Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Part One
Wild Mint

The dirt road was empty. Unassuming. Silent. To the left, a heat haze obscured the entrance into the forest, where the road met fields of knee-high grass bleached yellow by the summer sun; to the right, it snaked deeper into the forest before curving out of sight. It hadn’t rained for weeks and the trees seemed to bow under the weight of the merciless heat, leeched of moisture like bones in a vat of ash. Crickets and cicadas droned from the foliage, but otherwise it was silent, the air cut with tension.

Crouched in the brush by the roadside, Katsuki Bakugou wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his wrist and huffed.  He’d stripped down to just his linen pants hours ago but even semi-nudity provided little relief from the searing heat; he swore to the gods if he had to stay here much longer his skin was going to melt off his fucking bones. Admittedly, it was a shit time to attack a passing supplies wagon, but he supposed it worked in his favor too. Nobody would be expecting it, because nobody would expect someone to be stupid enough to attempt an ambush in the middle of the day.

Except him, apparently. But his reasons veered less toward stupidity and more towards desperation.

Beside him, Kirishima slapped a mosquito on his arm and grunted. “Man, I hate bugs.”

Katsuki said nothing. Having spent the last ten years living nomadically with his pack, he’d become used to the inconveniences of the wild, and besides, mosquitoes rarely bothered him; maybe his blood wasn’t sweet enough. Or maybe even they wouldn’t dare bite into an alpha.

That said, squatting in the dirt and heat for over an hour was definitely testing Katsuki’s temper. He would’ve given up long ago if they hadn’t needed this hit so badly, and his mother had once told him that patience was a virtue.

Unfortunately, Katsuki didn’t consider himself particularly virtuous.

“Should we send out a scout?” Kirishima whispered.

Katsuki chewed the inside of his cheek. He couldn’t afford to break formation – his pack was simply too small; one man in the wrong place might cost them their advantage. And if the scout was spotted, they’d lose the hit, and if they lost this hit then their likelihood of survival was -

A faint smell of alcohol and horsehair severed that thought and he lifted his head, sniffing the air. There was no wind to trail the scent to him, but his nose was far keener than his pack mates’. Kirishima’s gaze shifted to him expectantly, and Katsuki nodded.

“They’re here.”

A few minutes later, he heard the signal: a whistle disguised as a bird call. Kirishima responded in kind, and the sound of daggers and swords being slid from their sheaths briefly silenced the cicadas. Katsuki rested his hand on the hilt of his sword with a hungry grin.

Clouds of dust lifted off the baked road as the supply train drew closer. Katsuki had scouted them a week ago so already knew what to expect: three horse-drawn wagons guarded by ten beta and two alpha warriors of the Blueflame Clan. He didn’t know what was on the wagons, but it must’ve been good to warrant that kind of escort.

Finally, the wagons breached the forest and came into view. They were stacked high with boxes and pulled by pairs of chestnut mares. Most of the escorts walked alongside them in a rough diamond formation – two at the front, two at the rear, two at the middle – while the others rode alongside the drivers. Katsuki quickly pinpointed the alphas by scent; they walked either side of the middle wagon and were the only members of the guard that weren’t wilting in the midday heat.

“Leave the alphas to me,” Katsuki whispered to Kirishima, then he launched out of the undergrowth, tore his sword free of its sheath, and howled.

The attack had begun.

The first to fall onto Katsuki’s sword was a beta male, caught by surprise and barely worth the effort; Katsuki kicked him aside while he was still gurgling on his own blood and went straight for the closest alpha. The male had at least half a foot on him and was broad-shouldered, ripped in muscle, and smelt like clove. The tattoos creeping across his chest marked his rank in the Blueflame clan, but Katsuki didn’t have time to identity them before they engaged in combat.

Turned out Clove was pretty nimble; he sidestepped Katsuki’s first slash while reaching to draw his own sword, but Katsuki elbowed him in the kidney then spun, sword arching down to catch his exposed back. Clove sidestepped again and used the momentum to land a wicked punch to Katsuki’s ribs, hard enough to rip the air out of his lungs but not hard enough to break them. He kept Katsuki at bay with a few more jabs aimed at his face but couldn’t find an opening to draw his sword and began to panic.

Katsuki waited patiently until an opening presented itself. He feinted right, then ducked below a desperate punch and thrust his sword forward, slicing deeply into Clove’s side. Clove spun and landed heavily on the ground, bulging eyes fixed disbelievingly on the blood spurting between his fingers.

It was over within thirty seconds but Katsuki had no time to celebrate before the other alpha leapt on top of the wagon and howled, teeth bared and twin daggers drawn, smelling like anise and bloodlust. Katsuki grinned and lifted his sword, then beckoned for him to jump down and engage.

Anise leapt off the wagon and Katsuki was almost a second too slow; the twin blades whispered a hairbreadth from his throat as he leapt back, and he barely got his blade up in time to deflect another flurry of razor-quick blows from both daggers. Sparks flew off their blades, the sound ringing in his ears, but Katsuki kept his eyes on Anise’s, refusing to be distracted.

The right blade cut low while the other went high. Katsuki deflecting the one aimed to disembowel him and got away with just a cut across his left cheek from the other. He whirled, then ducked low, kicked Anise’s legs out from underneath him and sent him to the floor. He drove his sword through the alpha’s chest with a fierce roar.

Katsuki didn’t notice the dying alpha had sliced the back of his calf until he staggered to his feet. Blood trickled out his pant leg and pattered onto to the dusty earth, but it wasn’t bad – just a cut. He was more annoyed that he’d have to mend his pants later.

 Tsking, he planted his booted foot on the dead alpha’s chest and yanked his sword free. Nothing pissed him off more than sight of his own blood. His weakness.

Alphas dealt with, he climbed on top of the wagon and surveyed the unfolding chaos. Despite his pack mates being outnumbered, the Blueflame warriors were no match for them, and he watched with savage pride as they cut them down one by one. He only wished he could’ve seen the look on Dabi’s face when he received word that the last of the Firebrand Clan had wiped out a dozen of his so-called warriors. Again.

He’d see that look soon enough, Katsuki reassured himself, when he cut off the fucker’s head. Until then, he’d have to make do with harassing his borders and intercepting his supplies.

Katsuki’s clan-brothers massacred the rest of the beta-warriors and the drivers, and eventually the dirt road was silent again. Katsuki watched from atop a large crate on the middle wagon, sword propped on his shoulder, while Sero calmed the horses and the rest of his pack mates began looting the corpses.

Kirishima appeared to his right, grinning widely despite the blood dripping down the side of his face. “Weaklings.”

Katsuki nodded and studied the nasty cut on Kirishima’s brow. “Anyone hurt?”

“Not badly. You?”

“Just a flesh wound.” He sheathed his sword. “We’ll brand the corpses so Dabi knows exactly who’s responsible. And string the alphas up from the trees. He’s gonna have to toughen up his warriors if he wants to fend me off.”

“I’d advise you not to provoke him,” Kirishima said, “but I guess we’re ten years too late for that, eh, Chief?”

Katsuki snorted, then leapt off the wagon to where the alphas lay dead in widening pools of blood. A few of his clan-brothers clapped him amiably on the back as they passed by, buzzing with the adrenalin of a successful raid, then returned to unloading crates for inspection.

Katsuki retrieved a pair of pliers from his belt and got to work pulling out the incisors of the dead alphas. Later, he’d chisel holes through them and add them to the string of teeth around his neck. They clacked pleasantly together while he worked, reminding him of his victories.

One day he’d add Dabi’s teeth to his collection, too.

After extracting and pocketing the teeth, he tore off a strip of tarp from the central wagon and wrapped it tightly around his injured leg to stop the bleeding. The heat amplified the metallic smell of blood, but under that his sensitive nose caught a whiff of alcohol and spices – and something else, something sweet but sharp – mint, maybe?

He leapt onto the wagon and ripped off the rest of the tarp, revealing a dozen boxes and sacks stacked around a large chest – far larger than any of the others. This was what the alphas must have been guarding.

Katsuki grinned. Dabi was going to be pissed.

While running a hand over the chest’s intricate woodwork, he noticed a handful of crudely cut holes and a silver padlock keeping it shut. Weird. Was there something alive inside? He’d heard that some of the feudal lords collected rare and unusual animals as status trophies, like dragons from the east or tigers from the south. Katsuki had no interest in materialistic shows of power, but to be a fair, riding a dragon would be pretty cool. Maybe he could teach it to burn down Dabi’s palace.

Kirishima appeared at his side with a large ceramic bottle of sake tucked under his arm.

 “Check this out!” he said. “There’s enough sake and food here to last us all month. Or, uh, maybe a week if Kaminari gets to it first. We got damn lucky with this train, Chief. I’m guessing it must’ve been an offering or something…” He trailed off, sniffing the air and frowning. “You smell that?”

Katsuki didn’t look up from the padlock. “Hn?”

“Smells like…” He paused, looking momentarily disturbed. “Eh, never mind. Damn, that’s a big chest. What do you think’s inside? Gotta be something good, right?”

“I’m hopin’ for a dragon.”

 “Thousand yen says it’s silk.”

“Gods, I fucking hope not. We couldn’t shift that stuff last time; all the merchants knew it was stolen.”

“At least our tents look nice now.”

“Whatever. I’m gonna break the lock. Put the sake down in case there’s a tiger in here or something.”

“It’s not gonna be a tiger, bro.”

Katsuki ignored him and hunted around for something to smash the lock with. He found five iron ingots wrapped in cloth nearby then returned to the chest and raised one above his head. He brought it down on the lock with enough force to make the chest shudder and sparks fly – once, twice, three times – before the shackle broke free of the lock’s body. Katsuki tossed it over his shoulder, and beside him Kirishima leaned forward, one hand on his sword just in case.

Katsuki heaved open the lid –

and staggered back.

The smell hit him like a shot of alcohol, burning his throat and sinuses and stinging his eyes. He reflexively clamped a hand over his nose and mouth, head swimming, and resisted the urge to gag.

 “Fucking gods,” he choked, finding his balance again while blinking tears out of his eyes. “Who the fuck puts a shit ton of mint in a chest like that?”

Kirishima peered into the chest and his eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Uh. It’s not mint, Chief.”

“What are you talkin’ about? I know the smell of mint when I –“ He stopped short when he looked inside.

It wasn’t mint. It was a girl.

The first thing he noticed was her pale skin. Compared to his clan-brothers and the beta females he’d stumbled across, she looked like she’d never seen a day in the sun; her skin was white as unspoiled milk, stark against the swaths of purple silk wrapped around her limbs.

Secondly, she was gagged and tightly bound with rope. Why go to the trouble of restraining and locking her up? Unless she’d been noisy or tried to escape, he supposed. And on top of that, she had no access to water and was drenched in sweat from being locked in the near-airless chest. Even by Katsuki’s standards, it seemed unnecessary cruel.

His gaze snagged on a silver chain around her neck and the pendant carved from blue gemstone: Dabi’s emblem. A collar to mark his property.

Her eyes slowly opened, and immediately he could tell she’d been drugged; her gaze was unfocussed, breathing labored.

“A slave?” he questioned.

Beside him, Kirishima swallowed thickly. “You can’t tell?”

“What?”

“She’s an omega.”

Katsuki glanced at him in surprise, then shifted his gaze back to her.

This time their eyes met. Her drug-haze cleared for a moment as her eyes widened, pupils dilating. She sniffed the air, then her brow furrowed, and she fixed him with a look like she wanted to drop him dead.

“I think she likes you,” Kirishima joked.

Katsuki scowled back at her and pressed the back of his wrist over his nose. “She fucking stinks.”

“Bro! That’s super rude.”

“So? What’s she gonna do about it? Gods, it’s so fucking strong. Can’t you smell it?”

 “Yeah, but probably not like you can, Chief.” Kirishima smiled crookedly at him, like he was privy to some joke Katsuki didn’t get, then reached into the box and shifted the silk around to get a better look at her. “She’s damn ripe, is why. They probably drugged her to delay her heat until she reaches the palace. I’ll bet Dabi wants to use her as a breeding bitch. Unspoiled omegas are damn rare, especially in these parts. I wonder where he found her?”

“Who cares? But I’ll be damned before I let that motherfucker bring his devil spawn into the world.”

“You’re gonna keep her?”

Katsuki met the omega’s fierce glare again and wrinkled his nose. “No – what the fuck would I do with her?”

“Well, there are several things I could suggest –“

“Oh, shut the fuck up. I’m not interested in omegas or having a mate; I’ve fucking told you that. Havin’ her around will only be a distraction. And she’ll stink the camp out.”

The wagon shook as Sero and Kaminari climbed on beside him, and the pair peered into the chest.

“Fuck, is that an omega?” Sero said, sniffing the air. Katsuki was shocked he could do so without passing out – it was taking all of his concentration to stay standing.

“Damn, she’s cute,” Kaminari added, tongue swiping over his bottom lip. “Can we keep her, Chief? I’ve never had an omega before.”

The omega’s expression darkened, sweat dripping down the side of her face, but her glare quickly returned to Katsuki. Her body was tense and trembling, though he wasn’t sure whether it was from anger or fear.

“No,” Katsuki said.

“Ah, don’t be stingy,” Kaminari moaned. “You know you’ll get first dibs.”

Sero grinned wickedly. “Imagine how pissed Dabi would be if you ruined his elite breeding bitch.”

The thought was tempting. Not because he was interested in fucking the omega, but because he knew how furious Dabi would be. He crossed his arms (breathing through his mouth instead of his nose) and tapped a finger against his bicep while holding the omega’s furious glare.

His thoughts turned to the night the Blueflame Clan invaded the Firebrand Camp – his old home. He remembered the heat of the fires against his face as they burned huts to the ground, families still inside, families he had known since birth. He remembered the look on his mother’s face – the last time he’d seen her - when she’d kissed his cheek then pushed him into a secret passage with Kirishima and commanded them to run. He remembered the blue flames scorching the night sky as he fled into the forest. The sound of clashing steel. The smell of blood. Of his mother’s scent fading to nothing.

And he remembered the screams of his clan-sisters as Dabi’s men raped and murdered them.

 He swore that he would never be like that – like him.

“No,” Katsuki said finally. “We’re letting her go. Untie her.”

The omega’s eyes widened over the gag, both distrustful and surprised.

Kirishima scratched the back of his head. “That’s a nice gesture and all, Chief, but she’s about to go into heat. If you let her go now, she’s gonna be helpless against the alphas in the area. They’ll hunt her down, for sure.”

“Not my problem.”

“It’s just she –“

“Are you arguing with me?” Katsuki snapped, baring his incisors at Kirishima. The betas shrank back, while Kirishima’s gaze dropped submissively to the floor.

“No.”

Hackles smoothed out, Katsuki grunted. “If it bothers you that much, then we’ll let her choose. She can stay with us or she can leave. Happy?”

Kirishima shrugged. “Whatever you want, Chief.”

“So fucking untie her, already. I can’t think when it smells like the gods shit half a ton of mint out of the sky.”

The omega struggled as Kirishima pulled her out of the chest, but he pushed her to her knees and began cutting her binds with a dagger, starting with her feet.

Out in the open, Katsuki was struck by how tiny and soft she was. Her cropped brown hair was plastered to her face with sweat, her cheeks flushed pink, and her eyes were dark gold like hardened tree sap. The jewelry and tiny silk slip she wore did little to conceal her ample curves; he’d heard rumors of female omega’s bodies – how they were opposite in every way to alphas’ and superior in every way to betas’ – and, looking at her now, it seemed the rumors were true.

Fierce heat rushed to his groin, but he shook it off. There was no way he was going to let his alpha instincts control him. He was better than that. Stronger than that.

Kirishima cut the last of the bindings, freeing her hands, then gripped her elbow and helped her stand. She was weak and shaking but managed to stand straight – a full head shorter than Katsuki – before she removed the gag.

She inhaled through her mouth then recoiled, and fixed Katsuki with another deathly glare. He wondered if she could smell that he was an alpha.

Giving her no time to react, he reached for her throat and yanked the chain around her neck. It snapped, and he dangled it between his fingers, letting the midday sun lance off the blue gemstone, before he tossed it over the side of the wagon.

She watched it fall into the blood-stained dirt, expression unreadable.

Katsuki unclipped his water flask from his belt and held it out to her. She glared at him for a moment, then snatched it off him and gulped it so eagerly that water spilled down her chin and pattered onto her chest.

“I’m only letting you go because I know how badly it will piss off that blue-flamed fucker,” Katsuki told her imperiously. “But don’t think for a minute that I’m showin’ you mercy, ‘cause if you try anything I’ll cut out your fucking tongue and –“

She lowered the flask and spat water in his face.

He staggered back with a stuttered curse, wiping water from his eyes, but was afforded no time to react before she pitched the flask at Kaminari. It hit him dead on the nose with a sickening crack, then she spun low and swept Sero’s feet out from under him. Moving again before he hit the floor, she yanked Kirishima’s dagger out its sheath, then sprang forward with the intent to stab Katsuki between the ribs.

Reflexes alone saved him as he stumbled backwards over a box, landing gracelessly on his ass. Kirishima tried to grab her but rather than dodging, she ducked, planted her shoulder into his sternum and hauled him – an alpha that weighed maybe twice what she did – over her back and off the side of the wagon. Katsuki’s clan-brothers yelled in surprise, then dropped what they were doing and started running over.

Her eyes darted nervously to the encroaching betas, then slid to Katsuki again. She held the dagger level with his eyes.

“If I see you again,” she said, “I’ll kill you.”

And then she leapt off the side of the wagon and sprinted into the forest.

Katsuki blinked after her, mouth hanging open and thoroughly perplexed. A second later, Kirishima’s face appeared over the side of the wagon, and he laughed while rubbing the back of his head.

“Oh yeah. She definitely likes you.”

“She broke muh f’ckin’ nose!” Kaminari wailed, blood pouring between his fingers as he clutched his face. “Th’t crazy bi’ch! I’ll fu’kin’ kill her!”

“I’ll second that,” Sero said.

Katsuki climbed to his feet, nursing his bruised ego, and stared around at his prized brothers-in-arms, defeated in seconds by a single half-naked omega.

He cackled. He couldn’t help it. It was so fucking dumb. No wonder Dabi wanted to breed her – she’d probably make some fine pups.

That fire shot to his groin again and his laughter quickly died. He cleared his throat.

“Forget her. She’s not our problem. Keeping an omega in heat will attract Dabi’s alpha warriors and create more problems than she’s worth. Besides, she’s clearly more than capable of takin’ care of herself.”

The boys looked disappointed, but Katsuki ignored them. His attention was drawn again to the empty chest and the strong scent of mint wafting from the silk inside. He scratched his nose, irked, then jumped off the wagon.

“Burn that chest. I don’t want it stinking out the camp.”

Two days later, they were already halfway through the sake. Katsuki probably should have been more annoyed about it, but his pack mates were half-starved from two weeks of sparse rations – a result of the heat wave and shit luck on hunts. Additionally, Dabi had increased the number of escorts for supply wagons travelling through his territory, so Katsuki couldn’t take the risk of jumping them all the time. The only reason he’d risked the last one was because they were desperate. His men – the last of the Firebrands – were fiercely loyal, but he reckoned even they had their limits.

So he let them drink themselves stupid after their successful raid, albeit with rotating watch shifts, and between gorging on horse meat and rice, he even allowed himself a drink. Mainly to get that omega out of his head. Not that he thought about her much, but every now and then he swore he caught a whiff of mint on the wind and it stirred to life some base instincts that left him on edge and pricklier than usual. And he didn’t like that one bit.

It made him feel weak.

Katsuki quietly watched from a distance as his clan-brothers danced and wrestled around the campfire, nursing half a bottle of sake while plotting where they could sell the stolen goods. Merchants within the Iceburn Clan’s territory was probably his best bet; as much as he loathed their scarred chief and his green-haired mate, they shared his disdain for the Blueflames and tended to overlook Katsuki selling mysteriously acquired goods on their border. Plus, they’d been on good terms with the Firebrands before their downfall; Katsuki had been forced to spend a lot of time with the chief’s mate when they were pups. His mother had trusted them, which was a good enough reason not to add them to his hit list.

Kirishima appeared at his side, breaking his contemplation, and sat heavily beside him. His familiar scent of pine was muted under the stronger smell of sake, and he was more than a little red-faced from drinking all evening. He peered up at the stars for a moment before finally saying what was on his mind.

“That was a wasted opportunity, you know.”

 “The supplies train?”

“The omega.”

Katsuki rolled his eyes. “Go after her then, if you want to fuck her so badly.”

“I meant for you. You can’t mate with those betas you fuck.”

“I told you before: I’m not interested in finding a mate.”

“Finding an omega in the wild like that is like finding a diamond in the dirt,” Kirishima told him. “They’re cloistered away by the chieftains long before they come of age. You won’t find another one that ripe again for a long time. If ever.”

“I’ll get one when I become emperor,” he replied indifferently. “Anyway, she wasn’t wild. She probably belonged to someone else before Dabi stole her.”

“Wild, stolen, purchased, whatever. My point is: you should’ve taken her. Or at least sold her. We could’ve lived on that money for months.”

“We’re not slavers. And I don’t want her around.”

Kirishima side-eyed him with a grin. “Why? Worried you wouldn’t be able to control yourself?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Katsuki snarled, flashing him a molten look. “I’m not some lesser alpha that would fall into rut the moment they encounter an omega. That’s pathetic. And she smelt fucking disgusting anyway.”

Kirishima hummed vaguely and drank from the bottle of sake. At length, he said, “You act like being mated is a bad thing, when in truth it would make you ten times stronger than you are now. Strong enough to fight Dabi head on.”

Katsuki shot to his feet, hackles stirring and teeth bared. “I don’t need a fucking mate to kill that bastard! I’m strong enough already!”

Kirishima waved a hand placatively. “I know, Chief. I’m just sayin’ that –“

“I don’t give a fuck what you have to say!” Katsuki roared, kicking the bottle of sake out of Kirishima’s hand. “Bring it up again and I’ll pull out your teeth, understand? I don’t wanna hear another fucking word about it! You…”

 He trailed off suddenly, catching a scent on the wind. He stiffened, sniffed again, then rounded quickly on his men.

“Snuff the fire!”

All merriment and drunkenness vanished in an instant; well trained and nimble, his men smothered the fire and disappeared into the tall grass. Kirishima followed Katsuki up the rocky ridge they’d camped behind, and together they lay on their stomachs and peered across the heathland that rucked up against the forest.

Three figures emerged from the trees and stepped into the moonlit field. Even from a distance Katsuki could make out the intricate tattoos on their arms and chests marking them as part of the Blueflame clan.

Alphas.

“Should we prepare for an attack?” Kirishima whispered.

Katsuki paused, watching as they picked a path along the forest outskirts. Strange. The wind would have carried his scent towards them, yet they made no effort to hide themselves or show aggression. They were unmistakably Dabi’s men – so why weren’t they attacking?

Suddenly it dawned on him, and he stood up.

From across the field, one of the alphas looked up, meeting his gaze. Katsuki felt his hackles stir, but after a tense moment, the other alpha simply looked away and continued on.

Kirishima stood, his brow furrowed. “What was all that about?”

Once Katsuki was sure the alphas weren’t going to launch an attack, he climbed down the rock back to camp and whistled for his pack mates. They emerged from the grass, weapons drawn and looking disconcerted.

“They’re looking for her,” Katsuki told them. “The omega. That bastard probably wants her back.”

Which kind of pissed him off, honestly. Why would Dabi prioritize her capture over his? Surely he was more of a threat?

“Why send three elite alphas after one girl?” Kirishima said. “Sure, she’s a ripe omega but he must have others to breed from...”

“Maybe it’s the principle of the thing,” Kaminari commented.

“Or maybe she’s someone important?” Sero added. “That must be it. I mean, she wasn’t that pretty.”

 “I’d fuck her,” Kaminari said.

“You’d fuck anything with a pulse,” Kirishima remarked, then turned his gaze to the edge of the forest and sighed. “Poor kid. She won’t stand a chance once she goes into heat. We should’ve kept her; now she’ll be taken back to Dabi.”

“Keep her?” Kaminari squawked. “I’m fuckin’ glad we let her go! There’s no telling how many alphas are looking for her.”

“Three,” Katsuki said, staring off at the forest. “There’s only three.”

“Yeah, for now,” Kirishima said, “but he’ll likely send more when – h-hey, what are you doing? Chief?”

Katsuki ignored him and stalked to his bedroll. He buckled on his belt, water canteen, his sword and gathered a few supplies, then threw his fur-trimmed cape around his shoulders. His pack-mates were waiting in a rough semi-circle when he returned, their expressions flat with concern.

He walked up to Kirishima and crossed his arms. “I’m goin’ after her.”

“What!? Why? I thought you said –“

“I know what I said. And my sentiments remain unchanged. But… I don’t want the Blueflames getting hold of her. Clearly she’s important to him for some reason, and while nothing brings me greater joy than depriving that fucker of the things he wants, I don’t want him breeding her either. The last thing we need are his pups walking the earth.”

