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Chapter Text

More exhausting than the artillery fire, barrage of magitek soldiers, and waves upon waves of Garlean centurions sent to die against the Warrior of Light’s blade is the temperature. Ala Mhigo has never had a merciful climate, even before Imperial occupation, and it shows in every cracking cliff face and pool of salt. The Warrior pauses to wipe his forehead before the sweat can drip into his eyes. Now that his comrades have stayed behind to hold back any reinforcements that would stand between him and the crown prince, he has a moment to catch his breath. 

Though he’s made his way through seemingly endless hallways of royal tapestries and intricately carved stone pillars, fewer and fewer guards come to challenge him. It made no sense—unless the prince had dismissed them personally. Did a monster like that truly need protection in the first place? Not when he could snap the Warrior’s blade in twain between two of his fingers. He must have wanted to rid the way of any fodder, to allow the Warrior to challenge him without reservation. 

The thought of it makes his tail bristle as he sheathes his blade, sprinting faster through the halls. Even in the sheltered bastion of the palace, the heat casts a dizzying haze over his mind and sticks to his skin like a glaze of treacle. One more duel, and this would be over. When the gargantuan doors into the throne room appear, he leans into them with all his strength, snapping at the chance to clash blades with Zenos once more. 

The stone slabs creak apart and he dashes in. There, perched atop the throne of a palace in a land he has never given a chocobo’s arse about, is Zenos yae Galvus. The sight of him has the Warrior of Light baring the points of his fanged teeth. 

Zenos smiles as if he were welcoming a war comrade to sit by his home’s hearth, waving for the Warrior of Light to come closer. “At long last, you have arrived.” His eyes narrow from the breadth of his grin.

The Warrior of Light can’t let himself run face-first into a trap—he draws his sword and sets his eyes and ears upon every corner of the room, while sensing for any flares of aether behind the lioness statues that line the arena.

Meanwhile, Zenos rises from his throne, treading past his obnoxious rotating blade carrier without a second glance. Every step of his legatus’s armor grates against the sandstone steps and floor. “So you have finally sharpened your blade for our hunt. Returning to me with such rancor...”

The Warrior’s ears twitch backwards as if to scramble away from that noxious tone of voice. “Cut the chatter, Zenos. We both know what we’re here for.” He points his blade straight towards the man’s throat, exactly where he’d aimed it when they’d attempted to assassinate the prince in Yanxia. Only one of them can leave this palace alive. 

He expects Zenos to leap at the provocation, but he only gets another enigmatic smile instead. “Ahh. Your wrath may have distilled to a more potent essence, but there is still something lacking.”

“What in the hells are you on about?”

“Call it what you will. A more pure and personal motive to face me, or a way to shed any last pretense of civility as we fight…” The prince unclasps his fist to reveal a control mechanism of some sort, and without further fanfare, presses it with a dull click.

The Warrior of Light leaps back, expecting a detonation or some kind of magitek monstrosity to burst through the walls. Instead, a cloud of white mist plunges from the ceiling and drenches his body. Though he squeezes his eyes closed and slaps a hand over his nostrils and mouth in shock, his next reaction is to be offended that Zenos would try something as cowardly as poison gas on him.

“Your caution is unneeded, my beast.” Zenos takes another step towards him. When his eyes blink open, the man looks completely unperturbed as he breathes in the traces of the mist in the air, watching and waiting for the Warrior’s next move.

It’s that damned stare and those imperious ice blue eyes peering from above, like he’s some laboratory rat pinned to a table, that has the Warrior dashing forward to strike. The point of his blade arcs backwards, his body tenses and brims with energy and aether, and he takes a deep breath to draw upon more strength—

By the time that he coughs and his throat constricts, it’s too late. He braces for pain, for numbness, for some manner of alchemical abomination to rupture within him. The only thing he detects is a strange, pungent musk all around him instead. It’s earthy and herbal, but with an edge of nostalgic sweetness that has him sniffing lightly and wondering why it seems so familiar.

A shudder starts in his core and spills out like molten honey, a fruit ripening to redolent and engorged fullness in the blink of an eye within while he gasps.

What is happening to him—it couldn’t be, it made no sense. Why would a Garlean carry the purified scent of a nunh in heat like this? 

Zenos’s rictus of a smile is maniacal in its enthusiasm. “Yes...have you realized at last? Drink deep of it! This savage challenge, your most primal call to battle!” 

“What have you done?” the Warrior rasps. The scent is more addicting than breathing air itself. Another delicious, intoxicating huff of the pheromones brings the Warrior of Light slumping to his knees. Strength drains from him, and lascivious warmth licks between his thighs in its place.

“You are—” The sight of Zenos’s fading glee would have been hilarious had it been in any other place and for any other reason. “Are you not provoked to battle by the scent of another tribe’s leader? Your savage nature demands it.” 

This godsdamned lunatic. Had he learned about Seeker of the Sun biology just to try inciting a rutting challenge between them? Were the Warrior of Light like any other tia, the overpowering perfume in the air and upon his skin would be enough to drive him to feral, spitting madness, clawing to bleed the prince’s jugular dry. But as the fog dissipates between the sunbeams filtering through the windows, he is left swimming in an unholy haze of thoughts: a body pressed against his own, bending him over, filling him as he is claimed again and again by a worthy nunh…

“No, not now,” he hisses. He’s so close to ending this miserable war for once and for all, his sworn enemy just a few paces away. While his hand scrambles to reach the blade he’d dropped on the floor in his confusion, Zenos approaches with the carefree ease of a stroll in the Imperial Palace gardens. His fingers tighten around the hilt of the blade, so close to getting a grip, and then Zenos’s fingers tighten around him. With a quick tug against his scalp, a lurid yowl of satisfaction leaves his lips.

