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Of course, it’s Aspen who finds her.
Wren scents him before she sees him, and she tries to escape, but she already knows it’s too late. She can’t even climb a tree to hide; like this, she’d fall off and break her neck, and Aspen would still find her body. All she can do is run, and she does her best, really, but by the time he actually reaches her, she’s slumped over a log, panting, simultaneously freezing and burning. She can’t look at him.
“You’re in heat,” Aspen says slowly from behind her, drawing a hesitant step closer and then stopping, a twig breaking beneath his foot. “I was wondering.”
It’s humiliating, and awful, and— “Please don’t make me go back,” Wren says in a rush, still too scared to turn around and face him. She’d hoped that, if anyone, one of the betas would have found her. She wouldn’t have reacted to them. At least it’s not her best friend, because she would have been pitying and awkward, assuming Wren had left because of her, and neither of them would have had the willpower to just fuck and get it over with; she would have made Wren go back and face the others, and then… well. Maybe it’s good that it’s Aspen that had found her. She’ll only have to be a mess in private. “I— it’s embarrassing, I can’t— please— I know you hate me too, but don’t torture me—”
“I won’t make you go back,” Aspen murmurs. He takes another step closer. The forest smells like herbal lemon. Wren thinks about him taking a few more steps, coming flush with her body, lifting the hem of her skirt, pressing into her from behind—
No. She can’t. She pushes herself off the log and shakily turns around, so he at least won’t have the element of surprise, and Aspen’s eyes widen ever so slightly at the sight of her. She looks a mess, surely. “It’s going to snow soon,” he says, a nonsequitur until he adds, “I won’t leave you alone in the forest to freeze to death. Did you have a plan?”
“Of course,” Wren says indignantly, trying not to make eye contact. Her heat hasn’t even really struck yet, and she’s already having to fight not to beg. “There’s— I saw on one of our maps, there’s a safe house near here. I was going to go there and, um, wait it out.”
“On your own,” Aspen says, almost like a question. Before Wren can try to sound professional and in control of herself and all that, he reaches forward and presses a hand to her forehead. She twitches, but lets him. The touch feels good. “You already feel like you have a fever. You wouldn’t have made it.”
“I can,” Wren argues, but it’s weak. “You— you can leave now. Really. I shouldn’t…”
Aspen’s shaking his head, gentle but firm, and Wren wilts. She’s not sure she can maintain her composure for much longer with him here, and if she fails… “I’ll take you,” he says decisively. “I know the cabin you mean. We’ll get you to safety before the snowstorm, and the others will deliver suppressants once it passes. All right?”
Wren’s face crumples. It’s not a bad plan, objectively, but it’s more time with him. She’ll crumble, she’ll embarrass both of them by acting like prey, like a foolish omega— he’ll hurt her, he’ll laugh at her, he’ll abandon her, they hate each other, she can’t— “No,” she manages. “No, I… you don’t have to—”
“I wasn’t asking,” Aspen interrupts, and then he bends down and scoops her up like she weighs nothing, cradling her in his arms effortlessly as she shrieks and squirms. Wren is weak, and the touch of an alpha— his touch— is like an instant balm of healing in her pre-heat like this. The fight dies quickly. “I won’t hurt you, I promise, but I can’t leave you alone. Want you to be safe. It’ll be all right.”
Wren can already feel her brain, exhausted and heat-dazed, going fuzzy around the edges. He’s starting to walk, taking them closer to the cabin in the woods and what will surely be the most mortifying heat of her life, but she lets him carry her. It’s nice. She wishes it wasn’t. “You don’t want me to be safe,” she tries, but it’s weak. “I’m…”
Aspen exhales, but it’s not unkind. “I don’t hate you, songbird,” he murmurs, brushing a strand of hair from her face with his free hand. “I just want to help. Can you trust me?”
Wren blinks, and the whole world goes blank, a void but for the comfort of Aspen’s hands on her body and the sound of his heartbeat against her head. No, she wants to say, I can’t trust you, it doesn’t make sense, how could you not hate me? What’s wrong with you? If I were you, I…
“Yeah,” she says instead, on autopilot, “okay,” and then she really does pass out.
-
Wren only remembers the journey to the cabin in brief flashes of forest and scent. By the time snow starts falling in small flakes, maybe half an hour into traveling together, her defensiveness evaporates, and heat takes over; she wants to mock Aspen for saying they’d make it before the snow, but all that comes out of her mouth is a desperate little gasp, and his only response is to murmur something soothing at her that lulls her back to sleep. When she wakes, snow falling in earnest now, her body is on fire, and she shudders in his arms, torn between relief and pride. She would have been like this if she’d stayed, of course she would, she’d known all along that Aspen would have been the alpha she’d run to for comfort and contact, maybe even the alpha she’d dream about alone in the cabin, but he hated her and she’d make a fool of herself and— he didn’t hate her but he didn’t want her, was too principled to take advantage of her at her weakest moment, wouldn’t grant her relief—
“Please,” Wren whispers. Her voice comes out hoarse and broken. Aspen squeezes her hand and says nothing.
She’s half-awake when they finally arrive; through some miracle of coordination and strength, Aspen doesn’t set her down even as he fiddles with the key code and opens the door to let them both in, even as he adjusts the lights and heating through some small panel on the wall next to the entrance. It’s an old cabin, preceding the AI but well-maintained enough that there’s barely any sign of wear except dust; Aspen carries her through a small, homey living room and towards a series of rooms connected to it, opening the door to first a supply closet and then a bathroom before he finds the bedroom and takes her inside.