“I’ll come with you,” Kirishima said, thumbing the hilt of his sword.

“No. I’ll go alone.”

“But –“

“I’ll hunt her faster alone, you know that. Besides, I need you here leading the pack while I’m gone. I want you to harass their flanks while I pursue her. Don’t engage with them; I don’t want any casualties. Just buy me some time so I can get to her before they do. I’ll find you after.”

“She’s got a two-day head start on you,” Kirishima commented warily. “And if she goes into heat, you might not be able to protect her anyway. Dabi’s alphas are probably on suppressants, whereas you…”

“I’m not like other alphas!” Katsuki declared hotly. “I won’t lose control and I have no intention of taking her back here, but I can’t risk that bastard getting hold of her or killing any of us in the process.”

“So what’s your plan?”

Katsuki stared at him for a moment, then started toward the forest. Underneath the smell of campfire smoke and the musky undertones of the nearby alphas, he snatched the faintest whiff of mint, like a drop of blood in an ocean.

“I’m going to kill her.”

Chapter Text

PART TWO
Cardamom in the Dark

The forest never slept. Was never quiet. Never dull. Flowers splashed vibrant colors across a world washed in inky shadow, and the birdsong and trilling of insects was a pervasive choir to the rustling of leaves. Not even the trees offered respite from the heat, which summoned swarms of bugs around the stagnant pools in their roots.

Ochako Uraraka brushed mosquitoes off her arms as she passed one such cloud. Her omega blood put them off biting her, but it didn’t stop them from trying. The buzzing was driving her mad – in fact, the whole forest was driving her mad; it was too loud and bright and disorientating and she felt sick from it, couldn’t step a foot forward without the world spinning at the edges of her vision.

Well. Maybe it wasn’t the forest that was making her sick. Maybe it was something else. But she refused to think about that; all she could do was put one foot in front of the other. Keep going. Keep moving. Because if she stopped, they’d catch her.

The alphas.

Their smell hounded her with a tenacity that rivaled the bugs; a mishmash of musky tones that stood in contrast to the fresh, lively scent of the forest. A constant reminder of their pursuit. How they wouldn’t stop until they found her.

She paused briefly to catch her breath, panting and sweating, and leaned against a tree for support as the world tipped at a disagreeable angle. She couldn’t go on like this for much longer, for more reasons than one.

Days trapped in that cursed box with little water and no food had left her weak. The suppressants they’d force fed her had addled her mind and disturbed her body’s natural cycle. She was hungry and thirsty and exhausted, whereas the pursuing alphas suffered no such debilitations. And even if they had, they were much stronger than she was. Stronger than she thought they’d be. She’d killed a fair number of alphas in her time, but Dabi’s men were a cut above the rest. Hence why she’d ended up in this position in the first place.

Worse still, she was about to go into heat. And not just any heat: her first heat.

She knew what to expect, to a degree. She’d locked away her sisters in the caverns deep underground and doused them in perfume to mask their scent from passing alphas. She’d stayed with them through their pain and sobbing and begging, making sure they were cleaned and fed and watered until finally, finally, their heat passed, and everything would go back to normal.

But Ochako didn’t have that luxury. Her pack sisters weren’t here, and she was out in the open with numerous alphas on her tail, and if they caught her…

She didn’t want to think about it.

A low, thrumming anger sat in her chest, beating at the injustice of it all. She’d trained her whole life to defend herself and her pack sisters against the alphas that would – and often did – inevitably come for them. But all that training meant nothing the moment she fell into heat; they’d ruin her, and she’d let them, and it made her sick.

Gods, she didn’t want to do this alone. She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t hide. All she could do was run and pray to all the gods for a miracle.

She clenched the stolen dagger in her palm, comforted by the tacky leather wrapped around its handle, then pushed off the tree and continued onward.

Tree roots and brambles snagged her bare feet, but she couldn’t afford to be precious. She was sleep-deprived and dehydrated, living on a diet of berries and mushrooms; hunting was too time consuming. Her only solace was knowing the alphas couldn’t last on such a narrow diet; they’d have to find meat at some point, which would hopefully buy her time.

She followed the scent of fresh water until finally she stumbled upon a slow flowing stream that cut through the dense undergrowth. Feeling a rush of joy for the first time in days, she dived in without any hesitation and gasped in delight as the water washed away her grime and sweat. The rocks were sharp and slippery beneath her feet and weeds tangled around her ankles, but the freezing temperature helped lift the veil of her exhaustion.

She couldn’t risk drinking this water, but she reckoned the source couldn’t be too far away, so she climbed out on the opposite bank and followed it upstream. As an afterthought, she removed all the jewelry the alphas had forced her to wear and threw them in the water. Some of them sank, while others were swept away. She knew she couldn’t mask her scent entirely, but hopefully the scattered jewelry might throw them off.

She sniffed the air as she picked her way through the dense undergrowth. The rich, damp scent of the bank partly masked the stink of the alphas, but she swore a few of them were stronger than before. It was hard to differentiate them, but she thought she picked up burnt wood and spice. Were they getting closer?

Unable to rest, Ochako pushed on. She trekked for the rest of the day until the shadows grew longer and the forest’s song rose to an unbearable crescendo. Her impending heat was sharpening her senses, she knew, and there was a strange feeling in the pit her stomach, like a fruit growing large and ripe.

She didn’t have much time left, and that thought filled her with fear. What the hell was she going to do when her heat finally struck?

Twilight cast the forest into rich shades of purple by the time she reached the stream’s source, where it trickled from a sheer rockface into a pool. Dizzy from dehydration and relief, Ochako dropped her dagger and waded into the water, then pressed her mouth against the rock and drank with reckless abandon. It was cool and delicious; she nearly burst into tears from sheer relief. 

Once she’d drunk her fill, she dipped her head under water, washing off an afternoon’s worth of sweat, and played out her options. The forest was darkening quickly, and even though the alphas could see better than her in the dark, she reckoned they would stop to rest overnight. There was no way they could pursue her tirelessly in this heatwave, and they’d have to eat at some point.

She was tempted to push on through the night to put more distance between them, but she was already on the verge of collapse. She’d trekked two days on only three hours sleep – anymore and she might as well gift wrap herself for them.

Camp down it was, then. At least she had a fresh water source here, and there were plenty of trees to climb so she could be off the ground while she rested.

Ochako was just starting to feel a little better when a voice called out across the pool.

“Hello, little bird.”

She spun clumsily around, splashing in the water, and spied an alpha crouching by the side of the pool. He was turning her dagger over in his hand and had long, dark hair and shaved eyebrows. His blue tattoos marked him as one of Dabi’s alphas.

“You flew your coop,” he said, grinning slowly. “And now Lord Dabi wants you back.”

He was slurring, drugged to the eyeballs with suppressants – probably on Dabi’s orders so he wouldn’t rape her when she went into heat – which explained why she hadn’t smelled him approach. The suppressants would slow him down considerably – maybe she could outrun him?

Still, she didn’t trust the suppressants completely. Her mother had once warned her that running from an alpha while in heat triggered their hunting reflex and rut respectively. But what alternative did she have?

She took a step backward.

The alpha tsked and slowly shook his head. “Now I know you’re not going to run away from me, little bird. An omega can’t run from an alpha.”

She took another step back.

He grinned, then beckoned her with the dagger. “Come here.”

That pressure inside Ochako’s belly ballooned and she gasped, her legs going weak against the rocks. She fell under the water for a second then came up spluttering, her mind buzzing like a hive. Everything seemed fuzzy; all her thoughts were drawn to the alpha and his smell of burnt wood.

“There’s a good little bird,” Burntwood said, teeth flashing in the growing darkness. “Come to your alpha. That’s it. Closer.”

Her legs were moving. Why were her legs moving? Why was she getting closer to him? She wanted to stop, to run the other way, but the other part of her mind – a part she didn’t recognize - forced her to obey him. This dirty alpha that would hurt her then drag her to Dabi. So why – why was she doing this? Why couldn’t she stop?

“Good girl. Almost there, sweet bird, just a little more…”

As soon as she was within reaching distance the alpha grabbed her arm and hauled her out of the pool.

The tight vice of his fingers jolted her thoughts back into place, and with an enraged shriek she sank her teeth into his forearm. He roared and hit her on the side of the head with the hilt of the dagger, but she refused to let go, even when blood pooled into her open mouth and ran down her chin.

The alpha hit her again, harder this time. She released him with a yelp, then instinctively ducked out of a third blow. Skirting the ground, she made a dash for the treeline, but he grabbed her hair and hauled her backwards, throwing her against the rocks.

“Crazy bitch!” he snarled while holding his bleeding arm. “I’ll cut your fucking tendons, for that! You don’t need to walk to be bred!”

He swooped forward, grabbed her calf, then brandished the dagger in his other hand. The blade nicked the back of her ankle, but before he could slice through her tendon, she kicked him with her free foot and felt the satisfying crunch of his lip busting open against his teeth. He roared again, dropping both her and the dagger as he flung his hands over his face.

Not wasting a second, she snatched the dagger from under his feet and sank it hilt-deep into his shoulder.

The alpha roared in pain, blood coursing from his lip, but he yanked the dagger free and leveled it at her. “I’ll cut out your fucking tongue, you hateful bitch! Now lie down!”

Despite the adrenaline and the blood trickling from her head wound, her traitorous omega body quivered under his command. She halted her retreat towards the tree line.

“Lie. Down!” he roared again.

Her body began to shake as she resisted, her chest heaving, sweat mixing with blood. She wasn’t in heat – not yet! She wouldn’t listen to him, damn it! She wouldn’t!

She remained standing and bared her teeth at him in a spiteful grin.

“Fine,” the alpha spat, advancing towards her. “We’ll do this the hard way.”

He was on her in a flash, one hand wrapped around her throat and the dagger pressed to her cheek. She slammed her eyes shut and braced herself for the pain –

But it didn’t come.

There was a thud, then the sound of metal meeting metal, and suddenly the air was thick with the smell of cardamom.

Ochako opened her eyes and saw a blond alpha male standing in front of her. The same one who had freed her from the chest. The same one who had apparently let her go. She hadn’t believed him, of course, so she wasn’t surprised to find him here, undoubtedly fighting for his right to rut her first.

But the blond alpha didn’t look at her. His strange, crimson eyes were fixed on the other alpha, and his jaw was clenched in quiet fury. His red cape hung limply to his ankles, splattered with the same dirt and bloodstains that covered his tattooed arms and chest. He gripped his sword with white-knuckled determination.

“You,” Burntwood said, his eyes going wide with recognition. Then he sneered. “Heh. Well, today’s my lucky day. Lord Dabi will reward me generously when I fetch him both his breeding bitch and the head of the Firebrand pup.”

The blond said nothing. He threw down his sword and advanced on the other alpha with only his fists to match Burntwood’s dagger.

 Burntwood’s cocky grin slid away when he saw the blond’s expression, and he didn’t manage to get the dagger up in time to ward off a fearsome blow to his jaw. He went down hard, and the blond was on him before Ochako could blink. He grabbed Burntwood’s arm as he tried to stab him, then executed a quick, sharp movement that snapped Burntwood’s wrist like a dry twig. Dabi’s alpha wailed and dropped the dagger, hand falling limply to his side.

Far from placated, the blond grabbed the sides of his head with both hands and smacked the back of his skull against the rocks. Over and over again until the crunching became wetter, and in the dark Ochako saw blood creep over the rocks and drip into the pool.

Eventually, the alpha’s gurgling stopped, and his twitching body fell still. Only then did the blond slump forward, panting, his chin resting against his chest as Burntwood’s scent began to fade.

Ochako took a nervous step back and a twig snapped under heel. The blond’s head whipped around, and he reached for the dagger at Burntwood’s side.

She was about to run when his pheromones suddenly crashed into her. The smell of cardamom permeated every fiber of her being, aggravating that tightly coiled ball in her core. Why did he smell so strong? She wanted to fight him. She wanted to kill him. But it was too much. She was already so tired, half-starved and sleep deprived; there was blood dripping down her face and her body didn’t feel like hers anymore. Everything was upside down and inside out and wrong.

So when he pinned her against the rockface with the dagger pressed against her throat, all she could do was meet his crimson gaze with her own and whimper.

 The blade pricked her skin, drawing blood. His glower was ferocious, but he was trembling, chest heaving from an effort she didn’t understand. His musky scent filled her nostrils, turning her weak, and on the back of her weakness she felt a surge of anger.

This was it. This was how it ended. She’d hoped to get to Dabi first and plunge her dagger through his throat before he could rut her. But look at her now. She hadn’t saved her pack sisters at all. Couldn’t even make it to the palace without some stupid alpha thwarting her plans.

Ochako grabbed the blond’s wrist and pushed the blade harder against her throat.  

“What are you waiting for!?” she snarled. “Do it! If I can’t fight off one measly alpha then I’ll never be able to kill Dabi, so you might as well kill me before he does!”

Some unreadable emotion flashed behind his eyes and he held her gaze for a long minute. She didn’t blink, didn’t falter, even as her hand began to tremble and a wave of fierce despair threatened to steal her breath away.

“Do it!” she howled.

Abruptly, he lowered the dagger. He inhaled deeply, then gagged and stepped back, throwing a hand over his mouth.

“You really fucking stink, you know that?”

Too tired and muddled to be offended, Ochako slid down the wall and let out a shaky breath. “S-speak for yourself.”

He narrowed his eyes at her but said nothing, then slid the dagger into his belt. Although he was painted in shades of grey by her night vision, she could tell he looked considerably more run down than when she’d seen him last; there were dark circles under his eyes like he hadn’t slept for days and a slump to his shoulders that spoke of hunger. If she’d been in a better state of health, maybe she could have fought him off, but as it was, she was helpless.

“Aren’t you going to kill me?” she asked.

He peered curiously at her, then glanced sideways. “I changed my mind.”

Of course he did. Why would he want to rut a corpse? He’d followed the scent of her brewing heat, worked into a frenzy from the thrill of the hunt, and now he was going to take her.

She miserably clamped her legs together, knowing she was going to have to fight again and would probably die in the process.

“I’m takin’ you home,” he said suddenly.

She blinked at him.

“Where is it?” he asked. “Your clan, I mean. Do you have a pack?”

“I…” She squinted at the pool, wracking her brain. Of course she had pack, but she’d rather die before leading an alpha to them. And not just one alpha, but the others who weren’t far behind. Besides, Dabi would only find her again. “I can’t go back. Not yet.”

“Why? Surely there are alpha males in your pack who’ll protect you?”

She swallowed thickly. Revealing that her pack was all-female would only expose them to greater risk; there were few alphas who could resist a temptation like that.

He tsked in the face of her silence. “Fine, whatever. I’ll take you to the Iceburn Clan instead. The chief and his mate will treat you well, and Dabi sure as hell won’t step on their toes to get you back any time soon.”

She stared at his profile, completely taken aback. She’d never known an alpha to offer help to an omega, and certainly not for free. “And in return I suppose you want to breed me?”

He scowled at her, nose wrinkling and eyes burning in the dark. “I don’t want anything except to stop you from breeding with that Blueflame fucker. Depriving him of a potential mate is enough of a reward for me.” His eyes raked her frame in the dark. “What’s so special about you, anyway?”

She stiffened, then shrugged. Explaining that to him would only endanger her further. Although this alpha seemed different to the others – slightly too short and too wiry compared to the average alpha – he still had that feral quality about him that she didn’t like, and it made her nervous.

He sniffed the air and his eyes narrowed again. “We need to keep moving. Iceburn territory is a five-day hike from here, so we’ve got our work cut out for us if we want to keep ahead of them.” He eyed the blood dripping down her face from the head wound. “You should wash your blood off first, it’ll only create a stronger trail for them to follow us by. My scent will mask yours for only so long.”

We. Our. Who the hell did this guy think he was? Typical alpha male, inserting himself into a position of authority with unwavering arrogance. Honestly, if the situation were different, Ochako would have murdered him on the spot. But her choices were bleakly limited. Either she went alone and risked being caught by Dabi’s alphas during heat, or she went with this alpha and risked him falling into rut. It was a no-win situation.

But this alpha hadn’t hurt her when he could have. Not yet, anyway. She couldn’t say the same for the other alphas. And at least this alpha apparently didn’t like Dabi either.

Climbing shakily to her feet, she staggere d over to the pool and submerged herself again. The wound on her forehead was superficial but had left behind a nasty headache, and the ball of pressure in her belly was worsening with every passing moment. She suspected it was due to the alpha’s scent, which was strong enough to mask every other scent within a mile radius. It made her feel woozy and cast a fog over her thoughts.

It wouldn’t be long now.

The alpha perched on the pool’s edge and hurriedly washed himself, eyes roaming the undergrowth for signs of trouble. After refilling his water flask from the stream’s source, he returned to Burntwood’s corpse and savagely yanked out his incisors with a pair of pliers.

“What are you doing?” she asked, quietly shocked.

“Mind your fucking business,” he snapped as he pocketed the teeth, and it was only then that she noticed the strings of teeth, all different shapes and sizes, strung to a necklace against his bare chest.

Great. She’d landed herself with a psychotic alpha that collected teeth.

“Hurry up,” he said. “We need to move. Now.”

Grumbling, Ochako hoisted herself out of the pool then shook the moisture out of her hair. When she looked up, she caught him staring at her body, undoubtedly fully exposed beneath the sheer, white slip Dabi’s men had forced her into. He turned away with an unhappy expression, then withdrew the dagger from his belt and waved it in her general direction.

“Take it.”

She approached him cautiously. “Why?”

“So you can defend yourself,” he said, though he didn’t specify who she’d be defending herself from: him, or the other alphas? “Let’s go. I want to put at least ten miles between us and them before the night is through.”

She took the dagger and, realizing she had no way of sheathing it, took Burntwood’s belt from his corpse and secured it around her hips, along with the dagger and his water flask. When she returned her attention to the alpha, she found he’d ripped off a strip of his cloak and tied it into a makeshift bandana around his nose and mouth.

“I’m not that bad,” she muttered.

“Yes you are,” he countered angrily. “Stay close behind me but don’t fucking touch me, understand?”

“Yes, alpha,” she said, then clamped her mouth shut. She hadn’t meant to speak so subserviently – had her heat made her say that? Gods, she had never uttered those words in her whole entire life.

He scowled at her, as caught off guard as she was, then visibly shook himself and marched away.

Night fell quickly in the forest, dark and absolute without the moon and stars to light the way, making it hard to see even with Ochako’s night vision. Tiredness, hunger and her growing heat-fever did nothing to help her weakness, and she stumbled into the alpha’s back on more than one occasion. Every time he would whirl on her, snarling and belligerent, but she was too exhausted to apologize.

Despite his own evident tiredness, he somehow remained alert, sniffing the air and pinning his attention on every shifting shadow, every rustling leaf, every hooting night bird.

With nothing to break the monotony of their trek, she tried to dissect the alpha’s intentions.

It was alarming how quickly his pheromones had shaken her out of her suppressant-induced haze. She’d been delirious while locked in the chest, everything muted and numb like she was plunged underwater. She didn’t hunger, didn’t pine – all she could do was sweat and tremble in the suffocating dark. Until suddenly his scent pulled her out of the water, reigniting all her senses and stirring to life the heat in her belly.

She’d heard stories of rogue packs of males scouring the countryside for riches and females, and had fully expected him to rut on the spot before throwing her to his pack. Instead, he’d done what no other alpha had done to an omega before: he’d shown mercy. Let her go.

Well. Sort of. Because he’d still hunted her, hadn’t he? He’d wanted to kill her at the pool; she’d smelt bloodlust on him – an underlying tone of iron beneath warm cardamom.  So why hadn’t he killed her? If the other alphas caught up with them, he would have to fight them to the death. He had nothing to gain from keeping her alive, unless he intended to breed her after all, despite showing little interest in her aside from occasionally complaining about her scent.

It didn’t make any sense, and despite her exhaustion, she decided to tackle the issue directly. After all, neither of them could avoid what was coming.

“I’m going into heat,” she said.

He didn’t pause, didn’t falter. Just grunted.

“It’s my first heat.”

“So?”

She frowned. “Do you understand what that means?”

“I don’t care. Quit yappin’; you’re wasting energy.”

The traitorous part of her omega body begged her to obey his command, but she quashed it down. “You’re not on suppressants; you’ll fall into rut.”

He whirled on her this time, eyes flashing. “I won’t!”

“You will. It’s inevitable. All alphas fall into rut when omegas go into heat.”

“That’s bullshit!”

 “You think my pheromones are strong now? They’ll be ten times worse in heat. And I’ll beg for you, alpha. Tell me your name and I’ll scream it all night long. I’ll yowl and sob and cry and do anything you ask me to. You won’t be able to resist. And then the other alphas will come and take me, too. And I’ll let them. I’ll let anyone. Because that’s what heat does to an omega. Do you understand?”

 “I won’t let them take you,” he told her quietly.

She studied him in the low light, feeling angry and frustrated by his unwavering certainty. “Why?”

“Because what use am I if I can’t protect one measly omega?” he said, then turned on his heel. “If you’d rather end it, then you have the dagger. I can do it for you, or you can do it yourself; I don’t care either way.” He glanced over his shoulder “Or you can live long enough to watch me cut that Blueflame fucker’s head off his shoulders. Your choice.”

Watching him walk away, she felt that ball in her stomach loosen and a rush of heat sweep through her body.

She wondered if his words would offer any comfort in the days to come.

By the grace of the gods alone, Ochako managed to make it through the night without passing out, but suffice to say she was a mess. As the rising sun leaked through the canopy, it was all she could do to stay upright. Sweat poured down her body in rivers, pasting her slip to her body like a second skin. She clung to the alpha’s cape like it was lifeline out of the dark, and if he noticed, he didn’t protest.

The growing heat in her belly was spreading, spurred by the overpowering stink of cardamom. Everything was too loud, too sharp, too bright. She even thought she could hear the alpha’s heartbeat beneath his own tired pants.

It wasn’t long before the world began to spin. She couldn’t catch her breath and the headache from her head wound pressed wicked talons behind her eyes. The sound of her feet padding through the undergrowth became distant, and the edges of her vision faded to black.

Inevitably, a tree root spelled her undoing. Unable to summon the energy to step over it, her foot got caught and she crashed face first into the alpha’s back.

They tumbled with an almighty crash onto the forest floor, but she barely felt the impact. He snarled and shoved her roughly onto her back where she stayed motionless, staring at nothing, not a scrap of energy left in her body.

The alpha’s face came into view as he leaned over her. His crimson eyes burned like bloody moons in a night sky, furious and dark, then his hand loomed towards her face.

He had meant to grab her shoulder, perhaps to shake her awake, but by some cruel twist of fate his little finger accidentally grazed the scent gland on her throat.

And the world caught fire.

The tightly coiled ball in her belly erupted and flooded her with sickly-sweet pleasure and pain. It rushed through her like a tsunami, igniting every nerve ending and rending her speechless. She gasped, back arching, vision blurring, a mewl falling from her open mouth.

Helplessly, she gulped in the alpha’s spicy scent. He smelt so good – so good. How had she not noticed before? She wanted to drown in it, drown in him, wanted him to tear her open and fill her up with that scent because suddenly she was sure she couldn’t live without it, gods, it hurt, it felt so good, it hurt –

The alpha leapt off her like she’d caught fire, his eyes wide and wild. He staggered, throwing his arm over his nose despite the bandana, then groaned a long, rumbling note that Ochako felt all the way to her toes.

“Fuck,” he said.

Her heat had begun.

Chapter Text

PART THREE
Madness

Fuck.

Fuck.

Katsuki wished his thoughts would arrange into something vaguely helpful, but everything was going blurry, slipping away from him like a fish in water. All he could do was swear over and over like that was somehow useful.

Fuck!

He wanted to turn away, to close his eyes, close his ears. But he couldn’t. His attention was fixed wholly on the omega writhing and mewling on the forest floor at his feet.

He didn’t need to be told she was in heat. It was damn obvious. Might as well have been written in blood across the trees.

Nothing could have prepared him for its intensity.

Her pheromones, which had been obnoxious but tolerable beforehand, slammed into him with enough force to make him stagger. Now he clung uselessly to a tree, hooded gaze pinned on her, unable to hear anything over the thunder of blood in his ears.

She seemed oblivious to anything outside her bubble of pleasure/pain. Her face was brilliant red as she panted and sweated, open mouthed and whimpering, eyes clamped closed as though the light hurt her eyes. The white slip lifted as she writhed, revealing her thick, creamy thighs damp with… with...

He choked and pressed the bandana harder to his face as another wave of her pheromones hit him, forcing him into a state of unbearable arousal.

He wanted her. There was no denying it. His mind was leaping ahead of his body, begging him to take her. Break her. Ruin her. Fuck her until she couldn’t stand it anymore.