“Did the researchers contaminate the samples? This should not be possible,” Zenos murmurs, analyzing him like a misfiring gun or a chipped blade’s edge. The flash of disappointment through his eyes stings more than the pointed tips of his gauntlets digging into the Warrior’s skin. “Unless...”

Zenos’s other hand descends down the curve of his jaw, combing over his pulse, before idly flicking at the top buckle of his armored coat like a coeurl batting at a toy. That tiny movement has the Warrior salivating for the promise of blessed release. The unfulfilled promise of a nunh’s attentions wafts into his lungs with every breath he takes, the sole pleasure that he can think about, a worthy hunter and breeding male to sate his desires.

And for all the horror he represents, oh, what a fitting hunter Zenos would be. Even before this miserable heat had descended upon him, the Warrior could begrudgingly admit the imperial prince was attractive, or even beautiful. Now, as his neck cranes higher to meet his gaze, the sight of Zenos sends his instincts into a frenzy. How would he take him and wring out his heat? He had enough strength to force the Warrior of Light onto his back, spread him apart and take him against the wall, or to bend his legs back and hold him in a mating press—

He bites his lower lip hard enough to draw blood with his incisors. Zenos’s hands remain steadfast and unyielding as the steel he cloaks himself in, but his eyes dart to the sight and narrow as if he wished to drink every drop of the Warrior’s blood. In this wretched state, the Warrior of Light would let him get away with murder and more. More sweat drips down his neck, the light of the sun becoming nigh-unbearable on top of his body being thrown into heat.

When he shuts his eyes, Zenos shakes and jostles him away from any reprieve. “Hmph. After waiting for you to hone your instincts for so many moons, this is...an unfortunate development. But since you remain indisposed, mayhap I will confirm my hypothesis.” 

With that, Zenos shoves the Warrior on his back—it was like his muscles had melted to gelatin, unable to brace himself against the slightest force. The flicker of horror through his mind is quickly replaced by clamorous desire: he will be taken, fucked, bred to blissful satisfaction. Zenos tears apart the straps securing his armor and tosses it aside, ripping open the padded underlayer beneath the Warrior’s breastplate with the ease of a child tearing open a nameday present. The show of strength just gets him wetter. Gods damn it all. 

His chest is bared to the entire throne room and Zenos drags a teasing fingertip over the scars across it, from those earned in primal-slaying combat to the faded incisions under his pectoral muscles. As much as the Warrior should be repulsed, the cool metal is such a relief to his fiery flesh that he groans and struggles to extract his arms from the useless remnants of his top. It draws a cruel bark of amusement from Zenos’s throat. As dreadful as the shame of being laid out like a platter of honey roast bird for the crown prince is, at least he doesn’t seem disgusted or apathetic. The frightened part of him—the part that’s been exposed as prey—is grateful. Had this torrid affair truly bored Zenos, he might have received a katana to the gut by now. 

When Zenos’s hands finally hook under the waistband of his trousers, he whines. He’s so close, only a few ilms away from exposing all of him for his pleasure and use, and the part of the Warrior’s mind that continues to scream in alarm is growing quieter at the promise of soothing touch and sensation. Was a Miqo’te’s heat usually this agonizing, sending aching pains and feverish sweat down every ilm of the body? Or was this worsened by whatever accursed science experiment Zenos used to concoct this trap? His hips shake from side to side, urging Zenos to continue. Those cold blue eyes remain inscrutable, but they narrow with an emotion that the Warrior prays isn’t pity. 

Finally, Zenos snaps his belt buckle apart with a flex of his wrists and drags the Warrior’s trousers and smallclothes down to expose his utterly soaked cunt and thighs. His stomach clenching in fear makes the ache at his core all the more tangible. The scent of his sweat mingles in the air with traces of the nunh’s pheromones, like the salt of the Lochs with a sickly sweet edge.

Zenos’s breathing grows louder. “Ahh. So you are no ordinary ‘tia’ after all.”

His armor-covered palm comes to rest just below the Warrior’s navel, extending down past his clit. If that hand alone was so large, then what of the man’s cock? How thoroughly could it reach inside to fill, to breed? A visceral gush of warmth spreads from that spot, as if his womb itself were responding to Zenos’s touch. His eyes twitch and roll back for a second at the promise of it. “This is your damned fault…so do something about it!” the Warrior hisses. His hips buck up against Zenos’s hand, while his tail slaps against Zenos’s wrist with the impact of damp newsprint dropped on cobblestone.

Zenos sneers. “My fault that you could not master your own slovenly needs? I may have laid the trap, but here you lie before me...moaning and rutting against your enemy. You do not even attempt to flee, merely playing at being a writhing harlot to inflame my own instincts. Is there anything left in that head of yours besides carnal desire?” Even the man’s attempts to taunt and humiliate take on a delicious magnetism of their own, the low purr of his voice like an oiled fingertip tracing down one’s spine.

Though he speaks with a haughty, disinterested tone, Zenos hasn’t looked away from the Warrior or moved away this entire time. It’s the Warrior of Light’s singular hope—and he seizes upon it like a vulture diving for carrion.

“W-what’s...in your head then, I wonder?” The Warrior flexes his thighs and arches his hips higher, reaching far enough to work himself around Zenos’s index finger. The ridges of polished metal along his knuckles rub against his walls from the inside and make him gasp. “You sure seem happy to watch this ‘savage’…yet you’re too afraid to come and—oh, fuck—take him!” Zenos still refuses to thrust and grant the deliverance of friction and force that he craves, but the man remains frozen while the Warrior slides his wet cunt further down his finger.