The bed is large enough for both of them, but when he sets her down, he doesn’t move to join her, and the blankets are nice, the warmth is nice, but when he stops touching her and starts for the doorway, Wren screams. Aspen freezes, turns around; she feels herself turning red, some deep corner of her brain with her regular self’s level of awareness groaning at how pathetic the rest of her brain is, but she still says “Please don’t go,” in the end. Like hopeless prey. Like an omega.
“I was going to find drinks and medicine,” Aspen explains, voice slow and patient like he’s talking to a child. She almost doesn’t care. The thought of him leaving her for somewhere she can’t see or smell is so awful that Wren weakly makes to stand up, reaching out for him in lieu of words. He crosses the distance between them and takes her hand, which is something, but it’s not enough. “I have to, songbird. I’ll come back.”
“I can’t,” Wren whispers, desperately gripping his hand in an attempt to pull him closer. “Take me with you. Or, or do it somewhere I can see, at least, I need—”
“Shh,” Aspen murmurs, returning to the bed and scooping her up in his arms once more, like he’s not tired at all. Wren’s entire body relaxes at the touch, all the fire alarms of misery and abandonment that had gone off at his threatened absence retreating into silence. “Let’s go back to the living room, okay? You can rest on the couch with blankets while I look for medicine, and you’ll be able to see me.”
Wren’s gut still protests the idea of him leaving her, but if she can see where he’s going, at least, she can survive it. She nods shakily, and Aspen makes good on his word, returning to the living room and gently setting her down on a corner of the couch covered in pillows and blankets. She wonders if any other omegas have used this place to hide from a heat. She can’t smell it, at least, but maybe that’s just because she smells so much of Aspen, strong and undeniably alpha despite the measured care with which he touches her.
“You don’t have to look for medicine,” she says in a rush, just before he lets go of her. He lingers this time, expression unreadable, and lets her pull him back down onto the couch and curl into his side. Maybe— “You know you could just—”
“I can’t,” Aspen says softly, but he strokes her hair as he says it, like some sort of an apology. “I promised not to hurt you, didn’t I?”
Can’t is better than won’t, at least. “It wouldn’t hurt me,” Wren protests, burying her face in his side. His hands feel good on her scalp. They’d feel better on her breasts, her thighs, her neck— anywhere, really, if he was taking care of her like a real alpha, pressing into her and making her cry and stretching her open until she was so full of him she had no room for fever. “I’m not— it hurts, you don’t know what it’s like, I want relief, please—”
She’s crying, a little bit, mortified at the begging and miserable from her own pain. Great. “You don’t really want it,” Aspen murmurs, and she chokes on a sob. “You’re just in heat. It wouldn’t be right of me to take advantage of you, songbird. I’ll get medicine.”
He moves as if to stand, scent still hanging heavy in the air, but Wren stops him, clinging so intensely to him that he has no choice but to remain on the couch with her. “I hate you,” she cries, some part of her fully aware that he’s the one who should really be hating her after all of this is done. So needy, so hideous, so pathetic! “I’m not some child who can’t make decisions for myself, I’m an adult and I know what I’m saying, it would be so much easier, you— you—”
Maybe she’s imagining it, but at some point in her begging, Aspen’s breath catches, and it’s quiet but for her sobs for a few minutes until he finally says, strained, “I know you’re not a child. But I really could hurt you, you know. I fear it. We don’t have protection, for one thing, and I…” He trails off. For once, Wren lets him. “I’m selfish. I could ruin your life while you’re in heat and can’t think, and I want you to be able to look at me on the other side of it. Not to hate me even more.”
Even her heat brain is struck silent. She does hate him, usually— doesn’t she? Did she just think she had to because they were so different and she’d thought he couldn’t stand her for being weak? Was she just pretending? Wren can’t figure it out. Outside her heats, she always knows not to trust herself, that the worst part of being an omega is the vulnerability of it all, that she’d die over being forced to carry a child if those were her only two choices, but right now— right now she just wants him to fuck her, consequences be damned. Hadn’t she known all along that she would? That this simple platonic contact wouldn’t be enough, that her pride wouldn’t be enough, that he would be too principled and she’d have to beg, that she’d like it?
“It’s not like it’s just the heat,” Wren blurts out, and Aspen goes stiff and uncertain against her. She doesn’t know what she’s saying until it leaves her mouth, but she has to— she can’t let him not touch her, not when she wants it this badly. “I left because I didn’t want to— I knew I’d be like this. To you. You’re annoying and it’s embarrassing to beg for someone who I thought hated me, but you’re— I wanted you, I want—” Aspen is silent. Wren, out of words, forcefully detaches herself just enough to wipe her tears and say, “Sorry. You should, um, look for supplies. Probably.”
She barely makes it through the sentence when a wave of painful heat hits her and she falls back against his side, shivering from the pain of separation. Once the agony is gone and they’re touching again, the arousal comes through, sharp and awful and all-consuming. Wren has to fight from shoving her hand down her leggings, although she knows it’ll do nothing, not really. “Can you make it a few minutes without me?” Aspen asks finally.
He sounds different, somehow, voice lower and rougher, but Wren, exhausted out of patheticism, manages to lie even in the face of that. “I’ll be fine,” she says, not convincingly, then, “I might…”
Aspen doesn’t move to leave. He’s quiet, stroking her hair absentmindedly, before he comes to some decision and says “Come here.” Wren instinctively obeys, scrambling onto the warmth of his lap before her brain even realizes that he’d gestured her there, and he wraps an arm around her waist almost possessively as he breathes, “I’ll give you a little, will that help? Just my hands. If you don’t want—”
“I do,” Wren says, too fast, heart racing. “It would help. Please. I— it hurts.”