His lust had grown while he’d hunted her the last few days, the scent of her growing heat urging him on without rest or food, day and night, feeding a growing restlessness in his stomach that definitely hadn’t been there when he’d left his pack days before. He’d almost forgotten why he was hunting her in the first place; all he knew was that he wanted her first. Wanted her now.

That alone had almost driven him wild, and when he’d finally found her, bleeding and at the mercy of some pathetic Blueflame alpha, a cold, dangerous rage had crept over him. He was used to anger, but this was a different kind, emerging from a place he hadn’t known existed. Strange thoughts rose unbidden to the forefront of his mind: she was his, his, nobody else’s, and he would rip out the heart of anyone who so much as looked at her, his omega. His.

And then he’d killed the alpha and his mind had cleared long enough to remember why he’d hunted her in the first place. He tried to redirect his anger towards her – one slash of the knife and he’d be free of this gnawing want and could return to his pack and his great plans of revenge – but his resolve evaporated the moment he pressed her to the rock face. She was so small and soft – trembling and exhausted like a baby bird fallen from its nest – but still she’d stared him down with the kind of fury he recognized all too well.

She wanted revenge, and it seemed wrong to deprive her of that, even if he didn’t understand why.

The omega groaned and turned on her side, drawing him back to the present. Katsuki’s gaze trailed helplessly along her curves, imagining how it would feel to kick her legs apart and fuck her. Pump her full of his seed until she was ready to whelp, then drag her back to his pack, ruined and bloody but his. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything – more than he wanted to kill Dabi – but that desire wasn’t a conscious choice. It was his alpha instincts – nothing more – and that made him angry.

He was better than this. He could resist. He knew he could. Because if he couldn’t keep a promise to one measly omega then what good was he as an alpha – as a person?

And if he forced himself on her like that, he would never be able face his mother in the afterlife.

Pressing his forehead against the tree trunk, he closed his eyes and forced his breathing back under control. There was no use fighting her scent; he just had to accept it. Imagine it as part of the forest. It meant nothing to him, did nothing to him. She was pathetic, weak, useless. He didn’t need her. Didn’t want her.

Don’t need her.

Don’t want her.

He repeated those words over and over like a mantra, until the blood stopped roaring in his ears and he could finally think again. The lust was still there, of course, but he’d just about avoided going into rut. 

Still, if she had almost driven him, a clearly superior alpha, into a frenzy, what would her heat do to the other alphas? They would catch wind of her soon, if they hadn’t already, and he was in no state to fight them off. He needed rest and food so he could regain his strength.

Katsuki sniffed the air. He could barely smell anything besides mint but before she’d fully succumbed to her heat, he’d judged the other alphas were at least ten miles away. Thank gods they’d walked all night, otherwise they’d be in trouble.

He slowly turned back to face the omega. She seemed to have calmed a little and now lay motionless on the ground, one hand pressed to her stomach while she panted hotly against her shoulder.

He approached her cautiously, ignoring the way his body throbbed as the space between them closed.

 “Stand up,” he commanded.

She whined and squirmed, legs sliding through the dirt, then cracked open an eye and peered deliriously up at him. “C-can’t.”

“You have to. We have to keep moving.”

“I c-can’t, alpha, please, I can’t –“

“Get up!”

“I can’t!” she wailed.

“You can!” He kicked the ground beside her, spraying her with dirt. “You’re better than this! Are you just gonna lay here and let those alphas ruin you?”

She sobbed, clutching her stomach again. “N-no…”

“Then get up!”

Very slowly, she turned onto her side and used a trembling arm to prop herself up. Her head hung between her shoulders as she whimpered for a moment, then she tucked her feet underneath her and stood up.

He opened his mouth to praise her, then thought better of it. “Let’s go.”

After barely an hour of walking, he knew they wouldn’t be able to maintain the same pace as yesterday. The omega was making a valiant effort to keep moving, but he could tell that every step was torture for her; she would undoubtedly collapse before the morning was through.

It was no use then. They were going to have to camp through her heat.

He turned to face her, crossing his arms and sticking his tongue in his cheek while he considered their options. Her gaze was cautious as she leaned against a tree, but there was no denying the desire in her eyes. Thankfully she kept her mouth shut, because he’d lose his mind if she started begging for him.

“I’m going to find somewhere for us to rest,” he told her. “You need to wait here while I’m gone.”

He eyes widened. “Y-you can’t… You can’t leave me alone like this!”

“I won’t be long. I need to be able smell something other than fucking mint.”

“But what if the other alphas – “

“They’re still miles away. You’ll be fine for half an hour.”

“Nooo,” she wailed, then reached out to grab him.

He lunged back and snarled at her. Didn’t she understand how close he was to losing control? If she so much as brushed a finger on him he’d instantly fall into rut.

Raking back his control, he cocked a finger at her – “Stay,” – then stalked away without looking back.

He had to trek further than expected before he could discern anything over her stink. She’d unintentionally marked him when she’d stumbled into him earlier, and it clung to his cape like a bloodstain, snapping at his heels so he couldn’t entirely shake off those minty aftertones. Sniffing the air, he detected faintly – very faintly – the musk of the pursuing alphas, but more importantly he smelled fresh water.

As he trekked on, his limbs screamed with fatigue and his thoughts were beginning to dull; he needed to rest soon. Even he could only go so long without sleep or food.

The forest grew more ancient the deeper he ventured, and great trees soared over him, casting shadow over thickets of ferns and saplings. He caught a whiff of deer and his stomach growled; he’d have to find food for them both at some point. There was no way she could hunt in her condition.

Eventually, he came across the water source, barely a trickle over rocks that tumbled down the side of a steep incline. Likely it was a notable waterfall once, but the heat wave had dried it to almost nothing.

His gaze climbed higher, following the swell of the land, and beneath a dense knot of trees he spotted a shadow. He scaled the incline to investigate and confirmed it was a hollow, perhaps five meters deep before it hit a wall of dirt, its entrance partially concealed by twisting roots and ferns.

Better than nothing. The fact it was so close to a water source was favorable too, plus the incline would make it hard for the alphas to launch a surprise attack, if they happened to catch Katsuki off guard.

He hiked back to where he’d left her by following her potent scent and found her curled between the roots of a tree, shaking and panting and looking miserable. Her eyes lit up when she spotted him though, and she rolled her hips in a suggestive way that made his loins burn.

“Don’t do that,” he snapped, then pulled his makeshift bandana back over his nose to ward off her pheromones. “I found you a den. Come on.”

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” she crooned, her eyes clouding with lust again. “But I did what you said. I stayed. Am I a good girl?”

He wondered how the hell this mewling, pathetic mess was the same omega that spat water in his face just a few days ago. “Get up.”

Chest heaving and legs shaking, she dragged herself upright using the tree trunk for support. She took a wobbly step towards him, nearly fell, then righted herself.

“I feel like… like I’m on f-fire…” she said weakly.

“It’s not far,” he told her, taking an uneasy step back. “I can’t carry you; you know that. You have to do this yourself.”

She hiccupped, her dusky eyes latching onto his. “Puh-please, I want you to –“

“SHUT UP! Do not ask me for anything! I mean it. Start walkin’. You can hold onto my cloak but I swear to the gods if you touch me I’ll break your fucking arms, got it!?”

“Yes, alpha,” she said in a dreamy way, like he hadn’t just threatened to commit bodily trauma.

He scrubbed his hands over his eyes then started walking, albeit at a slower pace, and after a moment he felt a small tug on his cape as she trailed behind him.

It was a slow hike back to the den and on more than one occasion he was sorely tempted to carry her, but of course he couldn’t; he’d only just mustered the remnants of his self-control but he reckoned if she so much as breathed on him he’d take her right there in the dirt. Once they reached the den it would be fine, he reassured himself, because she could sit in there and ride it out while he kept watch outside; no need to interact.

The incline up to the hollow was the worst for her, and the five-minute climb took half an hour. When they finally reached the den, she collapsed outside the entrance and wouldn’t move again, even when he prodded her with the toe of his boot.

Worriedly, he realized she was barely conscious. She’d lost a lot of fluid during the hike and he hadn’t seen her drink once.

He nudged her again with his foot. “Oi. Drink something.”

She didn’t respond.

“Oi! I didn’t go through all this trouble for you to die on me.”

When she still didn’t respond, he moodily crouched beside her, wrapped the hem of his cloak around his hand so there was barrier between their flesh, then rolled her onto her back. She was conscious, but her eyes were so glazed she could have passed for dead if not for her rapid breathing.

“Hurts,” she whispered.

Gods, was she going to be this defenseless? Now he understood the stories about reckless alphas fucking omegas to death during their heat cycles – not because of the rut, but because they neglected their omega’s basic needs in-between fucking.

He unclipped his water canteen, lifted the back of her head, then held it to her lips. At first the water ran down the side of her face, but eventually her eyes came back into focus. She weakly gripped the canteen and began to drink, her gaze focused intently on him as water trickled over her chin and down her neck.

He felt the fire burn in his loins again and dropped her head back to the ground before standing up. “Get inside the den.”

She turned groggily to survey the hollow nearby. “Will you come too?”

“No.”

She sat up slowly, holding her head in her hands like it was going to fall apart. “I don’t feel good.”

“No shit.” He turned away and sniffed the air. “I’m going to hunt. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

“I won’t,” she whined. “It won’t help. You know it won’t. I need –“

“Be quiet,” he snapped, and she obediently fell silent. “You have to stay in the den while I’m gone. Don’t leave unless I give you permission. I won’t be far.”

She nodded, looking miserable. Her scent had subdued slightly, and he remembered hearing that an omega’s heat rose and fell in waves. Maybe she was coming down a little from the initial hit.

“How long is this going to last?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Days. Weeks. It varies.”

Weeks? Gods. He hoped not. There was no way he’d last that long.

She glanced at him, like she was reading his thoughts. “Alpha, there’s a plant called ephestatia. It has small, white flowers, grows in the shade and smells like lemons. If you chew that it’ll work as a mild suppressant -”

“I don’t need a fucking suppressant!”

“- And if you burn cedar branches it will help to mask my scent from the other alphas. Might throw them off for a while, but…” She hesitated. “My heat is going to get worse before it gets better.”

Worse? How could it be fucking worse than this? It was already more than Katsuki could bear.

She looked up at him and her liquid eyes burned straight through his soul. “I don’t care what you do to me, but please… don’t let them take me away. Don’t let Dabi have me. Even if you have to kill me.”

He wrinkled his nose, fixing her with a fierce glare. “I told you: I’d rather die before I let that fucker breed his spawn into the world.”

“Promise me,” she persisted.

“Tch. You’re being –“

“Promise me!”

He huffed, then glanced sideways. “Fine. I swear it. On my blood as a Firebrand.”

“On your blood,” she repeated, then crawled between the tree roots and into the little hollow. “Don’t be gone too long.”

“I’ll be gone for as long as I want!” he snapped, but already the thought of leaving made him uneasy. Not just because another alpha might find her, but because her pheromones were anchoring him somehow. Intoxicating and magnetic.

(Don’t need her. Don’t want her.)

Repeating his mantra helped him down the incline, even though he felt like he was wading through deep water. Every step was torturous; his body screamed at him to turn back. To rut her, breed her, protect her. But he pushed through it, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists.

The compulsion to stay finally faded at the half-mile point. The stink of mint still trickled after him, but it was muted enough that he could pick up the scent of the deer from earlier. He followed it through the undergrowth, keeping low and quiet, until he picked up their trail in the dry earth.

It took a few hours, but he finally spied them in a small clearing, grazing in the midday sun. They were muntjacs, barely three feet tall, but still large enough to make Katsuki’s mouth water. When had he last eaten? Or slept, for that matter? Days, for sure, though it felt like a small eternity. His energy levels were the lowest he’d ever experienced, and the damn temperature was not helping matters. He had to make this kill or he’d have no hope defending the omega against the alphas.

He picked a small buck sitting part from the rest of the herd, then stalked through the tall grass, minding where he put his feet while he moved very slowly, very quietly. He wished he’d brought his bow with him; making a kill with just his sword was tricky even when he was at full energy.

The other deer tread quietly around him, their dark eyes wide and watchful even while they grazed, large ears twitching for signs of danger. Crickets and cicadas droned in the trees, and the sun beat a brutal fist on the back of Katsuki’s neck. His heart slowed to a steady thrum.

He dashed out of the brush, leapt on the hapless deer and pinned it to the ground. It squealed and bucked underneath him while the rest of the herd bounded away, trilling alarms, but he ended its suffering with a quick slash across its throat.

He almost collapsed on top of it once it was dead, the last of his energy tapped. The idea of having to trek back almost made him want to give up on the omega completely. She was not worth all this trouble.

After drinking deeply from his water flask, he set to work skinning the carcass. He cut strips from the flank and hacked off one of its legs, then wrapped them in the skin. Usually he wouldn’t waste any of his kills, but he didn’t have the energy to carry back the whole carcass, and besides, he had no way to preserve the meat and didn’t want to attract flies to her den.

The omega’s scent coaxed him back through the forest; he didn’t even need to navigate his way back using tracks and landmarks. The urge to rut fell over him again as he drew closer, blowing embers on his snuffed energy while turning his thoughts hazy. Gods, how was he supposed to control himself when she smelt so fucking strong?

He climbed the incline and was pleased to find her still inside the hollow.

There was something to be said about an omega’s compulsion to obey an alpha; knowing she would do whatever he asked filled him with sickly desire. He hungered to command her to present herself for him, to lay still in the dirt while he knotted her and filled her full of seed. But he wouldn’t, damn it. He wouldn’t.

(Don’t want her don’t need her)

He dropped the skin by the entrance then crouched down to peer inside. Her pheromones punched him square in the face, and he yanked the bandana over his nose before he damn near passed out. It took a moment for his night vision to adjust to the shadows, but he spied her padding in circles on her hands and knees.

“Oi. Come out and eat.”

“Alpha,” she mewled softly. “You were gone for too long.”

“No I wasn’t,” he countered testily. “Come and eat.”

She made a strained noise, still scrabbling around, and he huffed angrily. He was too tired for this shit. Why wasn’t she doing what she was damn well told?

He leaned further into the den, trying not to gag on her scent, and realized she was pulling mounds of dirt and rocks around her in a rough circle. What the fuck was she –

Oh. Right. She was nesting. He’d forgotten omegas did that in heat.

He looked at her creation and felt a flash of pity. Which wasn’t like him at all, but honestly it was kind of pathetic. She was using rocks, for fuck’s sake. And even though she wasn’t his, he felt like it was his responsibility to provide her with better bedding materials during her heat. Especially if she was going to be stuck in here for however many days.

He wearily climbed to his feet again and began scouting the area for things he presumed would work as padding. He gathered soft ferns and ripped clumps of moss from trees, then dumped them inside the den’s entrance. She snatched them up and inspected each offering before throwing out what she didn’t like and arranging what she did. Katsuki had no idea what her process of elimination was; it all looked the same to him.

 Omegas were fucking weird.

Eventually she went still on her mound and looked at him expectantly. He fought down the urge to crawl inside with her, because if he did, he would not come out again until she was bred and broken.

“Happy now?” he snapped.

She whimpered and shook her head, then patted the nest.

“I’m not goin’ in there,” he told her.

Her eyes went wide and watery, face glowing with a blush as she began to pant again. “Alpha, please, I made this for you, it needs you, please – please come inside with me -”

“No!” he roared, trembling with the effort to maintain his control. He unrolled the deer skin, letting the meat fall in the dirt, then held it out to her. “Take this instead.”

She shuffled to the entrance and sniffed the tawny fur, then wrinkled her nose and batted it away. “Don’t like it.”

He glared at her incredulously. “What are you, five summers old? Just fucking take it already!”

“No,” she said, then her gaze flitted to his cloak and she ran her hand over its hem. “Want this.”

An argument sprang to his tongue, but he swallowed it down with an angry sigh. Truthfully, he didn’t mind the idea of his scent mingling with hers. Even if she wasn’t his.

“Fine,” he said, removing his cloak then shoving it against her face. “Put it in your stupid nest then come and eat. I need to sleep.”

She gathered the red fabric in her arms then spread it excitedly over her nest, mewling and cooing, before burrowing between its folds.

Then, much to his chagrin, she fell asleep.

He couldn’t be bothered to fight her anymore. Besides, seeing her nested was making his thoughts hazy again. The need to protect her was all-consuming; he could resist it no more than he could resist the tidal pull of the ocean. He would fight off an army if need be, kill for her, die for her.

He shook off those thoughts. Damn, her heat was making him weird.

There were a dozen other jobs he needed to tend to before he could assure the safety of her den, but he was pushed way beyond the limits of exhaustion. It worried him that perhaps it was the exhaustion alone that was preventing him from rutting her, but what could he do?

 He rolled out the deer skin in front of the hollow’s entrance then collapsed on top of it and immediately fell into a deep sleep.

It was dark when he woke again; he’d slept the entire day, and that thought sent him into a panic. Were the alphas nearby already?

He shot up and inhaled deeply through his nose, hoping to pick up their musk –

Then collapsed back to the dirt with a gasp.

The omega’s pheromones were ten time worse than before. Was it because they’d settled in one spot or because her heat was developing? Either way, Katsuki was in big trouble.

Arousal ripped through his veins and crushed his lucidity to ash. He couldn’t think of anything else – not the alphas, not control, not feeding – because all his thoughts funneled to a single objective, pounding over and over again at the front of his mind like a hammer against an anvil.

Fuck her. He needed to fuck her. Now.

Katsuki felt like he was watching the actions of a stranger as he crawled through the entrance of the den. The smell of mint was so strong it was almost tangible, clogging his nostrils and throat until he thought he’d choke on it.

She was curled into a ball in her nest, deep in the throes of a strong wave of heat. Her panting was raspy and dry, in sharp contrast to the sweat that poured off her and soaked into his cape. The den’s walls were damp with condensation, slick under his hands, but did nothing to ease the ruthless temperature.

His dilated pupils revealed her creamy curves in the dark, taut and trembling beneath the flimsy slip. Unable to hold back, he rolled her roughly onto her front and mounted her.  A growl ripped through him as he finally pressed himself against her small body. He was sweating already, panting open mouthed and painfully hard against his pants. He couldn’t wait. Couldn’t hold back anymore. How could he when she was so ripe for him?

“Spread your legs for me, little omega,” he commanded.

She moaned softly but didn’t respond. Was she disobeying him? He scowled, then rolled her onto her back.

She was unconscious. Her closed eyes were trimmed with dark circles, her skin a sickly hue. Beads of sweat trickled down her brow and burning cheeks. Even being so close to him didn’t wake her, and a sliver of concern pushed through his rut-induced haze.

He hung his head between his shoulders, his hair brushing her cheek, and tried to salvage the last of his willpower. The need to rut her went beyond desire; it was compulsion. It was wild, feral, wired into him like his veins, his heart, his lungs. His need for release was unbearable, and his vessel was right underneath him, primed to take his seed.

But of course he couldn’t take her now. Not like this. Not when she was… was…

Dying.

She was all alone in the wild, hunted and vulnerable, experiencing her first heat with an alpha she didn’t even know the name of.  She didn’t have her pack, all she had was him, and he’d be damned before he betrayed her trust just to slake his need to rut.

Groaning, he rolled off her then dragged himself out of her den. It took all his resolve to climb to his feet and stumble down the incline, but the farther he walked the clearer he could think, and slowly – very slowly – his rut receded. Not completely, but enough that he could reclaim control of his lust-addled senses.

He walked half a mile until the smell of mint was just a wraith in the moonlight, then leaned against a tree and ran his hands though his hair. The night heat left his skin clammy and hair damp, and certainly did nothing to aid his arousal. He’d had to take care of that before he did anything else.

So he pulled his hard cock out of his pants and jerked himself against the tree. His mind helplessly painted pictures of the omega sprawled beneath him, panting and keening his name, presenting her tight, wet folds for his knot. The lingering scent of mint urged him to his end in a shockingly short amount of time, but he was hardly surprised. This was days of pent up arousal, worse than he’d ever known it. Couldn’t be helped.

He wiped his hand on the grass, feeling slightly better. He wouldn’t be sated until her heat had passed though, which meant he was going to need more than a bandana and his cursed pride if he wanted to help her through this.

He sniffed the air and was perturbed to find the alphas’ musk considerably closer. Of course they were; Katsuki had no doubt they’d latched onto her powerful scent. He only hoped his pack mates could delay their arrival for a few more days.

He ignored their scent and searched for another as he walked between the trees. Thin tails of moonlight streaked through the canopy, brightening his night vision and highlighting the forest floor.

After walking back and forth trying to pinpoint a specific scent, he came to a cluster of small plants growing among the tree roots. Was this the plant she’d told him about? Hard to tell, but it fit the description.

He picked one of the leaves then shoved it in his mouth and started to chew. He wrinkled his nose; bitter. But not terrible. He’d tasted worse.

Sitting under the tree, he waited for the effects of the suppressant to kick in while stewing on his frustration. He felt like he’d lost a battle, and he hated himself for it.

 It was common for alphas to take suppressants, especially in packs where omegas were present. In towns and villages, it was often enforced by law. But as an outlaw, Katsuki had never felt the need to take them, despite Kirishima’s advice. He’d always considered himself superior to the average alpha and scorned them for their lack of self-discipline, but admittedly, he’d never actually come across an omega in heat. He'd smelt the occasional omega when his pack ventured into town to trade their stolen goods, but they’d had no effect on him, so he’d presumed himself immune to their influence. The betas he’d fucked had been a distraction, a means of release, but he’d never knotted with one, nor fallen into a rut.

Until now.

It took a few minutes before the drug kicked in. The smell of mint faded and the world became blurred around the edges, like he was looking at it through the surface of a pond. It was both pleasant and unpleasant. He felt relaxed, but slower, weaker, his thoughts trailing just a second slower than usual.

At least the other alphas were on suppressants too, otherwise this would have left him at a considerable disadvantage.

Katsuki spat out the chewed leaf then stood up. After taking a second to adjust to his drugged state, he headed back to the den, confident he wouldn’t try to rut her now. She needed him, and if her staying alive relied on him sacrificing his pride, then so be it.

The smell of mint inevitably strengthened as he climbed the incline, but it didn’t affect him to the same extent as before. Poking his head into her den, he found her much the same as when he’d left her, drenched in sweat and breathing shallow. He had no doubt she was starving and dehydrated, feverish from her heat. He wished he knew more about what the hell she was going through, but he’d spent the last ten years in an all-male pack and was woefully ill-equipped to deal with females beyond fucking them.

He collected a bundle of dry kindling, used a rock and his sword to spark it alight, then quickly seared a few strips of venison, just enough to keep it bloody while burning off any unpleasantness that might have festered on its surface.

He ducked into the hollow and shook her shoulder. She groaned softly, nostrils flaring as she picked up his scent again, then groped for him in the dark.

“Wake up,” he commanded.

She stirred, eyelids fluttering, but didn’t wake. He tsked. She had to eat.

He slipped the meat between her lips and she chewed a few times before turning her head weakly; the meat fell from between her lips, barely touched.

Katsuki ran a hand over his face and groaned. Gods, he was not cut out for this shit.

He rammed the discarded meat into his mouth and chewed it roughly to a pulp. Taking her jaw in his hand – being careful this time not accidentally brush her scent gland – he straightened her head then pressed his open mouth against hers.

She moaned softly as he pushed the mush into her mouth, then clumsily swallowed it.

And so for the next fifteen minutes he sat on his haunches and fed her mouth-to-mouth, feeling calm, in control.

He didn’t need her. Didn’t want her.

He could do this.

Chapter Text

Insatiable

The moment Ochako woke from unconsciousness, she became aware of two things: first, her crippling arousal, which swept through her in waves so intense it made her sick. Second: the smell of cardamom, the alpha’s pheromones.

Nothing could have prepared her for this.

She had smelt him before her heat, of course, and it had been strong, but now it was almost physical in its palpability; she could taste it on her tongue and feel it inside her, spreading fire through her veins and stoking her heat to an intolerable degree. It was impossible to fight. It consumed her. Defeated her. Turned her into an insatiable mess of hormones.

Her heat quashed her rationality and caution beneath a tide of desire. She would have given this alpha – this nameless stranger – anything he wanted without an ounce of hesitation: her soul, body, womb, mind. All because her omega biology demanded it.

It was disgusting.

Yet by some peculiar twist of fate, the gods had sent her a stubborn alpha.

She’d seen alphas in rut before. They were inevitably drawn to her all-female pack every time one of her omega sisters went into heat. After all, their scent would carry for miles. They’d arrive at their camp in a frenzy, foaming at the mouth, hunting for the omega with single-minded determination. And Ochako would fight them to the death. Not because she wanted to, but because they wouldn’t have stopped until they’d bred from her sisters, and she couldn’t allow that.

Not once had she felt guilty about this, but she’d always been confused by how her sisters – usually so fierce and independent – would scream and beg and sob for the strangers that descended on their camp.

