flipped me over on my stomach, slapping my ass as he pulled my hips up to his. Smug satisfaction. Finn and I were both horribly uncomfortable, but that wasn’t what Kylo was looking for. He felt slighted—deeply offended.

How many times did I have to insist Finn was like a brother to me? Would Kylo ever believe it, or did the Alpha designation come with being a jealous irrational asshole?

Finn coughed. “I’ll… I’ll just go.”

 “No.” Kylo pushed up my gown past the small of my back. “Have a seat in the sheets, Beta. You had your chance to leave.”

The Force rippled in the room. I turned a bit and saw Kylo with his arm extended, forcing Finn to kneel in the stripped sheets across the room. I glanced between Kylo’s glare and Finn’s look of utter shock, then tried to crawl away again. Kylo seized the back of my neck.

 “You don’t seem to comprehend who Rey belongs to.” He pressed his thumb to the mark on my neck and I whimpered. “This is my space—” Kylo shifted behind me. I felt him stroke his cock through my slit, but I couldn’t move. “And my mate—who you are not permitted to touch.”

I took a sharp breath as Kylo pushed in. His thoughts twisted; possessive and pleasured, spurred on by his sadistic Alpha edge. He wrapped an arm under my stomach as he drove in to me, pinning me to the bed by my neck.

The same part of me that enjoyed being fucked in plain sight of other Alphas was likewise pleased by the display of dominance. I tried to resist it, because what the fuck, but even out of heat I couldn’t control myself. I kept my head turned away from Finn, eyes closed, and mewled like a kitten.

 “Doesn’t she make such lovely sounds?” Kylo mused. He released my neck and mouthed at my mark instead. “All for me… my good girl.” His arm tightened around my stomach. I whimpered and squirmed.

 “Please…” I mumbled.

 “Please what?”

Fuck. I bit down on my lower lip, refusing to beg, and he laughed and fucked me even harder. Breaths caught in my throat with each punishing thrust, lewd and wet in the quiet bedroom. I could only smell Kylo’s scent and only focus on the stroke of his cock inside me. It horrified me being so trained on him: thoughts, emotions, dick.

My brain and heart had been thoroughly twisted and contorted to obsess over the man currently fucking me in front of my friend. I traced his feelings through the haze of lust; it was like following a well-worn path home to where I really wanted to be. Needed to be.

Kylo bit the mark, now huffing and grunting from exertion. Time had passed and I didn’t even notice it. He slapped my ass and growled and I lost track of where I was trying to go in his head. I whined, then came, then came again. My legs trembled.

He turned me on my back and gathered my knees to his chest. Kylo licked his lips, smiling as he entered me again, then his dark eyes flickered to Finn.

 “She’s so responsive.” Kylo leaned back on his heels, holding my legs, and his thrusts grew shallow. He liked teasing me. “We had some issues at first, but my Rey is a very quick study. Aren’t you, kitten?”

 “Not—” I tried spreading my thighs. “Not deep… deep enough.”

 “No? You want more?”

I nodded, trying to look pitiful, because I knew it would work. He smirked and made me beg a couple more times before he leaned forward and buried his cock inside me. Kylo’s black hair hung around his face but I could see the flicker of animal hunger in his eyes when I climaxed again, then went languid beneath him.

His emotions were too frenzied for me to follow them. He bent my knee up with one hand, changing his angle, and spat a curse as he tripped over the edge. I watched him run the gamut from excitement to possessiveness and settle on calm pleasure. Kylo rested his forehead on mine, hips stuttering and breaths coming fast. A calm haze settled across his mind as he emptied inside me.

Exhausted, I just laid there while he purred and kissed along my cheeks. He waved a hand and I heard Finn gasp and cough.

 “Get out,” Kylo murmured. He tugged the sheet over us, cooing and nuzzling my jaw, content. “My Rey is a sleepy girl now. Right where she belongs—with me.”

Finn didn’t say anything. The door opened and shut.

Kylo settled on his side and gathered me to his chest. He’d proven his point, or so he thought. I curled my hands together near his ribs and wound my legs into a tight ball. The vulnerability made him happy.

 “Almost time for the next heat cycle,” he whispered, petting my hair. He nosed along the crown of my skull. “We’ll see if I can put a pup in you this time around. If not…” Kylo hummed. “It’s still a very enjoyable experience to hear my fierce little kitten mewling for me.”

I shuddered. I had to run away before he induced heat again. I couldn’t bear to go through it a second time.

Chapter 13: I'm just tired

Notes:

dun dun dunnnn

Chapter Text

A couple days later, out of the blue, Kylo started confiding in me. My position had changed.

We were outside on the stone steps leading to the castle, me sitting two steps above him so I could braid his long black hair. He was watching the other Alphas milling around with their mates or children, resting his chin in his palm. The sun had come out for the first time in weeks and everyone was enjoying it.

Kylo clicked his tongue. “Omegas are becoming rarer and rarer. The men are restless.”

I shrugged, focusing on the task at hand. He was leaving on a mission to recover a handful Poe Dameron found in another outpost. He liked his hair braided back to keep it out of his face.

For some reason, I enjoyed braiding it.

 “It’s all going to collapse eventually,” I replied. “All these Alphas with no relief? You’ll see more and more challenging you like Galen did.”

Prickly irritation buzzed along our bond. Mine bounced around in Kylo’s head, but I was used to hearing that by now. I wound my fingers through his soft hair and listened to him grunt.

 “Yes,” he muttered, eyeing a child running by, “and I’ll have to kill them. Perhaps I should kill their children, too.”

 “I think you’re crossing a line you can never erase if you start killing innocent kids.” I rolled my eyes, starting on a new braid. “Though rape is pretty heinous, too.”

 “It isn’t rape. It’s the natural order.”

 “That’s not how it works, even if your Alpha brain says it is.”

Kylo turned suddenly and rested his forearm across my knees. He frowned. Confused.

 “I was as gentle as I could be,” he said, like I didn’t appreciate him gently raping me. “Am as gentle as I can be. I never cause you pain for the sake of it.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “Fucking me in front of Finn?”

His brow furrowed. “You’re mine. He should understand that you’re mine.”

Jesus. I rose from the step and trotted down past shallow puddles to the muddy grass. Now I wore slightly more practical boots and a shawl with my dress. He gave me a necklace with a blue stone, too, and wore one with a red stone.

Kylo followed in two long strides. He tugged the back of my dress, buzzing with confusion and insecurity; he was upset that I stopped touching his hair.

We circled the stairs and walked along the mossy edge that led to a sharp descent into a thicker of trees. One wrong step and you’d tumble down. Birds flirted through the dead branches and chirped to one another. Kylo yanked me to a stop.

I whirled around. “I know you get off on dominating me—I’ve felt it! So don’t bullshit me about how you’re doing it for my own good and pretend you don’t love pinning me down and humiliating me!”

He scowled, clutching my upper arm in one huge hand. I scowled back at him.

 “You want me to apologize for being an Alpha?” he snapped. “We all enjoy domination, Rey—it’s in our blood, like it’s in your blood to submit. Perhaps all your years hiding in a crawl space have corrupted your understanding of nature.”

 “Yeah right. Still doesn’t change the fact that you raped me and enjoyed it.”

 “You enjoy it.” Kylo was certainly sure of it—I was unsettled by his conviction. I could pick deeper and ferret out a lie, but there wasn’t one in him. “You come every time.”

Irritated, I wrestled my arm free of his hand and kept stalking around the side of the castle. Kylo followed because he wasn’t about to let me out of his sight.

Feeling his confusion just made me even more upset. He knew what he did was wrong. It was common fucking sense: I fought back and he kept going anyway. I wouldn’t let him manipulate me into feeling bad for him or trying to understand him.

But he continued following me like a kicked puppy and didn’t try to stop me or excuse his behavior again. I kept my arms crossed and paced through the gardens full of foxglove, most dead and wilting. Kylo hovered a couple feet behind me.

I paced. His obsession with having kids was at the heart of everything—it fed most of his grief and anger. But I still didn’t get why.

I needed to get some privacy so I could practice using the Force. Right now I had a simple grasp of it, but if I developed the strange power, I could use it to escape. I’d bring Finn and Rose, too.  We’d all get away.

I glanced up at Kylo. “Let’s go finish braiding your hair.”

—————

Rose didn’t have much fight left in her from months of dealing with Hux. She sat quietly between Finn and me while we talked about different ways to escape. Kylo was finally about to leave on his mission and I had just days before he returned and induced heat again.

Finn shrugged, nudging Rose. “I can carry her out, but the problem is that they’ll find us again, sooner or later. We’d have to put major distance between us and them for it to work, and we can’t go back to the outpost.”

 “I need to practice using this Force… thing. It can accomplish a lot.” I wanted to touch Rose; to comfort her, but knew it was dangerous. I was supposedly immune—supposedly. “What do you think?”

She blinked.

Finn spent most of his time doting on her. She seemed to like him. She’d smile and blush when he brought her out for walks and that was more emotion than I’d seen in her the entire time we’d known each other. She needed him more than I did.

We only had a couple days. I was determined to escape.

—————

 “Will you miss me, little one?”

In a few hours, he’d be gone. We were alone in the bedroom, me flat on my back as he crawled on top of me. I’d long gotten over being naked in front of him.

I scowled. “You know I won’t.”

Kylo smiled and paused between my thighs, licking his lips. “I’ll miss you. Behave while I’m gone.”

He kissed a wet trail down my inner thigh, agonizingly slow, and sank down to gently kiss along my mound. My legs trembled over his shoulders and I fisted the sheets when I felt his tongue tease just above my clit. He hummed and licked my slit with the tip of his tongue, back and forth until I whimpered.

Kylo squeezed my hips in his enormous hands and dipped deeper, slicking my folds with his saliva. I bit my lower lip and tried not to react. Fuck.

 “I’ll miss this sweet little pussy,” he murmured. Soft lips kissed and sucked gently, lingering over my clit until I whimpered again. “Mm. Very good.”

He kept going, burying his face between my legs, and I couldn’t resist rolling my hips. I threaded my fingers through his hair and held him in place as I drew closer and closer to coming, belly tightening, clit tingling. Kylo groaned when I mewled until finally—finally

I pushed my heels into his back and huffed and whined, fighting to stay quiet. His hazy dark eyes flickered to mine and watched me come undone, hips bucking against his mouth. I bit my lip until it bled.

He crawled up my body the way he always did and tried to flip me over on my stomach. Panting, I settled on my hands and knees, then managed to twist half away from him. Kylo looked irritated as I pushed a hand on his chest, then I pushed, twisted my hips, and ended up straddling his hips.

Surprise and the faintest hint of pleasure rippled from his mind. He watched me adjust and lift my hips, and settled his hands on my waist as I impaled my own body on his cock. Kylo’s eyes widened and he arched, groaning. His fingertips dug in to my skin.

It was an odd sense of power. I puffed while sinking down on him to the hilt until his cock was fully inside me, throbbing with need, then braced myself on his chest. He breathed hard, muscles rising and falling. I swallowed hard and leaned back.

Kylo gripped my hips and watched me roll them in a tight circle, licking his lips. He rested his head in the pillows and helped me bob up and down in his lap, and soon enough he had his eyes closed. I clasped my hands over his lying lazily on my hips and moved whatever way made him flicker with pleasure. He liked it—that was shocking.

We didn’t speak. I puffed little breaths while I moved and hesitated in one spot, squirming in his lap, and Kylo opened one eye to watch me. His lips parted as my climax clenched in my belly and his eyes rolled back when it hit a peak. He grunted, thrusting weakly and pushing my hips down as I came, and I let my head fall back.

 “God—” I felt him suddenly push upright, lips and tongue on my nipple, strong arms around my waist. “Fuck, Rey—come for me—come on my cock—”

I had to brace on my knees but that made penetration even deeper. Gasping, I clung to his shoulders and buried my face in his hair as my climax rippled over, squeezing him inside me until I could feel his cock twitch. Kylo groaned and mouthed one of my nipples while he came moments later, hips jerking his cum deep inside me. He grunted and sucked gently.

Trembling, I struggled to catch my breath. Kylo cupped my breast and kept at it, mind clear and hazy with satisfaction and pleasure, then he rolled his over on our sides in one smooth motion.

His softening cock slipped free, spilling cum on my thigh and the bedspread. I was too tired to care. I yawned and hitched a leg over his hip, eyes fluttering, and curled my arms around his head. Kylo kept licking and tenderly sucking, and that was how I fell asleep.

Chapter 14: And I'm in a mood for a brand new curse

Chapter Text

 “Not pregnant.”

Phasma tossed aside her needle beading with my blood and peeled off her gloves. I sighed with relief and rolled down my sleeve as Kylo chewed his inner cheek. He stood beside me, arms folded, trying to hide his irritation.

Almost time to leave, and I still wasn’t pregnant.

 “She should be by now,” he snapped.

 “I told you her body needs a few months to recover.” Phasma waved him off, packing up her supplies. “You’ll never put a pup in her until she gains weight. Her body thinks it’s still starving.”

It annoyed Kylo that all the food he shoved down my throat hadn’t undone years of hunger. I glared at him and regretted prostrating myself on top of him the night before. Jerk.

He hadn’t found his way into a shirt yet. His muscles twitched while he spoke and I could see the thin thrum of his pulse down his throat, throbbing with blood, just as human as me. Scars crisscrossed down his thick biceps and forearms, but there weren’t many on his chest.

Kylo didn’t let them get close enough for a fatal blow. But there were clearly plenty of attempts.

Phasma cast him a peeved glance. “You want my opinion; that’s my opinion. Feel free to fuck her to death if you’d like. If she does get pregnant, I doubt she’ll last long.”

 “Watch your mouth.” Kylo bristled at even a slight implication of my death. He considered it for a moment, like a flicker in a rainstorm, and redoubled. “Rey is… valuable to me.”

 “Funny way of showing it,” I muttered.

The two Alphas continued bickering. I hopped off the bed to use the bathroom and when I returned, Phasma was gone, leaving Kylo pacing near the door. His dark eyes flickered to me, tight and suspicious. At least he found his way into a shirt.