The whites of Zenos’s eyes widen around his irises. There had to be a way to make him break, to burrow between the crevices of his monstrous armor. After all, he’d shed those walls for the Warrior’s sake after their duel in Yanxia—all it took was shattering the tip of his helm. The Warrior of Light doesn’t give a damn if he has to burn every tattered piece of his dignity, as long as Zenos is willing to feed some of his own to the fire.

He finds a comforting rhythm for his twisted self-pleasure, and his body’s sweltering temperature eases the unnatural chill of the metal and leather now filling his cunt. The faster he moves his hips and the filthier the moans from his lips, the heavier Zenos’s breathing becomes. When the Warrior starts to run his half-gloved hands over his chest, stroking at the peaks of his nipples with a soft gasp, Zenos sucks in the air through clenched teeth.

“Ohh. What’s the matter, prince? Not willing to admit to yourself that you want this as badly as I do now?” The wetness around Zenos’s defiled gauntlet drips from the Warrior’s folds to the stone tile below. The Warrior’s breath hitches as he bucks harder, takes more inside, watching every blink and twitch of Zenos’s sculpted face.

When he rolls his hips and shoves his cunt as far down towards Zenos’s palm as possible, mewling for more, Zenos finally moves. Unfortunately, it’s away from the Warrior—and he pulls himself free with a sharp tug. The gaping absence of him seems as devastating as a wound in battle, eliciting a snarl.

“Enough. Since you have proven your case and demonstrated that combat is beyond you in this pathetic state, I will test your endurance in the only manner that you will accept.” Zenos leans over the Warrior, his silhouette engulfing him in shadow, and scoops him up under the waist. His body goes limp on instinct, all will to fight suppressed by the understanding that this man is to be his nunh and he is to be bred to his heart’s content.

Zenos carries him over to the throne and as soon as he’s deposited on the sandstone seat, the prince begins removing his armor. Starting with his defiled right glove and vambrace, he sheds each piece of his metal carapace and cloth wrappings with excruciating slowness. How does the man not go mad dressing himself every morning and night? 

The Warrior whines as he spreads his legs wider and leans back, making a lurid display of himself. His urgency has become contagious, at least—after Zenos removes all the pieces on his arms and shoulders, he growls and digs his fingers into some hidden nook on the left side of his torso’s plating. With an unceremonious and resounding thud, the remaining pieces on Zenos’s upper body snap apart and fall onto the ground. All that’s left on his torso is a black, form-fitting underlayer that clings to his musculature with the same closeness that the Warrior yearns to have. Even without the alienating layers of armor upon him, there’s something unearthly about his physique, the callous and coincidental beauty of a weapon designed first for function and nothing else.

When Zenos peels off that last layer to reveal his bare chest and pushes down the hem of his leggings and smallclothes, it’s enough to make the Warrior drool and beg. The scent of Zenos himself, not just that unnaturally pungent nunh’s hormonal perfume, peaks above the cloud of pheromones. His tail lashes from side to side beneath him at the sight of the prince’s cock—so full with vigor, thick enough to stretch him to his very limit, its veins trailing from tip to base in a way that highlights how heavy his balls appear. His greaves and boots still cover everything below his thighs, but it makes the encounter feel more illicit somehow. As if everything about this sordid affair wasn’t already the definition of sin.

“Should you crave to be claimed so badly, then begging should be no obstacle for you.” His smug grin is reminiscent of a goobbue’s maw. “Go on, little beast. Just what do you demand of me?” Zenos approaches and looms over him, arms braced against the sides of the throne, further drenching the Warrior in the smell of iron and boreal pine. 

“After all the shit you’ve put me through, don’t you dare make me beg…!” The Warrior reaches forward to claw at the sides of his torso, marring pale skin under his fingernails. When his legs attempt to hook and pull around Zenos’s upper thighs, the man lets out a huff of quiet laughter. “Just breed me already!” he cries. For Zenos, any fighting may be just as good as foreplay, but expressing this level of untamed need is exhausting for the Warrior. When a nunh started making his claim, pressing his claws and fangs against one of his harem, mating instinct demanded docility in response—it was one of many reasons he’d kept his distance from others in his tribe during breeding season. Now, it takes all that’s left of the Warrior’s pride to not crumple under Zenos’s chest and plead. 

Zenos relents with a bemused sigh, grasping the Warrior’s hips and lining them up with the flushed head of his cock. A triumphant groan leaves the Warrior’s lips as he tries to slide forward and get more of Zenos inside, all of him inside. He may have had larger partners before, but none had the scale of Zenos’s body eclipsing his own and filling him beyond his most perverse fantasies. Slick drips out from him with every ilm he takes. As Zenos’s cock widens towards its base, the pain of adjusting to the man’s size is overshadowed by the relief of his frenzied heat loosening its suffocating grip on his body.

Zenos’s eyelids flutter closed as his breathing speeds up and grows shallower. His stomach grows taut with restraint, as if he were taken off-guard by the sensations around him—but it only takes a few seconds for his murky grin to return, as he pulls his hips back a few ilms and thrusts. 

The Warrior sobs helplessly, his mind as frayed and disarrayed as if Zenos had placed his cock right in it and jolted all the thoughts out. His cunt keeps flexing and tightening around the fullness inside it, his body dedicating every onze of energy to fulfilling its debauched needs. The heat and humidity of the room embrace him and smother all sense of separation between him and his nunh, two melting to one. He struggles to clasp onto Zenos’s wrists as they drag him up and down like a cocksleeve—not to make the man stop, but to urge him faster.