Now she understood why.

So why wasn’t this alpha rutting her? Why didn’t he want to breed her? It was as frustrating as it was confusing. The tiny, tiny part of her that wasn’t at the mercy of her heat was awe-struck and relieved. Had she been stuck with anyone else she was sure she’d be thoroughly bred by now, left broken and starving in the open without so much as a nest for comfort. But here she was, wrapped in a cape on a bed of fern and moss, untouched.

At some point, the blond alpha left camp and his scent had faded to barely a whisper. And gods, how she’d wailed. Her whole body had twisted into knots, her empty core throbbing painfully to be filled. Bright lights accompanied a migraine that left her blinded. Sweat poured out of her like she was turning inside out. Even if she could have disobeyed his command to stay, there was no way she could have walked, much less pursued him. All she could do was howl and writhe in agony in her nest, until finally she was swept into blissful unconsciousness.

Now she was awake, lavishing the smell of cardamom while waiting for the next wave of her heat to hit. In the meantime, she had a little of her senses, enough that she could string together her thoughts.

A strip of his cape was soaked in water and folded against her brow, and there was the taste of venison on her tongue. She curiously touched her lips. Had the alpha fed her? Surely not. Only mated alphas fed their omegas during their heat cycles. Why would a feral alpha bother to care for a virgin omega without rutting her first? It made no sense.

Her heat stirred again as the omega part of her brain begged her to look for him. His pheromones weren’t as strong as before. Had he left again to hunt? She hoped not. His absence had almost been too painful to bear last time.

She crept cautiously to the den’s entrance and peered out.

Piles of cedar branches had been set alight a short distance from the hollow. Their smoke was pale but thick, wrapping them in a haze that dampened his scent – and the scent of the other alphas. That thought sent a shrill of fear down her spine, and her first though was to seek refuge near the blond alpha who had promised to protect her. After all, there was no way she could fight them off in her state. They needed only to command her to present herself on all fours and she would willingly obey, then let them use her however they saw fit.

She shuddered and pushed that thought aside.

Her gaze pegged on the alpha, sprawled on top of a deerskin just outside her den. He was gripping his sword despite being fast asleep, and he looked paler than she remembered. Was it the result of fighting off his rut? Even his pheromones were weaker than before. In fact, they smelt slightly of lemon –

Ah. He’d taken the ephestatia.

Her rational side was pleasantly surprised. Her omega side wanted to scream with frustration. She wanted him to take her so badly it hurt. Why didn’t he understand that?

Or maybe he did, and that’s why he’d taken the suppressant.

He’d commanded her to stay in the den, but with her heat wave briefly receded, she discovered she could disobey him. She crept over his sleeping form and vanished briefly into the bushes nearby to relieve herself, then returned to the campfire to scrounge more deer meat.

Her attention was helplessly fixed on him while she ate, mostly because of lust, but because she was curious about him too. He was handsome in a severe sort of way – all harsh angles and sharp edges – and it was rare seeing light blond hair this far east. She didn’t recognize his tattoos either – what had that alpha called him? A Firebrand?

Perhaps most intriguingly, he seemed to have a grudge against Dabi too. She would’ve thought about teaming up with him but Ochako knew there was no such thing as a trustworthy or good alpha. Especially not for omegas.

Shame, really.

Ochako stepped out of camp and sniffed the air. Above the smell of burning cedar and cardamom, she could tell the alphas were still miles away, and there was a fresh water source nearby. She followed her nose until she encountered a small stream, then tracked a winding path through the underbrush until it widened and deepened into a spot where she could bathe.

Thoughts of ‘learn your lesson’ crossed her mind, but she was positive she wouldn’t be caught unaware this time. No way was she going to let one of those other alphas catch her. And besides, she desperately wanted to bathe. She smelt like cardamom and smoke, but more alarmingly, she smelt like slick. She’d been covered in it when she’d woken; whatever the alpha had done (fed her?) had thrown her body into overdrive, even while she’d been unconscious. It was frightening how instinctive the need to mate with him was. Uncontrollable.

But if that blond alpha had managed to control himself then she could too. No excuses.

She tugged off her belt and white slip then eased herself into the freezing water. A shiver tracked down her spine, and not entirely from the cold; the current stimulated her sensitive skin, pressing between her legs and hardening her nipples. Gods, to think she was so touch starved that the mere pressure of water against her skin would feel this good.

Helplessly, she wondered what it would feel like to have the alpha’s hands on her.

Tendrils of blissful fire unfurled in the pit of her stomach, signaling the approach of another wave of heat, so she hurriedly scrubbed water over her limbs and prepared to climb out.

The smell of cardamom froze her by the bank, and she looked up to find the blond alpha watching her from atop a craggy boulder. He was out of breath and sweating, and his eyes had a turbulent look to them, like he’d come running here in a panic.

“I told you to wait in the fucking den!” he snapped.

She hunkered against the side of the bank, fingers curling in the damp earth. Had he been worried about her? Well, it made sense, she supposed. He’d probably thought some other alpha had rutted her first.

“You could just take me now, if it bothers you that much.”

Wait, what? Why did she say that out loud? That wasn’t how she felt at all!

Or was it?

Her heat fizzled through her veins again, sparked by the heady aroma of cardamom, and suddenly she was pulling herself along the bank towards him. He looked so enticing with his muscular torso slicked in sweat, crimson eyes boring into hers. He’d pulled the bandana down around his neck, and his internal confliction was obvious not just from the pained expression on his face, but the growing bulge in his pants. Her core throbbed with longing as she curled her toes against the riverbed, the freezing water in stark contrast to the heat under her skin.

“Don’t you want me to be yours, alpha?” she keened.

That voice was a stranger to her. So soft and lilting and pleading. Pathetic. Not like her at all. Did that mean this feral, unhinged side of the alpha wasn’t a true reflection of himself either? Probably not. All alphas were scum in her opinion. But even if that wasn’t the case, what difference would it make? Her omega blood didn’t care at all. He could murder her entire pack and she’d still fall on him at any given chance.

She slid out of the pool and padded over to the boulder, heedless of her nudity. Water ran in rivers down her arms and legs, over her breasts and between her legs. It was the closest thing she’d felt to a caress, and she cooed as she pressed herself against the bare rockface at his feet. Meeting his smoldering gaze, she reached up and gripped the toe of his boot.

“Come down, alpha. I’ll lay so still for you, I promise. Over and over. I’ll be good for as long as you need. Just please… please come down and touch me.”

Her heat was consuming her again but she didn’t care anymore. Her body was singing for him, begging to be touched. A small amount of slick trickled between her folds, mixing with the water from the river, and even though it was diluted she could discern its sweet scent mingling with cardamom. And if she could smell it…

The alpha’s pupils dilated, and his body language shifted. He leapt off the boulder, landing with a shuddering thud behind her, and before she could move he pressed his body flush against hers.

His pheromones crashed into her and she sucked in a taut breath as the world started to spin. His breath was hot in her ear and his thick erection was wedged against her ass. She couldn’t resist grinding into him as she groped behind her, fingers scrabbling against his thigh.

He growled, a deep sound that reverberated through her chest, then he grabbed her hand and slammed it against the rock by her face, threading his fingers through hers. Slowly, he began to grind against her ass.

“Please,” she sobbed. “Please, I need you, alpha, I need your knot, I need your seed inside of me, please, please please –“

“You don’t,” he whispered against the back of her neck. “It’s your heat talking.”

Was it? Honestly, she wasn’t sure anymore. It was impossible to think critically when there was slick creeping down the inside of her thigh and his manhood was so hard against her ass. She wished her thoughts would clear just for a second, but at the same time it was so delicious letting her heat take over, like letting the current sweep her away after paddling against it for so long.

Her eyes pinned on her hand snared under his much larger one, then she leaned forward and ran her tongue over the scent gland on the inside of his wrist.

His reaction was instantaneous; he groaned, head slumping onto her shoulder, then his other hand snaked around her waist and pressed against her abdomen.

She wailed. Her insides were so sensitive, primed and ready to take his seed; he only needed to shift his hand down a few inches to touch her slick sex and she wanted him to so bad.

It was too much. She felt like she was going to die if he didn’t take her now.

“Alpha please, please I’ll do anything you want, anything you ask, I’ve waited and waited I can’t stand it I need you in me so badly please please -”

“Shut up,” he said, voicing cracking.

“I won’t,” she moaned, “I can’t, not until you fill me up, not until you’ve bred me and bitten me and made me yours –“

He reared back, and the absence of his body and firm sex made her sob and thrash against the rock. But she only needed to wait a second before he returned, just not how she’d expected.

A flash of red passed over her eyes before something was forced between her lips. It took her a moment to recognize his bandana, but by then it was too late. He gagged her, tying the back of the bandana tightly around the back of her head.

“I’m gonna touch you,” he told her, “but I can’t have you beggin’ like that. You understand? The smell of your slick is gonna send those other alphas into a frenzy, and we can’t have that. Not when you’re so vulnerable. And it’s just gonna keep comin’ unless we do something about it.”

Any complaints she wanted to voice turned to dust as he trailed his knuckles down her spine. She hummed into the bandana and curved her back, relishing the line of fire he left along her skin. She wished she could see his face, but he wouldn’t let her; he kept one hand pressed against the back of her head to keep her cheek pinned to the rockface. Maybe he didn’t want to look at her. Either way, it was frustrating, but she was helpless to fight against him as his hand glided over her ass then dived between her legs.

The moment his fingers grazed between her slit, another wave of slick came rushing out of her. Her legs trembled weakly as he stroked her at a languid pace, calloused fingertips tracing over her clit before drawing down to her entrance, then up again, over and over until she was mewling mess.

She choked on the gag and the rock’s sharp edges grazed the side of her face, but she didn’t care. It felt so good being touched by someone else – something she had never experienced before, nor had particularly cared to experience. Now she’d never be able to touch herself again without thinking of him and the smell of cardamom.

He caught her clit between two fingers and alternated between rubbing and gently squeezing. When he finally released her sensitive nub and slid a finger inside her, her body turned to jelly and her legs gave way, so he let go of her head and wrapped his arm around her waist, keeping her upright while he stroked her trembling walls.

The pressure against her sensitive stomach almost sent her over the edge, and she grabbed his forearm with a smothered wail. She tried to speak, to beg, but of course the words were muffled. All she could do was pant and moan while he stretched her with his finger, pulling out occasionally to rub wet circles around her clit.

There was no pain – she was far too wet for that; the slick dripped down the side of her leg, so potent now that it overwhelmed the smell of cardamom. How he still had any restraint was beyond her because she was losing her mind.

Well, maybe he was too. He was rocking against her ass while he finger-fucked her, his panting hot and shaky, his forearm taut against her abdomen.

He eased another finger into her and found a sensitive part of her virgin walls while shifting his other hand to rub her clit in small, quick circles.

She wailed into the gag and thrust onto his fingers as her release hit her like an ocean wave crashing against a cliff. The pleasure was intense; it seared the world in blinding color while simultaneously depriving her of all senses save for his fingers guiding her through her orgasm. Her blood sang in her veins and her muscles tensed and loosened, matched by a rich ache in her stomach that begged to be filled by his seed in the wake of her orgasm.

She tried to ask for it but of course she couldn’t; all she could do was mumble weakly into the gag as she slid down the rock face.

He pulled out his fingers, letting her go, and she sank to her knees before turning around. She leaned her back on the rock, panting and still soaked in river water, sweat and slick, delirious from her orgasm.

It wasn’t enough, but she felt ten billion times better than before.

As the crest of her heat began to pull away again, allowing her to think, she was surprised to find that she still wanted him, but she credited that desire to her heat and nothing else. After all, she wasn’t even close to the end of her cycle yet.

Her eyes drew up to meet the alphas as he leaned over her, one arm propped against the rock, his face in shadow. He looked painfully aroused, sweat dripping off the side of his face while his erection still strained against his pants. 

She tried to remove the gag but he quickly snared her wrist.

“Don’t,” he croaked. “I mean it. If you start begging I will fuck you right now.”

It was supposed to be a threat, but it didn’t feel like one when she was still riding the waves of her orgasm and her womb was devastatingly empty.

So she lightly gripped his hand and caressed her cheek against the scent gland on the inside of his wrist. He winced like it was somehow painful, then his expression bled into one of pleasure. She tilted her head, then ran his scent gland over the one in her neck, eyes fluttering as their pheromones mixed into a subtle perfume.

When she opened her eyes again, his gaze was fixed on her with frightening intensity.

She pulled the gag out her mouth, then said, “You can cum on me.”

He blinked, like it was taking a lot to process what she was asking of him, then made a strangled noise in the back of his throat that sounded like a question.

“Here,” she clarified, rubbing her scent gland against his again. “It’ll hide my scent for longer, won’t it? Keep the alphas away, even if it’s only temporary. Smother my scent with yours. I want to smell like you. Want your mark on me, alpha, please. Please. Make me yours, make me your little kitten –“

He hurriedly shoved the gag back in her mouth, and honestly she couldn’t blame him. Her traitorous omega mouth had a way of running away from her, even when she was partially sated by his touch. Maybe because she was partly sated by his touch. It was impossible to tell where she ended and her omega instincts began anymore.

“Fine,” he said huskily, “but don’t take the gag off and don’t touch me. Understand?”

She nodded, then sat eagerly on her knees and clenched her hands on her knees. It was absurd that she was acting like this, begging for some stranger to spill their seed on her, but it could’ve been worse. So much worse. And for some reason, she really didn’t mind if it was him doing it.

He swallowed thickly, then unbuttoned his pants and pulled himself free.

It was her first time seeing the male sex, having grown up in an all-female pack, and she was both intimidated and intrigued by the sight of it. Were they all this big and thick? How was it meant to fit inside a female?

Yet despite how new and strange it was, it looked nice, gently curving in his hand, taut skin shining from the clear fluid that leaked from its tip.

She reached out to touch it, curious to know if it felt as silky as it looked, but he grabbed her hair and yanked on it hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.

“What did I just say?” he snarled. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

Unable to disobey, she dropped her hands in her lap then waited patiently, eyes fixed on his. Gods only knew what she looked like, naked on her knees, gag cutting into her flushed cheeks. But it was definitely working for him, and he began to pump himself in long, eager strokes.

Her temporarily quelled heat fluttered in the pit of her belly. His manhood was just inches above her face and she could feel the heat radiating off him, different to the oppressive summer sun. She wished he’d press himself against her again or at least let her do something with her hands, but she could neither ask nor disobey his command to keep still. All she could do was pant into the gag as he pumped himself faster, squirming on her knees and listening to the wet slapping of flesh against the backdrop of cicadas and rushing water.

Husky grunts hitched in time with his panting as his eyes became more glazed, though he didn’t shut them, not once; his attention was drilled into her with unblinking fervor. It made her stomach churn deliciously and she wished more than anything he was on top of her, wished he wasn’t so stubborn and he’d just take her already. Doing this was such a waste of his precious seed and she hated him for it.

The hand he had tangled in her hair drifted down and cupped her chin, tilting her face up and to the side to expose her neck. His jaw went slack and his breath hitched in his chest, then a second later a string of hot cum hit her collarbone. The second rope fell higher on her neck, and the third went over her chin and trickled dangerously close to her gland.

Breathing hard, he slipped his cock back into his pants, then reached down with both hands and began to massage his cum into the scent glands either side of her neck.

Oh. Oh…

The feeling was as intense as when he’d rubbed her clit, just in a different way. She went slack in his hands as he pushed cum up her neck and rubbed it in circles over her swollen glands. Forgetting his earlier command, she gripped his wrists, but he didn’t scold her this time. She panted softly with her eyes closed, relishing the feeling of his calloused pads on her skin as her scent faded underneath his more potent one. It smelt so strongly of pheromones she thought she could taste it, and without thinking she tilted her head and guided one of his thumbs into her mouth.

Oh. It didn’t taste like cardamom at all? But it did taste good, even though it was wasted in her mouth. It was supposed to be inside her, not on her neck or tongue. But oh well. This would have to do.

She absently licked the rest of his hands clean, tongue tracing the delicate folds between his fingers and delving into the lines of his palm, not thinking about it at all until she opened her eyes and found him staring at her with open mouthed disbelief.

Embarrassed, she hastily let go of his hands and looked askance.

 “I was hoping that would take the edge off,” he said, “but then you go and do something like that and it fucks everything up again.”

She self-consciously folded her arms over her breasts. Which was kind of too little too late, but there you had it.

Noticing her sudden discomfort, he went to the edge of the pool and retrieved her slip, then threw it over her head. He was avoiding her eye, and she wondered if he regretted touching her. He’d been so adamant about it, but if his rut was anything like her heat, she couldn’t blame him.

She gripped his little finger before he could stalk away, and he looked down at her with a frown.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

“What the hell are you thanking me for?”

She didn’t know, honestly. But she felt better because of what he’d done. “For respecting me.”

“I came on your fucking face - how is that respect?”

She pressed her forehead again his knuckles, feeling exhausted and confused. “I dunno. I dunno how I’m feeling or what I’m trying to say.”

“That’s exactly my point,” he said, then huffed. “Next time you want to go running off to bathe, tell me first. I thought one of the alphas had taken you.”

“Okay,” she said, then got up weakly, still gripping his fingers. She shuffled closer to him, liking his warmth and his scent. She smelt like him now, and it was nice.

He stared at her for a moment, seemingly conflicted, then he yanked his hand out of her grip. “Wash yourself off. We need to go back to the den where it’s safer.”

“Yes, alpha,” she said obediently, then lowered half her body into the pool, washing away her slick but being careful not to wash off the seed drying against her glands.

He went hunting once she was secure in her den, and he yelled at her when she begged him to stay. It was stupid for her to beg because he wasn’t going to listen; they needed food, and she had no reason to force him to stay.

Regardless, she couldn’t stand it. She wanted him in the den all day and night. She wanted his scent in her nest, on her body, inside her. It was unfair. He was unfair.

So she groaned and thrashed around in her nest when he vanished down the incline, left only with his cloak for comfort. It was impossible to separate her rational thinking from her omega lust. All she knew was that she wanted him. His fingers had provided fleeting relief but left her desperate for more. She wanted to know what his manhood would feel inside her, wanted to taste it, wanted his seed inside her, not on her.

Even though that was nice too. She smelt very strongly of cardamom now and it pleased her immensely. Did he feel the same way? Did he enjoy scenting her? She hoped so because she wanted him to do it again before the day was through.

He returned hours later with three fish impaled on a makeshift spear. Ignoring her attempts to coax him into the den, he dumped more logs onto the fire, stoked the burning cedar branches, then turned his back to her and propped the fish over the flames to cook them.

She watched him moodily from the den’s entrance, panting as her heat twisted in the pit of her stomach. It was strange being provided for. There were no males in her clan so everything fell to the females, and she had no qualms about that at all. They hunted, gathered, fought, cooked, learned – all of them equal.

Tears sprang to her eyes and she buried her face in her arms. She missed her sisters terribly. Were they okay? Would Dabi hurt them now she’d broken their deal? Would she even see them again, or would she die here at the hand of some frenzied alpha?

“Oi. You better not be crying.”

Ochako peered over the top of her arms and found the alpha crouched in front of her, a cooked fish held out like a peace offering.

She munched on it while hiccupping on tears.

 “I said I’d look after you, didn’t I?” he said.

She nodded.

“So stop crying, already.”

She was lonely, she realized. She’d never been separated from her pack. Never slept one night alone before she’d been taken by Dabi’s men. It was weird and she hated it. She hated that she couldn’t detect her sisters’ familiar scents. Couldn’t curl up in their arms for warmth. She hated they weren’t here to comfort her in her time of need.

She whined softly while she ate her fish, barely tasting it.

The alpha looked both conflicted and uncomfortable, then he sighed and shuffled closer. “You’ll see your pack again, alright? Quit bein’ a baby.”

His scent worked to quell her separation anxiety and she reached out to grab his fingers, yearning for the comfort of physical touch as tears bubbled down her cheeks.

“Stop it. I’m serious. Oi. Stop crying, dammit!”

She couldn’t, and his expression crumpled with annoyance.

“Finnnne. Damn, you’re a pain in the ass.”

He reached into his pocket and plucked a handful of ephestatia leaves off the stem before shoving them into his mouth. Then he leaned against the tree trunk beside the den’s entrance and patted the ground next to him.

“In here?” she tried, gesturing to her nest.

He shook his head slowly, the suppressant already working to soften his sharp edges.

She pouted, but eventually slid out of her den and crawled over to him.

Sighing happily, she curled into a ball at his side, rested her head in his lap and wrapped her hands around his thigh. He wasn’t as soft as her sisters and his scent was so distinctly masculine that she couldn’t hope to pretend he was part of her pack, but it was better than nothing.

After a few minutes, he rested his hand on the back of her neck and pressed his thumb and forefinger protectively over her scent glands. She wondered if he knew what he was doing; the drug was undoubtedly spacing him out. Still, she wasn’t going to complain. It felt good. Like she could pretend she was safe and protected, even though she wasn’t.

Not yet, anyway.

Chapter Text

Unbound

Katsuki smelt the storm before it hit; a remarkable feat considering the whole damn forest stank of mint. He’d never imagined that his keen nose – always a point of pride for him – would become a hindrance. Then again, how could he have known he’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere protecting some nameless omega in heat? The gods had a wicked sense of humor, after all.

He stood on a rocky outcropping some distance from the den, overlooking a valley in the forest. He sniffed the air again, probing for subtle tones between impending rain and mint, until he finally caught a whiff of an alpha’s dusky pheromones.

Shit. They were closer. Less than a day away.

He felt a spark of worry for his pack but shook it off. Kirishima was resourceful and strong; he’d be fine, and he’d keep the pack safe too. He couldn’t afford to worry about them anyway. He had more pressing concerns.

The ephestatia leaf was bitter under his tongue, a constant reminder of his predicament – and his weakness. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place; without it he’d be strong enough to fight the encroaching alphas, but without it he’d fall into rut. He had no doubt about that, now.

When he’d woken a few days ago and found her gone, he’d been struck by unrivalled panic. Propped against a tree, hyperventilating and sweating, he’d been immobilized because she was gone, taken by some inferior male, probably broken and in pain and crying out for him somewhere –

But he’d found her bathing in the fucking river, and he would’ve ripped her heart clean out of her chest if the sight of her nude hadn’t ripped his heart right out of his chest instead. She’d started begging, and he just couldn’t do it anymore. All he could smell was the intoxicating sweetness of her slick entwined with mint. All he could hear was her honied words luring him into a stupor.

He was mad for her. Irrefutably mad for her.

And now he couldn’t stop thinking about her tight, wet walls clamped around his fingers as he delved between her pert little ass. Nor could he unhear her blissful yowls as she came for him. Nor could he unsee the enrapt look on her face as he rubbed his seed into her glands, or as she’d sucked on his fingers for zero fucking reason.

Katsuki ran a hand through his hair and groaned before shoving another leaf into his mouth. Gods, it tasted bad. When this was over, he reckoned he’d never taste bitter-lemon again without suffering traumatic flashbacks.

A rumble of thunder briefly drew his gaze to the mountainous clouds, then he jumped down from the rockface and retracked his path through the undergrowth.

She wasn’t howling for him when he got back, which made a nice change. Although he didn’t like leaving her alone and found leaving the camp difficult at times, he didn’t grieve for her the way she did for him, probably because of the ephestatia (and quietly he worried how he’d react without it).

She peered at him curiously as he walked back into camp, arms crossed over the den’s entrance, chin propped on her forearm. He liked it when she was quiet like this. Her honey-dark eyes were thoughtful but sharp, and he could tell she begrudged losing her independence. He was curious about her, despite himself. Where she was from, how she ended up here. She felt like a bowl full of spice compared to the bland betas he’d occasionally bothered to interact with.

She held out her hand expectantly as he approached, and he dropped a handful of berries and mushrooms into her open palm.

“Did you eat the rabbit?” he asked.

She nodded while shoving the foraged goods into her mouth.

Good girl, he almost said, but thought better of it. “Can you fight?”

She nodded, then looked uncertain. “Maybe not now. Are they close?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should stop taking the ephestatia.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to,” she said. “I told you before: I don’t care what you do to me, so long as he doesn’t get me first. You have to fight them off; there’s no alternative.”

“I know that!” he said, angrily kicking dirt at her. “Get back inside. It’s going to storm soon.”

“I am inside,” she mumbled petulantly, but retreated further into her den, leaving him to his thoughts.

He spent the next few hours chiseling holes in the teeth he’d taken from the alpha a few days ago, then sharpened his sword on a whetstone. She was quiet the whole time, but he could smell her pheromones rising in response to his proximity, and occasionally heard her panting. It wouldn’t be long until another wave of heat would consume her.

He absently stuck another ephestatia leaf in his mouth, then propped his blade within easy reach.

“Alpha.”