“I can tell,” Aspen murmurs, burying his face in her neck and breathing her in, lips brushing her skin as he speaks. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of you now, songbird, I was too mean, I’m sorry. Tell me if you want me to stop, okay?”
Wren nods, but she doesn’t foresee that occurring, and maybe Aspen doesn’t either, because he doesn’t make her say it out loud, just gently nibbles the edge of her shoulder, one hand roaming politely over her chest while the other begins to find its way under her skirt. She almost expects it to snake under her leggings and underwear as well, but his hand lands on the side of her hips and pulls both fabrics down like there’s no need for them at all, which, to be fair, there probably isn’t. Wren lifts her hips when he directs her to, helps squirm out of her clothes under his instruction, shamelessly moaning when his hands linger too long on her bare thighs. Finally, though, they’re discarded on the other side of the couch, and Aspen gets to work.
If his touch had been good earlier, through layers of clothing and on the least sensitive parts of her body, it’s heaven now; Wren’s eyes slip shut as he runs his fingers up her thighs, and she bites her lip to stifle a cry when he finally reaches their apex and presses a careful, exploratory thumb to her clit, free hand holding her still as she writhes against him. “All right?” Aspen says, ever so softly, and Wren reaches down to desperately press his hand back onto her. He laughs, maybe the first time she’s heard him laugh so freely, and obeys, but—
“Empty,” Wren gasps, trying fruitlessly to grind against his hand and force his fingers into her. This touch is good, much better than anything else so far, but it’s not quite enough. Every second that she’s not full stings. “I— please—”
Aspen makes a noise she can’t quite decipher, something between amusement and desire, and starts to speak again, but Wren doesn’t comprehend the words at first, because at the same time, one of his fingers slips into her, longer and thicker and cleverer than her own could have ever been, and her whole body lights up. “I’m sorry, songbird, I shouldn’t have waited,” she hears him say, as if from a distance. “Better? More?” Wren makes an incomprehensible noise, feeling herself shaking like a leaf in his arms. The right answer is more, of course it is, it won’t be enough to cure her heat but she’s close right now, she can feel it, if he were just a little rougher, filled her up a little more…
She can’t find the facilities to use words, but it’s all right. Aspen kisses the side of her neck, teeth scraping against her just enough for the thrill of proximity to race through her, and slides a second finger into her. She’s so wet from heat that it’s easy for him to almost immediately increase his pace and move in and out of her comfortably, but Wren isn’t a large person, and Aspen’s hands aren’t small. Wren whines, finally at least halfway full, and closes her eyes, succumbing to the feeling. It’s taking her longer than she’d expected to come, but—
“I’ve never done this before,” she whispers, not sure why or how she’s saying it. “I mean, the heats, I’ve always been alone or on suppressants, I didn’t know it could be…”
Wren trails off, suddenly not wanting to praise him for what feels like the bare minimum. She’s always been miserable on her own, coming shallowly around her own small fingers again and again until she’d passed out with no relief; this is still mortifying, still not really enough given that he won’t commit to truly helping her, but it’s so much better.
“Don’t be alone,” Aspen murmurs, still maintaining a steady rhythm inside her as he speaks, the tip of a third finger just barely teasing the trajectory of the other two. Wren nods frantically, almost without realizing it, and he laughs again, slowly withdrawing from her just enough to ever so slowly press in again with all three. She lets out a shameless moan, so close to relief if only he’d bottom out in her, fill her up, and Aspen licks a stripe of comfort up her neck before finishing, low and sincere, “You don’t have to be alone. We’ll get you through this, all right?”
He sounds… almost scared. Wren doesn’t know what to do with it; she dares to open her eyes and look down, sees how wet his hand is and how obscenely full of him she looks, and shudders. He’s almost buried to the knuckle in her. “You promise,” she blurts out, a breath away from coming. “You promise you’ll take care of me.”
Aspen groans under his breath, the first true sign her heat has affected him, and pushes the final fraction of an inch deeper into her, thumb rubbing rough deep circles into her clit all the while. “Yeah,” he breathes, “I promise,” and that’s enough. With a sharp cry, Wren comes around his fingers, fever and disaster evaporating from her body in waves of acute, real pleasure, and if he says something to her then, she doesn’t remember, so lost is she in the first true relief she’s had since her heats began four years ago.
When she comes to, Aspen has already detached from her, fingers mysteriously clean and dry as they trace comforting patterns on her thigh over her skirt, but it doesn’t matter. Wren still feels the heat lurking in the back of her mind, threatening to take over, but she feels as clear-headed as she’d been before Aspen had found her now, which is a vast improvement. “I…” she starts, not quite sure what she wants to say, but Aspen shushes her.
“Don’t apologize,” he says, although Wren doesn’t even know if she’d been about to. “You needed it, and I want to help. Feel better?”
Wren nods shakily, a horrible sense that she won't be satisfied by just this next time creeping up on her. “I’m thirsty,” she says, to avoid that, and then, “For water, I mean.”
“I’ll get you water,” Aspen says immediately. “Will you be all right if—”
Wren raises her eyebrows, knowing as she does that he’s right to ask. “It can’t be more than a few minutes. You can even, like, give me a glass of water without sitting down and then go look for…”
She trails off, unsure how to finish the sentence. Aspen had wanted to look for medicine. Something for omegas, something to calm her heat until real suppressants could arrive. Something that would mean he wouldn’t have to take care of her. A few hours ago, when she’d been with the whole group, Wren would have liked that. The ability to pretend everything was normal, to save herself the embarrassment of rejection and what she’d thought would be the mediocrity of sex.