 “I’ll be back in a few days,” he said. “You will not leave this room. Your friend Finn will attend to your needs—bring food and whatever else.” He scratched his jaw, irritated. “And you will not leave this room.”

 “Okay,” I lied.

Kylo grunted. He wouldn’t admit it, but leaving me alone was making him extremely nervous. Of course he wouldn’t admit it. God forbid he missed an opportunity to knock me up, or showed a slight sign of weakness.

He still had his hair braided back. I perched on the edge of the bed and beckoned him, hoping to put him at ease so he wouldn’t enforce more rules that made it harder to escape. Kylo liked when I touched him. I sensed a ripple of pleasure; small snippets of me running my fingers through his hair.

None of it showed on his face.

Muttering, Kylo joined me in the bed. He sat between my thighs and hooked my calves around his waist, pressing his fingers into my skin a little too hard. I worked a few braids free to tidy them up a bit.

 “…Stay inside,” he repeated.

 “I will.”

—————

Using the Force was next to impossible without Kylo around. Not completely impossible, but pretty damn close to it.

At first I hung around Finn and Rose, just to have the company, but watching her give him gaga eyes was too distracting and too weird. I kicked them out on the second day and redoubled my efforts, struggling to use the strange power.

I could still run away without knowing how to use it. It wouldn’t be very hard to scale the wall in the middle of the night and take off into the woods.

Even worse, being separated from Kylo had my Omega brain in a state of panic, which made it even harder to focus. I kept trying to lift things and they’d wobble in the air before falling right back down, then my brain would spin off into worrying about my mate. I scratched my mark and growled.

This was fucking impossible.

On the third day, Finn insisted we needed to flee, because Kylo would be back soon and we’d lose our chance. I could barely turn a door handle with the Force but I knew he was right. It was time to go.

 “If we get separated, keep off the main roads.”

I rolled my eyes and tied off my boots. “Duh. Are we rendezvousing near the waterfall way back? They won’t know where that is.”

Finn sat on the floor helping Rose tie her boots. We had two backpacks ready to go, one for me and one for him, and it was the dead of night. Phasma and Maz and the others had already gone to sleep.

Finn nodded. “That should work. We’ll have to just… run, Rey. Get as far away as possible. Can he figure out where you are with the, uh…” He gestured toward his neck, grimacing.

 “Probably. Son of a bitch.”

Omega brain kept obsessing over braiding Kylo’s hair and the shreds of kindness he’d shown me the few days before he left. Him letting me be on top during sex was hardly the sign of a changed man. He was pure fucking evil, he ruined my life, and I’d kill him if and when we stumbled across each other.

I gritted my teeth as I shouldered my pack. I’d do it. I could do it.

Rose swayed to her feet and leaned on Finn. Hux hadn’t claimed her yet; maybe he was holding out for another Omega without the virus. She would be home free once we were past the wall. I would have Kylo relentlessly pulling on our bond trying to find me.

 “Stick together,” Finn said, raising his eyebrows, “and no one needs to be a hero. We leave together or we don’t leave at all.”

 “Okay,” I lied.

Fat chance. If they had an out, I’d let them take it. I didn’t want Rose subjected to being mates with Hux and Kylo would kill Finn if he caught him.

We checked for water and our compass and started out the window to the pavilion a sharp drop below. I’d been winding a rope and hiding it in the billowing curtains and was pleased to see it could hold our weight. I let Finn help Rose down first and watched them over the ledge, nervous. This would work.

 “Going somewhere?”

I turned—and saw Poe Dameron standing at the door.

He had a smarmy smirk on his mouth that immediately pissed me off, but he was an Alpha and I was an Omega. She shrank back at the sight of him as he ambled closer. He was an ideal Alpha: dark curly hair, sharp jaw, coiled with muscle. He was also a traitorous fucking snake.

I scowled. “I’m going home, Poe.”

His grin widened. “You think so? Ren might not be happy if you do.”

Fuck. Finn and Rose were well down the wall and I had my doubts I could fight Poe on my own. How did he even know to come see us in the middle of the night?

I paced a step back, clenching my jaw. “Traitor.”

 “No—you’re a traitor. There are laws, Rey, and you chose to ignore them.” He started towards me. “You have a place in this world and a purpose to serve.”

 “Isn’t that easy to say when you’re the one with higher status?”

 “I know my place. It’s time for you to learn yours.”

Poe wasn’t backing off. I let my pack fall to the floor and slipped under his arm when he charged for me, but he turned and grabbed my wrist. He twisted hard—I squealed in pain and fell against the dresser.

It radiated over my bond with Kylo like a beacon—I’m in pain and I’m scared please help me please help me

Poe pinned me to the rattling dresser, wrestling my wrists behind my back with great difficulty. I snarled and snapped and kicked my feet.

Kylo roused on the other end of the bond.

 “I’ve been waiting,” Poe snapped. “Rose has been way too lively the last week. Knew you were planning something.”

Furious, I threw my weight back into his chest, throwing him off balance for a split second. Brute force wasn’t my forte but I was slippery and quick—I slithered from Poe’s grasp and darted to the window, already screaming my head off.

 “RUN!” I shouted. I grabbed the cold stone and leaned over, hoping they could hear me. “GO! RUN, and don’t look back!”

Finn called back to me but Poe snatched me again from behind. He covered my mouth with a sweaty palm and spun us around in the dark bedroom. I shrieked into his hand and thrashed, fighting to weaken his grip. He knew Finn and Rose were escaping and I had to buy them time.

My mate loomed on the periphery. I could feel him dipping into my emotions tentatively, like he didn’t want to intrude, then he flooded into my panic and rage and it bled back into his own mind. He slowly swelled like a thunderhead.

Grunting, Poe dragged me to the nightstand. He ripped open a drawer and shoved my face into the bed. I screamed into the bedspread as a needle pierced my upper arm, plunging cold fluid in the muscle. I knew exactly what it was.

 “Not going anywhere now.” He tossed aside the needle and yanked me back to my feet. “You can wait for Ren to come back and deal with you. I have to go find the other two before they slip through the gate.”

Kylo crackled with rage, but I couldn’t tell what it was aimed towards. He could hear Poe’s name bouncing around my head while I kept screeching and kicking all the way to the heat room. I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to be in horrible forced heat again.

Poe shoved me through the door. I fell in a tangle on the floor and before I turned, he locked it.

He banged the door. “If you were mine, we’d be having a much different conversation. Ren should be back by morning—you’ll just have to suffer the consequences of your actions while you wait.”

 “Fuck you!” I hissed, growling like Kylo. His fury poured over our bond and filled up my head, washing away the obedient Omega. I scrambled for the door and beat my fists on it. “I’ll rip your fucking face off!”

 “Venomous bitch.”

I was too angry to even consider using the Force. I screamed like a wild animal and pounded on the door long after Poe left, until the drug thrummed through my veins.

Then I sank to the floor and cried, because I was exhausted, and because I just wanted to cry. Kylo seeped in through the wounds.

Chapter 15: You burn first

Chapter Text

 “Can’t you smell her?”

Alphas stood guard outside the heat room—for how long, I didn’t know. No one had tried the door yet and I was alone in my pile of misery, sweating and crying from the pain. I had no food or water and no bathroom. I was trapped until Kylo returned.

And he would not be happy with me.

The agony of unanswered heat had me yowling like a wild animal, rolling around in the sheets and desperately pawing them into a makeshift nest. I tried getting off on my own and just cried harder when I realized it wasn’t going to happen. I needed an Alpha; I needed my mate. I could barely feel him across our bond, just an occasional flicker of emotion.

Neither of the Alphas outside were willing to open the door. I suffered alone and hoped Finn and Rose escaped, at least.

Then I sensed him closing in fast.

I perked up from my swaddle of blankets and whimpered. Kylo’s trickle into my mind quickly grew to a rush of emotion: fear, for the most part.

 “Sir—we haven’t bothered—”

Kylo snarled. I scrambled to my hands and knees and crawled across the floor, warbling, desperate for help. Omega brain screamed that I needed a knot and honestly, rational brain was starting to agree.

 “Bring me Poe fucking Dameron!” he ordered. The door shook. “Alive.

Then the door opened and the Alpha guard beside Kylo caught a whiff of me. His eyes widened but Kylo reacted much faster—turned and punched, dropping the slightly smaller Alpha. He snarled again, radiating fury like I’d never felt before, and the guard snarled back. Pheromones swirled.

 “Don’t bare your fucking teeth at me!” Kylo kicked the guard hard in the ribs and suddenly drew his pistol, arm trembling. Fear reared up. “Get out!”

I barely noticed my mate’s black clothes had bloodstains all over them. He shot at the other Alpha as he fled the room and slammed the door shut with the Force. He was frazzled.

Kylo turned back to me. I shrank back under his penetrating glare until he took two sharp steps into the room and scooped me up under my armpits. He hefted me over his shoulder, sweaty and whining, and rummaged around in his nightstand.

We went to the bathroom, where he set me on the vanity. I pawed for his shirt and widened my legs in a way I hoped was inviting, but he opted to stab me with a needle in my upper arm. I squealed and jerked back as Kylo tossed it in the trash.

 “Quit your bitching.” He yanked off my panties and dropped them in the trash, quickly followed by my nightgown. “Is this what you wore for your great escape?” I shook my head, frowning as the drug took hold. “Did Poe fucking Dameron change you?”

 “No,” I mumbled. I didn’t remember, really. Maybe I did in the heat room.

Kylo picked me up again and dumped me in the tub. He turned on a spray of ice cold water and grabbed my upper arm when I tried to run. He dipped his own head under the jet, jaw clenched. I glanced at the noticeable bulge in his pants and reddened.

 “It’s going to end shortly,” he said gruffly. He tilted his face up and shuddered before stepping out from the spray. “The cold water helps—both of us.”

Kylo shook out his hair like a wet dog, splashing me and half the bathroom. He brushed a hand through it and knelt beside the tub to wash me. I silently allowed it, too shocked to refuse. My heat ebbed away, leaving me much more lucid, but I still didn’t argue. Why would he…?

His mind continued whirling like a firestorm the entire time he washed me off. It didn’t show signs of stopping until he reached the bite mark, brushing it with his fingertips. We shivered at the same time: a ray of light seeped through the dark clouds.

I swallowed. “What did you give me?”

 “Something to reverse heat.” Kylo scrubbed my hair roughly until I hissed and swatted. “You’re fucking filthy.”

 “You can thank Poe for that!” I retorted.

 “Oh, I’m going to have a very long talk with Poe fucking Dameron.”

Kylo turned off the spray when he was satisfied and lifted me out of the tub like a rag doll. He rubbed each towel under his jaw before wrapping it around me and bent to scoop me up bridal style. As we entered the bedroom, someone knocked on the door.

My mate placed me delicately on the bed and snapped ‘what?’ over his shoulder. Hux peeked inside and averted his eyes while Kylo toweled me off.

 “We have Dameron,” Hux said.

 “Good. Bring him to the main hall and gather the other men as well. Send for a meal for Rey and some water. I’ll be along in a little while.”

 “Yes sir.” Hux hesitated. “…Rose and the traitor escaped, my lord.”

 “What of it?”

 “A search party could—”

Kylo twisted and snarled, snapping his teeth, and Hux took off. He growled low in his throat as he turned back to me and peeled off his shirt.

I held back a smile. They got away.

Kylo stripped and changed into clean clothes before dressing me. I lay back and let him pull on whatever panties he wanted and shirt he wanted, and was mildly surprised to be garbed in one of his. I dipped into his thoughts, now quieting. Possessive.

 “Aren’t you mad?” I ventured.

 “Yes.” He slammed a drawer shut and opened another.

 “Oh.”

Next he yanked shorts up my hips and I almost laughed. Basketball shorts. Here. They draped halfway down my shins, a relic from a bygone era and a painful reminder of where I was. I’d never known the days of team sports, or the televisions to watch them on. Just this.

Kylo did, though. He was old enough. Finn figured he was about thirty, maybe a little older.

I sat up on the edge of the bed and stared at the back of my mate’s head. He was old enough to have babies to mourn and scars from the war and dominion over the other Alphas. My life hadn’t been easy, but his had to have been hellish.

Still—he raped me. Regardless of how miserable my life had been before, it was still mine, and he had taken my agency and freedom. Even if he thought it was his right as an Alpha, he knew rape was wrong and that was enough for me.

I scowled, clenching my jaw, afraid to delve deeper into his mind. I didn’t know if I could deal with what I’d find.

Kylo scooped me off the bed, thighs around his hips. I rested my forehead on his shoulder and closed my eyes. If I did go deeper, would it help, or just make everything worse? Knowing he mourned miscarriages and stillbirths made things a little too real for me. What else was there? Would I have to reconcile the Alpha with the traumatized man underneath?

Pink ebbed under my eyelids—warmth; affection. Blue cold fear pulsed beneath.

Kylo cleared his throat. “Feeling better?”

Oh… right. He reversed the heat and he really didn’t need to. He could’ve come straight in the room and fucked me and I would’ve been more than happy.

I shrugged. “Yes. Thanks.”

Pink bloomed purple, thicker and warmer, buzzing with a strange undercurrent. Kylo kissed my temple as we emerged in the main hall.

 “We’ll discuss this later, little one.”

The room was abuzz with male voices chattering and laughing. It died away as Kylo strode across the room to place me gently on the throne, lined with the bed I usually used on the floor. I sat up and scrambled for the tray of chicken and vegetables and water beside me. I didn’t consider anything else—way too fucking hungry to care.

Kylo stood beside the throne and idly scratched my back. No one spoke. The only sound was me chewing and stuffing my face with food.

 “Poe Dameron,” my mate called, voice deceptively calm. “Come forward.”

Voices mumbled. I slobbered on a chicken bone as Poe was shoved from the crowd, already bloody and wobbling. He spat blood on the ground.

Kylo flickered with thinly-veiled rage. It was Galen all over again. He’d kill Poe for slighting him and me and reinforce that he shouldn’t be fucked with, and neither should I.

I swallowed. Poe was a dick, but a loyal one. Kylo would be stupid to kill him for trying to keep me under control—and it would give away emotional weakness. He had to know that. Right?

Maybe he did, but Kylo’s emotions swept over him like they always did. He was furious. This was an insult he couldn’t ignore.