“Ahh...such a base form of satisfaction, y-yet...” Zenos’s rhythm is still too slow, his eyes too sharp as they scour the Warrior’s body. But each time his hips piston forward, the Warrior can do naught but flex around him and take it, while the swell of the man’s length fills him to the point of making his stomach bulge a little higher. It’s impossible to tell if the pace is meant to be mercy or further torture. 

He writhes against Zenos, his ears pressed back against his scalp as he strains to milk that cock for what it’s worth. Every time it pulses inside him he purrs with elation, imagining just how much cum would flow forth when he’d pushed the prince to his limits. The phantom sensation concocted by his sex-addled mind is enough to bring him close to orgasm. His moans rise in pitch to match it, his mouth lolling open as his bliss echoes through the room.

Zenos laughs overhead as if he’d had a breathless joyride atop a magitek reaper. “Such hunger within! As if Ala Mhigo and Doma and Garlemald never mattered to you—and how could they, before such unbridled lust!” Every sentence was punctuated by the rutting of his hips and the Warrior’s whimpers for more. Zenos’s hands cling to the Warrior’s waist, the span of his palms only emphasizing their vast difference in size as he envelops him from within and without. “Go on then. Abandon yourself to this shallow pleasure, beast. Come.” 

The skyrocketing jolt of ecstasy that rings through the Warrior’s body at the sharpness of Zenos’s voice, at his nunh’s command, forces him over the edge. He cries out as his hips tremble against Zenos’s forceful thrusts, his clit and cunt twitching desperately for more. His body molds itself to his nunh’s needs, lasciviously squeezing and flexing around Zenos’s cock until he has no choice but to fall to his body’s shallow needs as well. The warm flood of cum that pumps into him every time Zenos trembles inside washes away all aches, worries, doubts—his body slackens, with nothing left in him to resist the bliss spreading through him from head to tail. 

“Yes, please!” There’s hardly any brains left behind his words any longer, just a direct link from his cunt’s pleasure to his lips as he keeps begging and Zenos keeps fucking him. “Oh fuck, don’t stop—”

Zenos lets out a husky groan, the metal of his greaves clanking against the edge of the throne’s seat as he slumps forward. “To think that the famed eikonslayer would become such a depraved beast in heat...” Zenos croons, but the intimidating aura of his voice is dampened by how breathless and pleased he sounds. 

To have proof of Zenos’s vulnerability in the the most perversely intimate manner—spilling forth inside him—only stokes the Warrior’s hunger. When Zenos starts to withdraw, the Warrior of Light howls in protest. “No! Need m-more, keep moving, keep coming.” Again, his calves hook around Zenos’s legs, trying to reach that apex of fulfillment when Zenos’s cock is buried balls-deep inside him. His nails clutch hard enough at Zenos’s wrists to draw slivers of blood.

Zenos bares his teeth with a snarl. If it’s an attempt to get the Warrior to calm down, it doesn’t work, since the sight only reminds him that he hasn’t been properly claimed with a bite yet. “Are you so hopeless that you would keep wailing for my seed? Stooping low enough to let the crown prince of Garlemald take you and impregnate you?” 

His cunt spasms harder around Zenos at the provocation. If being disgraced and bred like this felt so good, what need was there for his duty, his titles, his blade? The Warrior of Light nods as he pants for breath, unable to trust his mouth to piece together any words. 

Zenos’s tongue flicks between his lips while he stares down at the man before him, now reduced to a slavering beast in rut. “Then...prove yourself worthy.”

He gives no further warning before seizing the Warrior by the waist and hauling him upward like a sack of flour while his cock remains buried inside that aching cunt. The Warrior’s legs flail while Zenos turns—and then the prince seats himself on the desecrated throne with practiced ease. When the Warrior’s body lands atop his lap, the sudden and inadvertent thrust against his inner walls has him gasping in shock. Zenos’s cum overflows and seeps down his cock between their bodies.

Zenos unfurls himself upon the throne and props his chin up on his hand, lilting to the right side of the seat with irreverence. “Go on. Indulge yourself, like the whore you are. Show me the depths you are willing to plunge to.” His smile is more subdued this time, tamed by the contentment of his own release. If only the Warrior could be so easily satisfied, rather than carrying this churning maw of hunger inside him like a bundle of tangled vipers. 

As humiliating as having to take his own pleasure from Zenos’s body is, he is left with no choice but to sate himself with this: his knees braced against a slab of unforgiving stone as he rises and falls atop Zenos’s lap, his hands snaking forward to yank on the man’s silken hair. The pain gets a rise out of Zenos, and his cock pulses with interest inside the Warrior’s cunt. Good. The prince’s bare, pale neckline is right before his eyes. He’d dreamed of putting his blade to those cords of muscle before—now he arches forward to sink his teeth into that enticing expanse of skin instead. 

Zenos’s breath hitches and he lets out a low hum of a moan beside the Warrior’s ear. It only encourages the Warrior to slam his hips down harder, trembling as he stretches to accommodate Zenos’s length. His own sighs of pleasure are now muffled against Zenos’s throat while the noisy clap of flesh against flesh echoes around them. He may have become Zenos’s prey, but he’ll take his fill from the predator so eagerly lending his body to be consumed. 

Zenos had been beautiful to just look at, but touching him is a revelation all its own—the Warrior’s left hand curls and drags through his golden, perfumed hair, while his right hand squeezes the firm, broad planes of his torso’s muscles with glee. His breath hitches when the Warrior’s fingers start rubbing and toying with his nipples. It ignites a frenzy of movement from the Warrior, his arse slapping down against Zenos’s hips as he bounces faster. Such a finely honed body made for an exquisite mate, a hunter worthy of taking an entire harem—but right now, the Warrior has him all to himself. A feral grin stretches across his face as he bites Zenos lower near the shoulder, lapping at the hint of blood below his tongue.  