He looked up to find her peering through the hollow’s entrance again. She gestured to his water flask and he handed it over. Despite having her own, she always wanted to drink from his, so he kept them both full and swapped them every time one was empty.

“It’s bad this time,” she said.

“The water?”

She squirmed, unfocused eyes fixed on him, and he was hit again by a wave of mint. “My heat.”

“Oh.” He chewed on the leaf, gaze drifting around camp. “It won’t kill you.”

Her mouth fell open as she began to pant, cheeks flushing pink. “You don’t understand what it’s like. It hurts. It hurts all over. I can’t stand it. And knowing it’s gonna get worse…”

“You’ll be fine.”

 “If it’s get too much then… I want you to take me.”

“I thought I told you not to –“

“I’m not begging!” she yelled, then had to grip the roots while she raked back her composure. “This is me asking. Me. Not the heat. I want to be able to defend myself when they get here, but I can’t like this. And I…” She hesitated, dropping her gaze. “I don’t mind if it’s you. If I get caught, then at least he wouldn’t be the first to have me. Do you understand?”

Katsuki’s stomach was twisting in knots, her words tugging at some entrenched compulsion inside his chest. Fuck her stupid heat. Why did it have such an effect on him?

It was just the heat, right?

He dropped to his haunches in front of the den, drawing her gaze. “I’m not going to let him take you. I swore it on my blood, didn’t I? If I say I’m gonna do something, then I’m gonna do it.”

She blinked tears out of her eyes, then looked away. “Just so long as you know.”

“What?”

“That I won’t resent you for it if you do.”

She retreated back into the den, leaving Katsuki floundering in a mess of alpha impulses and hormones. Gods, why did she have to make things so difficult?

He should’ve left the gag on her.

Half an hour later, the sky grew dark and the wind suddenly picked up. Boughs creaked overhead while the birds and cicadas went quiet, then the sky flashed and shortly after there was a crack of thunder loud enough to startle even Katsuki. The first fat drop of rain hit his cheek as he peered skyward, then the clouds properly opened.

The rain came down with torrential force, snuffing both the campfire and the burning cedar. He cursed and scrambled under the nearest tree for shelter, drenched in an instant.

Katsuki liked storms. He liked the chaos, the roar of the thunder, the bright flashes of lightning that struck the ground like spears thrown by a vengeful god. It was a fierce display of power, and he appreciated that.

He did not, however, appreciate rain. He hated the way it clung to his skin. How it made a battlefield treacherous. How it turned everything grey and melded all the earth’s scents together into a damp mess. He hated how it made him feel vulnerable and cold and inexplicably lonely.

So he sat under the tree and glared at the forest whipped by the storm. At least it cut through the insufferable mugginess, but that was a small comfort when he was soaked to the bone.

Unbelievably, the storm worsened. Katsuki cursed into the howling wind, hunkering further against the tree as a whipcrack of lightning ripped through the clouds overhead. Thunder roared on its tails, reverberating in his chest and shaking the ground.

“Alpha!”

The storm almost obscured the alpha’s terrified wail, but it was loud enough to pull him towards the entrance. He blinked rain out of his eyes and spotted the omega cowering against the farthest wall. She was curled into a ball, eyes so wide the whites glinted in the semi-darkness, arms outstretched to him in a silent plea.

He moved instinctively. That urge to comfort and protect was too powerful to resist; he’d throw himself off a cliff if it meant she’d be safe, which was an awful thought if he could think subjectively about it at all.

The smell of her pheromones was so pungent inside her den that it burned his sinuses and pricked his eyes with tears. The bandana did nothing to help; it swept through him in a heady rush, sharpening his senses until he thought he could hear individual raindrops hitting the earth outside.

She crawled into his arms, pushing him onto her nest and wrapping her legs around his waist. She was trembling with terror and whimpered against his chest in time with the crackling thunder.

“It’s just a storm,” he said.

“I live underground,” she told him shakily. “In abandoned mines. I’ve never… never been outside in one.”

Huh. That explained why she was so pale. “Why do you live underground?”

“Protection.”

“From what?”

She hesitated. “Alphas.”

Another crash of thunder tore through the forest and she clung tighter to him, shaking and whining. Katsuki turned his gaze to the den’s entrance, watching the lightning highlight the rain as it crashed to the floor, flooding their camp. He hoped the den wouldn’t collapse.

He didn’t realize he was stroking her hair until she started purring against the side of his neck. His other hand had crept down her back, rubbing small circles at the base of her spine. She was so warm and soft, and her breathy pants were hot against his neck.

His dick stirred against her thigh and she shifted to accommodate him, her chest rapidly rising and falling in time with her pants. Her pheromones intensified to accommodate her heat.

Fuck.

“Don’t go,” she cooed as she felt him tense. “Keep me warm and safe. I’m so cold in here alone… The rain is so cold. See?”

She took his hand and ran it along her arm so he could feel the goosebumps peppering her skin, then she shifted it over her breast and he felt her hard nipple under his palm.

Oh, fuck.

He shot upright but she locked her ankles around the small of his back, effectively straddling his dick and giving him the perfect view of her breasts beneath thin silk. His thoughts disintegrated to a useless mush while his body came alive. Base instincts rolled over his integrity as he grabbed her hips and ground savagely against her, a growl chasing the sound of thunder outside.

She crooned as a fresh wave of slick rushed out of her, mixing with the rain on his pants and filling the den with her heady scent. Pressing both hands against his jaw, she guided him into a kiss that probably would have been hesitant on her part if he’d had enough restraint to let it be so. As it was, the taste of her tipped him over the edge and he was kissing her in a mad frenzy, all teeth and tongues, one hand tangled tight in her hair to keep her still while she moaned into his open mouth.

Suddenly, she tilted her head and played her tongue across his teeth. It triggered an instinctive reaction in him – one he had no idea existed – and he kept very still with his mouth open as she flicked her tongue over his incisors. It was awkward and felt strange but also so good – why was she even doing that –

The answer hit him, and his eyes cracked open in alarm.

She was prepping him. Prepping him to bite her. To mark her permanently. To mate with her.

He let go of her hair and pressed his thumb against her sensitive neck gland. Her initial squeak turned into a moan as he massaged it, her hips rocking against his as her expression morphed into one of unhinged desire. She’d let him scent mark her a few times since their first encounter, but he never got tired of that look on her face, or the way her scent tangled so delicately with his own.

“Please,” she whispered, leaning into his mouth again. “Please make me yours…”

He wanted to. Gods, did he want to. More than he wanted anything, but…

He couldn’t. He couldn’t do this to her. If he rutted her now then he’d mate with her too; he knew that as sure as he knew it was raining outside. She was just too sweet and needy and if he was going to take her, he was going to take all of her. Katsuki didn’t do things by halves; she was either going to be his completely or not at all.

She drew back from his incisors and exposed her long, pale neck for him. He could see her pulse beating under her taut skin and the null of her scent gland just above that. Pheromones pounded into him with relentless force, beating him into submission. Her eyes met his in the dark, wrought in silver every time lightning flashed outside, crazed with lust. Undoubtedly a mirror of his own.

When he didn’t immediately bow to her wish, she leaned forward to kiss him again, but he slapped his hand over her mouth to stop her. The very last of his resolve spurred his hand to his pants pocket, and he grabbed two whole plants of ephestatia and shoved them in his mouth, stems, roots and all.

The omega wailed into his palm like she’d been stabbed, the look in her eyes one of utter betrayal. Her hand clamped over his jaw, trying to stop him from chewing, but it was too late; he swallowed the plants and she went slack against him, sobbing into his hand.

He leaned back on his elbows as she began to cry. She hit him weakly against his chest, her anger rolling in time with the thunder outside.

“Why?” she bleated. “Why won’t you just have me!? I want you, I want you so badly. Why don’t you understand? Why do you want me to suffer like this? It hurts. It hurts!”

Katsuki blinked slowly, then shifted her off him and onto her nest. She lay on her back, sobbing, until he crawled on top of her and pressed his lips against hers. Her needy mouth was in stark contrast to his as his thoughts began to slow. Pheromones wrapped him in a stifling blanket but couldn’t penetrate his skin anymore. His tongue was in her mouth but he couldn’t taste her at all. His fingers were numb and his heartbeat slowed to dull thud. He felt weird, like he was submerged under water.

Shit. Had he taken too much of the suppressants?

He drifted away from her mouth and pressed his lips against her throat, just below her gland. She crooned and sobbed but he could barely hear anymore. The storm was as muted as waves washing against a distant shore. Her body beneath his could have been the earth for what difference it made.

“…ha… Al…pha…?”

Her voice was far away. Everything was far away. He tried to grasp his thoughts but they slipped away like sand through his fingers. He should have been more concerned about that, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t concerned about anything.

Rolling limply onto his back, he peered at the root-riddled ceiling of the den while not seeing it at all. He thought he could see beyond it, at the roiling clouds and the lightning, like he was ascending, climbing, everything expanding into endless space, forever and ever. Her face bloomed into view, licked by lightning, like the face of a god cradled in the storm. The god looked concerned. Her hand was on his cheek but he couldn’t feel it.

Everything went quiet.

Strange dreams chased him through the dark. He was a on boat tossed by a giant sea creature. He was running through a forest of spears, slipping on the ground slicked with blood. He was inside a closed flower, waiting for it to open in the sun so he could escape. He was running between tents consumed by blue flames, chasing the sound of distant screams.

Those screams continued as the darkness receded, dragging him back to consciousness. He groaned, his head pounding, body aching. Bleary thoughts clicked into place and suddenly he could taste the bitter tang of ephestatia on his tongue. 

Stomach lurching violently, he staggered out the den and vomited. It burned his throat as it came up, but damned if he didn’t feel a lot better after.

He took a deep breath, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and caught the scent of mint entwined with… mahogany?

“Alpha!”

It was still raining, thin sheets filtering between the rustling canopy, but the worst of the storm seemed to have passed. The camp had been reduced to a mud bath, and what had once been a trickle of water over the rocks to the left was now a raging waterfall.

Katsuki barely noticed; his attention was centered elsewhere.

The omega was on her knees at the bottom of the incline leading up to their camp. An alpha had a dagger pressed to her throat. He had the same tattoos as the other alpha – the one Katsuki had killed – but this one’s hair was shaved on one side, revealing more tattoos on his scalp. Old blood caked his arms; it smelled suspiciously like the blood of an alpha, and Katsuki panicked – thinking of Kirishima – but a second, deeper sniff confirmed it didn’t belong to anyone he knew. Had this alpha killed the other pursuer to get to the omega first?

“Stay where you are,” Mahogany said, “or I’ll slash her throat, ear to ear.”

Katsuki staggered sideways, the ephestatia still wreaking havoc on his reflexes.

“Get the fuck away from her,” he slurred.

A sneer crept across Mahogany’s face and he laughed. “Drugged to the eyeballs. Guess this is my lucky day. This little bitch tried to lure me away from you and I might’ve missed you completely if I hadn’t become… distracted.”

He teased the dagger blade down the omega’s throat, drawing Katsuki’s attention to the ripped strap of her dress. The omega panted thickly, her legs and back slicked with mud, her eyes unfocused yet fixed on Katsuki. Pleading.

Fury roared beneath his drug-haze. Katsuki grabbed his sword and held it in unsteady hands, blinking rain out of his eyes as his gaze slid back to the other alpha’s.  “I’ll fucking kill you.”

“No,” Mahogany said, “I don’t think you will. I’m going to kill you. And then I’m going to fuck the bitch and send her back to Dabi with your severed head and tell him that you ruined her. Maybe he’ll have mercy on her, maybe he won’t. Either way, I’ll be rewarded.”

“Funny, your alpha friend said the same thing right before I bashed his skull in.”

The alpha chuckled. “Maybe. But I’ll guess you weren’t drugged then, eh?” He bent down and smelt the omega’s neck before tracing his tongue up the side of her face. She shuddered and whimpered, but her imploring gaze was still fixed on Katsuki.

The sight of her sparked to life his dulled alpha instincts, clearing the worst of the drug-haze. Suddenly he was overwhelmed with the need to protect her. To claim her as his. To kill the alpha that threatened his omega.

His omega.

His hackles stirred and he bared his teeth, eyes burning red against the grey rain.

The other alpha smirked, his own hackles stirring, muscles bulging under his black tunic. “Come get her, then.”

Katsuki leapt forward at the same time Mahogany threw the omega aside and brandished his short sword.

Fury making him careless, Katsuki slipped on the treacherous mud and almost impaled himself on the alpha’s sword, but managed to get his own weapon up in time to parry a thrust, then used the momentum of his tumble to slam his shoulder into the alpha’s flank with enough force to send him staggering back.

But while Mahogany kept his balance, Katsuki was not so fortunate. Reflexes dulled, he didn’t catch his feet in time and slipped again, and this time the alpha was ready; his blade caught Katsuki’s side, slicing almost to his ribs. Pain flashed through him, sharpening his senses, but not enough to counter the next blow. Mahogany shoved him with the blunt of the blade, and he fell backwards into the mud.

The other alpha straddled his chest, lifting his blade with a savage grin, and Katsuki barely got his blade up in time to block his download blow. Sparks flew. Rain pooled into Katsuki’s eyes. He gritted his teeth, shaking with the effort to stop the blade from inching closer toward his face. His gaze tunneled into the alpha’s crazed one as he pushed harder and harder, close to breaking the downward thrust –

Mahogany’s eyes went wide, and his mouth fell open. He gurgled, then let go of his sword. Katsuki barely managed to deflect it before it cut his face, then he kicked the alpha off him and staggered to his feet, sword raised. Ready.

But the alpha dropped to his knees, hands clawing the air, and that’s when Katsuki noticed the blood spurting from the side of his neck.

The omega was holding her dagger, its blade dripping in blood, shaking and panting hard from the effort of defying her heat. Defying an alpha. Stabbing him to death and saving Katsuki’s life.

He guessed that made them even.

Katsuki felt a thrill rip through him. His drug-dulled instincts reignited, burning like suns, blinding him with hunger so intense it could have driven him mad. Pheromones flared and crushed the last of the ephestatia’s influence, and her pheromones responded in kind, slamming into him with enough force to make him snarl. The rain steamed around him as his body temperature rapidly climbed, his pupils blowing so wide they turned his crimson iris’ black, and he was hard against his pants before he knew what was happening.

Assaulted by his powerful pheromones – stoked to new heights by his rut – she collapsed into the mud with a moan and lifted her arms in a wordless plea.

There was no hope of resisting now. None whatsoever. It didn’t even cross his mind. He simply threw down his sword and stalked towards her while the other alpha gurgled his final breaths in the mud.    

He fell on her with single minded determination, lip crashing into hers so forcefully that her lip split against his teeth. But she didn’t cry out, didn’t fight him, just opened her mouth and let him choke her with his tongue.

Snatching the dagger out of her grip, he tossed it aside then entwined his hand with her bloodied one, pinning it into the mud. She moaned into his open mouth, trying her best to keep up with his savage kiss as he bit and sucked her lips, tasting her properly for the first time, inhaling her intoxicating scent without the drug-barrier.

He roughly pushed her cheek into the mud to expose her neck, then lapped greedily at her scent gland while she wailed in bliss. Her nails dug into the back of his hand while her other hand tangled in his soaked hair, and she arched her back against his chest, writhing in the mud like she was going to fall apart at any second.

Scraping his fangs down her neck finally teased back her voice as she wrapped her legs around his waist. It started to rain harder.

“Please, please, alpha, take me now, don’t let me go again, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, please –“

He detached himself from her throat to peer down at her, rain dripping off his chin and pattering onto her cheeks. Her hair coiled like serpents in the puddles underneath her and there was blood on her lips and on her hands and up her arms. Mud and leaves pasted her pale skin. She smelt like mint and earth and death.

She was gorgeous.

“Are you going to gag me again?” she asked shakily.

He bared his teeth in a savage grin. “No, little omega. I’m going to make you scream.”

The look of deranged desire on her face propelled him into a full rut. His mind buzzed like a hive as he ripped her dress over her head and tossed it aside, then delved down her body, sucking and biting her soft flesh, teasing her nipples between his teeth then lapping up her slick between her legs. The forest came alive around them, rain crashing onto the canopy and churning the river, but he barely heard it above her desperate sobs. Her hot hands blazed trails down his back, warding off the frigid rain.

He growled between her folds as he drank her arousal. There was no need to prep her at all, but he still wanted to taste her; it worked him into a frenzy until he wasn’t sure if he wanted to tear her limb from limb or rut her.

Her tortured moans and breathy sighs drew him back to her mouth as he yanked himself free from his pants. His rut commanded him in a fiery rush, chasing away his humanity, but she didn’t seem to care at all as he pulled her legs over his shoulders and pushed into her with a savage thrust.

She yelped then gasped, locking her arms around his neck, and he began to pound into her far rougher than he should have considering it was her first time. Gods, he could feel it was her first time; she was tighter than any female he’d taken before, clamping hard around his dick as he forged a path through her center.

The mud was slippery underneath them, so he sank one hand into the ground beside her head while the other clamped her hips flush to his. Her face contorted into a mask of mingled pleasure and pain and he slowed his pace just a little, planting a lingering kiss on the side of her open mouth, before he sank his teeth into her collarbone. Blood trickled between his lips but he licked it off, not wasting a drop of her, then resumed his fierce tempo that left her sobbing and clinging to him like he was the only thing anchoring her to the earth.

“Alpha, I… puh-please, I need… I need…”

He paused, then eased slowly into her, relishing the sensation of her swollen walls parting around his solid girth. “What do you need, kitten?”

“Ngh…”

He cupped her jaw, prompting her glossy eyes to meet his. “Tell your alpha.”

He knew, of course, but he wanted to hear her say it. Wanted to hear her beg for it. He pulled out to the tip then thrust hard into her and held himself there, letting her feel him embedded deep inside her core.

“Your seed,” she gasped, nails scrabbling down his back. “Please.”

If he had even an ounce of sanity left he would have said no, but he was wild and furious and any thought beyond possessing her was dark besides the burning sun of his lust.

He pulled out of her, ignoring her yelp, then scooped her up and headed for the den. She squirmed in his arms then clamped her lips around the scent gland in his neck. He almost lost his footing in the slippery mud and snapped at her until she let go, then he shoved her through the den’s entrance and dropped her into the nest.

She squirmed and panted needily on his cloak as he crawled inside, then opened her legs for him. He eyed her swollen sex for a moment while stroking himself, suffocating on her heady pheromones. Not good enough.

His voice was a guttural rumble as he commanded, “On your front, little omega.”

She didn’t hesitate – she couldn’t; there was no way she could deny him when he was in the throes of his rut and she was gripped in her heat like this. She turned eagerly on her front then lifted her hips for him, cheek pressed to the ground, her sex opening deliciously between her ass.

He growled around chesty pants, drinking in the sight of her as he toyed his fingers around her entrance, circling her clit. Her back was mottled with mud, rain running off her skin in rivers that turned the cloak dark. He could already feel his knot swelling, days’ worth of pent up frustration roaring to the surface like magma bubbling between cracks in the earth.

When she wriggled her hips impatiently, he finally lost it, and thrust hard into her from behind. Her little hands twisted in his cloak as she yowled, eyes half shut and expression lax with pleasure. Unable to hold back, he gripped her hips and shoved into her at a savage tempo. His raspy grunting worked in time with each thrust, so deep in her now that his head almost nudged her most inner core. He didn’t give her a chance to thrust back onto him as he clutched her hips and pistoned into her; all she could do was moan and clutch the cloak beneath her, entirely at the mercy of his frenzy.

Something about her tightness changed as she started to hiccup and gasp, seemingly fighting against a current that threatened to sweep her away. He hadn’t given a thought about her pleasure, too consumed with rutting her how he liked, but now he wanted to know what it felt like when she came.

He leaned forward, tangling a hand in her hair, then slowed his pace just a little as he whispered, “Good girl. Sweet little thing. Taking me so well for you first time. Cum on my cock like a good little kitten.”

The combination of praise and command tipped her over the edge, and he felt her walls clamp around his cock as she came with a wail that challenged the fierce wind and rain outside. A fresh rush of slick dripped down her thighs, coating him, and finally he felt his knot start to swell inside her. He released her hair as she went slack, then resumed pounding into her more fiercely this time. She gasped in awe and reached one hand around to grip his wrist and press her thumb to the scent gland there.

The possessive gesture triggered something inside him, and they locked together quite suddenly right before his release hit him with tidal wave force. Pleasure burned through his veins as the first rope of cum spilled across her insides. He rocked into her more gently, head slumped forward, milking his orgasm while he sucked in shuddering breaths and she whimpered beneath him.

Fuck, it felt so good. He couldn’t remember why he’d held back this long. Their connection was intoxicating, suffocating. He could barely think beyond the need to keep pumping her full of his seed.

She shifted slightly, nails biting into his wrist, wincing as his seed continued to flow. Knowing it would be a while before he released her, he carefully shifted them into a better position, laying her on her side with him pressed against her back, her right leg pulled up by the crook of his elbow. He panted softly into her hair as he unloaded into her. He’d never knotted before, nor cum like this. Only blood lust compared to this fierce feeling – this feeling of dominating another.

Another wave of cum gushed into her and when she tensed, he pressed his lips to her neck, just below her ear.

“Gonna take every last drop, aren’t you?”

“Yes, alpha,” she breathed.

“Good girl.”

She purred delightedly at his praise, then finally settled against him and fell into a light doze.

As his knot finally began to deflate, a niggle of concern crept through his post-frenzy haze. Would she hate him now? Follow him? Were they mated or did he have to bite her? Did he even want to bite her?

She sighed softly as he pulled out of her, then squirmed around so her face was pressed against his chest. Her pheromones wrapped around him like an embrace as his rut slowly began to recede, replaced by a bone-deep tiredness that dragged his lids down and quieted his confused thoughts. 

Before he fell asleep, he tied a strip of his cloak around the sword wound on his ribs. His rut had concealed both his pain and concern; it was still bleeding a little, and it hurt, but it seemed a trivial thing, now. Everything seemed trivial.

He’d figure out what to do in the morning.

Chapter Text

Part 6
Undone

Ochako was woken by the rising tide of her heat. It was a familiar feeling now; fire that burned under her skin, the painful ache in her belly, the throbbing between her legs. But it felt different this morning, and it took her a few seconds to figure out why.

She was filled with the alpha’s seed. Her virginity had been taken.

Maybe it was her heat influencing her feelings, but she was surprised to find she didn’t mind at all; a pervading sense of relief swept aside her concern – relief from her heat, albeit only mild, and relief that it wasn’t one of Dabi’s alphas or Dabi himself that had taken her. Her belly felt sensitive and swollen from taking so much of his seed the night previous, and her womanhood was very sore. He hadn’t been gentle with her by any means.

She’d held no romances about losing her virginity – how could she when her time was spent defending her sisters against rapists? -  but she had at least hoped she wouldn’t be taken and discarded like a broken sword sheath.

And she hadn’t been, judging by the alpha’s arm draped over her waist and the enticing wall of heat against her back. His hand was clamped protectively over the scent gland on her left wrist and she could feel his even breaths against her neck. The potency of their intermingled pheromones suggested he hadn’t budged an inch all night.

Alarmingly, she suspected she’d bonded with him before they’d rutted. When the other alpha – the one that stank of mahogany – had appeared at the bottom of the incline and called her out of the den, her first thought had been to lure him away. The blond alpha – her alpha – had drugged himself unconscious to preserve her dignity (and probably his pride) and had he been discovered in such a state of vulnerability, Mahogany would have killed him.

So she’d tried to lead Dabi’s alpha far away from the den, but the potency of her heat had overwhelmed the effects of Mahogany’s suppressants, and they barely made it past the incline before he started touching her. Had it been just a few days earlier, she couldn’t have resisted, but things were different now. She’d formed an ambiguous bond with the blond alpha, and suddenly the touch of another repulsed her so much that it temporarily overwhelmed the impulses of her heat. Long enough for her to call for help.

 And the blond alpha had come running. Despite being too drugged to stand straight. Too drugged to speak clearly. Too drugged to fight.

Watching him struggle and bleed in the mud, a curious fear crept over her. A fear that stemmed not from the possibility of a future condemned as Dabi’s mate, but one of losing her alpha. A man she didn’t even know the name of. If he died now, a part of her would die with him, and that frightened her more than being raped or bred by Dabi.

That fear quashed her heat long enough for her to plunge the dagger into the side of Mahogany’s neck, and after that, her alpha finally took her. She hadn’t realized how badly she needed him until he was inside her, breaking open her walls and filling her with seed. Maybe she’d regret it when her heat cycle finished, but that was a concern for later.

She didn’t fight against her heat this time as it surged through her in a delicious, hot wave, making her mewl and her toes curl. Behind her, the alpha stirred in his sleep, perhaps disturbed by the steady rise of her pheromones.

She rolled over to face him. His harsh features were free from their usual scowl, his mouth slightly parted, eyes closed, undoubtedly at peace now he’d claimed her.

