Alta gasped as the alpha on top of him moved again, still just grinding their hips together. His body was screaming for release, his heat already triggered by the alpha kissing him and he reached up, threading his hair into the golden curls of the man on top of him. He needed this, needed to be marked before Yna could have her alpha drag him out of here. 

“Please,” Alta repeated, his voice strained with the effort of speaking through the haze. The alpha’s scent, earthy, bitter-sweet, like tree sap seared over heat, clung to the air like the sharp memory of a storm in the woods. “Please, mark me before they take me away.”

The alpha didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His body answered for him, bucking down again with a sound that was more growl than breath, more demand than desire. Alta arched against it, groaning when the sensation dragged hard across his pelvis, friction catching perfectly along the sharp ridge of the alpha’s need.  His body bucked up of its own accord, meeting each thrust with a desperate friction that only made the tension worse.

His fingers dug deeper into the thick golden curls of the alpha's hair, sweat-slick and warm. It was the only tether he had left to any semblance of control. The heat had already overtaken him, there was no point pretending otherwise and Alta felt as his free hand fumbled. The alpha had already ripped his pants apart, he just needed to free him to. He needed to be filled. Gods, he needed it. 

The alpha didn’t speak. Maybe he couldn’t. His face was buried against Alta’s throat, panting like a thing hunted, hips rolling harder with each passing second. Every movement was desperate, but not final. There was restraint threaded into it, strangled and fraying, but still there. 

Alta didn’t want that restraint.

His fingers finally found the button snap of the Alpha’s pants, and it popped open beneath the tremble of his grip. He worked the zipper down with less coordination than he would’ve liked, but his desperation outpaced his clumsiness. The alpha shuddered when the metal teeth separated, a full-body ripple that started at his shoulders and ended in a sharp, unsteady thrust of his hips that made Alta moan.

He wasn’t thinking anymore. Not clearly. Not about Yna, not about consequences. Alta spread his legs wider, welcoming the alpha down between them, guiding with both hands now—one buried in that thick tangle of golden hair, the other fumbling with the waistband of his ruined pants. There was no gentleness to what he wanted. No room for it.

“Do it,” he whispered. “Please, just–”

The alpha surged forward in one long, brutal movement. Alta’s breath caught, his hips lifting instinctively to take more. The stretch was blinding, his body greedy for the friction, but gods it hurt. His body had changed less than an hour ago, and everything was still raw, still unprepared, but it didn’t matter. Pain and need twisted together into something beyond language, beyond reason. Alta cried out, not in protest, but in surrender. The alpha above him snarled low in his throat, a guttural sound that rumbled through Alta’s chest like thunder as they grinded deeper into him.

He clung tighter.

The alpha thrust again, and Alta’s mouth dropped open, unable to stop the moan that escaped. His nails dragged down the stranger’s back. Broad, sweat-slick, and trembling with strain; he wasn’t gone yet, not entirely. Alta could feel it in the way he paused between thrusts, panting like a man running from something. A kind of frantic restraint coiled through his muscles, delaying the inevitable. Alta knew it wouldn’t last, just like his restraint never could. Rut and heat never cared about what the person wanted, just what the body needed. 

“Don’t hold back,” he rasped, his voice half-gone from panting. “Please don’t hold back. I need you to mark me.”

The alpha didn’t answer with words, just moved faster, his hips slamming into Alta with a brutal rhythm that left him gasping. Each thrust knocked the air from his lungs and sent white streaks of sensation crackling behind his eyes. Alta’s legs wrapped tighter around the alpha’s waist, anchoring them together, driving him deeper. There was no rhythm, no rhyme to it anymore. Only the raw, unchecked urgency of two bodies driven to the edge.

Alta’s back arched violently as the next thrust struck just right, his vision blanking at the edges. He felt the surge gathering behind his ribs, pulsing outward through his chest, down his limbs, coiling at the base of his spine like a fuse waiting for flame. His nails dug into the alpha’s shoulders now, scraping against taut muscle, anchoring himself as the tidal wave crested. 