My mate kissed my temple before descending the steps. He reached back and drew a dagger from his rear belt, blade glinting with a swing in the air. Someone threw Poe a blade, too. I kept eating, determined not to help Kylo use his fucking head.

Poe staggered back. “Sir—Kylo—”

I watched for another moment and anticipated Kylo orchestrating his own downfall… But Omega brain protested. She didn’t want him to lose, and she was quickly becoming a bigger part of me. She wanted me to call out and rationalize and even though I resisted—

Words didn’t matter. My emotion flickered across the bond to him, much stronger than the I felt from him, and he stiffened. Kylo turned and fixated his dark eyes on me, crouched and gorging myself.

He pulled from my mind before I could utter a word. His brow drew. I blinked and kept eating.

Kylo narrowed his eyes. “…Dameron.”

Poe perked up, knife trembling in his hand. Kylo slowly turned away from me and regarded the other Alpha for a moment. Silence settled across the throne room but I guzzled water and blew it off. Fuck them. I was fucking starving.

Kylo flicked through my consideration. He stiffened and relaxed. Talked.

I didn’t give a shit. I pounded back my dinner as people clapped and Kylo ascended the stairs. He had some blood on his knuckles, apparently from punching Poe, but he was still alive.

Kylo grabbed my hands and sucked off the juice. He had pulled in my rationality and set aside his emotion, which made me mad. Fuck Poe. I growled at the memory of him throwing me around and injecting me, but my mate scooped me off the throne in the next minute.

He carried me down the stairs to Poe standing in the middle of the room. I wavered on my feet, slippers clipping on the floor, and my mate helped me.

He whispered in my ear.

 “All yours, little one. Hurt him.”

I frowned and peered back at Kylo. He raised his eyebrows and nodded toward an unmoving Poe. Two big hands held my hips as I slowly turned to regard the dickhead Alpha before me.

 Hurt him.

Poe cast me a slight smirk.

Kylo rippled through my mind and I punched Poe fucking Dameron across the face. He jerked and sprayed blood on the floor but I caught a left hook and hit him again. The Alphas whooped and my Omega blood was revolted, but Kylo was pleased and that pleased me.

Fury raged. I thrashed Poe, drawing from my mate the entire time and screaming until Kylo dragged me off. His anger and possessiveness overwhelmed any trace of rationality. His cohorts laughed and mocked Poe as my mate dragged me off and down the hall.

I’d been used.

Kylo don’t say much. He yanked me to our bed and bent me over the edge. My aggression had him turned on—he didn’t expect it.

I hissed as he penetrated me. Kylo snarled back and thrust harder, cock pounding through my unwilling body. He caged over my shoulders, warm breath in my hair. This was my punishment. He fucked me like it had been weeks and all I could do was yowl.

 “Good bitch,” he snapped. “Fucking hot—broke Dameron’s nose.” Kylo grunted and skin slapped. “You’ll never get away—never. All mine.”

No matter how much I squealed, he still came inside me. Kylo growled and fucked deep inside me until I felt cum dribble out. I howled until he covered my mouth and littered soft kisses down my throat.

Chapter 16: "Cover me if there is a fire

Chapter Text

Sometimes I heard stories of islands where the virus hadn’t reached. They were peaceful communes without Alphas; simple societies that coexisted through democracy and diplomacy. Havens.

This was fire and blood, and eventually it would consume itself in a flash of flame.

Kylo held me in his lap in the main hall, observing a brawl down the stairs from his throne. His mind wandered elsewhere while the two Alphas snarled and swung fists and beat one another into submission. I watched the bloody display and my mate idly nuzzled my neck.

The others jeered, filling the hall with horrible laughter and cheering. At least Finn and Rose escaped. I hoped they were safe and happy wherever they were. Maybe they reached one of the islands and left all this behind them. It wouldn’t last much longer—the Alphas couldn’t tolerate being around each other forever.

Kylo purred and gathered me closer. He hooked an arm behind my knees and one curled around the back of my neck, wrapping me up in a tighter bundle. I could feel eyes watching him adjust the blanket he insisted on swaddling me in. Underneath I wore another useless green dress and slippers; the chill in the castle had worsened over the past few days.

The others resented their leader more and more. I could see it plain as day but Kylo’s thoughts were usually too wound around me for anything else to be a concern. He fretted obsessively and even I was getting sick of it. Soon he’d fucking smother me.

We went back upstairs to our bedroom. The balcony doors were open and let in a soft warm breeze that felt out of place in the old castle. Children laughed and shrieked in the distance, oblivious to the state of the world around them.

Kylo climbed on top of me in bed, settling between my thighs. “Do you hear them, little one? We’ll have our own soon.” He pushed up the hem of my dress past my hip bones and placed his warm palm between them. “Soon.”

I glared up at him as he unzipped his pants and shimmied them down his hips. He adjusted the covers on top of us over his shoulders and kissed my chin, then steadily worked down my throat. He lingered on my mating gland until I whimpered and opened up my legs, hitching them over his hips.

 “There we go,” Kylo murmured into my skin. Fingers trailed down my ribs. “I think you’re about due for another heat.”

 “No—” My breath hitched as he grazed his thumb down my slit, just brushing my clit.

 “Why not? I’ve given you a nice long break to recover from the last experience. I’m eager to knot my woman again—see how many orgasms I can wring from her soft little cunt.”

Different voices mingled with the laughter. Kylo returned to laving my gland, letting me deeper into his mind in the process, down into things I really didn’t want to see. I grimaced as I brushed past bloodshed and screaming; dipped deeper into colder areas with quiet babies and crying.

On the surface, Kylo wasn’t affected. He huffed out a pleasured breath as his cock breached my body in a slow, steady stroke, just an inch that stretched in more painful inches. I dared a growl and he growled back, nipping my earlobe and pushing on with one stroke that seemed to go on forever.

 “You’ll make a beautiful mother,” Kylo whispered in my ear. “Nice and round; thick with my pups. You’ll glow.” He batted away a hand and pinned it next to my head, threading our fingers and thrusting tenderly. “And you’ll never leave me.”

It was hard to argue with him buried inside me, lips hovering over my mating bite. Something was settling in my mind like a poison and I found it harder and harder to hate him—which should’ve come as simple as breathing. But dark things in his mind swirled around me and I clung to his rolling hips instead.

Silence seemed to hold the most agony for Kylo. He loathed it.

Words kept flowing out of him while he fucked me and I decided not to reply. His pace picked up, flickering with red agitation, and he grabbed a fistful of my hair to make me look at him.

 “What’s wrong?” he cooed, poorly hiding how annoyed he was. He jerked deeper and I hissed. “We’ve been so happy this past week, kitten. Don’t spoil it being a brat.”

 “You’re a beast. That’s what’s wrong.”

Kylo rolled over on his back, pulling me on top of him. The blanket fell away and he held my hips, guiding me back and forth in his lap and trying to move me up and down. He licked his lips and raised his eyebrows.

 “A beast you like to fuck.” A smug grin brought out his dimples and crooked white teeth. “No need to deny it. I can feel it.”

 “Fuck you!”

Kylo laughed and held me in place on top of him, driving up with punishing thrusts. I braced my palms on his chest and chewed my inner cheek, fighting the way my body reacted, but he reached up and cupped my breasts in his hands and I couldn’t keep quiet. His smarmy smile drove me insane, thumbs circling my nipples and making me squirm. Asshole.

The warm sunny afternoon carried on while we were in bed together. Kylo ran his reverent hands down my stomach to where his cock tethered to my body and teased my clit with his thumb. I clenched around him, tightening and edging toward climax, but I could still feel the sickly cold emanating from deep in his mind.

It was beyond a turn off. I swallowed hard until I couldn’t take it anymore and turned over on my stomach instead. Kylo purred approvingly, oblivious to what I could see, and mounted me the way he liked from behind. This was easier. I didn’t have to look.

 “Very good,” he purred, “very good. My sweet Rey, so soft and warm.” His voice caught as he eased inside me again and I couldn’t hold in a subtle whimper. “Fuck—fuck, baby. Christ, I want to knot you for days. Fill you up with cum until you’re heavy with my pups.” Kylo breathed in my ear. “I… I love you.”

My eyes widened. What?!

Still, he kept thrusting. I gaped into the pillow and couldn’t even focus on coming myself before Kylo grunted his spend inside me with a few stiff jerks of his hips. He caught his breath against the back of my head and then he was moving all over again.

It blared across his mind like a bright white signal: I love you. I shook my head and pawed at the headboard, horrified by the thought of it; this monster genuinely in love with me, but he ripped my hands away and pinned them. I dug my toes into the mattress and burst into tears.

Kylo kissed my temple. “Shh… shh… you’re doing so well. I love you, Rey.”

 “No—shut up!”

 “I do.” He restrained my hands beside my head, purring to calm my sobbing and slowing to long, languid thrusts. “I do… I do… shh…”

Hazy pink ebbed across my mind, coupling with his purring to lull me into quiet acceptance. I mumbled and Kylo gently fucked me without speaking another word. Birds sang and children laughed, and yet—nothing fit the mood of our bedroom. I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

He did love me, or he was seriously convinced he did. He shushed my lingering whimpers and kissed the corner of my mouth, grasping a hip with one hand and winding the other between my legs. I rubbed and rubbed until I climaxed, struggling to keep his thoughts away from mine; the agonizing dead babies and hollow sadness in his chest. Kylo hardly noticed.

My mate hummed, yellow with joy. “Oh, Rey… feels so good…” Yellow melted into pink. “I love you. So good for me. Such a pretty little Omega.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, hiccuping. “I—I can see everything—I see the b-babies!”

 “Our babies?” Kylo teased.

 “No—no—dead ones! I see the ones—you lost!”

He stopped very suddenly.

Kylo’s mind washed over icy blue. He jerked back like I’d burned him, stumbling out of the bed. I scrambled on my behind and gathered the sheets to my chest.

He paced, already soft. “You… you!”

 “You let me in your head! I can see them and I can’t—do this when I can see them!”

 “Venomous bitch!” Kylo retorted, seething. “You’re picking around where you don’t fucking belong!”

 “Fuck you! You bit me and we’re bonded—you let me in your fucking head!” I grabbed a pillow for protection and puffed indignantly. “You’re a monster! You torture me and kill all these people and have the gall to cry about the babies you force on Omegas!”

Kylo lashed out with the Force, sweeping the dresser drawers open and flinging clothes all over the place. I jumped out of bed and bared my teeth. He didn’t scare me. Fuck him and his fake feelings.

But they came back, bright white and pink, and I trembled with rage and embarrassment. I didn’t love him. No fucking way.

I swept the Force through my fingertips and threw him into the wall. Kylo hit the door hard, spluttering in shock, and I knew—this was it. It was my only chance to escape and be free of him.

No time for supplies. I scrambled for a jacket and boots, snatching a pair of shorts along the way, then felt a hand on my ankle. As I turned to kick Kylo away he yanked me closer and something sharp bit my calf.

Cold plunged into my muscle. He winced as I stumbled back in shock.

 “…Good luck,” he grunted, laughing. “You’ll be in heat soon.” Kylo flinched again. “Won’t get far.”

I staggered for the balcony and didn’t look back. I’d get far. I’d… I’d get somewhere that wasn’t here.

My mate shouted for me to stop but I swept over the ledge to the floor beneath, heart pounding, and jumped to the next. I’d find Rose and Finn on one of the islands and they could help me.

I’d get somewhere that wasn’t here.

Chapter 17: Gaia

Chapter Text

The injection took about fifteen minutes to kick in, but I was well into the woods at that point. I stumbled along in my too-big boots with only a flimsy jacket to protect me from the elements and seriously wished I grabbed something before taking off.

But it was too late now. I’d run away in the middle of the day and soon Kylo would be after me with the other Alphas, or maybe he’d leave them behind and chase me down himself. My scent would be like a beacon and being my mate, he’d track me down before I found a place to hide for the night.

I had to keep moving.

Branches snapped at my bare skin, raking bloody gashes through my thin pants. Pain rippled across my bond with Kylo and I felt him flare furiously in response—he knew I was hurt but didn’t know why. Red burned into my mind, forcing me to sway to a stop against a gnarled old tree.

His anger was so overwhelming that I could barely stand under the weight of it. Sobbing, I slowly sank to the base of the tree, a trembling mess of hormones and heat, and decided I’d let him find me. Maybe there was no escape. Maybe I’d never get away.

Maybe I’d die out here.

A couple miserable minutes passed. I cried and cried, sensing Kylo’s approach and turning over in my mind the punishment I would get. There wasn’t much more he could do to me—wasn’t much more I could stand.

I wiped my eyes, lower lip quivering. My friends were gone, my home ripped away, and I only had him to go back to in the end. 

 “…Miss?”

A small voice startled me from my misery. I jerked into the tree in terror but only found a little girl peering at me through the bushes. She was thin and all bones, with wiry dark hair and round brown eyes. We stared at each other for a quiet minute. She couldn’t be more than nine years old.

The girl crept from the brush toward me on all fours, wearing nothing more than a torn burlap sack as a dress. She crawled right into my lap and smelled my neck but I was too shocked to shove her off. I grunted and twisted away until she withdrew with an awed expression. What the hell?!

 “Omega?” she whispered. “You’re an Omega?”

 “Who’s asking?!” I snapped.

The girl blinked, then chirped a couple times like a bird. I frowned at her dirty hands and feet until the bushes and trees started rustling.

More children emerged, all young girls who didn’t look any older than twelve. There had to be about a dozen of them, all wearing burlap with their skin and hair in varying states of disarray. Some had open wounds and gashes poorly fixed with leaves or twine; others were missing fingers or toes.

Wide, curious eyes watched me from all around. I sniffled and glanced at the girl squatting in front of me, who had her head cocked, wringing her hands.

 “I’m Hana,” she said. She watched me for a minute longer like she was worried I’d disappear, then gestured to the girls hanging from trees or poking from bushes. “These are my friends. We’re all Omegas, too—escaped from the government.”

 “You’re kids. How can you be Omegas?”

Hana tilted her jaw and poked a round gland under it. “We aren’t grown up yet, but we all have a gland. We were born in the labs.”