Well, almost claimed. He still hadn’t bitten into her scent gland and mated her, but she didn’t want to think about that just yet.

She roused him from sleep by sucking gently on the scent gland in his neck. He groaned, his manhood twitching before he was even awake, then pressed his hand to the small of her back and pulled her closer with a rumbling growl.

“Alpha, wake up and take me,” she whispered.

He murmured something unintelligible into her hair before yawning, then pressed his lips against her forehead. The gesture was way too gentle for him, so she guessed he still wasn’t awake.

She nipped his gland. That woke him up instantly, and he startled back with an angry look.

“The fuck is your problem?”

“You,” she told him without any trace of sarcasm, then feathered her tongue along his jaw.

He went stiff – in more ways than one – then traced his hand up the curve of her spine before tangling it in her hair and yanking back her head.

“Did you just call me a problem?” he growled.

Something about having her hair pulled sent delicious shivers all the way to her groin, and she dug her fingers into his chest with a needy mew. Apparently her ability to construct sentences had already expired, so she used her body instead, hooking her leg over his waist and pressing his erection into the juncture of her thigh so he could feel the heat radiating from her arousal.

His pupils dilated as his rut took over again. Clearly he wasn’t bothering to fight it anymore either, and she had zero reservations about that.

He pushed her onto her back then mounted her. Having slaked his initial frenzy, he seemed more in control this morning, and took his time swirling his tongue over her nipples and stroking between her folds. Not that he needed to; she was soaked before he’d even woken. But she certainly wasn’t complaining.

He propped himself on one elbow and watched very intently as he stroked her through her first orgasm. She writhed and gasped, eyelids fluttering, hands curled into the cloak beneath her, until she drowned in rapture. Then he sat back on his haunches and pulled her up with him, guiding her legs over his hips before encouraging her to lower herself slowly onto his sex.  She sighed as he stretched her wide, relishing the sensation that was still unfamiliar.

Hot breath feathered her bare chest and his fingers clamped around her waist while he guided her pace. Lifting and lowering herself onto him in lingering, slow movements, she decided she rather liked the look on his face while gripped by his own pleasure. The fire in his eyes usually fueled by impatience was now stoked by a desire that made her feel both vulnerable and powerful. She commanded his full attention, and she loved it.

Her thighs began to tremble, and when he sucked on her exposed neck gland, they gave out completely.

“Are you hungry, little omega?” he whispered as she collapsed onto him.

She whimpered as his thick cock twitched in her core, then nodded.

“Show me what you can do with that pretty mouth, and maybe I’ll feed you.”

He pulled her off him, ignoring her sobs of disappointment, then pressed his hand to the back of her neck and encouraged her to move lower. He didn’t need to direct her further; even though she’d never done such a thing in her life- didn’t even know it was a thing, in fact – she kneeled over him, instinctively gripped the base of his cock and eased it into her mouth.

“Good girl,” he purred as he circled his thumb over her neck gland. “Take it all for me. I know you can. Show me how hungry you are for your alpha’s cock.”

Her eyes watered as he pushed further down her throat. The urge to gag was profound, but she resisted, and began sucking on him in a way she hoped was pleasing, swirling her tongue around his tip before dragging it under his length as he rocked slowly into her mouth. The stimulation against her gland helped to relax her, and soon he was able to push all the way in until she felt the whisper of flaxen hair against her nose.

“There’s my good kitten,” he said as he tangled his fingers in her hair and held her there for a moment.

She whimpered a little, so close to choking that tears stung the corners of her eyes. But she wouldn’t. She wanted to please him, to be the best for him. She’d let him impale her throat all day if that’s what it took.

Eventually he let her resume sucking again, and his panting turned to raspy grunts as she picked up her pace and used her hand to stroke what she couldn’t suck without compromising speed. It wasn’t long before she tasted watery precum on her tongue, which she lapped up with a contented hum, then resisted when he tried to push himself past her lips again.

“Kitten,” he said warningly.

She blinked up at him and panted against his pulsing tip. “But I want it inside me. You need to fill me up again. Please?”

Unable to resist her plea, he spun her roughly around, spread her folds, then shoved into her from behind.

He was a different person when at the mercy of his rut, no different to her in heat, his aggression banked to sultry, gravelly tones and silly pet names. But she didn’t mind at all. Despite knowing him for barely a week, she doubted anyone had seen him like this. The idea that she could turn him into such a mess of impulses was probably as arousing for her as it was for him.

She gripped the cloak and trilled in time with his eager thrusts as the air thickened with the scent of their combined pheromones. The den grew hot as an oven, painting them in sweat. She longed to feel his teeth in her neck but could do nothing to break his tempo as his knot began to swell inside her. It pushed her already stretched walls to the point of splitting, but there was no pain; he drilled her to the edge of euphoria and a second after her fierce orgasm locked them together, she felt the first of his seed flood her insides. It was hot, yet somehow extinguished her heat, gifting her with clarity.

The alpha settled on top of her, propped on his elbows, as his cock throbbed in time with his release. She shivered as he trailed kisses along the back of her neck and dripped sweat onto her back, but mainly she was focused on the gentle swelling of her abdomen as his seed filled her almost to bursting.

If she wasn’t bred after this, she would be shocked. Which was both alluring and alarming. Something she’d have to think on very seriously once her heat passed.

She fell into a light snooze as they stayed knotted together for the better part of an hour, until he finally deflated and pulled out of her. When she rolled onto her back to face him, he was wearing his usual disgruntled expression that suggested his rut had receded. He watched her curiously for a minute while she dragged her fingers up and down his bicep, then brushed her away.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

She thought about this. “I think so.”

“Then we should go. It isn’t safe here and we still need to get you to the Iceburn Clan.”

A million conflicting feelings shot through her as she frowned at him, confused. “But my… my nest. I can’t leave it. I have to stay in the nest with you, alpha.”

“You can’t. Not with the Blueflames looking for you.”

The need to nest was overwhelming in heat, the thought of abandoning it too painful to bear. But worse than that: “You’re going to leave me with the Iceburn clan?”

“If that’s what you want.”

She frowned. She didn’t know what she wanted while in heat, other than to be rutted and bred, which certainly wasn’t an accurate reflection of her long-term needs.

His eyes betrayed nothing of his inner thoughts when she shrugged. But what did she expect? He had no reason to want her once her heat was through, and he clearly wasn’t interested in raising pups.

“We’re leaving now,” he told her, then crawled out the entrance.

The heat came again, but in a different form; she clung stubbornly to her nest until he was forced to grab her by the arm and drag her out. She sobbed and snarled at him until he offered his cloak as a comfort blanket, which quelled the worst of her tantrum while simultaneously exacerbating his mood.

Outside, the air was fresh from the night’s storm, the undergrowth dusted with dew; the whole forest was wonderfully fragrant. Ochako would have relished its scent if not for the dead alpha’s corpse nearby, which was already infested with flies and beginning to rot in the growing heat. All the more reason to abandon camp, she supposed.

The blond alpha retrieved his pants and her slip from where they’d been abandoned last night, then washed them in the nearby waterfall. After pulling the dress over her head, he stood very close to her and knotted the dress’ cut strap with nimble fingers, a gesture so uncharacteristically tender it made her heart stutter. The fabric was cold and stuck uncomfortably to her skin, so she wrapped the cloak around her shoulders once he’d finished tying the strap, relishing the warm smell of cardamom bound within its fibres.

As he descended the incline, she noticed the wound he’d taken from the alpha yesterday had almost healed. Her breath caught in her throat and she pressed a finger to where he’d bitten her collarbone yesterday. If he noticed the accelerated healing, he didn’t mention it, and she decided it was wise not to point it out. There was no need to tell him yet. If at all.

She buckled on her belt, sheathed her dagger, then refilled her water canteen and was ready to go. The alpha watched impatiently over his shoulder as she descended the incline to meet him. She’d forgotten how intense he was without the ephestatia dulling his senses; his gaze was razor sharp, the muscles along his back and arms tense, his head always turned towards some scent he’d picked up. In fact, he seemed more intense than before, likely due to the hormones from his rut.

“There’s another one out there,” he stated, eyes fixed on her.

“An alpha?”

“Yes. He’s trying to hide his scent but…” He looked uncertain for a moment, or maybe annoyed, then he jerked his head at her. “Come here.”

She went to him obediently and he tilted her head, then surprised her by roughly rubbing the scent gland in his neck against hers. It was a curiously intimate gesture. One that shouldn’t have bothered her considering they’d rutted, but she found herself clinging to his biceps, eyes half closed, cooing with pleasure. He was only scent marking her to throw off any pursuing alphas, but it felt nice nonetheless. Like she was his. And it alarmed her again how much she liked that idea despite her mind being mostly untainted by her heat.

She nuzzled against him affectionately and he let her for a few seconds before pushing her away. The strong scent of cardamom made her dozy again, but she wasn’t afforded time to rest before he was moving.

“Keep up or I’ll leave you behind,” he said.

“Yes, alpha,” she replied, then hurried after him with the tail of the cloak dragging through the dirt.

Ochako lasted a surprisingly long time before another wave of heat hit her. She reckoned the waves would be spread farther apart now she was being actively rutted, but it still turned her into a dithering mess; she cried for her nest and tried to turn back until the alpha commanded her to stay with a few sharp words, then she clung to him and refused to let go despite his growing annoyance.

But for all his bravado, her heat inevitably triggered his rut. It was different this time, though; without the safety of the nest he was on high alert, his gaze raking the surrounding forest even as he bent her over a fallen tree, tore off the cape and shoved her dress up to her shoulders.

Tides of slick rushed over his cock as he rammed into her, his intensity making him rougher than before. Bark scraped her skin and damp moss soaked into her dress while she clutched fistfuls of ivy to keep her anchored. He groaned as she clamped around his sex, then propped one foot on the fallen tree, giving him a better angle to thrust deeper and harder; she wailed in both ecstasy and discomfort as he nudged her core.

“Good girl,” he growled quietly. “You’ll be so wet for my cock whenever I want, won’t you?”

“Y-yes, ah-alpha…”

“I’m gonna take you many, many times today, but you can handle it, can’t you, kitten? I know you can. Such a good girl. Have you molded around my cock, nice and tight. Bursting with my seed like an obedient little omega. Would you like that, kitten?”

Ochako clung uselessly to the log, practically sobbing with delight as he pistoned his sex into her hard enough to pepper stars across her vision.

“I can’t hear you, kitten.”

“Y-yes!”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, a-alpha!”

He grunted, apparently satisfied, then after a few more fierce trusts she felt his knot inflate as he unloaded into her again. The stimulation of his knot locking within her walls sparked her orgasm and she scrabbled and sobbed against the log until it faded. How her body could tolerate so much seed was baffling. Where did it even go?

His knot remained for only a few minutes this time, likely because he was on high alert, and he quickly pulled out of her the moment it was gone. Her heat receded again, granting her free thought, and she rolled tiredly onto her back.

The alpha stared down at her wearing a hazy, satisfied expression as he rearranged himself back into his pants. Watching his features return to their usual scowl, she found it funny how talkative he was during their rutting. Not that she minded, but she wondered how much of it was his rut and how much of it was him.

“What?” he said, catching her odd look.

She held out her arms. “C’mere.”

“Why?”

She wriggled her fingers at him.

Looking annoyed, he leaned down, and she snatched the chance to lick his jaw and plant a kiss on the side of his mouth. He reared sharply back, wiping away her saliva, but she swore there was the faintest hint of a blush on his cheeks before he turned away.

“Get up, you idiot,” he said.

She pouted as she tugged down her dress. “What happened to ‘kitten’?”

“Get up.”

“Tch. Fine.” She collected the cloak and hurried after him as he walked away. Still reluctant to sever their connection, she clung to his wrist, and was pleased when he didn’t shake her off.

Strange that she wanted a physical connection despite the break in her heat.

He maintained a constant vigil as they walked, routinely sniffing the air, and she felt a flash of self-consciousness regarding her current state of ineptitude. She wanted to clarify that she wasn’t usually this pathetic – she was a very good hunter, actually, one of the best in her pack – but he probably wouldn’t care. He probably wanted to dump her with the Iceburn Clan and go back to… to whatever he was doing before he’d become side-tracked protecting her.

“Why do you hate Dabi?” she asked, the words stumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them.

The alpha tensed, then hoisted himself onto a craggy rockface that cut through the forest before crouching to help her. Her own calloused hand linked with his as he pulled her up, then he lowered himself down on the other side. She dropped into his spread arms, but instead of letting her go, he held her, expression pensive.

“Dabi murdered my clan.”

His eyes were cold when he said this, the words rooted in revenge that likely banked the pain of the loss. She pressed the back of her hand against his cheek and smiled weakly.

“Not the entire clan. You’re still here.”

He grunted, looking away, but his hands stayed on her waist.

“You want to kill him,” she stated.

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Then I’ll take his title and his land, and one day I’ll raise an army and kill the emperor too.”

She stared at him, a laugh chasing up her throat until she realized he was serious, then the laughter died beneath her shock. He met her gaze, deadly serious, challenging her to mock or doubt him. And for a second, she really believed he could do it, even though Emperor Shigaraki was merely a concept to her, like a villain in a fairy-tale.

“Why?” she asked.

“The emperor was the one who commanded Dabi. Didn’t like how strong we were, maybe. Couldn’t risk anyone else Awakening.”

“Awakening?”

“You know.” He flexed his hand in an ambiguous gesture. “Connecting with the gods. Wielding their power.”

A nervous serpent stirred in her belly. She suspected she knew what he was talking about, but such abilities weren’t awakened by the gods, they were awakened by –

He suddenly leaned forward and pressed his lips against her neck. The unprompted contact startled her, and she stiffened; this was the first time he’d initiated contact without being incited by her heat. Had he fallen into rut? It didn’t feel like it; he was too calm, too gentle. Ochako thought his touch would feel more invasive without the shroud of her heat, but instead she melted against him like honey dripping down a ladle, her eyes falling closed.

As he lifted her against the rock face, hands pushing up her dress before they locked under her thighs, she felt herself grow wet, but this time it was slow and languid, untainted by the fever of her heat. She moaned softly into his mouth as he eased into her, then again when she locked her ankles around his back and he began to move.

Their coupling was deliberate, intense; the fact it was initiated outside of their heat/rut was an unspoken delight that made Ochako’s heart race in her chest. He felt so good like this, and she was able to really enjoy him for the first time. Slow kisses deepened and broke apart between their panting. Dappled sunlight chased over their limbs, and his thrusts were measured and powerful. She rode him towards an orgasm that built in intoxicating waves before it burst open in her core like a flower unfolding in the sun.

Panting against her throat, he found his release, and she felt his seed swell inside her then trickle down the inside of her thigh. His palms were hot and sweaty under her ass and the rockface was cool against her back. Finally, he pulled out of her, but kept her pressed to the rock after she found her feet.

“I won’t let that blue flamed fucker take you,” the alpha murmured against her throat. “I’ll die first.”

“Don’t say that. You owe your family revenge; I mean nothing compared to them.”

He growled, then nipped the side of her neck like a reprimand, except the feel of his incisors so close to her gland set her stomach to simmering again. She tilted her head, further exposing her neck, and slid her fingers into his hair. Whether it was her heat or genuine want that made her yearn to be bitten, she wasn’t sure she cared anymore.

“You won’t mate with me because you think you have to do everything alone,” she said, “but that’s stupid. Even Dabi knows he needs others in his quest for power. It’s why he wants me – why he hunted my sisters for so long.”

The alpha pulled back to look at her.

“I don’t know how he found us,” she went on. “We’ve been sequestered for generations – women bring their omega offspring to us, you see, because we keep them safe from the alphas who would steal them away for breeding when they got older. It’s a sad life, being a slave to an alpha, so we try our best to provide better lives for them. But Dabi found us, and he wanted all of us to breed from, but I made a deal. I promised to willingly mate with him if he promised to leave my sisters alone. Because breeding is one thing, but mating with an omega from the right bloodline… that’s something different entirely, and he only needs one pure blooded omega to…”

The alpha caught her hesitation. “To what?”

She ran a finger along the wound on his ribs, already puckering into a scar despite it being a day old. “I guess I’ve broken that promise. He’ll hurt my sisters now, whatever I do, so my only option is to kill him. I can’t fail, not because I care if I die, but because it means my sisters will die too. So I have to do whatever it takes, even it means…” She hesitantly met his gaze, then pressed the tip of her thumb against one of his incisors. “Even if it means mating with an alpha I don’t even know the name of.”

He blinked slowly, then nipped her thumb. When she moved her hand away, he said, “My name’s Kat –“

Hot, wet blood splattered up Ochako’s front, and when she looked down, the head of an arrow was protruding between the alpha’s ribs.

Katsuki looked dumbly down at the arrow protruding between his ribs. He frowned, shock and confusion briefly smothering the pain. It seemed to him like he stood there for a small eternity trying to process exactly what was happening, but in reality it was barely a second before he reacted.

He grabbed the omega and thrust her up and over the rock face out of harm’s way, then followed with far more difficulty. Another arrow whizzed past his ear as he breached the top, cutting hairs, but he quickly jumped to the other side unscathed. The pain caught up with him quickly then, and he felt a curious draining sensation, like something inside him was leaking away. He staggered back against the rock and sank to his haunches.

One sniff of the air confirmed his fears: the other alpha had caught up with them. And it smelt like… like burning.

No, it can’t be. It can’t be.

Panic raked the walls of his chest, antagonizing the arrow wound. He coughed, and blood splattered down his chest.

The omega was in front of him, her eyes wide with terror and panic as she clamped her hand around the arrowhead. “Ah-alpha, y-you – you’re fine, you’re fuh-fine, I can p-pull it out, I can –“

He grabbed her hand before she did something stupid – because pulling it out now would definitely be a death sentence – and around a raspy breath he said, “Run.”

Her eyes grew wider, more terrified. “No! No, I won’t  - I won’t leave you! I’m staying, I’m staying and I’m gonna help you, I can make it better, I can –“

“No,” he gasped out, wincing as he pressed a hand to his ribs. It was getting harder to breathe. “I can’t protect you anymore. You can outrun him, find my pack, follow the scent of pine, Kirishima will –“

A thud in the leaves nearby drew their attention, and suddenly they were looking into the face of the man that plagued both their nightmares.

Dabi was tall, even for an alpha, a foot taller than Katsuki and just as broad. Blue flame tattoos wrapped around his bare arms and torso, broken only by puckered scars – souvenirs from his countless victories – which turned his flesh into a grisly patchwork of white and purple. In one hand he held a short bow. A curved sword was sheathed at his waist, a quiver of arrows strapped to his back. But Katsuki was drawn to his eyes, cold and uninterested like lumps of coal in a pan, as they drifted first to the omega and then to him.

“There you are,” he said coolly. “The pebble in my boot, the thorn in my side.” He took a step forward and the omega shrank against Katsuki’s chest. “You know, I was annoyed at first that I had to come out here to retrieve my mate myself, but now I’m glad I did. There’s nothing quite like looking your enemy in the eye when you kill them.”

“Fuck you,” Katsuki spat, blood flecking his lips.

Dabi grunted, clearly amused. As he took another step closer the omega pressed one hand to Katsuki’s chest and drew her dagger with the other, twisting so she squatted on her haunches. His gaze locked on her, unimpressed.

“Don’t waste your strength, pureblood. You’ll need it for what I’m going to do to you.”

Katsuki felt his hackles stir, anger frothing inside his chest. “Stay the fuck away from her, you piece of shit!”

“No,” Dabi replied calmly. “I’m going to mate with her in front of you, and then I’m going to find the rest of your sad little pack and make sure their deaths are slow and painful. I’ll leave you here to bleed out, alone and nameless, the last of your clan. The birds and bugs will eat your rotten guts, I’m sure, but that’s as much of a burial as you’ll get.”

Katsuki distantly heard a snap beneath the tide of his rage, but before he could stand for one last fight, the omega leapt to her feet with her dagger in hand.

“Come any closer and I’ll fucking kill you,” she spat.

Dabi rolled his eyes, and suddenly Katsuki was hit by a wave of the other alpha’s pheromones, so strong it stuck in his throat like tar. It smelled like burning coal and charcoal, singed hair and hay. It smelled like the night his life changed forever. The night his clan had been almost erased.

He didn’t think he’d hated anyone as much as he hated the man standing in front of him now.

But the pheromones had the opposite effect on the omega. The tension leaked out of her stance and she whimpered, then shivered, and Katsuki felt his heart go cold.

“Get away from him!” he snarled and wished very intensely that he knew her name. Fuck, why hadn’t he bothered to learn her name?

Regardless, she took a single step back. Dabi watched her with that same look of dull interest, then said, “Stay.”

And she did.

“Throw the dagger on the ground.”

She did; the dagger dropped into the dirt not far from Katsuki’s feet, blade catching the sun between clusters of brown pine needles.

“Come here,” Dabi said, and again, she did, taking long, dreamy strides towards him like she was caught in a spell. And Katsuki supposed she was, in a way, but one that would lead to her greatest fear.

A fear realized because of his weakness.

Katsuki tried to stand, but the muscles around the arrow contracted, and pain beyond imagining tore through him limb from limb. He gasped, and the sound was wet and wheezing, the air not reaching as deep as it should. He gritted his blood-stained teeth and glared.

Dabi grunted again in amusement, then ran a hand up the omega’s back to the nape of her neck where he dug his nails hard into her scent glands. His pheromones pulsed out of him in noxious waves, and Katsuki could see the omega visibly respond to his touch; she wilted with a soft moan and tilted her head to expose her neck.

That alone hurt Katsuki more than his wound.

Sniffing her hair, Dabi said, “You rutted with him, didn’t you? No matter. We’ll drown your first litter, to be on the safe side. You understand, don’t you? We have to erase his bloodline from the world.”

Her breath hitched in her throat once before she answered. “Yes, alpha.”

“Maybe I’ll make you drown them – you have to obey me, after all – and then I’m going to hunt down your sisters and give them to my pack. Maybe I’ll make you watch that too. You’ll do everything I say like a good girl, won’t you?”

“Yes, alpha.”

“And all that just because you couldn’t stay in your box. Because you had to be disobedient. But we don’t have to worry about that for much longer.” He tipped her head sideways, stretching her neck taut. She whimpered with anticipation and pressed one hand to his chest. “You won’t think to disobey me ever again.”

“Fight it!” Katsuki rasped out, clutching the wound with a trembling hand. “Don’t let him bite you!”

Dabi chuckled, peering at Katsuki over the omega’s shoulder. “Maybe she can fight against an inferior alpha like you, but she stands no hope against me. Are you watching, last of the Firebrands? This might be the last thing you ever see, and I don’t want you to miss a second of it.”

He bared his teeth, something about him turning feral, then just as his incisors nicked the omega’s neck, she reared back and plunged the head of an arrow into his left eye.

The snap. Katsuki looked down. The arrowhead that had protruded through his ribs was gone, broken off by the omega when he wasn’t looking, small enough to keep concealed in the palm of her hand. Only the splintered shaft remained, jutting from his bloodied flesh like a tree trying to grow roots between his ribs.

Dabi roared and the omega leapt back so fast she almost lost her footing, but then she was turning, scrambling over to him, and she yanked him to his feet before he could protest.

“Move,” she hissed. “Move, move.”

Pain ripped through him, flashing bright lights in front of his eyes. Blood splattered between his fingers and his lungs sagged in his chest like sacks filled with rocks. But her arm was under him, supporting him, and somehow he managed to put one foot in front of the other as they staggered through the forest.

No use, he thought. He’ll track us even with one eye. Should’ve left me behind and saved yourself.

But he couldn’t tell her that because he couldn’t talk. Could barely breathe.

It was a curious feeling, facing death. He wondered if his spirit would stay behind, forbidden rest because he couldn’t fulfil even a single one of his life’s goals: he could not protect his pack, could not avenge his clan, could not kill Dabi.

Could not protect the omega.

He wondered, very distantly, if Kirishima had been right along: he burdened too much alone.

They could have run for days or minutes, for what little difference it made to Katsuki’s hazy brain, until finally he collapsed on the ground, unable to take another step. His legs and arms were numb and everything was dull except for the bright, searing pain of the arrow shaft grinding against muscle and bone.

He coughed more blood, then slowly, painfully, eased himself into a sitting position with his back against a tree trunk. His breath whistled in and out of his throat and blood trickled listlessly between the fingers he pressed to the wound.

The omega’s face came into focus, her small hands on his cheeks, and for a second he felt like crying. He hadn’t even learned her fucking name.

It took a while before her voice reached him, as if carried on a distant tide.

“….- nted to go further but I guess this is the best we got. I don’t know if it will work or even be enough, maybe you’re too far gone but… but it’s better than nothing. I don’t know what else to do.”