… Now, she really just wants Aspen to find some excuse that will make it okay for him to take care of her properly. The traditional way. Like an alpha.
Aspen is quiet. “I’ll see what I see,” he says eventually, voice soft. Wren almost wonders if he’s afraid to let her down, but then he shifts, presses a kiss to the top of her head, and murmurs, “I promised, remember?”
Wren feels herself turning red in real time, embarrassed by her own reaction to it. It’s the heat, surely, not that she’s moved by his cheesiness, but— “Yeah,” she says awkwardly, shifting off his lap before she can regret it. “You have to actually get me water first, though!”
“Silly songbird,” Aspen says, but his laugh is affectionate.
She can see the kitchen from the couch, so Wren gets to watch Aspen struggle with a visibly rusty water faucet and some sort of pocket filter for a few minutes until he finally pours two clean glasses and walks back over to the couch, handing one to Wren and setting the other on the table. By then, she’s starting to feel warm again, heart beating uncomfortably quickly against her rib cage and thighs awkwardly damp, but she tries to disguise it. “Thanks,” she mutters, taking a sip of the water before she says something else stupid. It’s too cold; she shudders, and they’re close enough that she can see Aspen watch her do it, eyes sharp with some sort of intent. It occurs to Wren, as the water flows down her throat, that she’d been so busy fearing rejection and embarrassment that it hadn’t occurred to her to fear success, an alpha wanting her too much and taking advantage of her. Usually, that’s her biggest concern when she goes into heat, that an intruder will come and decide they have to have her, that if she finds an alpha to help her they’ll take her forever, but now, oddly enough, the thought doesn’t bother her nearly as much as the thought of Aspen not wanting her.
“All right for me to look around a bit?” Aspen says softly, gaze still fixed on her. “If you need me—”
“No,” Wren says too quickly, unsettled by her own interest. “The water— you helped. I’ll be fine for a few minutes.”
Aspen doesn’t look like he believes her, but he nods, taking a sip of his own water and setting the glass down before turning back towards the rooms in the back. Wren tries not to watch him go. She doesn’t want to regret it.
She’d been tired before, so she tries to close her eyes, but the time without Aspen still passes slowly and painfully, every second of absence making her feel more and more pathetic. His touch had helped earlier, but Wren almost wonders if she’s worse now because of it; the fire in her stomach is hotter, more insistent, more painful, the agony of the arousal she feels sharper and harder to bear. Wren feels empty, so harshly so that she has to fight to keep her eyes closed and not shove a finger into herself. It wouldn’t be enough, anyway. Her hands are so small compared to her alpha’s, and even those aren’t enough, nothing compared to—
Wren jerks back to attention when she realizes Aspen is saying her name. Has been for a few minutes, at least. Her glass of water is sitting on the table, barely touched, and her free hand is in his. It’s a tiny fragment of the relief she needs. “Sorry,” Wren whispers, although she doesn’t quite know why. It's her mental slip, maybe, that she needs to make up for, her ridiculous heat brain calling him hers. “I—”
Aspen exhales, long and deep. “Don’t apologize,” he repeats. “I’m the one who left you alone.” Still, though, he doesn’t move to take her in his arms, doesn’t try to claim her, until he finally says, “I found a heat relief kit. There are some basic supplies. Expired a year ago, but it should be fine. I can give you medicine, or…”
“I don’t want medicine,” Wren blurts out. “I want— I want—” Burning with heat and embarrassment, she can’t finish her sentence and closes her eyes. “I… you know, right?”
“Use your words,” Aspen says softly, followed by the sensation of him gently cupping her face in his hands. It’s touch, so Wren doesn’t mind it, silly as it is. “I want you to tell me, songbird.”
Mortified, in pain, and unfortunately turned on, Wren chokes out, “I want you to touch me again, please,” and opens her eyes.
Aspen is looking at her with maybe the most intensity she’s ever seen anyone look at her in her in her entire life, eyes dark with want; she thinks for a brilliant, terrifying moment that he’ll kiss her, but ultimately Aspen just murmurs, “Let’s move, then,” and scoops her up into his arms once more, blankets and all, to return to the bedroom.
Aspen had been as careful as if he were handling porcelain when he’d set her down on the bed the first time, but now he’s faster, still gentle but moving with an urgency that almost frightens Wren, mostly because she likes it. He is turned on. She doesn’t really have to look to know.
The fabric of the comforter below her is fine, maybe because Wren is uncomfortably aware that it belongs to a Bed She Is About To Have Sex On, but Wren’s at the point in her heat where the remaining clothes on her body burn. While Aspen is still standing, doing… something… Wren almost turns herself inside out on the bed trying to shed her remaining clothes as quickly as possible. The jacket had been nice earlier but is awful now, the skirt is pretty but touches her too much, the shirt…
“I could have done that for you,” Aspen says. Wren, naked but for her bra, freezes and turns to look at him. His jacket is folded neatly on the chair near the door, because he has the luxury of comfort and not being in heat, but his hands are trembling, just a bit. “I’m meant to be taking care of you.”
Meant to be, is that all she is to him? An obligation? “I can take off my own clothes!”
Aspen sighs, but Wren somehow gets the impression that it’s at himself. “You can,” he says, then, “Come here. You’re too far away.”