 “Are you from a lab?”

Another little girl, this one smaller than Hana, had crept up behind me. I jumped in surprise and a couple of them giggled. The little one grinned, mouth mostly gums from lost baby teeth. Her wild blonde hair was full of twigs and leaves.

 “Uh… no,” I muttered. “I’m a lot older than all of you. Do you live out here?”

The blonde girl brazenly crawled into my lap with a soft chirp and Hana hissed.

 “You can’t do that, Agatha!”

 “Uh huh I can!” she retorted. “I smelled her first!” Agatha stuck out her tongue and tried resettling in my lap with an irritated huff. “You aren’t the boss of me, Hana.”

 “I want to see!” called a girl hanging upside down from a tree. “Don’t hog her, Aggie!”

They started arguing with each other before I could stop it. I had no clue what they wanted from me or how they’d been hiding in plain sight, but seeing all their scars and wounds made my heart hurt. Agatha’s toenails had turned black; Hana was missing a thumb. I got so caught up in their voices and bickering that I forgot about—

Him.

The girls suddenly scattered back into the underbrush, save for Agatha, who refused to leave my lap, and Hana, who grabbed my arm. Kylo came through the thick trees not ten seconds later, pistol drawn, dark eyes wide and wild.

He had a pack with all the survival gear I left behind, along with boots and a jacket. His gaze fell on me sitting at the base of the tree and the anger dispelled from his mind and expression. He stopped dead.

Hana hid her face in my neck. “Is that an Alpha?”

Kylo let his pack slide off his shoulder. It hit the ground with a resounding thud and he holstered his pistol before speaking. His dark eyes studied the tree line, probably looking for all the kids who just ran and hid. Oh no.

 “What’s this?” he laughed, eyeing Agatha trembling in my lap. “Are we adopting these little tree beasts, Rey? Is that why you ran away from me?”

 “Don’t touch them,” I hissed. Heat throbbed in my head and I was overcome with a weird protective urge—I’d probably claw his eyes out if he came too close. “You only came here for me.”

 “I did, and you found yourself a brood in the meantime. Sweet.” Kylo jerked his chin toward me. “Come. I’ll decide your punishment when we get home.”

Agatha perked up. “Home?!” She turned her gray eyes on me, bright and beaming. “You have a house? Do you have a doggie, too?”

Kylo kept laughing as he approached. “Don’t give the children false promises. It isn’t very nice.”

He reached out for me and Hana lunged, snapping at his wrist. Kylo jerked back with a growl before seizing her by the hair, dragging her from behind me.

Hana squealed in pain as he threw her a couple feet back and drew his pistol. My heart practically plummeted at the sight of it and I shoved Agatha from my lap, scrambling to my feet.

I managed to grab his forearm and push up so the bullet discharged harmlessly into the canopy. Kylo snarled and backhanded me, but I ignored the taste of copper and the pain radiating down my jaw. I screamed at him to stop, throwing all of my weight and energy into wrestling the gun from his hand, then it fired again with a loud bang.

 “I’m doing the little shits a favor!” Kylo seized me by the jaw, grinning as he searched my teary eyes. “Now they don’t have to listen to their new mommy scream while I fuck her.”

 “You’re a monster!” I hissed.

 “But you love me all the same, baby.”

He staggered forward, almost knocked off his feet, then I caught a flash of blonde. Kylo yelped in pain as Agatha bit his gun wrist and ripped it from his grasp before he could swat her from his back. She threw it up into the trees and another girl caught it.

 “Fuck!” he spat. “Fucking—”

A group of the girls swamped him in the next minute, all yelling and shrieking mixed battle cries. They piled on his back to knock him over but Agatha did the deed by yanking on his ankle. Kylo fell hard to his side, swearing and struggling to get a hold on one of them.

Hana trotted up to me with the gun. “Here you go. Jewel is our best climber.”

I watched, bewildered as the girls worked together to tie Kylo’s wrists behind his back. They bound his legs as well with thick vines and retreated when he was thoroughly restrained. The thing of my nightmares had been subdued by a group of little girls.

He snarled and rolled on his back, straining his neck to escape. The girls gathered around me in a tight group to watch him fighting, Hana winding an arm through mine and Agatha bouncing to be picked up. I scooped her up on my hip, transfixed by Kylo.

 “Rey!” he snapped. “When I fucking get out of this—I’ll break your FUCKING legs!”

 “Should we leave him here?” Hana whispered. “He’s scary.”

Like it or not, my heat was close to starting, and Kylo was my only option to help it. I swallowed and looked down at Hana’s trusting wide eyes.

 “Is there somewhere we can put him?” I asked. “Where he won’t be near any of you?”

 “The cabin!” chirped Agatha. She had her skinny arms and wrapped around my neck and raised her head to look at Hana. “Then he won’t follow us back home and we know where he is. He isn’t very nice.”

The girls loaded Kylo on a old slab of particle board to drag him through the woods. They fitted a piece of cloth between his teeth to keep him quiet and Agatha waggled her dirty toes in his face.

I hesitated, studying the pistol. Should I bring it for safety, or was it asking for trouble?

 “We’re ready, mommy!”

Agatha waved wildly from the other edge of the clearing, hopping up and down. My gaze flickered back to the pistol and I emptied the chamber before following them. I didn’t need bullets, I just needed Kylo to think it had bullets.

Off into the woods we went, towards something I never expected.

Chapter 18: Madonna

Chapter Text

The group of girls led me through the woods to an old cabin with a broken door. I peered inside and found most of it had been consumed by nature: bugs chewed through the fabrics and squirrels set up nests. It wasn’t a place I could leave Kylo unattended for long, but he deserved a least one miserable night.

Hana helped me carry him to the cot in the corner. Kylo hissed into his gag, rattling off a string of curses that Agatha giggled at. The other girls waited outside and talked quietly amongst themselves about seeing an Alpha male for the first time. They were pretty scared of him and keeping their distance.

Heat rolled in faster than normal. I wiped my forearm across my head and swallowed, struggling to avoid Kylo’s furious gaze. God. I’d have to be like him.

 “Hana,” I managed, “I need you to keep the girls away from here, please. Just for tonight. Kylo and I need to have an adult conversation.”

 “She means sex!” Agatha chirped from the bedside. She was busy tying Kylo’s hands and wrists to the banister.

Hana made a face. “You’re so gross, Aggie. Hurry up so we can go.” She looked up at me, cocking her head. “We can come back tomorrow night to bring you where we live. We have cool treehouses and stuff and we’ll make something really good for dinner.” Her expression softened, reticent and nervous. “Um… be careful?”

I smiled. “I will be. Thanks for helping me, Hana.”

 “Mhm. Thanks for saving us.” She hesitated, then flung her arms around my waist in a bone-crushing hug. “Be safe… mama.”

That name made my heart skip a beat. I heard Agatha say it too and I wasn’t sure what to think. They were lonely kids who wanted someone to care for them, and I was probably the first adult Omega they’d ever met. Maybe I could try. What harm could it do?

The girls gathered and left, promising again to come back the next night. Kylo and I were left alone in the dilapidated cabin, plunged into utter silence—alone in the wilderness. This wouldn’t end well.

I ripped the gag from his mouth first. Kylo coughed and yanked hard on his restraints but it didn’t help him come any closer to escaping. His wild dark eyes followed me to the fireplace, where I’d already begun piling wood for a fire. We had to boil water to make it safe for consumption, and there wasn’t much around.

 “Let me go,” my mate snapped. A muscle jumped in his cheek. “I won’t hurt you or them.”

 “No. You injected me and my heat is starting soon. I’m not letting you go anywhere.”

The words felt strange coming from my mouth. They were vaguely threatening; something that should’ve come from Kylo. I nudged the logs with a stick as the fire began chewing through them. I’d use him the same way he used me.

Kylo sneered. “Is that so? You think you’re going to hold me captive with a group of little girls?”

 “I don’t know, but I won’t let you hurt them.”

 “You won’t have a fucking choice!”

Yeah fucking right.

Agitated, I checked to make sure the girls were gone, now slipping into the throes of heat. My thoughts clouded over like usual but this time I wasn’t restrained to my mate’s heat room. I stalked back to the cot and only bothered with removing my pants because he didn’t need to see any other part of me.

Kylo grinned and bared his teeth but I could feel the irritation buzzing across his mind. He yanked on his restraints as I crawled into the bed on top of him and used the same clinical indifference unbuttoning his pants. Just do it. Get it over with, Rey. Hurt him the same way he hurt you and get back to the girls. They need you. Recapture isn’t an option.

His smile faded but he didn’t speak. Red and blue flickered across his thoughts; anger and sadness, maybe a hint of fear. I swallowed a lump in my throat and struggled to ignore the feeling that I needed to stop before I became a monster, too.

But I stared into his dark eyes and glimpsed his cock limp underneath me, and felt nausea gurgle up my throat. This wasn’t what I wanted to be.

I slipped out of the bed to the floor and leaned against the edge. No, it wasn’t what I wanted to be. I wasn’t like Kylo Ren and I never would be, and that wasn’t a bad thing, and it didn’t make me weak. Revenge just made the wound deepen and fester to my own detriment. Violence and hatred helped fuel him.

His thoughts flickered anew, black with rage. “What’s the matter, Rey? Surely you know I need a bit of foreplay before I—”

My wrist flicked. Following my thoughts, a scrap of fabric tore from the sheet and firmly fitted between Kylo’s teeth to shut him up. The Force only seemed to work for me when I didn’t intend it.

Irritated, I crept to the fireplace and grabbed the heavy iron pot beside it. I’d find some water for the night instead of listening to my mate carry on about how he intended on killing a group of children. Kylo was a general during the War but he lacked any and all capacity for compassion or goodness—except for the occasional glimpse, which I now assumed was a fluke.

He mourned lost children he forced upon women who never wanted them in the first place. For him and for that, I felt no empathy.

The forest had little to offer by way of water. I stuck close to the cabin and dumped what I could from thick, wide leaves, shivering and struggling to ignore my heat the entire time. Soon it grew too dangerous to stay outside and I returned home with enough water for each of us to have a sip, though I didn’t want to allow him any.

Kylo glared at me when I walked through the door. Teeth gritted, I crouched at the hearth and set the water to boil, not giving him the satisfaction of my attention. I’d make it through. Maybe I could find an herb to chew that would reverse the heat.

…Come to think of it, I felt better when the girls were around. All thoughts of letting Kylo fuck me went out the window when they appeared.

I frowned at the flames. Had I made a mistake in sending them away?

My concern reached my mate. He tried soothing me, only aware of the change in my mood and not my actual thoughts, and I brushed him off like a gnat. Kylo strained on the bed again and spat curses into his gag that echoed the anger blooming red in his mind. He was frustrated. He didn’t know how I resisted him.

Frankly, neither did I.

 “I’m not letting you up,” I said dryly. “Don’t bother making all that noise or I won’t give you water, either.”

He growled but obeyed. It was a nice change of pace but one I was sure wouldn’t last.

Exhausted, I sat on the floor in front of the gently cracking fire, waiting for the water to boil. Having Kylo constantly lurking on the fringes of my mind drained so much out of me, and now I had to keep him away from kids. I could leave him tied to the bed to die, but he’d be even more pissed off when he inevitably escaped—and I’d share in his slow suffering through our goddamn bond.

I drew my knees to my chest, shivering. After all he’d done to me, killing him should be the easy choice. The right one. I’d be a fool to let him live. He ripped me away from Finn, raped me, tormented me… and I didn’t have to kill him myself. I’d leave him to starve.

How much could it hurt? Could it be any worse than the suffering I already endured?

His mind brushed mine again, light and delicate like a flower. I swatted him away and he sharpened like a knife, quickly stabbing right inside a weak spot. When I hissed and recoiled Kylo twisted the knife and drove deeper, not in search of anything, but just to make me bleed.

Our bond gave me an edge that I didn’t have physically. I ripped free of the attack and retaliated with a sweep of the Force that slapped his head sideways. He laughed and took another stab so I stormed across the small cabin to his bedside to seize his jaw in one hand, forcing him to look at me.

 “Fuck off!” I spat. “You’re like a mosquito; fucking nagging at me!” I squeezed until he winced, still grinning. “You have no power here, dickhead—and you were overpowered by a group of little girls.”

That brought him back to his usual pissy self. Kylo bared his teeth and I bared mine back at him. Prick.

The water finished boiling after a lengthy silence. I left it to cool near the door and took a small sip when the temperature was tolerable. Kylo huffed at my approach with the pot; I just rolled my eyes and ripped the gag from his mouth.

 “Aren’t you going to fuck me?” he scoffed. The tendons strained in his neck as he leaned up toward me. “I know you want to. You can’t help it.”

 “…I feel okay, I think.” I drank the rest of the water right in front of him and dropped the pot. It clanged and rolled across the floor in time with Kylo’s steadily worsening mood. “Unlike you, I’m not a rapist.”

 “You’re an Omega—I can fuck you whenever I please.”

 “Can’t right now, can you?”

God, I knew I shouldn’t prod him, but feeling his righteous outrage rolling in like a storm felt fucking incredible. I had to commend Agatha on her knots. Kylo couldn’t move and it was driving him nuts.

He licked his lips, feigning indifference. “No, I suppose I can’t. You don’t smell entirely appealing anyway, with the scent of the little tree rats on you.” His dark eyes roamed to the door. “But you’ll have to let me up sooner or later. I do have bowels.”

 “I have your gun, too.”

 “Don’t pretend you’re capable of firing it.” His head tilted, gaze sharp and predatory like I remembered. Calculating. “Do you think you’re going to kill me, Rey? Wander the rest of your life as a half-made thing?”

My jaw clenched. For him to think he could be in love with me or I with him, he had to be more insane than I thought. The longer we were alone together, the more likely it seemed.

 “I don’t need anyone to be whole,” I retorted, folding my arms over my chest.

 “You need me.”

No, I didn’t. I didn’t need Kylo Ren.

Annoyed, I found a corner to huddle in by myself and laid on my side, curled into a ball. I could sleep anywhere after all my days hiding from the Alphas: cold floors, cellars, old beds. I’d fall asleep and suffer a couple hours with him tomorrow before Hana came back with the girls.