He sucked in a breath, gaze fixed on hers, scared to look away because he wanted her face to be the last thing he saw before he died. “What are you… talking… about…”

Her eyes were wet with tears, but she bit hard on her lip to stop them from falling. “You’re gonna bite me. Now. It might be too late to save you, but you promised me you wouldn’t let him take me. You promised on your blood. Remember?”

Brain working at a sludgy speed, he swallowed blood, then nodded.  He’d rather she spent this time running, but if this is what she wanted, he was hardly in a position to deny her.

She pressed her lips to his, lingering long enough that he could taste her even through the blood – gods she tasted so good, so good – then she shifted her head and exposed her neck to him. Up close, he could see delicate blue veins under her pale skin like rivers on a map, and the frantic beating of her pulse just below the nub of her gland. Gods, the smell of mint was so strong, enough to stoke the last of his energy.

There was no time to prep; he pressed a hand to the back of her neck to keep her still, then sank his teeth into her flesh. He felt the pop of his incisors piercing her gland as she gasped, nails biting into his shoulders, though whether the gasp was one of pleasure or pain, he couldn’t tell.

Blood coursed into his mouth, except it wasn’t just blood, it was something else. Sinking his incisors deeper, he sucked hard, tasting something sweet yet bitter, like over-brewed tea, and thought he felt it wash through him when he swallowed.

He drank her while she sobbed and sighed, her hands roaming his shoulders and hair, giving herself to him completely, and him to her. There was no doubt about it now: something was shifting inside him, changing, threads unfurling across an intangible space and lacing them together. He bit harder still, spurred by a feeling that lifted him to a different plane; he was unravelling, coming apart, but also binding together into something else… something new, but also the same.

The feeling was so intense and strange that he might have been frightened if it hadn’t felt so good and he wasn’t dying.  As it was, everything was turning black, the edges of his vision blurring, and he didn’t realize he’d released her until her face came into view again. Blood pumped from the punctures in her neck, and her expression was a mixture of rapture and gratitude. He wanted to reach up and touch her, to comfort her in his last moments, but his arms were leaden; he couldn’t move.

She spoke, but he couldn’t hear her.

Everything faded, and the world went black.

“I’m yours, now and forever,” she told him, a second before his eyes slid shut.

She felt a lump in her throat and her eyes stung, but she shoved down her emotion and stood up. Crying achieved nothing, and if she was going to die today, then she was going to die fighting.

Turning, she spied Dabi between the trees. He was hunched over with one hand pressed to his left eye – or where his left eye had been, she supposed. Dark blood ran in rivers down his cheek, dripping off his chin and splattering to the forest floor. His other eye was a bauble of unadulterated rage.

Ochako smirked and exposed the dripping puncture marks on her throat. “Guess that puts a damper on your big plans.” She laughed, feeling giddy with the knowledge that these might be her last moments. Sheer terror had a strange way of manifesting, she was learning, but she just didn’t give a single fuck anymore.

“You hateful bitch,” Dabi snarled. “You wasted yourself on him. On a corpse.” He straightened, letting his hand drop to his side to expose the ruined pulp of his eye. “I’m going to enjoy killing you. Oh, yes. I’m going to make it slow.”

Strangely, that sounded a lot better than being mated to him, so she merely shrugged and smiled sweetly. She bent down and pulled the blond alpha’s sword from its sheath then twirled it dexterously between her fingers. She felt good. The best she’d ever felt in fact. Whether that was due to being mated or being free from her heat or from looking death in the eye, she didn’t know, nor particularly care. It had been a while since she’d had a good fight, and she didn’t want this one to disappoint.

She levelled the sword at him and said, “It’s rude to keep a lady waiting.”

Dabi’s lips peeled back from sharp incisors as he drew his own sword. “I’m going to cut out your tongue and feed it to you, bitch.”

They leapt forward simultaneously, neither surrendering to hesitation, and their swords met in a clash of sparks that flared brightly in the sun streaming between a break in the canopy. Startled birds abandoned their perches with frightened squarks, but Ochako’s focus was narrowed to the burning fury in Dabi’s eye. Their blades trembled between them, metal singing against metal, then Ochako was forced to leap backwards before he overpowered her.

Again, their blades met, Dabi countering Ochako’s underhanded swing before she lifted her sword to fend off a downward blow that would have sorn her in two. She sidestepped, jabbed, missed, then twirled to avoid his blade. A series of blows were meant to force him back so he’d stumble over the prominent roots tangled at a tree’s base, but he wasn’t fazed by her plan, and easily countered, countered, countered – parried.

His blade whistled past her defence and cut open her cheek just below her right eye. It was deep enough to slice all the way to her gum; she swallowed blood but steadied her resolve. One fumble and she’d be dead.

Dabi’s sneer was gruesome under his ruined eye. He probably thought he’d gotten the first hit, so maybe she needed to remind him who’d taken his eye in the first place.

She ducked under his next blow and tried to thrust her blade into his exposed ribs, but he saw her coming and kicked her away. Tumbling backwards, she rolled, leapt nimby to her feet, then raised her sword again to block another attack. The collision reverberated all the way up to her shoulder and she almost dropped her sword. Her second hand clamped hard around the handle as she gritted her teeth, knees buckling beneath the alpha’s superior strength.

Truly, that was what it boiled down to: Dabi was stronger and bigger and faster. So Ochako had to be smarter and pray for a little luck. She could do this. She’d fought alphas before and won. This was no different.

The sound of clashing swords pierced the air as they engaged in combat. The summer heat bore down on Ochako, but she pushed through it, blinking sweat out of her eyes as she kept her gaze fixed solely on Dabi. If he was affected by the heat, he did not show it, and that leery sneer stayed fixed on his face no matter how hard she fought back. She just needed one opening, one slip up, one moment of weakness, and she’d have him.

Finally, the forest floor got the better of him first. A fist-sized rock slipped under his foot as he stepped back. He stumbled to keep his balance – for a barely a second, barely a heartbeat – and Ochako would have missed the opening completely if she’d been but a foot further away. She launched herself forward. The blade caught the sun as it sliced through the air, flashing white light across the canopy, and the tip grazed Dabi’s chest.

He grabbed the blade with his left hand, almost losing his fingers, and stalled its advance. Blood seeped between his palm and the sword’s edge, pattering onto the forest floor, and his eye burned with fury. Ochako blinked, momentarily thrown by his sheer resolve, and that was all the second Dabi needed. He thrust the blade away from him so hard that the handle rebounded against Ochako’s chest, knocking her back and damn near breaking her ribs. She coughed, staggered, and Dabi was on her.

Pine needles crunched as she fell backwards. A root prodded her spine. The sunlight blinked between boughs that stirred very softly, the forest unbothered by the bloodshed happening within its cloister. Ochako felt very small and insignificant, and wondered if someone were to happen upon her and the alpha’s corpses, might they have pity and bury them side by side, under the tall pine trees? She was allowed one final romantic wish before the end, wasn’t she? Not too much to ask.

Dabi’s face eclipsed the canopy. His expression was stony and cold – the look of a man who knew he’d won. Perhaps Ochako always knew he would. He was simply too strong, and she too weakened by her heat.

He pressed the blade against the bite on her neck. It felt cool against the wound. Soothing, even. Which was so ridiculous it made her want to laugh. But she didn’t. She simply stared at him, quietly resigned to her fate.

“I’m going to gouge this out,” he said, “so he’ll never find you in the afterlife. You’ll be wandering alone in the fog, condemned among the wretched for disobeying your alpha.”

“You’re not my alpha,” she said, then spat a globule of blood at his feet.

His face twisted into a look of disgust, then he lifted the sword to strike her through the throat.

The sound that came next was of dry kindling crackling on an open fire. For a delirious moment Ochako thought the forest had caught alight in the summer sun; the gods had heard her prayers and rewarded her with a distraction – an opening, maybe. It certainly commanded Dabi’s attention as his gaze snapped to the source of the noise, and his one eye widened in both fury and horror.

“No.”

Ochako craned her neck to see.

The blond alpha stood at the foot of the tree. Dry blood caked his torso and pants and the arrow shaft jutted from his chest. His attention was fixed on his hands. Brilliant sparks of light crackled above his palms, popping in the air before spluttering out, like miniature suns bursting into existence.

Crackle, pop, splutter.

Crackle, pop, splutter.

A feral grin crept across the alpha’s face until every one of his teeth showed. His eyes glowed unnaturally red. He slammed one hand against the trunk behind him and an explosion ripped through the bark. There was a shuddering crack, the trunk groaned, the boughs shifted, then the tree came crashing down behind him.

Animals squawked in alarm, the forest floor shuddered, and the alpha’s grin widened.

“I’m gonna blow your head off your fucking shoulders, asshole,” he snarled, then extended his hands behind him and launched himself across the space with an explosion that cracked like thunder.

Dabi got his sword up in time to defend himself, for what little good it did; the first explosion hurled him backwards and he hit the opposite tree hard enough to rain pine needles to the forest floor. Ochako blinked them out of her eyes in time to see a second explosion catch Dabi on the side of his face. He wailed in pain, skin was blackening and twisting, but still he carried on fighting, sword cutting the air inches from the alpha’s right shoulder.

Her alpha leapt back, his temporary cockiness banked beneath the severity of his injury, his breath still whistling unpleasantly in his chest. Ochako whistled, and without needing to confirm her intentions, he held out his hand and she tossed him his sword. He caught it, twirled it, then descended on Dabi again.

Ochako scrambled back as their swords clashed, again and again. They were evenly matched in many ways, both of them tired and wounded, but her alpha had the upper hand. That much was clear to Dabi, who fought with the same kind of ferocity as a cornered rat. Her alpha was cautious, sensing that one step would spell his end.

As Dabi’s blade whistled sideways to sever her alpha’s head from his shoulders, the blond deflected it with one hand, and with his other he summoned the flames of hell. They exploded out of him like nothing Ochako had ever seen before, like he’d stolen the sun from the sky long enough to channel its heat into something terrible and fierce. The sound was incredible, and it echoed through the valleys of the forest long after it had gone silent, long after Dabi dropped to his knees, his skin black and his hair and clothes singed almost to nothing. Black tails of smoke curled from the undergrowth behind him as more branches crashed to the floor. The birds shrieked.

Her alpha walked over to Dabi’s insensate body, then lifted his sword and with one final slash, severed his head. It rolled a short way before becoming wedged between tangled roots, its one eye staring sightlessly at the canopy.

Ochako’s rush of relief was dampened when the blond dropped to his knees and fell forward, almost collapsing onto Dabi’s body. She climbed unsteadily to her feet, limped over to him, then rolled him carefully on his back. He blinked at her then grinned, looking totally feral with blood smeared across his teeth.

“Told ya… I’d cut off that… fucker’s head…” he rasped.

She felt hot tears spring to the corners of her eyes as she pressed her hand to his face. “You idiot.”

He choked on a laugh, winced, but couldn’t say anymore.

“Don’t die on me now,” she said.

Lifting a shaking hand, he summoned another crackle of light and fire between his fingers, reflected in his crimson eyes. His Awakening. The power of the Firebrand bloodline.

“Don’t think… I’m dyin’… anytime soon…”

She wrapped her hand around his, closing his fingers. “Don’t strain yourself. You’re healing fast, but I’m going to have to remove the arrow shaft otherwise your flesh will heal around it.”

He gritted his teeth, eye flashing, then nodded. She wrapped her hands around the shaft, and their eyes met briefly, intensely, some intangible understanding whipping across their connection (she thought she felt a form of fierce love from him, projecting into her mind like pictures in a book), until she started to ease the arrow out of his chest and his eyes clamped closed in pain. His back arched and his breath wheezed, and Ochako ground her teeth in concentration as the splintered wood slid from its resting place, inch by inch, until it popped free with a sound like a stone plopping into viscous mud.

Blood gushed out of the hole, and the alpha’s head flopped to the side as he fell unconscious again.

Wasting no time, she tore off strips of his cloak and applied pressure to the wound. When the worst of the bleeding had stopped, the fabric was dark and sopping with blood, and the alpha had turned pale enough to match her sun-starved skin. Yet his breathing was even, and he didn’t seem to be fading like before.

Stories told that it took whole armies to stop an Awakened alpha, and now she believed it.

Crashing in the undergrowth nearby had her leaping for the alpha’s sword. She snatched it off the ground and crouched over his body just as the brush parted, and a red-haired alpha barrelled into the clearing. Their eyes locked, both of them as surprised as each other (his scent of pine had likely been obscured by literal pine) and then his attention locked on the blond and his hackles stirred.

“Stay back!” Ochako barked, immediately wary of this strange alpha, even if he was part of the blond’s pack.

But there was both genuine panic and concern in the redhead’s eyes now – what had the blond called him? Kirishima? – and he strode over before she could stop him. He brushed her gently aside then hovered a hand over the blond’s mouth to check his breathing.

“He’s not dead,” Ochako told him. “Not yet.”

“Who did this?” Kirishima asked, voice suddenly cold with rage.

Ochako pointed at the burned, headless corpse of Dabi, then at his severed head wedged in the roots. Kirishima’s mouth dropped open, then he eyed the bite mark on Ochako’s neck with equal parts disbelief and awe.

“Fuck, he actually did it. Fuck.”

“Help him,” Ochako demanded.

Kirishima pressed a hand to the blond’s wound, mouth settling into an unhappy line. “I’ll get the others. We have to take him back to camp. Wait here. They’re not far; I’ll be back soon.” He shifted his hand to the blond’s forehead in a familiar gesture, and sighed – “Big idiot” – then he got up and jogged back the way he’d come.

Alone again, Ochako stared at the alpha and chewed on a nail. Soon his pack would come for him, and she needed to make a decision before then. One she didn’t want to make.

But really, there was only one option.

With her heart in her throat, she sank her teeth into his neck, puncturing his scent gland. He stirred, but didn’t wake, and she tasted heat on the tip of her tongue that reminded her of the little sacks of spice her sisters kept in the kitchen.

Their mating complete, she removed his necklace of teeth – fingers brushing his jaw one last time – and placed it around her neck. Then she stood up and forced herself to start walking. If she lingered any longer, she might lose her nerve completely.

The teeth clacked together as she walked away, like ghosts lamenting her decision.

Chapter Text

Katsuki woke in a tent that was dark and quiet. Canvas walls decorated with trinkets, weapons and furs were shrouded by smoke too pungent for his sensitive nose – incense? He coughed, and pain ripped through his torso. Lifting a trembling hand to his chest, he discovered an angry, puckered wound, freshly healed by the feel of it.

Memories slotted back into place. Pine needles crunching underfoot, the aftersmell of a storm laced with burning – Dabi – that fucker sneering down at him, an arrowhead jutting between his ribs, blood and over-brewed tea on his tongue and –

His omega. His mate.

He sat up too quickly and snarled, one hand clamped to his side. Gods, that fucker got him good. He remembered biting the omega, darkness, then… then what happened? Waking, but different. Fire in his veins, on his palms, crackling.

Dabi’s head rolling off his shoulders.

A savage grin spread across Katsuki’s face despite his fatigue. He’d done it. He’d fucking done it. Avenged his clan, albeit not alone; the omega had helped too, hadn’t she? She’d blinded and weakened Dabi, then awakened Katsuki’s power with her blood.

Holding up his hands, Katsuki willed to life a miniature sun, awestruck. He didn’t know how it worked, couldn’t explain it even if he tried, except it was like remembering something he’d always known but forgotten. The power had been in him from birth, like all Firebrands, he supposed, but something in the omega’s blood had gifted him the knowledge of how to activate it.

The fire spluttered out and he shook his tingling hand. His mother had been able to do the same. She was an alpha, a powerful one at that, and he remembered watching in awe as she’d razed battlefields to cinder. Now he could do the same.

He hoped he could face her with pride in the afterlife.

The incense clogged his throat again and he choked, temper settling back into place. How the fuck was he meant to smell anything beyond this medicinal bullshit? And where the fuck was his mate?

Someone suddenly marched into his tent without permission, shoving the tent flap aside. Light left Katsuki briefly blinded as he threw up a hand to cover his eyes, but the familiar scent of pine quelled his panic.

“Chief! Holy fuck, chief! You’re awake!”

Beefy arms snared him a hug that damn near reopened his wound, shooting pain all the way to his toes.

“Gods – fuck – you fucking idiot, get off me – you’re breaking my ribs - agh!”

Kirishima let him go, blinking tears out of his eyes. “Suh-sorry! I just… the monk s-said you should've been dead because your lung was punctured and I – and I… fuck!” He caught him in another hug, softer this time, and Katsuki sat still for a whole thirty seconds before he shoved him away again.

“How long have I been out?” he asked.

Kirishima sat back on his haunches, looking tired and thinner than when Katsuki had last seen him. “Uh… three days, more or less. You’ve been in and out. Sometimes you seemed okay while other times…”

“I’m fine now,” Katsuki said, then winced as another wave of pain scattered hot needles in his chest. 

Kirishima looked doubtful. “Sure…Take it easy though, yeah? The monk said it might take weeks for you to fully recover, so you need to rest.” He paused. “He also said… he said you’ve been Awakened. Is it… true?”

Katsuki grinned, then snapped a sun into existence above his fingers. Kirishima’s eyes widened, then he matched Katsuki’s grin.

“You did it,” he said, then pressed a heavy hand on Katsuki’s shoulder. His eyes glittered; he didn’t need to say anymore. The weight behind his words was enough.

He’d fucking done it.

“Oh!” Kirishima said, snapping his fingers. He routed through a pouch hanging off his belt, then dropped what Katsuki at first thought were stones into the palm of his hand. On closer inspection, he saw they were incisors.

“Dabi’s,” Kirishima said around a warm smile. “Thought you might want them.”

Katsuki’s free hand brushed over his chest – his strings of teeth were gone; he presumed the monks had removed them during his treatment – then clenched his other hand around the teeth until they broke the skin. Only then did he feel a genuine rush of victory.

Dead. Dead.

“She needs the other one,” he said quietly. “She earned it.”

Kirishima blinked at him. “Who?”

Unease squirmed in Katsuki’s stomach. “Her. My omega. My mate.”

“Oh.” Kirishima’s expression mirrored his unease as his gaze flicked to Katsuki’s neck. “I… well… Are you… are you really mated with her?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.”

Katsuki grabbed Kirishima’s arm, heart pounding against his bruised ribs. “Where is she? Where is she? Tell me!”

Kirishima peered forlornly at the tent flap. “I don’t know.”

The landscape beyond his tent was unfamiliar. Paddy fields rolled away to where tree-shrouded hills undulated across the horizon like the back of a great sea serpent. His pack was camped at the base of one such hill, overlooked by a brilliant red temple built on its peak. A bell tolled from its grounds -a lonesome note that rolled across the landscape like a ghost calling for its lost lover.

But Katsuki barely noticed any of this. Head tipped skyward, he sniffed the air for traces of mint. The familiar scent of his camp offered no comfort; horsehair, cooked rice, the distinguishable scents of his pack-brothers, wet canvas, incense, earth…

No mint.

Katsuki stumbled to the edge of the camp, clutching his side while ignoring the worsening pain. The fire in his lung paled compared to his growing panic.

She can’t be gone, she can’t be gone, there’s no way, she’s here, she’s fine –

“Chief, please, you have to go back inside. The monk said –“

“I don’t fucking care what the monk said!” Katsuki roared. “She’s here, I know she is, she wouldn’t just… she wouldn’t leave!”

His pack brothers emerged from their tents to watch him, but their initial expressions of elation quickly vanished. Likely they’d anticipated this fallout the moment they’d seen Katsuki’s bite without an omega at his side.

There's no way she's gone, no fucking way –

He waded into the paddy field beyond the circle of tents. He just needed to be further away from camp – needed the fresh air. That was it. Just needed to pick up her scent, was all. And once he did, he’d be able to find her. No problem.

The smell of camp was replaced by wet earth, grass, ripening rice.

Wet earth, grass, ripening rice.

No. no no no no no

He was panting and shaking now, only half of it from fatigue. His legs worked sluggishly beneath him, kicking up whirls of dirt in the flooded paddy. His lungs burned and burned. How could he be tired already? He couldn’t be. He hadn’t even started looking for her and with every step he couldn’t take, it meant she’d take one further away.

Further away from him.

Finally, he stumbled. He dropped to his knees, water sloshing around his thighs, and panted up at the sky.

There wasn’t a trace of mint in the air.

“Chief…”

Katsuki’s chin dropped to his chest. He gritted his teeth. “Why… Why did she…?”

Kirishima stood behind him, his presence offering none of its usual comfort. “I don’t know. I went to get help after I found you, but when I returned, she was gone.” He paused. “She never came back.”

Katsuki couldn’t stop shaking. He stared at his hands. He thought he was going to be sick.

No. No she can’t. Can’t just leave like this…

Kirishima’s hand on his shoulder. “Come on, chief. You have to rest –“

Never came back.

Katsuki jumped to his feet and whirled, snatching Kirishima by the collar of his shirt. “This is your fault! You let her go! You did this! I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll –“ He broke into a coughing fit that ended when he spat blood into his palm. His chest rattled, and Kirishima threaded an arm around his waist.

“C’mon, chief. Please.”

“No!” Katsuki howled, tearing out of his grip. “I can’t! I won’t! Not until I find her!”

Kirishima swallowed thickly, looking upset. “I know, chief. I know. But you have to rest –“

“No, you don’t fucking know! You don’t fucking know what it’s like!” Katsuki pressed a hand to his chest. He felt like he was on fire. Like he was dying. Except he’d almost died before, hadn’t he? And it hadn’t felt as bad as this. This pain cut deep, gouging caverns through his insides, hollowing him out and filling him with despair.

He choked again, then dropped to his knees, wracking and spluttering and coughing more blood.

When Kirishima’s touch came again, he didn’t shake it off.

“She’ll come back, chief,” he said, “I’m sure of it. And when she does, I don’t wanna be the one to explain that her mate killed himself while tryin’ to look for her. She’s scary, man. Think she might cut my balls off.”

Katsuki blinked at his hands, submerged underwater. Everything hurt. Everything.

Haltingly, he asked, “Did she tell you her name?”

Kirishima looked at him curiously. “No.”

Katsuki stayed kneeling in the water a moment longer, then stood, and accepted Kirishima’s help as he limped back to camp.

If Kirishima noticed Katsuki’s tears, he was considerate enough not to mention it.

Days crawled by into weeks. Katsuki kept mostly to his tent. Not just because he was told to rest by the monks that tended to his health, but because going outside was too painful to bear. It hurt. It hurt worse than the healing wound through his lung. He began to resent the tiny bite mark on the side of his neck. More and more it felt like a slaver’s brand – a mark of ownership that he couldn’t escape from.

He wanted to hate her for it. He told himself, night and day, that he did. Repeated it over and over –

(hate her hate her hate her)

while he repressed those, haunting sweeter memories: her soft hair entwined between his fingers, flesh rippling under his hands, her honied eyes, dark and watchful, pinned on him while he pretended not to care.

(hate her hate her hate her)

His pack tolerated his mood swings with saintly patience. The best he could offer was sullen silence; at worst, he was a raging inferno, threatening to burn down the camp and the temple alike, his power fueled by his frustration. Only Kirishima could calm him down then; he would sit beside him on the dark, cold nights while Katsuki tossed and turned in his bedroll, consumed by the strange malady of being separated from his mate.

He wondered if she suffered the same but couldn’t find it in himself to wish ill on her. Even now, he couldn’t stand the thought of her in pain. But it had been her choice to leave, hadn’t it? So maybe she wasn’t suffering like he was.

As the weeks crept into months and summer gave way to frosty, Fall mornings, Katsuki’s wound had healed enough that he could join hunting parties. His pack were still wary of his foul temper – which had been terrible beforehand but now twice as fierce and unpredictable – but glad to have their chief back.

While hunting did his mind a world of good, he resolutely told himself that he wasn’t looking for her while he roamed the countryside. That he wasn’t sniffing for traces of sharp mint. That he didn’t sometimes deviate from the pack to follow winding pathways through woods and fields in search of tracks.

Sometimes his roaming took him away from his pack for days, but he would always return, downtrodden and filthy, then try his best to forget about her again.

A few times a week, his pack would descend upon the brothels in the nearby villages. Katsuki never went with them. Not anymore. He suspected he’d never be satisfied again; his mind and body belonged to another.

With Winter drawing in fast, he decided to keep his pack camped by the temple. News of Dabi’s death at the hand of an Awakened Firebrand had sent ripples across the prefecture; it was only a matter of time before the emperor had to respond to this gross challenge of his authority. But that wouldn’t come for a while yet, at least not while Katsuki was camped on the Iceburn Clan’s borders.

The Iceburn’s chief’s mate – Katsuki’s childhood companion, loathe as he was to use the word – had sent Katsuki a letter wishing him well, and saying he could stay as long as he wanted and that he was always welcome inside Todoroki’s estate if he wished for better safety over the Winter.

Katsuki burned the letter and didn’t bother to reply, though he did indeed stay within their territory. When Spring came, he intended to move onto Dabi’s estate and claim it as his own, but he couldn’t risk being caught in a battle when the snow settled.