He almost sounds like he’s pouting? Head spinning, chest warm, Wren scoots down the bed until her legs are dangling off the edge next to him, kicking her clothes off onto the floor as she goes. He’s still wearing almost everything— what in the world had he been doing for the past few minutes? “I don’t want to feel fabric,” she complains, too embarrassed to finish her sentence and ask him to strip like her. “Hurry, I—”
“I know, I know,” Aspen murmurs, reaching around her to unhook her bra. Wren squirms, relieved to feel the cold of his hands against her skin but also mildly disturbed by how quickly they’ve become comfortable touching each other like this. “Stay here and lean on me while I get ready, okay? If that helps.”
Wren collapses onto him as much as she can as soon as she’s given permission, closing her eyes to distract from the hunger radiating across her body. Fabric rustles in his direction, but she ignores it until Aspen has to gently push her away to pull off his shirt and she returns to the luxury of his bare skin against hers. “Why did you wait,” she mutters childishly, overjoyed by the feel of it, and he laughs, but it sounds strained.
“Had to make sure there was protection here,” he reminds her, wrapping his arms around her and guiding them both towards the center of the bed. Wren wonders if she should open her eyes. She doesn’t want to. Like this, all she feels is the comfort of him holding her, can avoid looking at his expression and be reminded of how much this is a nice task to him. He’d been intense before, like he wanted it, but now— “Are you worrying, songbird?”
“No,” Wren lies. She forces her eyes open for a split second, sees Aspen bare and almost atop her on the bed, and snaps them back shut before she can be consumed by another wave of burning emptiness. “You’re just being strange.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m the one worrying,” Aspen says softly, which surprises Wren into opening her eyes for real. His expression is somewhere between that intensity from earlier and a sort of tender fear Wren’s never seen him wear before. “I want to be good to you. Gentle. Not to force you into something you…”
Wren’s heat hits then, sharp and too-warm and uncomfortable, and Aspen is still talking to her like she’s a helpless child who doesn’t know what she wants, which—
She gives up and lets her body take over. Consumed by desire, she lifts her head, throws her arms around Aspen, and kisses him. He’s surprised for a brief instant, unresponsive against her surely less experienced lips, and then he’s kissing back, lips clever and cool against her own, and Wren forgets to be embarrassed by her own impulsivity.
Suddenly, his hands are on her too, roaming across her sides and her chest and her thighs, and she gasps into Aspen’s mouth, heat perking up its head inside her at the sign she’ll be filled soon. Aspen draws back from her just enough to whisper, “You’re so wet, I bet you could take me without any preparation at all,” and then he kisses her again like that isn’t the filthiest sentence anyone has ever said to Wren in her entire life, never mind that she’s in heat, of course she’s wet!
Instead of yelling at him for saying ridiculous embarrassing things or yelling at herself for being into the ridiculous embarrassing things, Wren chokes out a desperate, miserable “Please, you don’t have to make me wait, it hurts,” into the kisses, first trying to ignore the fact of his leg between hers and then trying to ignore her hips’ opinion on that. The heat within her burns too fiercely to force her body still. “Please—”
Aspen slides three fingers into her at once without warning, and Wren cries out like she’s been slapped, processing the brief relief just before she does the slight ache. He’s right; she is wet enough to take just about anything. Loose. Ready for an alpha. “God,” he murmurs, drawing back from her just enough to realign their bodies into a neater position, fingers still shallowly thrusting in and out of her like he needs to keep her plugged up. With his other hand, he encourages her legs open, her hips onto a pillow; Wren, shamelessly, lets him. “You’re so pretty like this.”
For some reason, this is what makes Wren flush and turn her head to the side, that lie of a compliment. He doesn’t seriously think… “Look at me,” Aspen says, then, “Look at me, songbird, I want you to see.”
She freezes, uncertain, for only half a second, but by that time, Aspen’s fingers have already slipped out of her and found her face, tilting it back up towards him. To witness him kneeling between her legs, rolling on a dusty blue condom with his other hand, so close to her he could probably slip into her easily if she breathed the wrong way. Wren processes her emptiness late, and her own moan at it later; it’s probably Aspen’s fault that his fingers stray towards her still-open mouth, but it’s definitely Wren’s fault that her tongue darts forward to lick herself off them. Aspen’s gaze is fixed on her unrelentingly throughout, piercing green nearly eclipsed by dark pupil. Wren wants to tell him off for being mean to her. She can’t. “Yes,” she breathes, almost unconsciously. “I’m looking.”
Aspen doesn’t reply. He lifts his hand from her face, settles it possessively against her hips, and leans down.
Wren feels him in her before she feels anything else, the immediate glorious relief of being full. He’s gentle with her, too slow as he slides into her, too careful as he bottoms out and their hips connect, but Wren almost doesn’t care. He’s large enough that it doesn’t matter. She opens her mouth to— moan, cry out, say something, she doesn’t know— but then she realizes that he’s also kissing her, softer and more secure than she would have expected, and she’s already kissing back, as messily as she can.
By the time they part, Aspen’s already dragging himself out of her, painfully slow. “Good?” he whispers, voice unexpectedly strained. “Anything hurt?”
“No,” Wren gasps, then, “I mean, it’s good, nothing hurts, you— don’t be so—”
Aspen lets out a shudder of an exhale, pushes back into her with an audibly slick noise, and says, “Just want you to feel good, songbird, that’s all,” and reaches down to press a thumb to her clit, which distracts Wren enough to silence her thoughts for a few moments of satisfaction.
He’s increased his pace just a bit, grip on her hips a tiny fraction tighter, but… It’s her heat, surely, that isn’t just satisfied with being full like this, that wants him to be faster and rougher and hold her down while he fucks his knot into her. Wren doesn’t think of herself as someone that would normally want an alpha to push her around. But then again, she also doesn’t think of Aspen as someone that wouldn’t want to push omegas around. Is it just her he wants to be gentle with? Is she deluding herself? Why does she care?