I huffed and closed my eyes, determined to get some quality sleep and ignore my mate. He had a big mouth for someone restrained to a rotting cot by a gang of feral Omega girls.

The bed creaked. “I love you, little one.”

Then the trickle of pink and violet came back unbidden, polluting all my vitriol with Kylo’s twisted brand of affection. I pretended it didn’t bother me and kept my eyes squeezed shut while his emotions leaked over into my mind like the poison they were.

Only the bond forced me to need him in any capacity. I never had been and never would be a ‘half-made thing.’

I buried my face in the crook of my arm and shuddered under the silent onslaught of my mate’s turbulent emotions. Maybe I knew I would be just as whole without him, but Kylo certainly wouldn’t be without me.

Chapter 19: Viral

Chapter Text

 “You’re going to like our home, mama. We live in treehouses and no one ever bothers us.”

We walked through the woods, Agatha holding my hand and leading the way for the rest of the abandoned girls. A couple lugged Kylo on his makeshift sled and kept whispering about how weird he smelled. They told me I smelled nice, and the heat urges had faded away, so I gathered that their presence was what made it stop.

None of them could quite remember when they’d arrived in the woods, or where they came from. They didn’t remember parents or homes or anything before the War. I didn’t know how a dozen little girls were abandoned in the middle of nowhere, but Kylo had a couple ideas bouncing around his head.

He kept brushing against my mind, coaxing me to let him in, but I distracted myself with chatting. Hana and Agatha had plenty of questions about who I was and who Kylo was and I kept him at bay with talking until I was breathless. He snarled on the sled, drawing giggles from a couple of the girls.

Soon we walked through a thick snarl of trees that wound into a tight maze. I followed close behind Agatha as she led the way, until we finally emerged from the darkness into bright golden sunshine.

Their safe haven really was a haven. Tall stone walls surrounded a wide clearing filled with swaying green grass, and a shimmering small pond took up much of the rear space along the wall, fed by a small waterfall drizzling down from above. The trees tangled thick above to make a natural fence that protected them from prying eyes, and some of the lower trees in the clearing really did have houses in them.

 “Wow,” I whispered. “This is amazing.”

 “No peeing in the lake!” Agatha piped up. She turned and cast Kylo a glare. “Mister.

Hana beamed. “We’ve been hiding here for a while. I live up at the top so I can watch the perimeter and keep everyone safe.”

I smiled down at her and patted her back. They were resourceful kids, for sure. After Kylo had me kidnapped I just curled up in the corner and felt bad for myself. They banded together.

Said kidnapper was dragged into their makeshift dungeon hidden beneath the biggest tree in the clearing. The thick roots made sturdy bars and Hana constructed a complicated series of braided vines to protect the door. Small genius.

Agatha ripped out Kylo’s gag but left his hands bound behind his back. He glared at the small group by the door as Hana dragged it shut and turned her back to work the knots. I crossed my arms.

 “You’re going to keep me here?” he sneered. “Good luck.”

 “You can’t use the Force with your arms tied. Most you can do is sit there and be mad.”

Kylo clenched his jaw. Agatha giggled and stuck her tongue out as we turned and left him alone in the cell.

—————

The girls led me to a treehouse with a small bed and a bucket system for collecting rainwater. They had clearly been out in the wild for some time, and I didn’t quite understand how they managed to build houses so high in the trees.

I laid in the too-small bed for a while as the sun set. I thought about Finn and Rose and whether or not they were okay—and how Amilyn and the others were faring. So much time had passed since Kylo took me as his prisoner, all those horrible days melding together into an even worse blur.

 “Mama?”

Agatha stood near my entryway with a bunch of fruit in her arms. She eyed my pensive look with a natural amount of nervousness for a little kid. I felt bad. I didn’t want her to worry about me, of all things.

I sat up and smiled. “Wow, those look so good! Are they for me?”

She beamed and nodded, trotting over to dump them on the bed. Some of the other girls gathered around, almost like they radiated towards my presence.

Agatha cracked open a purple fruit. “The seeds of this one give you the poops so only eat the other parts.” She smiled snidely at Hana, who sat near my feet. “‘Member that, Hana?”

 “Shut up,” she muttered. She leaned on my leg and heaved a sigh. “That Kylo guy is a real jerk, huh?”

 “He smells bad,” Agatha added. “Like poop.”

 “No he doesn’t, Aggie!” snapped Jewel from the floor like she was deeply offended.

I ran my fingers through Hana’s hair and tried to change the subject. “So, uh… is the lake good for swimming?”

That launched a long discussion about swimming and fishing in the lake. I listened politely, brushing my hands through whoever happened to present their hair to me, sometimes finding a tick or other bug to pull out. God I felt bad for them. They were just barely eking out an existence—and so many were sick or injured. How much longer…?

I didn’t have the means to save them all, but I unfortunately knew who did.

But it wasn’t an easy decision to make. It should’ve been; it really should’ve been, but I found myself staring at the ceiling until sunrise, tormented.

There was no guarantee Kylo would keep any promise to me. What if I led the girls straight into a death trap? Jesus, that was definitely worse than some ticks. But they were all so sick and they looked exhausted, and they just wanted a place to call home.

I chewed my inner cheek, ignoring Kylo stirring across our connection. The other Alphas would absolutely demand the girls. They didn’t care about how old they were or how much trauma they carried. I could ask him to bring a doctor to see them, but that still left them living outside, and they deserved a real home.

Maybe a doctor could visit and I could take the girls across the sea to the Omega refuges. Maybe.

Probably not.

I somehow made it to the ground without breaking my neck and found Hana crouched in front of the lake. She jabbed a spear and brought back a bloody, flopping silver fish that quickly went limp. She’d washed her hair and changed clothes.

She waved. “Hi mama. Hungry?”

 “I’m okay, thank you.” I sat beside her and twiddled my thumbs. “So… I wanted to talk to you about something.”

 “Ugh, is it Aggie? She’s such a pain.” Hana speared another fish, huffing.

I laughed and shook my head. “No, not her. I, um… I noticed a lot of the girls are sick.”

Hana hesitated mid-throw. She cast me a sideways glance because she knew the same thing, and I felt like I’d stepped on a sore spot.

 “It’s just what happens,” I added quickly. “Living outside and all. But you all did such an amazing thing here—you should be really proud of it all.” I swallowed, weirdly nervous. “I’m just concerned.”

She chewed her lower lip for a moment before sitting beside me. Hardly a minute passed and she started crying, big tears dripping down her cheeks to her lap; tears I made. Shit.

I hugged her as best as I could at the angle, squeezing and apologizing up and down while she cried into my chest. I’d never been anyone’s shoulder to cry on, let alone a feral little Omega kid. Hana didn’t notice at all, she just hugged me back and kept crying.

 “Two of us died already!” she bawled. “They got fevers and we couldn’t m-make it stop!”

She coughed and spluttered and I knew at that moment there was no way I was leaving without the entire group of them. No way. I’d drag the doctor back myself and stitch together a raft; I’d live with Kylo fucking Ren for a thousand more lifetimes if it meant them not having to stare death in the face.

I held Hana by her shoulders and helped wipe the tears and snot from her face. She hiccuped and sniffled. Poor thing—she was their leader. She couldn’t cry like everyone else could. Jesus Christ.

 “It’s okay,” I soothed, strangely calm in the emotional turmoil. “I’m not letting anyone else get sick.” I brushed her hair back from her face and suddenly kissed her forehead, another weird impulse. “Go back to fishing, okay? I’m going to talk to Kylo.”

 “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.” She grabbed my hands, lower lip quivering. “He’s a bad man. Some of us know what he did to you.” Her gaze flickered to my throat, right where the mating bite scarred my flesh.

 “It’s okay—really. I’m just going to talk to him.” I slipped free of her grasp, slowly rising to my feet. “Don’t worry about me, Hana. You deserve to be a kid. No one should take that away.”

It didn’t make sense. I barely knew the kids and I was willing to give up my hard-won freedom to help them. Someone smarter than me would’ve planned longer; they would’ve waited for the right time, but I couldn’t bear seeing all their infected cuts and missing fingers.

I braced for my visit with Kylo—and felt him brush across my mind.

He was still restrained when I walked down to the dungeon, sitting in the middle of his cell with a scowl on his face. His thoughts perked up when he noticed me at the door and he tried filtering deeper into my thoughts, but I easily repelled him. Dick.

Kylo sighed. “I’m very bored down here, little one. Can’t you bring me a puzzle?”

 “I want to make a deal.”

He raised an eyebrow, studying me. The shadows helped hide my fists trembling at my sides.

 “What kind of deal?” he asked.

 “The girls need to be seen by a doctor. They’re sick.” I crossed my arms over my chest, aware of him staring at my breasts like a hungry beast. “And they need somewhere safe to live, away from the Alphas.”

 “I have no use for prepubescent Omegas.”

 “Your friends do. You know what they’ll do.”

Kylo puckered his lips and clicked his tongue, smiling slowly. Beastly.

 “I suppose a cunt is a cunt, aged or not.” He shrugged. “And what do I get in return for healing, feeding, and housing a brood of children that don’t share my blood?”

It wasn’t the best offer, but he currently had no way out. I rolled my eyes and motioned to myself, and Kylo burst out laughing. Fucking prick.

 “Better than where you are now!” I snapped. “I’ll stop trying to escape and do whatever you say, as long as you keep them safe and fed and healthy. That’s it. Take it or leave it.”

He wiped a tear with his shoulder, still laughing a bit. “I already own you, Rey. We’re bonded.”

 “Well you’re not escaping here anytime soon.”

 “Maybe—but how long can you watch a group of sick children festering? I think you’ll be the first one to break and let me free.” Kylo shifted his weight to one side and stood, staggering to find his balance. He sauntered to me and rested his forehead on the cell bars, smiling. “Then I’m going to drag you back to our bed and…”

I looked back and found Agatha a couple feet away. She had a thumb firmly in her mouth and I noticed her eyes were droopier and dark. She shuffled to my side and whimpered past her thumb, and I knew immediately that she was very sick.

Kylo growled when I picked her up. She had sweat across her forehead and down her nape.

 “Don’t touch that!” he seethed. “She’s ill!”

 “What am I supposed to do, ignore her?!” I stepped away from the cell, glaring at my mate and shaking my head. “What the hell is wrong with you? These kids didn’t do anything wrong.”

 “They aren’t mine. I couldn’t give less of a shit about whether they live or die.”

We glowered, me rubbing Agatha’s back, Kylo clenching his jaw—and weirdly, he broke first. He glanced at her shivering in my arms and snarled as he turned away to sit on the floor. His thoughts brimmed blue and volatile, guilty and angry about it.

I ground my teeth. “Forgetting that you and I will die if this sickness spreads: you’re an even worse creature than I thought if you’ll sit by and watch little kids die. After all those memories of you crying and mourning miscarriages, these real kids aren’t enough for you.”

Kylo didn’t respond. His mind cut off from mine and I plunged into strange silence.

I stormed from the cell with Agatha resting her head on my collarbone. Fine. I’d just have to try something else. There had to be another way.

Chapter 20: Scorn

Notes:

well this fic is about to cross 2k kudos, which is bizarre to me

Chapter Text

The sky opened up and poured rain that night. Lightning slashed across inky black clouds, scaring the girls and making it even harder to make them comfortable. I was in over my head and I knew it but I couldn’t leave them to suffer alone.

We huddled together in the treehouse—where you shouldn’t be during a thunderstorm—and I tried going through all the fairytales I could remember from when I was a little kid. There weren’t many. I didn’t have the happiest of childhoods.

Agatha mumbled against my chest. “I wouldn’t kiss a frog, no matter what.”

 “Yu-huh you would,” Hana interjected with a laugh.

Most of the girls were asleep but Jewel giggled from the loft. One of her long tan legs hung off the edge, lazily kicking back and forth.

 “Come on girls,” I sighed, “it’s time for bed.”

Agatha huffed and rubbed her eyes as she sat up. She would’ve picked a fight with Hana any normal day, just another indicator of how sick she was.

 “‘M not tired,” Hana mumbled. She swayed to her feet and tripped over Quinn. “Oops! Sorry!”

 “You all need to sleep down in the empty cell. What if this tree gets struck by lightning?”

A dozen concerned pairs of eyes popped open and turned in my direction. I nodded, adjusting Agatha on my hip, and they looked to each other before slowly getting up. Their treehouse was pretty amazing, but it wouldn’t survive a lightning strike.

We began the slow trek down to the bottom. It was slow going with how sick everyone felt, and the more drenched they got, the slower they moved.

 “Come on,” I urged, “you’ll be dry down here. Agatha, you stay here too. I have to get some blankets and you’re kind of heavy.”

 “Hey!” she whined.

Hana took her hand and led her into the cell, snickering. “Mama said you’re fat.”

 “She isn’t fat, she’s just weighs like fifty pounds!” I rolled my eyes and kissed the top of Agatha’s head. “You’re not fat. You’re perfect.”

She beamed up at me. “I know.”

Hana yanked her down to the floor as I turned and left. A chorus of coughing followed me out and my heart skipped a beat. Why were they getting sick now, when I happened to stumble across them in the woods? Did I have a germ that made them ill?

They’d already survived much worse. Hana said they looked sick before they found me. It couldn’t be my fault. Just bad luck. Bad timing.

I climbed up the slick ladder to my own sleeping area, where I knew I had a handful of dry blankets. It was torn apart from my many visits with the girls so I knelt and folded to make the blankets easier to carry. I’d take them out tomorrow. We could follow the coastline—it was better than staying here waiting for them to… to…

I frowned, pausing in the middle of folding in the dark. Something tickled on my throat.

And I sensed him.

I whirled around with my teeth bared and saw Kylo looming in the doorframe, fingers hinged loosely overhead. Lightning flashed behind him and cast an eerie glow across his long face. He smiled, trickling into my mind as he slowly moved toward me.

 “How did you get out?” I demanded.

Kylo flipped a short, sharpened rock in his palm, then cast it aside. “You underestimate how resourceful I am, little one. How do you think I became a general during the War? Good luck?”