Zenos makes a sound between a laugh and a gasp, and his hips roll up against the Warrior’s. He leans back to meet his gaze with something like admiration while the Warrior fucks himself on his cock. “How uninspired and tedious all my prior bedmates seem before you. Naught more than royal obligation, but this—!” He lets out a lewd rasp as the Warrior tightens and squeezes their thighs to better feel his arousal. “T-this is...a savage dance worth partaking in...”

The Warrior whines with both satisfaction and craving, sweat now dripping over his brow from the frenetic pace of his movements. The praise from his nunh is sweet to his ears as sugar-drenched caramel, and his body repays it to Zenos in full as he bounces on his cock. “Need you Zenos, my mate, mine.” His insistent begging and moaning is like chanting in worship, the closest he can come to a primal’s tempering with his Blessing. He reaches around Zenos’s ribs to claw at his back, a canvas of muscle to carve into with his nails. At this distance, their chests press together, Zenos’s masculine scent fills his nostrils, and the Warrior is in heaven. So close, so full, ready to be claimed again and again. 

Zenos straightens his back and grabs the Warrior’s hips again, driving his cock as deep as he can inside. The pressure forces a whine from the Warrior. His lips press against the furred edge of the Warrior’s ear as he delivers the finishing blow—“Ohh, my beast,” he croons with sadistic affection. “Take your fill then, all of my seed, until it quickens in your womb.”

Like a fuse set alight, his body can only shiver and tremble as he’s set to explode. The sin of his desire be damned, no other need holds a candle to the overpowering urge to be bred like his nunh’s prize whore. Zenos’s cock throbs between every bounce of his hips, the luxurious tightness of his cunt plunging Zenos into silken heat. The prince is so hard and thick inside him that every quiver has his clit pulsing at the thrum of sensation against it.

At last, he hears the shuddering gasp of Zenos reaching the precipice, his spine arching as he rams his hips higher. One, two, three more thrusts, and the prince moans as if winded by a punch, his length shuddering from the force of his release. The deluge of cum filling the Warrior’s depths, staining him, is what triggers his orgasm—his vocalizations turn to thin gasps for air, his fingers rake down Zenos’s shoulders, and his core tightens and squeezes as if the only thing holding him together was his union with Zenos’s cock.

Each spurt of cum he can milk out makes his hips writhe and roll. The desperate, indecent motions are enough to get Zenos to snarl and bend down to bite the Warrior’s neck in a vain attempt to discipline him. The sharp stab of Zenos’s teeth as they dig into the side of his throat draws out another excited whine from the Warrior, and a fluttering of his insides around Zenos’s length. 

"Again!" The nunh he chose had to match his own stamina, his own untamed need. "Come in me again...!" 

"You are...insatiable." How sweet Zenos appears when tormented by agonizing bliss. Something foreign and subdued slips into the prince’s voice as the Warrior of Light fruitlessly chases another climax, another calming flood of seed to continue their mating dance. When the Warrior squeezes around his cock, it's like Zenos is biting back a whimper.

The idea of ruining his nunh with pleasure has him forgetting all his soreness and the clinging discomfort of sweat on his skin. “You think twice is enough? You haven’t done enough damn research on us Seekers then," the Warrior grumbles. The head rush of orgasm still thunders through him, but a heat cycle required more than just the physiological release from coming. Climax was but a mere means to an end, and that end needed him to be pumped full of cum until it spilled down his thighs and to his shaking knees. 

"Oh, I have read enough." Zenos’s chest heaves for breath like the rise and fall of a magitek engine's pistons. "Your savagery lends itself to surprising feats…six hours with a single partner was among the average of the numbers I documented."

"Twelve hours won't be enough to make up for what you've done, you bastard! You'd better keep going, or else I’ll—"

"Very well, you voracious coeurl. Or perhaps you would wish for me to call you my mate now as well?" 

A shaky, excited whine came from his drool-covered lips.

"Enough of this tiresome desert ruin, then. I will oblige your needs for a time..." Zenos pulls him up off his cock with a filthy squelch, leaving the Warrior to press his thighs together in a futile attempt to keep himself stuffed with seed. One of Zenos's arms slips under his knees while the other grabs him by the shoulders, yanking him into a sweaty embrace.

That the prince still had strength to muster to carry him is a feat worth rewarding with a purr of gratification, though the Warrior’s chest also clenches with anxiety as Zenos moves with him in tow. "Where are we going?" 

"To the Royal Menagerie above. Both my legion and your allies will be obstacles to any further consummation, and I have little patience for their interference." A wicked smile brightens his face. "I have a means for our flight from this place and a safe house within Ilsabard to indulge you properly. We will see who runs themselves ragged against the limits of their flesh first," he whispers. 

Chapter Text

How many bells had passed? How many times had Zenos staked his claim, sheathing himself inside the Warrior of Light? There were no windows in the depths of the safehouse’s rooms to tell—only blue ceruleum lanterns that cast Zenos’s body in glacial light.

Their mating has exhausted the Warrior more than any fight he’s had with a primal, but in a way, he is battling a primal still. Zenos had transformed into Shinryu just to carry him to this place, somewhere in the mountains on the edge of imperial territory. With every thrust, he can sense the steady aura of the dragon’s aether mingling with Zenos’s own when he closes his eyes and concentrates. Zenos might be drawing upon it just to keep his hips moving.