“I thought,” Wren says eventually, when she can remember how to talk, “I thought you just wanted to— to help me. Get this over with.”
“Did you,” echoes Aspen, his voice strange and soft. Sad, almost…? “Wren, I…”
It’s not his stupid nickname for her, just her name! Somehow, that hurts. Wren doesn’t want him to let go of her, but she doesn’t want to talk, either, so she kisses him again, and he dutifully kisses back, fucking her through it at that same awful pace until they both have to part and breathe. “Be rougher, you’re not going to break me,” she blurts out at the end of it, heart hammering for some inexplicable reason. “And I wouldn’t— I wouldn’t mind if you did, anyway. Please—”
“I would,” Aspen says simply, and Wren feels helpless to do anything but blink at him, partly in outrage; he’s stilled in her, their hips almost flush. “I like you, songbird. I know you want me, but you’re always so far from liking me. I could break you, if I wanted to. If I’m the big bad wolf you think I am and hurt you now, if I lose even your attention…”
Aspen trails off, for once seeming embarrassed of his own words. He should! He deserves to feel silly for saying something so awful, so cheesy, for lying to her— “You don’t,” Wren cries, and his eyes narrow, clearly confused. “You’re just making excuses, you—” There are tears welling in her eyes. She’s not quite sure why. She shouldn’t care how Aspen feels about her as long as she’s not embarrassed by rejection. Shouldn’t care about the lies. Shouldn’t care that he doesn’t think she’s capable of taking him at his fullest, that he thinks she’d let him go for being a little rough. That he thinks she’s prey that can’t survive her natural role in the ecosystem. “I don’t like you at all,” she whispers, and something in Aspen’s gaze shatters, goes blank. “You don’t like me either. You couldn’t even do anything to hurt me or break me. You—”
Wren’s talking too fast, saying too much, trying to be hurtful, but Aspen interrupts her before she ruins the solution to her heat even more than she already has. “Look at yourself,” he says, voice low. “Look how much you had to stretch to take me. Do you really think I don’t need to be careful?”
Wren’s eyes had been closed, for some reason, and she wants to keep them closed, but she can’t resist her alpha’s command. She looks.
Her eyes move down slowly, and she feels Aspen’s moving with her, like he wants to understand every piece of what she sees. Her breasts are still small against his much larger— much older— hands, and her stomach isn’t quite smooth anymore, visibly distended from his movement inside her. Unbidden, her omega mind summons an image of it further swollen, her thoroughly bred and claimed, and Wren has to fight her body’s instinct to shiver. She’s not afraid! She couldn’t be! Just…
Wren’s gaze lowers, at first to distract herself, and then because she can’t look away from it. The sight of Aspen’s cock buried deep in her, skin around him stretched unnaturally wide just to let him in, her slick dripping down her thighs, every breath of his bringing the slow-forming girth of his knot closer to—
They notice it at the same time. Through the drab navy of the condom, a line of warm brown skin is revealing itself, then another, then— Aspen swears and pulls out of her before Wren can point it out, remnants of the condom just barely managing to come with him. He pulls it off, holds it up to the light for just long enough for her to see the damage, and swears again, tossing it aside.
It’s an awful, stinging I told you so. Maybe if he’d kept going slowly, limited himself, it wouldn’t have broken; maybe Wren’s fantasy of being hunted down and devoured would have ended in her nightmare (?) of him filling her with children. Surely everything in the house is old and fragile like that. Surely this is the end. He’d been responsible to give up on it now, of course he’d been, and now Wren will be empty for the rest of her heat and she’ll return to a Aspen that knows she’s cruel, knows she’s a freak, knows she wants him, knows to really truly hate her.
“I—” Wren starts, uncertainly looking between the remnants of the condom on the floor and Aspen bare in front of her, in the same position he’d been before he’d entered her, but she’s interrupted by the sound of Aspen’s breath. Heavy, sharp. Like he’d been punched. “Are you…”
“I’m sorry, songbird,” Aspen murmurs, all prior hurt gone from his voice, and then his hand is on her mouth, silencing anything she could possibly think to say, and he’s fucking into her again, as insistent and sharp as if he’d never feared hurting her. As if this isn’t the most dangerous thing of all.
So of course, Wren comes on the spot.
It’s mortifying, the feeling of euphoria she gets from him treating her like this, but— she likes it so much. She’s floating in some far-off cloud, banishing every remnant of her awful heat from her body, glowing in his arms as he drives the beginnings of his knot almost fully into her. He wants her enough to risk them both like this. To trust that she won’t fall apart. It feels better, too, for him to be in her without a barrier between them, even disregarding the change of pace; maybe her omega body had wanted this truest form of mating, but maybe— maybe it’s just Wren. Maybe this is who she is. Maybe she doesn’t even mind.
“You feel so good,” Aspen is whispering above her, voice cut open with pure raw desire and room full of uncontrollable lemony alpha. “Sorry, baby, I couldn’t resist, you’re so—”
Wren wants to moan, to try to kiss him, but his hand is still on her mouth, pinning her to the bed as if… as if he doesn’t think she wants this at all. As if he’d fuck babies into her for his own pleasure even if she’d screamed for him to stop, as if he’d use his strength against her no matter how much she’d tried to fight back. Hadn’t her speech earlier gotten to him?! Doesn’t he know she likes this? Likes everything he’s doing to her, even though it’s objectively terrible?