He didn’t show it, but he was angry; red-hot and steaming with rage. I scrambled back for the window and kept my eyes on him as I pawed over the ledge. I could drag myself out onto the roof—he was too big and heavy to follow. Climb a couple branches and I’d be home free.

With a brutal tug, that plan went up in flames. Kylo dragged me across the floor by my ankle and I lashed out with all my limbs, just short of screaming. I didn’t want the girls to come running. What if he hurt them? He would—he wouldn’t hesitate.

Both his hands caught mine and left my legs free underneath him; my only chance to get away. He licked his lips and tried pulling me up, but I curled my upper lip and kicked him as hard as I could in the dick he was so proud of.

Kylo sagged on the bed poster and swore as I made a mad dash for the door. Pain never stopped him for long and he came after me before I made it up the ladder to the next level of huts. My hand slipped off the top rung but I managed to kick him away, scrambling up and squinting in the rain.

My head spun as I got to my hands and knees in the darkness. The girls needed blankets—they needed something warm. The thought of returning empty-handed made my stomach turn in a weird way. Not going back at all wasn’t even an option.

I crawled into the next hut and yanked the door shut behind me. Thunder rumbled through the floorboards as I stumbled to the open shelving with blankets the girls had pillaged from nearby settlements. Only the rain and my panicked panting filled the room, and I hurriedly gathered blankets, hands trembling.

A loud thud made me jump. The door sagged inward, groaning on the weak homemade hinges, and I yelped at a sudden stroke of fury from Kylo. Blankets fluttered from my arms and I quickly snatched them up again, already heading for the window.

 “Your precious babies are all trapped, Rey!” he taunted through the door. His footsteps circled—he was about to kick it down. “I have the key to the cell you put them in, and I’ll let them die there!”

I hesitated, drawn back in fear. He didn’t. How could he have gotten it without us noticing?

Thunder cracked as Kylo burst through the door, knocking it to the floor. He twisted his neck and took a step toward me and I moved for the window. Did I run? Should I get to them before he could?

We stopped at a flash of lightning that lit up the cabin. Kylo narrowed his eyes but before he could speak, an awful crack echoed through the floor, shifting the tree and making it groan. I glanced out the window and saw black smoke curling from the base of the tree. 

 “Shit,” I whispered.

Kylo shouted at me to stop but I scrambled out the window like a possessed beast, clawing to make it down the side of the burning tree. My fingers slipped on wet wood and slivers stabbed under my nails, but I kept going anyway, ignoring the blood and pain and following wailing through the rain.

Soon I dropped off, twisting my ankle the wrong way. I hissed but didn’t hesitate to check it: orange and red flames licked up the tree trunk near the cell. I staggered through the dark toward the glowing light, limping along and dragging my injured foot through the damp grass. I had to get them out.

The short hall leading to the cell had half-filled with black smoke. I covered my mouth with the hem of my shirt and groped along the wall to where Kylo had shut and locked the girls in, and their panicked cries echoed in the cell. Fire chewed on the ceiling.

Hana was shaking the door but stopped and reached for me instead. Tears streamed down her cheeks as I grabbed hold of the door and pulled like hell while she pushed, but it still wouldn’t budge. Smoke tickled my lungs but the coughing didn’t stop me from desperately kicking and screaming at the door.

 “Rey. That’s enough.”

I didn’t turn and look at him. “Hana, I’m going to try the window—move the girls away from the smoke, okay?” I reached though the bars and cupped her cheek. “You’re doing so good. You’re so brave.”

She nodded, still crying as she turned to move the others, most of them unconscious. I turned and found Kylo right behind me.

He seized my wrist. “I said: that’s enough.”

 “No—no, I’m not going to let them die in here alone.” I shifted my weight off my ankle and his dark eyes flickered down. “I’ll die with them.”

My mate scowled, clenching his jaw, then shoved me out of the way. He grabbed the door and the side of the cell and gave a hard yank, wrenching through the lock and tearing the door open. It banged against the opposite wall just as I rushed inside.

 “Hana, take whoever you can lift,” I said, “and stay outside, okay? Don’t come back in.”

She grabbed one of the smaller girls and helped her hobble from the cell. More smoke filled the chamber and I worried no one else would make it out. I couldn’t move them all fast enough.

Kylo pushed past me. In another shocking show of humanity, he scooped up two girls and barked at another two to get on his back. They hesitated but did what he said, and he pushed past me again to bring them outside. I took a deep breath through my shirt and guided two more out through the smoke.

Kylo dumped the girls in the grass and walked past me again. I gently helped mine down before stalking after him back into the cell.

 “You could be gentler!” I snapped. “They’re not bags of potatoes!”

 “They are to me.” He roughly pulled up two more, including Jewel, and another swayed to her feet. “Take these three out. Are there any more?”

I helped the girls through the door and almost shook my head—then remembered I hadn’t seen a blonde head come through yet.

 “Agatha?” I called. “Aggie? Are you here?”

No response. I started walking forward and Kylo growled at me to stay back. Where could she be? The cell wasn’t that big and she was too sick to slip past me. Pulse racing, I watched Kylo move further into the darkness in search of her.

He disappeared for a minute. I didn’t move, too terrified he’d come back with her dead body.

Then he returned, aglow from the flames, with her draped listlessly in his arms. Her skinny legs and arms hung limp and swayed in the air. She wasn’t smiling or chattering and I knew that meant—

Kylo shoved me. “Go—now.”

Too stunned to cry, I climbed out of the cell into the cool rainy night. The girls hung in a circle of coughing and crying illuminated by a pale full moon overhead. It felt like a spotlight onto their suffering.

Hana noticed Agatha first. She covered her mouth and rushed over to us as Kylo knelt and laid her out on the ground. Her head lolled to the side.

 “Is… is she…?” Hana sobbed. “I thought she was right behind me!”

 “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I pulled her down to sit with me and she cried into my shoulder. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

At least most of the girls made it out. They came closer and clung to each other, silent at the sight of Agatha’s uncharacteristically still body. The rain kept on coming, drizzling down on top of our heads.

Kylo bent and pressed his ear to Agatha’s chest. He leaned back and grasped her jaw, angling it back so her mouth opened, and bent again to give her a rescue breath. Her chest rose from the force of it but she didn’t move, so he gave her another.

Her eyes popped open and she promptly rolled over and threw up on his thigh.

Hana shrieked and grabbed Agatha before anyone else could react. Kylo bared his teeth at her as he got up and she stared with her mouth hanging open, clinging to Hana. I was sure I had the same dumbfounded look on my face.

 “Aggie!” Hana crowed. “You’re okay!”

 “Did the mean Alpha man kiss me?” Agatha asked, bewildered. She watched him walk into the lake to clean her vomit off himself.

I laughed and wiped her mouth with my bare hand. “No, babe, he was giving you a rescue breath. Air, because you had smoke in your lungs.”

She glanced at me and smiled, and I had a feeling she’d already made up her mind.

I left the girls under a cluster of trees to dry and warm up. Kylo was still sitting on the edge of the lake pretending to scrub away Agatha’s vomit. He glanced my way when I hesitantly sat beside him.

 “She thinks you’re in love with her now,” I said.

He snorted. “Maybe she was better off dead.” His hand moved to the clasp on his pants and he wrapped an arm around my waist. “I’ll clean your cuts soon.”

 “They’re just across the field; what if they see?”

Kylo didn’t give a shit. He worked his cock free in the rain and misty smoke and craned his neck to suck on my mating bite, groaning and stroking himself. I shifted uncomfortably and resisted the urge to relax against his side and give in.

 “You can’t wait?” I asked. “I want to—”

 “I’ve waited long enough. You’re mine and I want to fuck you.” He tugged the hem of my shorts. “Take these off.”

 “Kylo—”

The Alpha male I knew all too well re-emerged. He dragged me across his lap to tug off the shorts before draping me half over his shoulder. I dug my nails into his shoulder blades, gasping as he penetrated me with both hands cupping my ass. Kylo heaved a breath and nibbled my mark as he slowly sank down to the hilt.

It hurt. I tried to ignore his excitement buzzing around in my brain and he tried to ignore the pain buzzing around in mine. He huffed and held my hips in place as he thrust haphazardly, pounding into me hard. The rain helped drown out our breathing and the wet sound of our bodies coming together.

 “Fuck, Rey,” Kylo grunted. He kissed along my neck and groped a breast through my shirt. “That’s good, baby. Stay nice and quiet.”

I did. I wrapped my legs around his waist and hid my face in his neck. Every stroke of his cock burned and stung but I didn’t open my mouth and complain because I didn’t want to scare the girls. His hands wandered across my body until they settled on my hips, holding me in place.

Colors bloomed. He kissed the corner of my mouth sloppily, hips moving faster, breathing quick and shallow.

 “I missed this, little one. I missed fucking this sweet pussy.” Kylo’s thighs tightened under me and he shuddered. “I love you—you’re going to be… such a good mother for our pups.”

 “Shut up,” I hissed.

 “You were going to get them out of there no matter what. My little one is a good mommy, isn’t she?”

Furious, I tried slapping him, but it dragged both of us into the lake with a loud splash. Kylo pinned me against the bank and I dug my nails into the mud as he violently forced his way inside me from behind. He breathed a laugh, curling his fingers around my throat. I pawed for freedom and tried not to cry.

His other hand teased my clit. He panted in my ear.

 “We’ve been over this,” Kylo whispered. “When we go home, I’m going to start your heat, and chain you to the floor until there’s a baby in your belly.”  

 “I won’t give you anything.” I squirmed against his languid thrusts inside my body. “Anything.”

Red excitement flared up and he redoubled his efforts stroking my clit. I resisted and tried to find purchase on the underwater bank with my toes, but they curled and I whimpered as I came closer to coming.

He fanned a big hand on my stomach. “You give me pieces of yourself all the time, Rey. You can’t help it.” His tongue traced my mark, slow and reptilian. “My lonely little orphan.”

The rain had slowed and did nothing to cover up me screaming, but Kylo covered my mouth. He nuzzled my temple and mumbled ‘can feel you twitching on my cock,’ and I dry heaved as I gave in to him.

It felt good—it felt even better when he followed suit, biting my mark and rhythmically pumping his load inside me. I moaned into the safety of his palm, overcome by hormones and the bond and other things I didn’t want to acknowledge.

 “That’s right,” Kylo hissed in my ear, “take it like a good girl.”

He yanked my head back by my hair to kiss me hard on the mouth. I trembled and sunk forward when he released, but when I tried to move, I realized we were tied together. Knotted.

Kylo leaned across my back where I lay on the grass, body half out of the water. I stared at the burning tree as he kissed the back of my head.

 “You’ll never get away from me, little Omega.”

Chapter 21: Freedom

Notes:

there's gonna be an epilogue but technically it's finally complete so thank fucking god

this idea was suggested to me as a khal drogo kylo last year by a person who has gone on to harass and torment me, so i've been pretty eager to finish it, and i'm glad it's finally done and over with. it opened up the floodgates for dark ABO tho so i'm proud of it nonetheless

it's done, it belongs entirely to me, and i'm pleased with it

Chapter Text

The trudge back to the castle was worse than I thought it would be.

Sick girls aside, I knew what would be waiting for me when Kylo had me back in his tower alone. I knew the girls would get passed around, hopefully when they were older, and they would be damned to the same fate. None of us would escape the Alphas.

But I couldn’t ignore the deep wounds they had and how close they were to death. Maybe it wouldn’t be a worse fate to be kept alive. I hoped not.

Agatha seemed happy to be carried by Kylo, at least. She complained about being short of breath until he let her up on his back, and she grinned at me triumphantly. I smiled and bit back how much it upset me to see him putting his hands on her at all. He was an evil bastard. Last night just reinforced it.

We made our way to the castle by nightfall. Several larger Alphas met us around the side of the wall and frowned at first when they saw the girls—then I saw realization beginning to bloom.

 “Bring them to the infirmary,” Kylo barked. He walked up until he was nose-to-nose with one of the other Alphas. “Don’t disappoint me, Felix. A dead Omega is of no use to anyone.”

 “Yes sir.”

 “I’ll go with them,” I interjected.

Kylo shrugged Agatha off his shoulders and seized my wrist. I tried yanking back.

 “No,” he said, smiling, “you’re coming with me.”

And I did. He dragged me away from the shivering group of girls, Hana and Agatha included, and back up to the tower I’d worked so hard to escape. I waited to scream until they were out of earshot, and didn’t stop even when he shut the bedroom door behind us.

I pounded on his chest and thrashed when he grabbed my wrists. “You son of a bitch—you can’t leave them alone!”

 “They’re of no use at their age.” He walked forward, pushing me with him until I bent over the bed. “But you’re of use to me, Rey.”

He kept me pinned with one hand and produced a vial of XV-10 with the other, and this time I couldn’t escape. The needle bit into my upper arm and I cried and kicked as he dragged me up on the bed, clicking his tongue. They needed me. I didn’t have time for this shit.

But he ripped off the rest of my clothes anyhow and threw them aside, because he didn’t care and he’d never cared. I kicked my feet and squirmed as he settled between my hips, warm breath on my ear, and he whispered as he slowly, painfully, forced himself inside me. It took my breath.

 “I know.” Kylo groaned, grabbing the headboard as he sank deeper, arching his chest over mine. “Be a good girl and I’ll let you see your babies.”

 “I hate you. I hate you.”

He laughed a little, breathless, hips slowly rolling against mine. The window was open and let in a gentle breeze and I could only hear his heavy breaths as he fucked me into the bed. He kissed my cheek hard and shifted closer with another groan.

 “Be a good girl,” he repeated, “and keep your legs open for me, and you can go see them.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as his mouth fumbled wet and hungry across my mating mark. This time he wasn’t desperate and aggressive but that made it worse: I was finely attuned to his cock stroking inside me, and the purring, and the way his warm skin brushed across mine. I couldn’t close my eyes and ignore him like I wanted to.

Kylo drew a hand down to my hip, angling me up so he could push deeper. His knot already rubbed near my entrance and made my muscles tighten and my stomach flip. He was going to come soon and so was I, then the heat would start and I’d lose all sense of reality for a week.

Maybe I’d forget the girls. Then I wouldn’t have to worry.