When they first entered the room and Zenos was stubbornly carrying him in his arms, the prince had barely taken a few steps in before stripping off his leg armor and boots and fucking the Warrior of Light against the concrete wall. The next times had been more hazy after he’d howled and clawed into Zenos’s back in orgasmic panic—again and again, Zenos pulls him close, hips rutting and trembling as he steeps himself deeper in the Warrior’s intoxicating heat.

For a blessing, it’s far easier to take and be taken upon a proper, Garlean-sized bed, though the Warrior’s knees are still rubbed raw from the sandstone surface of the throne. The realization brings a flicker of embarrassment to his awareness—generations of Ala Mhigan royalty had used it as a seat of power, and they’d bred like animals upon it—

Zenos snarls, and just as quickly as it came, the embarrassment is shaken from him when Zenos thrusts faster and faster. The prince is so much larger than him that when he’s mounted and fucked from behind, his head is tucked below Zenos’s chin. When Zenos grabs the back of his neck to force him further into the sheets, all he can do is purr and let go while Zenos fills him, surrounds him, soaks him in his scent.

All he can do to avoid breaking apart is lose his mind in the onslaught of pleasure, while pain and panic are held at bay by the ebb and flow of his heat. Before a worthy nunh, there is little advice to give to his harem but to enjoy the ride. When Zenos comes inside him again, he gasps in excitement as his nunh’s cum slakes his desire.

The bed was now a breeding den, drenched in sweat and other fluids after fucking upon it and against it and into it. In his right mind he might have found it disgusting, but he only cares about being as close to his nunh as possible. He switches positions, crawling over Zenos’s lap and wrapping his legs around the man’s hips, arching his chest to rub against Zenos’s body. The Warrior’s lust-drunk mind keeps lingering on how pale the man’s unarmored flesh is—and how much better it’d look marked with flushed bites and hickeys. He kisses and laps at Zenos’s nipples with his tongue for the first time, and Zenos flinches as if genuinely caught off-guard. Despite being indomitable on the battlefield, he can’t fully defend himself against pleasure.

The realization drives the Warrior of Light into a frenzy, and he bounces on Zenos’s cock and moans and begs and milks the man into another orgasm. Zenos’s expression as he comes once more, shivering from the pleasures of the Warrior’s body, is the most emotive that he’s ever seen on the prince’s face: Despite being driven to orgasm enough times that even a slight touch could make him tremble, Zenos forces himself to keep moving, and the overstimulation carves a portrait of ecstatic agony into him. His lower lip drips with blood from biting down, and his eyes widen as they roll back into his skull. Any trace of his usual impassive, apathetic disposition is gone. Like a marble statue snapped free from its prison, reveling in the sensation and give of soft, warm skin beneath it, Zenos leans deeper into the pleasure and moves and thrusts and thrusts—

A choked whimper barely escapes Zenos’s throat. The Warrior knows that by this point the man’s semen has been fully spent, now dripping from the Warrior’s cunt and making the sound of their coupling more lascivious with each passing hour. It’s by some miracle of willpower or Garlean physiology that Zenos remains hard enough to fuck him and have a dry orgasm at all.

While they both stutter to a halt, recovering their strength, he can do little but catch his breath and admire Zenos in repose. The privilege of being the only one to see him like this, at the edges of his endurance, fills the Warrior with inexplicable elation. A purr rumbles through his throat and chest.

“After all that I have done to you, you still smile at me?” Zenos stares blearily at him, but the fascination in his eyes shines through his fatigue.

It’s too hard to explain himself in words. He can only continue to selfishly take, grinding against Zenos’s hips until he flinches from the continual stimulation after climaxing.

“Ahh, to while away the quiet hours like this…” Zenos’s tone is almost tender, his hands wrapping around the Warrior’s waist in a possessive hold. “You wish for it too. We are...one and the same.” His breath hitches each time the Warrior forces himself back down and his cunt squeezes around Zenos with unquenchable need. “How about it, my beast? Won’t you spend your life with me?” Zenos whispers.

Just as the desire between them has been contagious, so is Zenos’s yearning, the rawness now seeping from the crown prince’s shattered visage. The Warrior of Light shudders. It would be so easy to say that the heat has addled them both, that he couldn’t ever agree—but there’s something lodged in his throat that holds him in a silent cry of pleasure, staring upward at the only man who’s ever been worthy of claiming the title of nunh over him.

“I…” The Warrior groans as he withdraws for a moment of relief, slumping back on Zenos’s thighs. He is exhausted, yet his empty cunt still twitches for more. “I wish that I could.”

His answer is damning enough for Zenos to lick his lips, iron coating his tongue as he considers a response. “If you would not stay by my side…” His expression grows shuttered and distant, if only for a single moment. Then that thin, cruel smirk returns to his face.

"I shall ensure you are ruined for anyone else ere you return."

Zenos’s eyes flash that unnatural, metallic crimson hue, and the Warrior yelps as Zenos’s length shifts and swells against his stomach. Shinryu’s aether pours into them from above, the wave of energy as overwhelming as a waterfall spilling directly overhead. He averts his gaze from the radiant light surrounding Zenos’s body, barely able to catch the glow shifting and wrapping around the prince’s physique before he shuts his eyes.

When the Warrior of Light blinks again, the flow of aether has stopped. The churning energy is now held captive in Zenos’s body like a dam containing a river, distorting the man’s shape. Red horns crown his head, mirroring the silhouette of his helmeted regalia. Cascading waves of purple and gold scales cover the edges of his body, concentrated along his shoulders, the sides of his ribcage, and his forearms. His hands hold the Warrior’s shoulders down with claw-tipped fingers. Behind him, two large wings block out the hanging ceruleum lights, curling over them both like a golden longbow.