Wren tries to yell some of this, but she’s still muffled by his hand, and it’s kind of hard to focus on speech when he’s fucking her so well. She doesn't know if he’d even noticed her coming. So much for selfless help! He's not completely ignoring her for the sake of his own pleasure, though, free hand possessively talented against her body, lips falling against her neck. Dangerously close to her mating gland. Wren wants him to bite. She wants—
Fuck. She does like Aspen. Has liked him for a while, maybe. Even though he's obnoxious and presumptuous and has all the right in the world to look down on her, even though he has no idea how she feels now. She’d thought it just attraction, but she'd wanted him to really care for her through the heat, stay by her side and kiss her and bring her water and say nice things to her and protect her like he would any stronger and worthier omega. She’d wanted them to belong to each other.
And Aspen had told Wren he reciprocated, had wanted to be gentle with her, and she hadn't believed him! She’d thought— she’d thought—
Wren can't stand the lack of speech anymore. She bites his hand, almost hard enough to draw blood, and he gasps, recoils, continues fucking into her even as he shakes his hand in pain. “Let me talk,” Wren cries, seeing it move back to her mouth. “I’m not— I won't scream, or yell at you, or— please, I just—”
Aspen’s hand freezes midair. Gradually, carefully, it comes down to rest on Wren’s cheek. She lets him feel her, warm and willing beneath his touch, and he says, very slowly, “You like this.”
Panicking, Wren snaps, “Obviously,” and Aspen lets out a surprised little laugh. “Did you mean it,” she says, endeared into painful truth, and shakily brings her own hand up to meet his. He’s stopped moving in her, but she doesn't mind. “The… what you said before you…”
“Yes,” says Aspen immediately. Seeing her face, he softens and adds, “I lost my mind afterwards, but you…”
“I didn't believe you,” Wren whispers. “I thought you just thought I was weak and fragile and pathetic and were coming up with excuses. Because I also— there's no way you could ever—”
Aspen kisses her. Wren, mid-stammer, kisses back; it's a natural response, almost like breathing, like coming up from a deep pool. “I don't think you're fragile or weak or pathetic,” he murmurs into her lips eventually, still close enough to her that she can almost taste each syllable. “Truly, songbird. I just didn't think you’d want me without all that self-control. I like you too much to let you go.”
Wren shudders. The heat is back, just a bit, and before she can communicate, Aspen is moving again, somehow filling her even more completely than before. She forgets to speak. When she remembers, what comes out of her mouth is, “I wanted you to be my alpha, the real you, I don't care that you're mean sometimes or that you can't control your strength sometimes, I just didn't think you could ever want me, I—”
“We’ve both been silly,” Aspen interrupts, rather decisively. Wren giggles a little bit, hips rocking against his. Aspen’s free hand dips down to where they're connected, coating his fingers in her slick, and then returns to her face; Wren, automatically, opens her mouth and takes his fingers in. This time, he keeps them there while he speaks, spread just enough for her tongue to reach every inch. “Do you know, songbird, that I was so insistent on our getting protection because I’ve already thought about having you without so many times? Of course I want you. More than I thought you’d accept. But if you do…”
Aspen’s fingers, now clean, withdraw from her mouth as he trails off. His eyes are almost completely dark with desire, and his breathing is ragged and erratic as he returns to fucking into her like he had before, like he couldn’t stop himself from spending more than a breath outside her. Wren, overwhelmed, blurts out, “If I told you to stop now, would you?”
Wren wants him to protect her, to take care of her, to value her thoughts and treat her like an equal, but— heat or no, she likes this wild, poetic version of him, almost drunk on her, almost unable to control himself. She likes feeling like she’s giving him something, likes feeling the rush of controlled helplessness. She likes being wanted. She wants him to say—
“No,” Aspen confesses, voice low and regretful. “I like you so much, baby, I’m sorry. You feel so good for me. Smell so sweet. I can’t stop.”
He’s going to say more, maybe, but Wren moans, high and pathetic and undeniably pleased, and he inhales sharply, one large hand splaying over her chest to feel for her heartbeat. “You wanted me to say that,” he murmurs, and Wren shivers, nods. “You’re getting off on me hurting you.”
“You’re— you’re not hurting me,” she manages, just so he doesn’t start getting complexes about it and stop giving her what she needs. “I just— I thought I didn’t like being an omega, I thought it couldn’t be good to be, to be so small, but I like that I can’t stop you from wanting me, I like you pushing me around, I like you, I want to be good for you, I accept everything, I can take it, please—”
She’s not even sure what she’s begging for at this point, but it doesn’t really matter. Aspen swears under his breath and kisses her, and they both forget about words for a few blissful moments. Wren can feel his knot growing against her, always just a breath from forcing its way into her, and she shudders against it, instinctively opening her legs even further to let him in. “You can take it,” Aspen echoes into her mouth, and Wren nods frantically, lips chasing the sound of his voice. “You want me to come in you, baby?”
“Yeah,” Wren breathes, daring once more to look down to the place where their bodies meet, to see how close he is to filling her so completely that all her weakness and pain will have no room to breathe. Aspen’s lips are brushing her neck, teeth against her skin almost sharp enough to be painful. “You should do it,” she whispers, and she doesn’t just mean the knot. “I want it.”
She knows as she says it that he should say no, that heat insanity aside, it would be ridiculous to mate her now, when they’ll return to the group soon and everyone will see, when they have a mission to complete, when he has a partner of sorts, but— Wren does want it. She wants him to claim her, fill her, ruin her for anyone else’s touch. Aspen exhales hot against her skin, tongue flicking against that dangerous spot she wants him to devour so much, and says, “My greedy omega. Not just satisfied with being knotted and bred, huh? Want to belong to me in every way?” He pauses, lets Wren gasp and shake around him at the words, at the thought of him taking her so completely, and then, softer and less certain, “Really?”