Familiar warmth swirled in my lower belly. Kylo moved a little faster, kissing the skin he could reach from how his hard body flattened to mine, and his hand squeezed my shoulder hard. He huffed and nipped my jaw and I dug my nails into his pounding hips. Fuck.

 “That’s it,” he whispered. “Come for me. I’ll give you a nice warm bath—” Kylo shuddered, slowing to long strokes, breathing hard on my neck. “Fuck—fuck—”

I squeezed my eyes shut and bit his shoulder as I climaxed, drawing him in for the knot to thicken. He bit my mark in return and his big body shivered. Our hard breathing mingled and stifled as we pawed closer together, Kylo steadily rolling his hips and emptying inside me. My eyes rolled back a little. I couldn’t help it.

He caught his breath and licked the bite clean, nudging my mouth with his shoulder so I would do the same. I did, grudgingly.

Then he turned on his side to his back, pulling the blanket along with us and wrapping us together. I swallowed in the stuffy humid darkness, nervous, but Kylo purred and gently stroked my back, and again my emotions were stripped away from me.

 “Good,” he mumbled. “Good.”

His fingers traced along my spine. My eyes fluttered shut and I slipped into a deep sleep.

—————

 “They’re doing much better, my Lord. Maybe now is a good time to… divvy up the spoils?”

Voices reached me through the thick wall sectioning me off from Kylo’s bedroom. I blinked blearily, naked and curled in a ball in the corner. They. He must’ve  meant the girls—the girls I hadn’t seen in two weeks.

I whimpered, pawing at thick blankets. The days and nights blended together now, broken only by Kylo’s arrival and departure and the baths that came between. He still didn’t let me see the girls, not even Agatha or Hana. I had no idea if they were okay.

Kylo growled. Something hit the wall hard.

 “No,” he snapped, “and don’t ask me that again or I’ll separate your large head from your shoulders. I’ll be down later on to visit them, and there will be no more talk of dividing the spoils. Do I make myself clear?”

 “Crystal—crystal, sir.”

 “Good. Now get out of my sight.”

The bedroom door opened and shut. I crawled for the edge of the nest I’d made just as Kylo opened the door to the heat room, already taking off his shirt. He smiled and closed the door behind him.

 “Where are you going, hm?” He dropped the shirt and his hands went to his belt. “Did you miss me that badly?”

I shrank back. “Are… are they okay?”

 “Yes. They’re all eating, gaining weight, and no more of those awful coughs. I’m going to see them before we go to bed tonight.”

 “Hana had… Hana had an infection in her… in her foot.”

Kylo nodded, pouting his lower lip as he approached. I kept recoiling until I met too much fabric, my own prison I’d designed in his absence.

He made a motion for me to turn. “Hands and knees, little one. You know the way I want you.”

After the first week of heat he gave me another injection of XV-10, and I had a feeling another was soon to follow if I didn’t fall pregnant soon.

But I didn’t want the girls to suffer, so I turned over on my stomach and let him lift my hips roughly up to his. He did the same thing every time we were together instead of wasting it fucking my mouth. That was something to be happy about.

Kylo pushed down his jeans and sank inside me before I recognized his cock prodding my entrance. He growled and arched over my back, pinning my hands beside my head like he needed to hold me down at all. I kept my spine the way he wanted it so he could thrust as hard as he wanted, knot, and fall asleep beside me.

But I liked when he visited. It was lonely being in the nest all day with no one around and being my mate, he was the first person I’d miss. I picked around in his mind and found wisps of old memories, things that haunted him and things that didn’t.

I also found other things: like how fond he was of Agatha, and how he let her follow him around the castle and play outside where he could watch her. He let Hana read books and Jewel climb the big trees on the fringe of the settlement, and slowly allowed the others out to interact with the few other children.

But he didn’t leave them alone. Ever.

 “I missed you all day.”

Kylo leaned his weight forward so he could murmur in my ear. He squeezed my ass in one big palm.

I swallowed, throat dry. “Me too.”

He breathed a laugh, moving gentler now, lowering his body until his stomach touched my back. I had to lift my hips more to meet his languid strokes and it quickly made my toes curl. Fuck.

 “You’ll give me my babies soon, won’t you?” Kylo whispered. He moved his hips in a tight circle and I made a muffled moan. “Since I take such good care of yours.”

 “I’m trying—I’m trying—”

He slipped a hand underneath me and teased my clit in small circles, panting in my ear. I whimpered and squirmed, fucking myself against his fingers and cock, and clawed at the pillows as I climaxed. It tingled down my spine and up again and he kept going, rolling his hips the same way, teasing my clit.

 “I know you are,” he cooed. “I certainly don’t mind fucking you like this until you do.”

 “Ah—I—”

Kylo waited until I came again then followed soon after, grabbing my hip and making the same gentle rolling motion he always did now. He kept the knot pushed deep when it swelled, breathing in my hair, subtle motions in his abdomen to keep fucking me even while he wasn’t moving.

He lazily resumed stroking my clit. “Don’t let me fall asleep, little one. I have to check on the girls before we go to sleep.”

The words didn’t hit him like they did me.

He fell asleep anyway, hand draped over my hip, and only woke long after the knot had slipped free. He yawned and tucked me in a blanket before he stood, buckling his belt and running a hand through his hair. I ignored the pulsing need for him to fuck me again.

 “I’ll be back,” he said. “We can take a bath before bed.” He raises an eyebrow sleepily and glanced at his watch. “Agatha should be asleep.”

 “What does that matter?”

He shrugged, yawning again. “She always wants a story first.”

I stared after him when he left. Did he hear himself?

—————

 “Rey. Rey, wake up.”

No, no—I knew he would roll over on top of me again and I wasn’t in the mood. Heat was fading thank god, so I’d be back to normal for a couple hours before the next injection dragged me back.

Kylo grabbed my arm and jerked me upright. He had Agatha on his hip, her eyes wide and looking around the room. Thankfully I still had the blanket wrapped around me and she didn’t see.

I scowled. “What the hell are you doing?”

 “You have to leave.”

…What? I tried to speak but he yanked me to my feet and pushed a worn shirt and pants in my arms. He left the room with Agatha and I saw frightened eyes watching me from beyond the door.

I dressed fast. I was sore and tired but all the girls being collected together made me anxious to know what was going on. Surely he wasn’t doing something… evil. Not with them. Right?

Kylo shifted Agatha on his hip and opened the bedroom door. “Come. Now.”

I found Hana and leaned down to hug her, then took her hand in mine. She looked much better: her skin glowed and her hair had been braided, free of knots and snarls from the trees. They all looked better, but still kept their distance from Kylo.

 “What’s going on?” I asked, slipping from the room with Hana. “Is there a fire?”

 “No. The men have made a decision.” Kylo passed Agatha off to me and shut the bedroom door behind all of us. “And you all need to leave.”

My spine prickled. I noticed cuts along his forearms and some blood dripping down his fingers that had smeared on the back of Agatha’s dress. Something was wrong, but why didn’t I feel it through our bond?

I didn’t ask anymore questions, afraid I’d rouse the suspicion of the other Alphas roaming the halls. Agatha clung to me on our way downstairs to the main hall, where Kylo’s throne sat empty and the tables turned over, chairs scattered. Blood pooled between the old stone cracks in the floor.

There had definitely been a big fight, and when we stepped outside, I saw more evidence on Kylo. He tried holding back the pain so I wouldn’t feel it.

 “Go to the beach,” he muttered, dark eyes flicking back and forth while we walked. “There’s a ship due west that can take you wherever you need. Hana has been reading plenty on sailing to have an idea of what she needs to do.”

 “You’re… you’re saying here?” I asked. My heart pounded and I couldn’t ignore a small ache in my chest. “Why?”

A dagger flew right past Kylo’s head and sank into a tree trunk. He pushed me away and growled as he turned to face a small group of men emerging from the castle, all nursing wounds of their own.

 “You said we had an agreement!” one snarled. He plucked up another dagger from his belt. “You fucking thief! You can’t keep them all!”

Kylo pushed me again and this time I felt a stroke of fear through him. I stumbled back with Agatha, eyes wide, pulse pounding, and he bared his teeth.

 “Go!” he snapped. “There’s some duffel bags around the side of the wall. Go!

Another dagger caught him in the shoulder and I didn’t need any more encouragement.

I ran down the steps where I sat and braided his hair so long ago, and the girls ran close behind me. We stumbled upon the promised duffel bags and hefted them up before continuing on our way straight into the forest, straight into the darkness.

My head spun and my feet tripped over branches. I ran like I did the day I finally escaped, but this time—this time I slowed to look back as the trail closed off from the light. I hesitated, hoping maybe… even thought I knew I shouldn’t.

 “Mama?”

I glanced down at Agatha’s terrified face, then around at the other girls. I couldn’t afford to stop.

So I took another short step into the darkness before we took off running again, and this time I didn’t look back.

Chapter 22: Epilogue

Notes:

it's done!!!!! thank u all!!!!!

Chapter Text

Warm water swirled around my waist, little eddies carrying bits of sand and minnows off into the current, but my eyes stayed riveted on my quarry. My arm cocked back, sore and sunburned.

A big blue fish about the size of my forearm swam in a slow circle two feet away from me. It had come in closer to investigate the shiny lures on my skirt, tail flipping in the strong current. My toes dug into the sand and my heart fluttered. Lunch.

I narrowed my eyes, squeezing the long spear—and struck.

Fish scattered; sand muddied the clear blue water. With it came a quick flash of blood and I drew back my arm to find the fish impaled on the sharp end of the spear. It flopped once or twice and went still.

 “Nice catch, mama!”

Agatha waved like crazy from the shoreline and I waved back. She had a basket full of berries, her preferred activity to killing animals. It didn’t bother me in the least. She could find food anywhere.

Beside her stood Hana, shielding her eyes with a hand and carrying a repaired sail under her arm. They had grown up so much from the five years since fleeing Kylo—now Hana was a teenager and an accomplished sailor, ready to leave the island and explore.

Aggie didn’t so much want to leave. She and a couple of the other girls liked our safe, quiet home.

I waded from the ocean and turned to look back over the rolling waves. Sunlight glittered on whitecaps and carried away the red stain from my catch.

Hana tilted her head. “That’s not the poisonous one, is it?”

 “No, no.” Agatha pointed to a stripe along the edge of the fish, beaming. “See? White stripe. The black stripe gave all of us diarrhea.”

 “Fun times,” I said. I set a hand on my bare hip and nodded toward Hana. “All patched?”

 “Yep, ready for another jaunt around the island.” She turned, pointing toward where the soft golden sand gave way to dark rocks. “Jewel thinks there are big fish over in there that will be great for the feast tomorrow.”

Ugh. I liked the prospect of the girls in dangerous shoals as much as I liked the prospect of them leaving.

But I couldn’t hold on to them forever. We found the Omega paradise after weeks of struggling through violent waves and enormous sea creatures, and Hana had been instrumental in our survival. She was growing up and growing out. I had to let her go.

So I smiled. “Sounds great. Be careful.”

We walked along a well-worn path back to the main village, one of three that worked together in harmony. A flowering plant that grew all over the island gave off heat-suppressing pollen that kept everyone from cycling and more importantly, drove any seafaring Alphas away.

So the three villages got along well: all women, all Omegas, with an occasional Beta. Storms very rarely hit the island and it usually stayed around the mid-70s, balmy and breezy from the ocean.

One village, Oliwa, had dozens of accomplished physicians who fled the mainland and helped keep everyone healthy. Agatha learned a lot from them while Hana stayed in the largest village called Orom, where she learned how to build and explore.

I lived in Oloro, all ancient crumbling stone buildings and plenty of hunting to keep me occupied. Everyone mixed together and worked together in a way the Alphas would never be able to, and five years of quiet had ensued after I washed up half-dead on the beach with a dozen exhausted child Omegas.

They took us in: the girls received medical care and Hana even got a mechanical thumb, which sparked her interest in building. There were no true leaders, but some of the women separated me from the group for a bit while my mate’s pheromones dissipated.

I stopped feeling Kylo’s pull within a couple days of arriving—but it was always there like a phantom limb.

Agatha chatted away on our walk back to my small house, still cheery and excitable even after the harrowing trip and her hard start in life.

 “Tomorrow I’m going up further on the slope,” she chirped. She nudged open my door and trotted inside. “Felicity knows where the blue flowers are—y’know, the volcanic ones? They grow in the black soil.”

I waved and smiled as a neighbor passed. “Be careful. Darcy went there a couple weeks ago and said she saw magma.”

 “Well the volcano is dormant, mama. The woman from Orom says so.”

True. An enormous dormant volcano loomed over the entire island, but after many years of study, the lead geologist in Orom determined it was dormant. An occasional small earthquake would bring that into question but her science was sound.

Bethany witnessed the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s and helped predict it, but no one believed would happen. We were more inclined to believe her.

I ambled to the fire pit in the center of my sitting area, down a short step, wincing. The physical damage from struggling to keep twelve kids from falling off a small boat had never quite gone away. It was fine. I wouldn’t let them drown.

 “Just be careful,” I repeated.

We cooked the fish and ate lunch together outside. Women milled around together, some with little kids or babies from men who weren’t welcome on the island. No men—especially no Alphas.

Life on the island, fittingly named Olympia, was pretty simple and easy. Different women brought all kinds of skills to the table and we coexisted in relative peace. No army. Any Alphas would be repelled by the pollen that kept all of us from cycling and the island was extremely difficult to find, anyway.

…But sometimes I could still feel him pulling me.

—————

Agatha left me when I went for my walk on the beach that night. I avoided the revelry around birthdays (tomorrow was Felicity’s, and she was turning thirteen), preferring the quiet roll of the waves and glittering blue tide that sometimes came in.

I’d read about it in a book once: phytoplankton lit up the waves in certain weather, and tonight was one of those nights. Each wave glowed as it crested in a whitecap over the dark black water beneath, catching the moonlight just right, and I paused to watch. Pretty. I wished I had a camera sometimes.

My gaze wandered along the driftwood and broken shells until it settled on an enormous shape.

Whales and dolphins would wash up sometimes and we would do our best to roll them back into the ocean. I frowned and ambled closer to investigate. Maybe I could roll it in myself. I didn’t want to bother everyone having fun.