The unexpected beauty of his transformation renders the Warrior speechless. Under any other circumstance, he would catalog and appreciate every aspect of the changes—but right now, his eyes dart down and are held hopelessly captive by the sight of Zenos’s cock. Its base is also covered in smooth gold scales that bow outwards in long ridges, spreading and spiraling towards the head of his shaft. The surface bulges out wider along the center of the length. His cockhead is elongated with a thinner, almost triangular tip that drips white precum down a groove along its center—so thick that it resembles normal semen. And peeking out from behind that monster is an enlarged, heavy set of balls, oval in shape as they descend to Zenos’s upper thighs.

The Warrior of Light drools as his heat’s symptoms flare up once more, his cunt dripping while the tension in his hips fades away with a blissful wave of hormones. His legs tremble as he tries to spread them wider, until Zenos lets out a dismissive snort and shoves the Warrior’s knees backward to hold him in a mating press. The helplessness makes him twitch and tighten. Zenos could tear him in half with his bare hands now that he’s absorbed Shinryu’s might, but that power has become indistinguishable from the pleasure it also promises. The Warrior’s tail lashes against the crumpled sheets beneath his torso while Zenos grinds against his clit, letting him feel every bump and ilm along that sublime, scaled cock.

“Ah, my friend...I had planned to bring the rage of this eikon to bear against you in battle, but we have other ways to test such a creature’s limits.” Zenos holds the heated tip of his length against the Warrior’s soaked entrance, and the sensation of precum about to drip inside has the Warrior mewling with delirium. “Have you the strength to accept this form, knowing that I would leave my mark in you forevermore? Knowing that none other could compare as a mate…?” Zenos murmurs.

The Warrior of Light knows that all too well. For once, his blessing’s immunity to tempering is useless as he looks at Zenos’s primal form with awe. The ravenous need he has is for more than prayer—if he accepts Zenos inside him, he will be debased and made an altar, his womb a place of worship, his body a living vessel for the heedless, exhilarating devotion to pleasure and violence that Zenos represents.

And he has never wanted anything more.

He’d never let himself indulge in a partner like this: a mate, a nunh, a force of nature to claim and overwhelm him. Too much for a chosen hero, a Warrior of Light, a proud man to ever desire, until now.

"I do, y-yes. I need you, please—!”

Zenos’s smile widens to a sharp, fanged grin as he pushes inside once again, a slow yet cruel pace that stretches the Warrior’s entrance wider with every row of scales and bumps that massage his insides. One set of ridges lining the underside of Zenos’s cock keep pressing hard against his walls, making the soreness inside so sharp and bright that it’s indistinguishable from building orgasmic pleasure. The Warrior’s high-pitched whines of pleasure as he adjusts to the searing warmth and firmness within are matched in volume by Zenos’s groans and the sloppy, wet sounds of his cunt being filled while overflowing with cum.

When Zenos finally bottoms out with a snap of his hips and a choked gasp, his cockhead is throbbing against the edge of the Warrior’s womb. The transformation seems to have rendered him more sensitive, judging by how his wings shiver and his chest rises and falls in a rapid rhythm while attempting to regain his composure. The Warrior of Light squeezes his thighs and makes the muscles in his hips tighten, until the walls of his cunt press tighter around every ilm of Zenos’s cock in a needy embrace.

“S-such impatience, my beast…” Zenos groans as he begins to roll his hips. The swell of scales above his cock juts out enough to arch into the Warrior’s clit with every movement. “I will leave you sated and bred in due time.”

“Faster, ahh!“ The Warrior’s pleas grow more feral and incoherent while his mouth droops open with every moan he makes. Even without fully withdrawing and thrusting, the slightest twitch of Zenos’s body radiates through the Warrior’s hips, making the ache of his womb sharper, deeper. Nothing will fix this emptiness besides being filled to the brim again, the most vulnerable place in him ruined and flooded with Zenos’s warmth—

Zenos tries to laugh, but his voice drops to a low snarl when the Warrior starts writhing against him from the impending orgasm building inside. “If I lost control of Shinryu’s influence over me…you would be torn asunder from within. But if you yearn to be treated like a whore still, beg for it properly first.”

Nothing is left of the Warrior of Light’s pride or sanity to disguise what he truly wants. “Ohh, I—please, keep fucking me, please c-come inside me, breed me until I’m full of your cum…” He musters what little strength he has while pinned down for mating to stretch into Zenos’s cock, forcing its tip against his cervix. Instead of pain, there’s a jolt of sensation that wipes his mind blank with satisfaction—proof that his body is at its most fertile and insatiable peak, ready to bear his nunh’s seed. “Make me have your child,” he moans.

Zenos’s cock throbs inside the Warrior’s cunt as his eyes widen and flicker red, his own need as clear as a starving lion lunging at a carcass. “Heh…such a heartfelt, pathetic answer. Even I would not deny you such crude joy.” He pushes the Warrior’s knees further to the limits of his flexibility as he begins to thrust faster. Every slap of his balls against the Warrior’s ass is another reminder of how full Zenos is again, how his seed has been further empowered by Shinryu’s energy. Zenos’s breaths quicken, the sound of it resonating like rolling thunder in the small bedroom. Another mark of the draconic aether corrupting him, making him bestial and virile and perfect as a mate.

The insistent pressure against his clit, every vigorous pulse of the length inside him as it nears release—it forces the Warrior of Light over the edge, and he shudders as if the pleasure were seizing him and shaking him from head to tail. Deep, guttural groans leave his lips while Zenos fucks him through his orgasm. His cunt and womb both tighten with such force that Zenos bares his teeth and hisses while pushing deeper, hurling himself at his own climax.