Wren realizes, in a moment of horrifying clarity, that if she were to say yes with enough conviction, he would do it. Not because he couldn’t control himself, but because she’d asked. Because he’d listen to his omega no matter what, regardless of whether or not he was ready. The power of it almost scares her. Breathing in shakily, Wren says, “Do it when you want to. You’re the alpha. Decide for me.”
Aspen makes another guttural noise of instinctive satisfaction, then shifts his mouth to the other side of her neck, biting hard enough to leave a bruise and a rush of slick on Wren’s thighs. “You’re mine to use as I wish,” he murmurs, then, when Wren nods, “When all this is over with, I will, songbird, promise, okay? I’m already yours.”
Wren smiles, relieved. They belong to each other. She can’t help but be happy. “Thank you,” she says fervently, meaning it, and then, “I’m—”
“Me too,” Aspen agrees, sucking another bruise into her neck. It’s going to be impossible to cover up. Wren doesn’t mind. “Ready?”
Wren doesn’t have time to verbally assent or even nod. Aspen’s lips are already on hers again, his knot pushing into her unrelentingly as their scents mingle in the air. She cries out into his mouth, overwhelmed by every part of the experience— the pain of being stretched so wide open, the wonder at her own body’s capacity to open itself up for its alpha, the addictively delicious fear at the close, inevitable risk of his coming in her. She decides, in a rush of mindless obsession, that she can never spend a heat— no, forget that, she can never spend a single day without Aspen by her side again.
He’s saying something above her, Wren realizes, and manages to tune in just in time to hear “God, you feel so good around me, songbird, always knew you would,” which is a funny thing to say about someone he’d met a week ago, but whatever. He’s almost fully submerged in her now, and Wren knows somewhere deep down that she’ll come the instant he fully knots her, even if it hurts.
She wants to beg for it again, to gasp a desperate please into her alpha’s mouth, but then his mouth shifts back to her shoulder and he bites her like he really does want to mate her, teeth digging deep enough into her flesh to devour her whole, and she forgets to speak. With an exhale stained with her blood, the rest of Aspen’s knot slips into her, his come spilling into her hot and dangerous and intense enough that she wouldn’t be surprised if her stomach swelled visibly with it. Wren, predictably and wonderfully, comes so hard she blacks out.
Even when she regains consciousness, after what feels like a year but was surely only an instant, it feels so good. Wren’s kissing Aspen again, somehow, and one of them is crying a little bit, salt slipping between their lips as Wren falls apart to the sensation of her alpha emptying himself into her. All the pain and tension of her heat is gone, replaced with a gentle, all-encompassing warmth.
-
Aspen is gentle as they clean up, wiping away the tears and blood and slick covering their bodies with some soft cloth he’d found somewhere or, sometimes, his mouth. They find a shower in the bathroom, and only then do they separate, Wren too exhausted for the distraction she knows that level of closeness will bring on. Her clothes are too sweaty to be comfortable, and she’d forgotten to bring replacements, so she searches the house to no avail while Aspen showers; when she comes up with nothing, she pulls on the flannel he’d abandoned outside the bathroom just to have some feeling of normalcy. It’s far too big on her, falling to her mid-thighs like a very small dress, but she doesn’t mind. It smells like him.
When Aspen emerges from the bathroom, he almost freezes in his tracks at the sight of her curled up on the couch, trying fruitlessly to roll up the too-long sleeves without constricting her blood flow. “God,” he murmurs. “I didn’t think this through.”
Wren frowns and abandons the sleeve. “Don’t tell me you regret—”
“No,” Aspen interrupts, eyes wide. “No, songbird, I could never. Do you…”
Wren shakes her head. She’d considered, briefly, apologizing for the crazy sex talk and for generally being a freak, but she wouldn’t have meant it. They do belong to each other. She does want him to mate her, someday when their mission has succeeded. Maybe it will, after all, if the others are like Aspen and don’t think her too weak to ruin everything. “I’m happy.”
“Good,” Aspen says, smiling, and crosses the rest of the room to sit next to her on the couch. Wren, obediently, curls into his side. “I just saw how pretty you were and realized I have to keep my hands off you for the next week or so we’ll be together. It’ll be torture.”
“Wasn’t it already?” Wren says, pleased but wanting to goad him into admitting the length of his desire, and Aspen pinches her lightly on her thigh. She yelps, heart pounding, and cries, “You don’t have to, anyway!”
“I don’t?” Aspen repeats. He sounds smug. Wren hates him. “You want me to find somewhere they won’t see and have my way with you every day? Or do you want to sit on my lap in the car and hope they don’t notice?”
Wren feels herself turn bright red, a fraction of her heat returning at the thought. She hopes the suppressants come soon, if only so that she can be made to beg on her own terms. “We’re not traumatizing my friends!” Still, though… “Do you care if they know?”
It comes out too genuine, but Aspen, putting an arm around her, doesn’t seem bothered by it. By the thought of the whole world knowing she belongs to him. In that awful, self-satisfied tone that had almost thoroughly convinced Wren he looked down on her, he mimics, “Don’t they already?”
Wren cries out and hits him with a pillow, but she doesn’t mean it. He’s right. Anyone with eyes would have been able to tell even before he’d marked her with enough bruises to paint a whole field of violets across the wall of a skyscraper, even without their risking quick hookups in the back of the car while the others slept. “Maybe,” she says, resting her head against Aspen’s heartbeat, content. “But that's all right. That’s how it should be.”