He yelped as he was suddenly lifted, his head hitting the roof of the car, but before he could even process the change in position, he was hauled into the alpha’s lap. Straddling, open, every inch of him exposed to the furnace of heat between their bodies. The new angle made it worse. Better. Deeper.

Alta’s head dropped back against the fogged ceiling of the car with a choked gasp, his thighs tightening around the alpha’s hips as they surged up into him with an animal desperation that shook through every nerve. The alpha’s hands gripped his waist—no, not just gripped, anchored. Fingers dug into the crease of his hips like he was something to be mounted, held down, claimed.

Another thrust, deeper this time. Alta’s vision flared white. He was aware, distantly, of his body convulsing, hips rolling down to meet each punishing grind with frantic, uncoordinated movements. The heat was a living thing now, blooming outward like wildfire from the base of his spine. He clutched at the alpha’s hair, dragging his mouth up to meet his own. It wasn’t a kiss—there was nothing soft about it. Their mouths crashed together in a tangle of teeth and open gasps, the kind of contact that stripped more than breath. It was possession. Mutual destruction.

He was so close.

“Please,” Alta begged again, voice cracking as he slammed himself down harder. “I–”

“Mine.” The alpha growled, cutting off Alta’s words with a thrust that tore the breath straight from his lungs. It was like his whole being had narrowed to one point; the heat deep in his belly, the pressure winding up in a spiral so tight it felt like his bones would crack beneath it. He clawed at the alpha’s back, dragging his nails down hard enough to score flesh, to feel skin catch under his fingers. 

His cry rang in the cabin as the alpha shifted beneath him again, pulling him down into another punishing thrust. The sheer depth of it made his entire body seize, pleasure and pain indistinguishable now, the two tangled like wire in his veins. He was riding the edge, too close, the overload building in a rush that promised no escape. He could feel it blooming in his fingertips, in his spine, in his chest, like something was about to rupture.

And then it did.

Alta’s orgasm slammed into him with the full force of a body pushed past its limits. His spine arched like a bowstring, head thrown back, the sound he made somewhere between a scream and a sob. His thighs convulsed around the alpha’s waist, body locking up around him, and something beneath his skin cracked open. He could feel it, the swell of the knot, the alpha’s release deep inside him, filling the emptiness that threatened to swallow him whole.

The mark.

It was searing, hot, like ink etched in lightning. Alta felt his nose burn as his NPP reacted to him being knotted and a sharp, bright pain burned across the back of his left hand. For a single suspended second, all thought left him. 

Alta collapsed forward with a shudder, burying his face in the curve of the alpha’s neck. He was still inside him, still shaking with the force of his own climax, but he wasn’t rutting mindlessly anymore. Alta did what he could, raising his hand to touch the face of the man who had saved him. 

Molten gold eyes met his, so vivid and clear they almost seemed to glow in the dark car. Or maybe Alta was just too grateful. He was safe. He had a master, and he had an Alpha, neither of them Yna’s. 

A slow tremor ran through the alpha’s body, starting at his chest. The alpha exhaled, one long, shaking breath, and then he sagged forward, pressing Alta against the slope of the seat behind him. Their combined sweat soaked through the upholstery, their bodies locked together in the mess of what they’d just done.

Alta turned his head slightly, blinking through the sweat and blur, and looked at his hand. There it was. A black scar, etched into the skin between his thumb and forefinger. 

Sharp lines, almost like a sigil, dense and permanent that curled around his fingers like vines.  Flowing, precise, unmistakably deliberate. Alta stared at it for a long time, barely breathing, the tremors in his thighs and belly still echoing from the force of what had just torn through him. 

Of all the marks he had seen over the centuries with the curse, this was one of the prettiest. 

“Thank,” Alta started to speak, but he felt his body giving up on him. He had just gone through two weeks of heat, three days of abuse and had run god knows how many miles to escape Yna. Now his body was being asked to endure a second heat again and he knew he was at his limit. Magic only worked so fast and he wasn’t even fully healed before this started. 

Alta did his best to meet the alpha’s face as they sat up, leaning them back in the seat. He moaned slightly where the man shifted inside him but he did his best to smile. He really felt bad that he didn’t even know their name yet.

“Thank you.”

And Alta collapsed onto the alpha’s chest.