“Accept all of me, my friend,“ Zenos gasps as he orders and begs and breaks apart all at once, his scaled cock swelling as hot cum spurts from its tip and drenches the Warrior’s cunt. The Warrior of Light howls in ecstasy as pressure builds with every wave of seed that fills him. He’d been so thrilled for each climax and drop of semen before that the prospect of greater happiness seemed inconceivable—but it’s as if his body and its heat had withheld itself until Zenos brought every ilm of his might to their contest. The Warrior giggles aloud from the warmth that radiates from his womb, soothing as a long soak in a bubbling hot spring.

Zenos isn’t as delirious as the Warrior is, but he does appear pleased with his debauched efforts. The prince’s eyes, now back to their usual blue hue, sweep from the Warrior’s face to the sloppy, cum-spattered space where his cock meets the Miqo’te’s hips. He lowers the Warrior’s legs back to the bed with surprising restraint, and they lay trembling and immobile with bliss.

The Warrior of Light’s erratic breathing slows as he closes his eyes, reveling in every pinprick of electric pleasure coursing through his clit and cunt. His exhaustion weighs heavy on every limb. Just as he’s about to try and fall asleep on the spot, Zenos’s voice rumbles from above.

“Is this all that you can bear? Ahahaha…”

While the Warrior is left paralyzed from the intensity of his orgasm, Zenos pulls himself free. The start of a whimper of protest is cut off immediately when Zenos seizes his hips and rolls him onto his front, resting his shaft over the cleft of the Warrior’s ass. The prince’s cock is so enlarged that the tip leaks cum past the small of the Warrior’s back, running down the groove of his spine. He arches into that lewd, sticky sensation while the walls of his cunt flutter inside.

“You demanded to be bred and this eikon’s power has not yet been spent! Such tempestuous, overwhelming wrath left to burn in its breast with no means for release, except—“

Zenos grabs his ass to pull him up to his knees, spreading him apart to tease his aching and dripping hole with his erection. “It is your duty as the eikon-slayer to crush such beasts and bring them to heel by any means necessary, is it not?” The Warrior of Light cannot turn to confirm it, but he would swear that Zenos was looking upon his new prey with that feline smile of his. “I had promised you would be sated for a reason.”

Zenos mounts him with one harsh thrust, abandoning all prior restraint. In this position, the scales and ridges along Zenos’s cock press into new spots, raw and unpredictable as his cunt stretches beyond all sane limits. The Warrior groans as if he’s been robbed of air. Zenos hovers above him, the sharp scent of his sweat mingling with the crisp air of a passing thunderstorm. The rush of concentrated, primal aether around and inside of the Warrior’s body is invigorating, and he foolishly, desperately, cries out to be filled with more of it.

“Yesss, Zenos—“ His moans and breaths fill the increasingly narrow spaces between each pounding, slapping thrust as Zenos finds a punishing rhythm to breed him. “—Keep, f-filling me, oohhh, please!”

Zenos’s laughter starts out mocking, but it becomes breathless and almost exuberant with each additional snap of his hips. His cock keeps throbbing faster and harder—and as he thrusts faster, those rows of scales on his shaft rub and press and overstimulate every ilm around and within the Warrior’s entrance.

No matter how much the Warrior of Light tries to fight the unbearable pleasure, there is nowhere to run and hide, nowhere he could bear to be except pinned under Zenos’s body. He comes again with a helpless, babbled plea for mercy. Zenos seems beyond caring or even the ability to comprehend his words as he thrusts and pants like a ravening beast above, humping and bucking his hips ceaselessly.

Even when Zenos finally comes and his balls and cock throb while flooding the Warrior’s insides with thick seed, the prince’s pace barely slows through the orgasm. With every few thrusts more cum gushes forth, and the excess oozes down to his thighs. The sound of their breeding is so perverse, with each slap getting wetter and louder as Zenos ruts into him, that he can barely hear when Zenos lowers himself to moan beside his ear.

“S-such a good beast…” The rasping warmth of his breath has the Warrior shivering with satisfaction. “Take every last drop, my friend.” His hips move with such force that the bed creaks and the Warrior crumples into the mattress, his breath forced out of his lungs with every thrust. ”Get pregnant for me.”

The Warrior of Light sobs as ecstatic, raw arousal courses through his body, making him collapse and open himself completely to Zenos without resistance. White-hot aether drenches his womb while cum fills every ilm of his cunt. It’s as if Zenos has fucked his womb and released all of his semen directly inside—but even though that seems impossible, there is a slithering feeling of certainty that Zenos’s seed will quicken in him no matter what he does.

While the Warrior of Light quivers from overstimulation, Zenos finally relinquishes Shinryu’s influence. His cock turns back to its normal, albeit still massive shape, and he lets out a satisfied sigh. “To have been devoured by my own prey…” Zenos’s voice is impossibly soft, or perhaps even gentle. “What brilliant, unexpected joy…”

Zenos slumps to the mattress, “defeated” at last, and hundreds of ponze of muscle land upon the Warrior’s right arm with him. The Warrior of Light grumbles and tries to elbow the prince into moving, but he’s passed out cold. After squeezing out from under Zenos’s torso, there’s little else he can manage in this state. Even the prospect of wiping the gross amounts of sweat and semen covering his body seems impossible as fighting a whole legion with his hands behind his back.

The cloying, irresistible drive to mate has lost its demanding hold over his mind, but he still can’t bring himself to leave Zenos’s side. Where there was supposed to be fear, panic, or disgust, he now feels…

His eyelids droop and sink as Zenos’s breaths lull the Warrior to sleep, and he struggles to name the warmth that still lingers in his chest.