The monks didn’t seem to mind the wild pack of males camped at the base of the incline. In fact, they welcomed the protection. Roaming packs that often took advantage of their food stores during winter were now deterred by rumors of an Awakened Alpha roaming the area. Plus, Katsuki made sure to gift portions of their hunts to the monks, partly to stay within their good graces, and partly because he owed them for their medical assistance.

One of the monks was particularly helpful. A wizened old man with a beard that trailed to his knees, his mate had died some years ago from a disease, and offered comfort to Katsuki when they were alone and Katsuki dared to let his endless grief creep through the cracks in his façade. He taught him how to mediate, and in response to this, Katsuki found it easier and easier to control his explosive new power – and his temper, and his grief.

Even if he couldn’t forget about her. Even if he looked for her almost unconsciously now, waiting and waiting for the day he would snatch that whiff of mint of an errant, winter breeze.

At night, villages from miles away bore witness to fierce crackles of light tearing across the night sky, and soon rumors spread that a god walked the earth near Sesho-in Temple, and his name was Katsuki Bakugou.

At some point during the first month of winter, Katsuki was woken by the tolling of the temple’s bell. Usually the trailing sound of the monks’ morning chants worked to calm the flare of panic and grief he felt every time he woke up alone (if he hadn’t needed to fight so much he would’ve considered becoming a monk months ago) but this time, however, the bell wasn’t followed by chanting.

 Katsuki frowned, then sat up in his snarl of winter furs. Something was wrong; the monks only rang the bell repeatedly like this if they’d spotted trouble on the horizon and wanted to warn the pack.

Pulling on his clothes, boots and winter cloak, Katsuki exited his tent with his sword in hand and stood between the circle of tents while his pack begrudgingly emerged, blinking into the bright, winter sky. Snow was falling in thick clumps, coating the paddies in ivory blankets. The landscape was still. Katsuki sniffed the air. Smoke, incense, cooked meat, frozen earth. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The bell fell silent.

“What do you think, chief?” Kirishima said at his side. His gaze was alert, one thumb on the hilt of his sword.

“Don’t know,” Katsuki said, sweeping his gaze across the surrounding fields. He thought he caught a whiff of something like wine – or was it plum? He wasn’t sure. “Something’s out there.”

“It was probably just a senile old monk,” Kaminari commented around a yawn. “Saw a cow and thought it was a dragon or something.”

Sero stared grimly at the sky. “It’s too cold to fight, chief. Let’s just ignore it. I wanna go back to bed.”

“Shut up,” Katsuki hissed – he thought he’d heard the crunch of snow beyond the circle of tents.

“But it’s cooooollld. The end of my dick is gonna freeze off!”

“But then you wouldn’t have anything left!” Kaminari exclaimed, and Sero punched him in the ribs.

Katsuki whirled on them both - “I said shut –“  before a white-cloaked figure launched itself between the tents in a flying kick that planted on the small of his back and sent him sprawling tits over ass into Kirishima.

All chaos unfolded.

Two figures – no three, four, five – shit he lost count – emerged camouflaged in white and descended on his pack like crows on a carcass. His men cried out in alarm, scrabbling for weapons even as they were picked off one by one. Kaminari was pinned face first in the snow and his arms yanked roughly behind his back, while Sero managed to at least get his sword up before he was ruthlessly disarmed by a warrior carrying a spear; his blade went pinwheeling through the air – missing a beta by a hair’s breadth – before embedding in a wooden tent poll.

Katsuki untangled himself from Kirishima and the pair leapt to their feet, swords raised. Metal clattering against metal, white shifting against white, steps crunching in the snow – all these factors worked to muddle Katsuki’s focus as he tried to pick even one figure from the chaos.

As it turned out, one of the figures picked him. The warrior leapt into his space with twin daggers spinning in their grip. Katsuki blocked them one at a time. The blades glanced together in a fit of sparks – ssshing – and in that moment Katsuki saw the lower half of the figure’s face was obscured behind a white veil. The eyes above it were very dark – almost black – and rimmed with pale lashes.

He leapt back to create space – ignoring Kirishima fighting off another figure at his side – and met the warrior’s flurry of blows with his own. His opponent was damn agile; they ducked and dodged between every move he threw at them, but Katsuki got the distinct impression they were weaker than him – that all he needed was one good opening to knock them off balance.

Their sword whistled down to meet his, and as he lifted the blade to block it, he summoned a flare of power to his left palm. It burst in the space between them, melting a circle in the snow at their feet.

He’d hoped to startle the figure enough to create an opening, but they didn’t falter. Instead, they feinted right then slid through the slush, knocking his feet out from under him. Before he knew what was happening, three figures had him pinned to the ground. Another fiery explosion nearly knocked them back, but they were quickly replaced by others, and one of them jabbed him between the eyes with the hilt of their sword. Stars exploded in front of his vision, and in the second it took him to gather his senses, they’d already lashed his hands together with cord.

Katsuki glanced sideways to find his pack utterly defeated, trussed up like pigs to market.

How? How had they been bested so easily?

Laying on his back in the melted snow, Katsuki turned his furious glare on the cloaked figure standing over him. They rested one of their twin blades casually on their shoulder while they sheathed the other. That confidence stoked Katsuki’s temper, and he roared and snarled until they lowered the tip of the sword to meet his throat.

“Tell me who you are,” Katsuki roared, “or I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll cut off your fucking face and wear it as a mask, you motherfucking coward!”

The dark eyes considered him over the top of the veil, then they planted a small boot in the center of his chest, aggravating his old wound. The cloak parted with the movement, revealing a long, lean leg. The warrior unclipped the veil, letting it drop to one side, and Katsuki realized the warrior was a female. Unusually pink skin stood in stark contrast to her dark eyes, and her pale hair was cropped short around her face; her scent was like sweet berry wine tinged with vinegar.

She leaned forward and sniffed him, then looked disappointed. “Oh gods, it is this one. Ugh, how lame. He’s so scrawny.”

“He smells terrible,” another one of the warriors chimed in. Katsuki looked sideways in time to see her unclip her veil too. This one was extremely attractive, her voluminous figure straining against the white cloak, her long hair falling in luscious waves from under her hood. She smelt like chamomile tea and was staring skeptically at Katsuki with one hand propped primly under her nose. “They all smell terrible. Don’t they bathe?”

“Doubt it,” another female said – one that smelled like plums and had hair so dark it looked almost purple against the snow.

“Well, I don’t like it,” Chamomile stated.

“I just can’t believe it’s this one,” Berries went on, then scanned his pack and pointed at Kirishima. “I mean, look at that one! Way better in my opinion. He’s built like a damn fortress. Reckon he could crush my head between his thighs – just look at ‘em! Like two slabs of ham.”

“Mina!”

“I’m just sayin’,” Berries grumbled, then cupped her hand around her mouth and called, “Hey, Red, you wanna try crushin’ my head between your thighs?”

Kirishima at least had the decency to blush. “I, uh… I don’t… um…”

“Can’t even string a sentence together,” Chamomile said sadly. “Tragic. I can’t believe we came all this way for… for this.” Here she speared Katsuki with another disapproving look.

“This one smells okay, I guess,” Plum said, toeing Kaminari’s rump (who had his wrists lashed to his ankles). “Like a thunderstorm.”

“Untie me and I‘ll show you a thunderstorm, baby,” Kaminari said. “A sexy thunderstorm.”

“Wow, no thanks,” Plum replied, then walked over to join Berries and Chamomile as they leered down at Katsuki.

He ground his teeth together, sparks crackling on his fingers. When he got free – and rest assured, he would – he was going to make these bitches regret ever stepping foot in his camp. “I’m gonna pull out every single one of your goddamn teeth while you're still alive to feel it, you dumb whores!”

“Geez, he’s an angry one,” Berries said, lifting a brow. “They don’t fit together at all.”

Plum nodded sagely. “You’re right. Let’s bury him somewhere and say we couldn’t find him.”

“Good idea,” Chamomile agreed. “If we hurry, she won’t even know he –“

“Let him up, girls.”

The playful, familiar tone hammered a nail straight through Katsuki’s heart; his breath hitched, a light sweat broke out on his brow, his pupils blew wide. He felt like he’d been short with an arrow all over again.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.

Suddenly it made sense. All these bloody women made sense. Except for one thing: he couldn’t smell her, not even the faintest suggestion of mint. So she couldn’t be here, right?

But…

Berries lifted her foot and he leapt to his feet, knowing the truth before he clapped eyes on her. How, he couldn’t say, but he knew it in his bones because she was his mate, and he’d know her even if he was deaf, blind and dumb.

His omega stood a short way along the snow-beaten path beside another female, wrapped in his red cape that hung to her ankles. Her hair was longer and secured to her head in intricate braids. Colorful jewelry made from woven threads hung from her ears and neck, alongside a necklace of teeth. His necklace. But he didn’t care about that. Not one bit.

He blinked at her a few times, just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, then stalked towards her with such ferocity that his path was quickly blocked by the other women. Their expressions were wary and dangerous. Protective.

“It’s fine,” his omega said softly. “Let him through.”

He damn near knocked them aside to get to her. A miniature explosion tore him free of the binds around his wrists, then he grasped her cheeks between his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. Emotion surged through him until he thought he’d choke on it, and for a moment he was so terrified he was dreaming he didn’t dare to so much as blink.

“Hello, alpha,” she said.

“You left me,” he choked, his voice cracking. “You left me.”

“I had to.” She pressed her hands over his. “I’m sorry.”

“No. No you’re not sorry, fuck you, fuck you –“ His breath hitched in his chest and he realized he was very, very close to crying. He could not let his pack – or hers – see him like that. “Just… fuck you.”

She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. He sensed a buzz of emotion across their peculiar bond and knew she was sorry. Terribly sorry. And that she’d missed him and mourned him much the way he had with her. He knew he should move because everyone was quietly staring at them, but he was afraid she might disappear or leave again if he let her go.

“I’m not going anywhere ever again,” she whispered, reading his thoughts. “I swear it on my blood.”

“On your blood,” he repeated, then stepped back. “Let’s talk.”

She nodded and let him lead her by the wrist through their silent packs towards his tent.

“Hey, what are we meant to do with this lot, chief?” Mina called after them.

His omega shrugged, then grinned. “Just play nice for a few hours.”

“I get dibs on the redhead!” Mina announced.

He took his omega to his tent, and she peered curiously around at the fur and trinkets hanging from the walls as she ducked through the entrance. Then her eyes fixed on him, and he felt a rush of longing sweep through him so fiercely he thought he would start coming apart at the seams. Sensing this, she raised her arms to him, but with restraint that he had unfortunately mastered during her heat, he took a step back.

“Explain.”

She dropped her arms, then suddenly seemed uncomfortable with standing and sat heavily on his fur-lined bedroll. He glared until she started talking.

“I had to go back for them,” she said. “My pack. My clan. You must understand what that’s like, the need to protect your family.”

“I’m your family,” he snarled. “Your mate. How could you leave me like that?”

“I didn’t want to,” she said unhappily. “It wasn’t an easy thing. That’s partly why I couldn’t bear to tell you. I wouldn't have been able to resist if you'd commanded me to stay, and that frightened me.”

“I wouldn’t have kept you from your pack,” he countered hotly. “I would have come with you.”

“I know you would have; that was part of the problem. I couldn’t risk taking you. Not because I don’t trust you, but because they wouldn’t have trusted you. Seeing me mated with a male might have made them not trust me. And I needed them to listen.” She ran a hand over his necklace of teeth, a gesture that presented itself like an old-worn habit. “I was worried you might want to take your pack with us, and there’s no way I could’ve risked that. My sisters are very strong, but they’re also very vulnerable. Not all of them are omegas, but some of them are. And not all males are as stubborn as you, alpha.”

Katsuki tsked.

“It took a long time to convince them,” she went on. “Weeks, in fact. And for a while I thought they wouldn’t come at all. There’s comfort and safety in the mines, you see, but our encounter with Dabi taught us that we can’t hide forever. Meeting you showed me there are good alphas out there. Males we can trust. And truth be told, we were tired of hiding in the darkness of the mines.” She sighed, fiddling with the hem of her cape. “Like I said, they almost didn’t come and I’d resigned myself to returning to you alone, but then I started… started showing, and then I grew sick and couldn’t travel, and then they simply wouldn’t let me go alone for fear of my safety – it’s a female thing, you know, a pack thing – so they came with me and – “

“Wait, what sickness?”

She looked at him like he was slow, then used her hands to flatten the front of her cloak.

Her stomach was swollen. Tripled in size since he’d last seen her.

It took an embarrassingly long moment for Katsuki to figure out what that meant, and when he did it felt like someone had swept a rug out from under his feet. He opened his mouth to ask, then shut it, then opened it again, and after a moment or two of doing that, his omega burst out laughing.

“What did you think was going to happen?” she spluttered.

Katsuki’s thoughts seemed very far away. “I… Is it… Are they… pups?”

“Well, it’s not bloody bread!” She laughed again – a sound he immediately decided he wanted to hear more of – then rubbed her stomach. “That’s probably why you didn’t pick up my scent. It’s changed a little since I’ve become pregnant. Hormones, I guess. It’ll go back to normal after I give birth.”

Give birth. Fucking gods. He was going to have a litter and he was not ready.

But also… he was. This was exactly what he’d wanted even if he hadn’t known. Expanding his bloodline, fleshing out the Firebrand Clan again, keeping his mate bred and satisfied.

He dropped to the bedroll beside her, feeling a little weak-legged. She let him process this information in silence, until he leaned over and licked the healed bite on her neck. She shivered at the contact then pressed her hands to his chest, purring as his tongue traced the little indents over her gland. Her scent was distinctly hers, and while he liked that, he also wanted her to smell like him; she had once, but didn’t anymore, and that fanned the old alpha impulses he’d tried so hard to repress. He wanted to reclaim her, make it very clear to everyone outside his tent – their tent – who she belonged to.

Pulling back, he asked, “Tell me your name, little omega.”

She smiled and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Ochako.”

“Ochako,” he repeated, savoring the word like he was tasting a new food. “Ochako.”

“If you tell me your name, you won’t get shot with an arrow again, will you?”

He snorted, then dipped low to catch her bottom lip between his. Gods, he’d forgotten how good she tasted. “Katsuki,” he told her. “And I think we’re done talking for a while.”

He undressed her while she crooned and squirmed, skin peppered with gooseflesh, nipples hardening in the cold. His pheromones turned her dozy, and even thought she wasn’t as subservient as she’d been in heat, he liked her like this too because he knew she was going to remember every second of it.

“Only if you make it memorable,” she said, reading him across the link with a little, knowing smirk.

He mirrored her smirk, then delved eagerly between her folds like a man starved for weeks. Tongue playing between her slit, he was reminded of her flavor and the way her voice lilted and hiccupped while he pleased her. He bit down a groan when he slid two fingers into her, purely from the anticipation of being inside her again, but steeled his resolve while he stretched her out and lapped her little bundle of nerves.

Her first orgasm came swiftly under his ministrations; she gasped and bucked, hand tangling in his hair, arousal dripping over his tongue and onto the bedroll. Only then did he pull back and climb up her, kicking off his pants and unleashing his fierce erection – the first he’d had in a long time.

His initial want to press himself flat against her was impeded by her belly, which gave him pause. She grinned, reading his mind, then turned onto her front and presented herself. Needing no further coaxing, he pressed into her with a guttural growl. She arched her back, giving him deeper access to her core, and he pushed all the way in until he was flush against her ass.

“Katsuki,” she crooned, “Katsuki, please.”

It was the first time she’d said his name during a coupling, and it shot electricity all the way to his toes. Hissing her name between his teeth, he took her hard and fast, all those months of pining and mind-crushing loneliness melting away beneath the feel of her coming undone around him. He leaned over her and sank his teeth into her bite mark, then pounded into her in short, sharp bursts. Blood trickled over her neck, pattering onto the bedroll, but he didn’t care. Not when he could drink from her gland again, reforming their bond with yet another set of little scars. He reckoned her neck would be a mess before the day was through, but judging by her moaning, she didn’t care much either.

He came with his teeth still embedded in her neck, one hand on her hip, the other entwined with her fingers against the fur roll. She sobbed his name as he filled her up, though he didn’t knot her; he couldn’t unless she was in heat.

Pulling out, he shifted them onto their sides with her back pressed to his chest, and dragged the fur bedroll over them, concerned about the chill in the air. He lapped up the last of the blood trickling from the puncture wounds, and one more sniff reassured him that she smelt like a good blend of both their pheromones.

For a while there was only the sound of their heavy breathing and pounding hearts, then she turned to face him, her big eyes blinking above the blanket.

“Am I a good girl?” she asked.

 “No,” he replied.

 “Are you still mad?”

“A bit.”

He knew she was pouting even though her mouth was covered by the blanket, but then she winced in pain and he almost shot out of bed in a panic.

“What? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’. Just the pups moving. Do you wanna feel?”

He hesitated until she guided his hand over her stomach. After a few seconds, he felt the alien sensation of flesh bulging and shifting under his hand.

“Fucking weird,” he said.

She kicked him.

 “How many are there?”

“How the heck should I know? I guess, like… four. Maybe five. It’s hard to tell.”

He felt a bit woozy again, but also pleased; a strange clash of his alpha impulse to breed his mate and his own concern about being a… a father.

Gods.

“You’ll be okay,” she said, tracing a finger across his forehead and down the bridge of his nose. He felt again that strange push against his thoughts, their bond lacing together after time apart, and wondered if she could somehow read his thoughts, or at least feel what he was feeling to some degree.

A clatter of swords and raucous swearing cut through their peace, pulling Ochako out of bed. She stuck her head through the tent flap and yelled, “Mina! Leave him be! Or at least untie him first!”

“Whhaaa?” a voice called back. “But that’s no fun!”

“Mina!”

“Okay, okay. Sheesh.”

“Tsuyu, can you just… just keep an eye on everyone for another ten minutes? Please?”

“An hour,” Katsuki yelled, and Ochako shot him an exasperated look over her shoulder.

“I was gonna say,” the voice of Kaminari drifted back, followed by an, “Ow! What?”

With that apparently settled, Ochako crawled back under the furs and buried her face against his shoulder. He could feel the press of her swollen belly against his side, smell the fragrance of her hair, and hear the content, satisfied purring of her mind.

Now she’d returned, the yawning hole in his chest carved by her absence was finally filled. He felt complete, which was still a little frightening. He’d known mating was a serious affair that created a co-dependent dynamic – one he definitely hadn’t wanted – and while it was hard imagining having her with him forever, to think of the alternative was too painful to bear. Now he had her back, not even the gods themselves could take her away again.

“Do you want your teeth back?” she asked.

He frowned, caught off guard by the subject of the question, then remembered the necklace she was wearing. His necklace. He played them between his fingers, listening to the familiar rattle, then shrugged. “Keep them. I’ll bring new ones back to you every time I’m victorious in battle.”

“So long as you’re the one who brings them back.”

He summoned a miniature sun to his palm, and they watched it flicker in the dim light. “Told you before: I’m not dyin’ anytime soon.”

“Well, you did just get beat up by a bunch of girls.

He soured at that and the power vanished with a crackle. “Why did you attack us?”

“Dominance,” she said, without any trace of humor.

Katsuki grunted.

“My pack aren’t going to listen to you for a long while, if at all. You know that?”

“So long as they listen to you, then I don’t care.” He paused. “I want them to be Firebrands, though.”

“That was the plan.” She sighed and nuzzled against him.

Gods. He’d forgotten how good she felt. How soft yet firm. How warm.

“If this is a dream,” he said, “I’m gonna kill myself when I wake up.”

She blinked up at him, arm wrapped tight around his torso, then pressed her lips to his bite mark. “Don’t talk like that. I’m here, now. Forever.”

“M’still not convinced.”

Her expression turned shrewd, then she straddled him and leaned forward until her glittering eyes were all he could see. “Let me convince you, then.”

Once the shock of having her returned – along with fifteen females, many of them omegas – had worn off, Katsuki’s hormones went wild; her pregnancy pheromones sent him into an almost feral state. He became ferociously protective of Ochako; he wouldn’t let anyone near her, not even Kirishima, despite Ochako reassuring him that she’d managed perfectly well by herself until now. Of course, he wouldn’t hear any of it. He did everything she asked without question and kept her warm and fed and well rutted as the snow stacked up around their tent and winter gripped the world in its unforgiving claws.

The only people allowed within touching distance of Ochako were a select few females. Katsuki detested them muddling their scents with hers, but the first (and only) time he tried to chase them away, Ochako reprimanded him with a bite so fierce it bled for hours. So now he tolerated their pampering, cleaning and general fawning over his mate while he skulked around outside, restless and on edge, torn between protecting and providing. 

Their merged packs fared little better. The mishmash of hormones combined with being tucked away against the winter chill in small, cozy tents turned the camp into a place almost unholy; Katsuki didn’t see Kirishima for nearly a week, and when he emerged from his tent, dazed and ruffled, he admitted he’d  mated with the pink-skinned female within the first hour of their coupling.

Katsuki scoffed at him but decided not to brag. He’d last nearly a week before mating with his omega.

By the time Ochako was almost ready to whelp, Katsuki could barely string a sentence together on account of turning so feral. He spent his time either hunting for her or preening her. The inside of his tent had essentially become one giant nest of furs and linen with her tucked in its center, eternally tired. But despite this, she let him bite and lick and rut her routinely, and even tolerated him scent marking her for the first and last hours of every day. Her scent glands were almost rubbed raw but he didn’t care; he was too focused on making sure everyone knew she was his. His. As if his pups growing in her belly and the scars on her neck weren’t testament enough. Even Kirishima wouldn’t dare go near him by the end; he was simply too wild.

Ochako gave birth in the early spring while Katsuki paced circles around the tent outside. He’d been banished from its interior by the other females, who would not permit him to enter no matter how much he raged. Hearing his mate scream and wail in pain drove him to the brink of madness, but Kirishima kept him steady, one hand firmly on his shoulder while Katsuki bounced on his heels and cracked his knuckles and went through every single expletive one could imagine.

Finally, the women let him enter. Ochako was sprawled on fresh blankets, the rest having been removed by her sisters, with four mewling pups clutched to her chest. It smelt like blood, cardamom and mint entwined with four other scents that were somehow a blend of all three, and something very very clean, like cotton balls.

For the first time in weeks, his hormone-induced frenzy lifted, granting him civilized thought. His protectiveness was still there, but it was diluted now between his mate and his pups. He wasn’t sure how he’d manage to protect them all against the emperor in the upcoming months, but he would, without a doubt.

Ochako smiled, too exhausted to even lift her head, as he perched nervously on the edge of their nest and hovered one hand over a fleshy, wrinkly miniature version of himself. All four of them had a mishmash of blond and brunet hair, and he reckoned their eyes would be red and brown too.

“Happy now?” Ochako asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Me?”

“Isn’t this what you wanted? To breathe life into the Firebrand Clan again?”

He ran his fingers over the fine, brown hair of one of his pups and it mewled against Ochako’s chest. “Mn.”

“I’m sure there’s more to come.”

“From you?”

Ochako scoffed, then shifted two of the pups in her arms. “No, you idiot. From Mina. And probably Jirou, too. You’re gonna have a big clan.”

“I want more from you.”

“Oh, shut up, Katsuki. I think I deserve a break after giving birth to four of your demon offspring. At least wait until they’re walking.”

He ran his thumb along her jaw, sniffing. “You’re going into heat again.”

She hummed. “The monks know about a tea that stops a female from being fertile for a while, so I’ll drink that while I’m in heat.” She caught his look. “I’m serious, Katsuki. No more pups. How am I supposed to fight against the emperor if I’m always being bred?”

 “Who says you’re coming into battle?”

“I do,” she said fiercely, then prodded the scar on his ribs. “Clearly you can’t watch your back.”

“I was having an off day.”

“Uh-huh.”

Something sharp pressed into his upper thigh, prompting his memory, and he fished an object out of his pocket before handing it to her. “Forgot to give you this.”

She turned it over in her palm, frowning. “Is this…?”

“Dabi’s incisor.” He pointed to his left ear, where the other tooth was pierced through his lobe.

“You romantic,” she said around a grin. Hers was laced with wire, which she threaded through the hole in her lobe. It dangled by her throat, reflecting the dim light. Katsuki felt a swell of triumph to see it.

 “Will you give me more pups once I become emperor?” he asked.

She looked at him curiously, then sighed. “When I’m empress, sure.”

He leaned forward, lips brushing her wet brow. There came a rush of love across their bond, tangling somewhere in his mind, making his heart pound hard against his chest. His expression didn't change, but she felt his response across their bond regardless, and smiled at him from the nest.

Ochako fell asleep with the pups still in her arms, and Katsuki watched over them long after the light of day crept through the seams in the tent, casting wintery light onto his sleeping family.