The shape groaned and I stopped dead.

Frozen in fear, I could only watch as he dragged himself from the waves, coughing and clawing at the white sand. Big hands dug in as he pulled his half-naked body past shards of sand dollars. His black hair concealed his face but I knew who I found.

The muscles in his back rippled from the strength it took to push up to his knees. Panting, he pushed his hair back from his face, and looked straight at me.

We stared at each other for a long minute. Kylo’s dark eyes widened along with mine and I felt the first true spark of our mating bond that I hadn’t felt in years. His scent wasn’t concealed on the beach where the pollen was scarce. All Alpha—unfortunately, all mine.

I grabbed a shell and threw it at his face. He didn’t dodge and yelped, covering his head when I lobbed another. Son of a bitch!

 “You!” I snarled. I picked up a big branch, baring my teeth. “Get the fuck out of here!”

 “Rey—!?” he rasped. “Is… is that you?!”

 “Don’t play games with me, asshole! I know you’re here for me!” I swung the branch like a sword and took a step back. “You’re outnumbered. They’re going to kill you, Alpha.”

Kylo groaned, swaying and collapsing to his hands and knees. He swallowed and took another couple hard breaths before he fainted in the sand.

How did he find me? I had to tell the others. Someone smarter than me would know what to do, and I trusted all the other women with my life.

But I hesitated, eyeing him unconscious in the sand. Maybe they’d kill him—or me. Bonded pairs would die together and I didn’t feel like dying today.

I prodded him with the stick to make sure he was out, then hefted him up on my back. All these years building and working made me strong and Kylo felt thinner than he used to be. It was odd being the one scooping his unconscious body off the ground.

Somehow I lugged him down the path through the dark woods to my house. Everyone was asleep or at the gathering for Felicity so I had no issues hiding him in my bedroom. On the floor. I wouldn’t let him ruin the new bedspread I got for my birthday.

I shut my door and closed the blinds.

—————

Kylo woke a couple hours later as the sun rose in the sky. I paced before my bedroom door and scowled as he groaned and blinked, stretching out on the wood. His chest was covered in thick scars, cheeks gaunt, like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

I tossed a piece of fish at him. “Here.”

He rubbed his eyes and took a second before eating it. I glared down at him.

 “So?” I demanded. “What do you want?”

 “What is this place? Why does it smell like—shit?”

 “Fine, I’ll go find Viveca and she’ll make you talk. She has a lot of swords.”

Kylo shook his head, struggling to sit up. “This is… I’ve tried finding you dozens of times and never gotten anywhere. Deserted islands, lots of fucking sharks.” He stared at me. “And you’re here.”

 “Well Hana is a good sailor.”

 “I guess so.” He draped his arms in his laps and laughed a little. “Christ. I’ve almost died more times than I can count and you made it here with a dozen kids in tow.”

 “No thanks to you.”

Years had passed since I saw Kylo or any other man, but the pollen helped keep me from ogling too much. Still, we were mates, and the old longing to be in his arms came crawling back like a sickness Oliwa couldn’t heal.

Someone pounded on the door.

I cursed and shut the bedroom door to hide him before answering. Shit. Hiding him would be worse. They’d be fucking furious if I hid an Alpha.

Outside stood three women: Viveca, the sword enthusiast, Janell, an ex-attorney, and one of the most senior women in the colony, Helena. All tall, all no-nonsense, and all very aware that I had a man hidden in my house.

Helena smiled. Her pretty gray eyes betrayed some irritation.

 “Hello, Rey,” she said. “We heard you found someone washed up on the beach.”

 “Oh.” I looked over my shoulder. “Well…”

Viveca nudged open my door and let herself in. I stumbled back and protested when she and two other women made their way to my bedroom. What was this?! They couldn’t just come in my house!

Janell clicked her tongue, dark braids waving as she shook her head. “Rey. We’re so disappointed.”

Kylo didn’t resist. Viveca and another woman dragged him off the floor, binding his wrists behind his back, and shoved me aside on their way out. I followed until Helena stopped me with a small hand on my arm.

She smiled. “Ah, ah. We’ll let you know when we’ve decided what to do with him.”

 “He’s my mate!” I snapped. “He owes me a lot of answers; you can’t just take him!”

 “We can do whatever we need to do in order to keep peace on the island.” Helena squeezed, nails digging into my skin. “And the presence of an Alpha male is bound to cause chaos.”

She left me with that. I tried to follow again, watching as they marched Kylo down the street, but my path remained blocked. Women actively got in my way.

And all my sisters and friends slowly turned to fixate me with different degrees of loathing or pity. I shrank back toward my house and hurried inside, ashamed, but I could still hear them whispering outside.

—————

Agatha was beyond ecstatic to learn that Kylo had washed up on shore. She didn’t understand that she couldn’t go see him and moped for the few days until Helena summoned me to Orom.

It became apparent that no one wanted to be associated with me anymore. Neighbors stopped waving and passing my house, avoiding me at all costs, and my paradise descended into another hell. Plenty of other women used to have mates or even arrived pregnant.

It wasn’t like I brought Kylo with me. I tried to hide him but—but that was only to get answers from him.

Agatha came with me that afternoon. She brought a couple snacks and woven things as gifts but this wouldn’t be a friendly meeting.

Helena sat me down in an old granite complex, accompanied by Janell and Viveca. Kylo was nowhere to be seen, maybe stowed away in the cells beneath our feet. That had to be miserable.

She sighed. “This puts me in a very difficult position, Rey. Hundreds of women live here who do not deserve to be subjected to the presence of a man—or an Alpha—and you willfully hid him.”

 “It was less than a day,” I said, tight.

 “But long enough,” Viveca added. She crossed her arms. “The laws are clear. What you did is selfish.”

Birds sang outside the long shadow the complex cast. I wrung my hands under the table.

 “He forced me,” I managed, eyes brimming with tears. “I didn’t want him to come here. I still don’t want him here, but there are some things… some things I need to ask him.”

 “Such as?” Janell prompted.

Their gazes didn’t falter. They stared at me like I’d gone and murdered someone, and I knew I would never get any direct contact with Kylo, and never get any answers. They might kill him, even if it killed me. If he went back out to sea and drowned…

I lowered my eyes. The home I thought I’d found in Olympia vanished in a puff of smoke.

 “Nothing,” I said.

 “Oh. Good.” Helena clapped and motioned behind her. “He’s down in the dungeon—musty old place—until we can send him back where he came from. A ship will be prepared with provisions, but that’s all we can offer him. If he ever returns, he will be put to death.”

I didn’t look up. “What if he drowns?”

 “…Then he drowns.”

They released me to go about my day as if I shouldn’t be concerned about the fate of my mate. I hated him, sure. I hated him more than ever.

But if he died, I died.

Agatha was crestfallen when I told her she couldn’t see him. Her memory had to be pretty twisted but Kylo did take a liking to her during our short life at the castle. Hana, too. He liked them, even if he was never so kind to me.

Usually. Sometimes he could be, and if Helena sent him off to his death, then I’d never be able to get closure. We parted ways so suddenly all those years ago that I didn’t get to scream at him or process the way he sacrificed all he had to let us escape.

Eyes Agatha and I on our walk back to Oloro, and my utopia crumbled around me.

—————

Kylo was to be sent off the night of the feast, and I intended on going with him. I certainly had no life left on Olympia, especially when Hana went off to sail, and I didn’t want to make Agatha’s life harder.

So I decided I’d go with him. Living without closure would be a fate worse than death, and living in a utopia where I wasn’t welcome twisted the knife.

Nightfall came and I packed a bag with some gifts from the girls, including harpoon tips Hana made and rope Jewel wove. Agatha gave me so many that I decided on a couple pictures that might survive the trip and used the other space for necessities like pans and a fire starter. We’d need it.

I closed my door and put a hand on the wood before leaving. It was easier if I didn’t tell Aggie or Hana.

Another fire glowed in the center of town. I crept through the dark streets and forest to Orom, where the silence stretched on, eerie.

 “Mom.”

Yelping, I whirled around at the quiet voice two feet behind me. My heart pounded when I saw Hana there with a pack on her back, too—and I hoped she wasn’t here to convince me to stay.

I sighed. “Jesus, Hana.”

 “Sorry,” she whispered. She patted her pack and smiled. “I knew you’d leave so I followed. I’ve got all my sailing books and—”

 “You are not coming with me.”

She scowled. “I’m seventeen. You can’t tell me what to do.”

 “Hana, seriously.” I rubbed my face and gestured toward the complex. “Kylo is a very, very bad man. You belong here. You’re so smart and talented, and soon you’ll be sailing around the world and writing books and…”

 “I know. I’m going sailing with you.”

 “Hana.”

 “You’re only a couple years older than me,” she snipped, “and I’m not letting you and Kylo sail straight to your deaths. We can all go together.”

I groaned. I’d never been blunt about the things Kylo did to me but I knew Hana was old enough to understand. She had to be losing her fucking mind. Why would she come? Go live your life, kid.

Firelight danced through the trees and I knew time was running out. I waved her on and she beamed as she followed me through the quiet town.

 “You’re going to cycle if you leave,” I muttered.

 “Already got that covered: I have a whole trove of suppressants, and I know how to make more with all kinds of stuff.”

 “…Well, you know Kylo is a piece of shit, right?”

 “I do,” she replied quietly. Paused. “But then there are two of us and one of him.”

We stopped at the edge of the alley. I glanced back and she smiled and gave me a thumbs-up, like I deserved her devotion. Sure I kept her alive on our trip but she was the only reason we found the island. She had better things to do with her life.

I huffed and shook my head but Hana kept following me, all the way up to the complex. She picked the lock down to the cells and we coughed as we descended into musty, damp darkness.

Kylo was sitting upright in a middle cell. He slowly raised his head and brightened when he saw me, chains rattling around his wrists, but seemed confused when Hana picked the lock. He really was thin. He must’ve been tossed around in the waves for a long time.

 “You’re coming with me,” I said. “We have some catching up to do before I dump you on a desert island.”

 “Oh. Lovely.” Kylo smiled as Hana entered the cell. “I hear you’re an accomplished sailor, Hana. Will you be joining us?”

 “Yes,” she replied tersely, “and I know all the desert islands where mom can dump you.”

 “Duly noted.”

He swayed to his feet but managed to follow us upstairs and back into the warm night.

We hurried through the forest to the dock where his ship was already prepared. Hana groaned at the sight of it and I did too: sort of small to take on the ocean, just like the ship from our daring escape. It would have to do.

 “I added extra supplies,” Hana called over her shoulder. She threw her bag at Kylo. “Make yourself useful and put this below deck.”

He smiled a little and took mine, too. I kicked off the ramp as Hana went to the bow of the ship, moving ropes, adjusting the sail. Water rocked us lightly.

But she worked fast and we slipped away from the shore undetected. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, hands on the rail. I couldn’t sit in purgatory anymore. Heaven or hell, I had to move on to something.

 “Wait! WAIT!”

Splashing snapped me from the moment of contemplation. I squinted through the darkness and felt Kylo come up to stand next to me.

He sighed. “Oh shit.”

Agatha figured out she was being left behind and was desperately swimming towards us through the inky water. Hana snapped at her to turn around but she plowed on through the waves, spluttering and floundering, and I went to pull off my shirt. Hana was a better swimmer but obviously busy—

But Kylo dove in before I got my hands on the hem. I gasped and jerked forward, compelled to follow him even when he surfaced a handful of feet out. He grabbed Agatha around the waist as another wave crashed over them. They vanished.

Panicked, I went to jump in after them. Shit. Shit shit shit. I should’ve known she’d find me.

They resurfaced again, much closer than before. Hana toyed with the sail to slow us down as Kylo swam to the hull, first passing up Agatha to me. At nine years old she was a lot heavier than she used to be but my relief and fear helped me lug her up on deck.

 “Jesus, Agatha!” I snapped.

She coughed long barking coughs and threw her arms around me. Hana hissed at the lights coming up on shore and raised the sail again.

 “Jewel said you were leaving!” Agatha blubbered. “I was afraid I missed you!” She cried into my shoulder, shivering. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

 “I’m sorry.” I sighed and sat on the deck, hugging her close. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to protect you.”

Kylo hauled himself up on deck and peeled off his shirt to wring it out. He squinted at the lights moving through the woods, almost like he was ready to swim to shore and fight them.

 “Any more unexpected travelers?” he asked.

 “No, Jewel is staying behind,” Hana said. She shot him a dirty look. “And watch your tone.”

He laughed and shook his head, wandering the other way to finish drying his shirt.

It took a long time before I got Agatha calm enough to sleep in the cabin. Hana stayed at the helm, sailing us straight toward the moon, further and further from Olympia. I felt like I needed to force her and Agatha to go back. They didn’t deserve this.

 “Can you still use it?”

I glanced at Kylo where he leaned over the rail. He raised his eyebrows and waved a hand that made a small fish flip out of the water. The Force—the weird energy we could use, stronger when we were together. I did still use it.

I crossed my arms. “Sometimes when I went spear fishing. Better aim.”

 “Ah. Smart.” He straightened, sucking in his cheek and gazing across the water. “I could feel stirrings sometimes. Not much.”

 “Did you feel when I broke my wrist trying to pull Agatha back on the boat?”

Kylo nodded but didn’t say anything. I glared at him. He did supply the boat but he was the whole reason we had to flee in the first place. Him and the rest of the fucking Alphas.

His throat bobbed. “I’m assuming… no children.”

I shook my head and pretended to be interested in my shoes. Nope. No children. A damn blessing.

We lapsed into silence. There were a hundred things I wanted to ask him, like how to use the Force, and why he decided to let us go, and what happened after we did go. How many times did he set sail to look for us? What did he see across the endless ocean?

But I settled for standing there watching Olympia shrinking in the distance. A whole world of new possibilities unfolded before me again, terrifying and new and full of promise and pain. Purgatory receded into the fog behind us, and heaven or hell beckoned over the horizon.

I leaned on the rail a foot or so away from Kylo and we quietly watched the same speck of ocean. Hana and Agatha were with me. Safe. I had all the time in the world to demand my answers from my mate and find the closure I needed.  

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the salty breeze. For now, this was enough.