“My alpha,” Alta whispered, his lips brushing against Rian’s temple. The heat was unbearable, rolling in waves that made it hard to think, harder to wait. He shifted forward, straddling Rian’s hips, every nerve screaming for contact. God, why had they bothered to clothe him, he didn’t have the strength to bother with trying to remove clothes. The brain fog was overtaking his mind and the idea of having to climb off Rian sounded as offensive as asking him to roll over and die. Alta’s eyes drifted to the straps holding Rian’s wrists, remembering what Ysemna said. 

Unless you let him out.

Alta reached for the straps, his fingers fumbling as they brushed the leather, but stopped just short of the buckle. His hands trembled, not from fear, but from need, every muscle in his body wound tight with the ache of absence. A sharp buck of Rian’s hips nearly unseated him, and Alta gasped, clutching at the alpha’s sides for balance. The leather beneath Rian’s wrists creaked ominously, and another growl escaped around the bit as his head thrashed from side to side.

He managed to free one of Rian’s hands and Alta barely registered the movement. Faster than Alta could track in his brain fog, Rian ripped the bit from his mouth, freed his other hand and grabbed Alta’s waist with a bruising grip. Alta clung to Rian as the alpha sat up, growling and pulling him in so tight that Alta could hardly breathe. The heat slammed into him then, unforgiving and immediate, as if the bond itself had recognized its missing piece and demanded satisfaction. Rian buried his face against Alta’s neck, inhaling so deeply it almost sounded like a sob.

“Mine,” Rian growled against his throat, the word so broken it barely held shape. He licked along Alta’s neck, breath hitching violently, hips grinding up into Alta like he needed to fuse them together. “My Omega.”

“Yes, yours,” Alta whispered, wrapping his arms around Rian’s shoulders. His body melted into the alpha’s grip, yielding without resistance, with only the faintest flicker of memory reminding him that Rian might not know what he was doing. But none of it mattered. Not the risk. Not the pain. Not the month-long warning Ysemna had left him with like a loaded gun on the nightstand.

All that mattered was this. The scent, the contact, the unbearable, bone-deep ache in his belly demanding relief. Rian’s hands moved roughly, yanking at Alta’s clothes with an impatience that bordered on violence. Threads popped, fabric tore. Alta didn’t care. He attempted to lean away, to reach the restraints that kept Rian from moving his legs, but he never got the chance. 

“No.” That word was the only warning Alta had before he was pulled down onto Rian’s throbbing member, filling him again in one fluid motion. There was no pain this time, no ache now that his body had time to fully heal; no, all Alta felt was a fullness that felt so perfect he wanted to cry. He quickly brought his hand back to Rian’s neck, all thoughts of releasing the restraints gone from his mind. They didn’t matter, didn’t need to matter.

Alta clung to Rian’s neck, nails sinking into sweat-slick skin as the second thrust ripped a sound from his chest that barely resembled a moan. It was something rawer, jagged, pulled from the pit of his heat-fractured soul. Rian didn’t wait for rhythm. He didn’t need it. The moment Alta’s body had taken him in, the alpha’s hips began a brutal pace as though this wasn’t a reunion but a reclamation. As though every second they’d been apart had carved something out of him, and this was how he intended to fill the void.

“Rian,” Alta gasped between frantic kisses, clawing at the slick skin of his back as the thrusts grew more erratic, more primal. Rian couldn’t respond, not with words but he made a sound that rumbled low in his chest, something almost like a purr, except broken, cracked open with too much hunger. His mouth never left Alta’s skin, moving between his collarbone,and the curve of his jaw in a feverish, uncoordinated path. 

Their bodies rocked together in a rhythm dictated by heat and rut and the biological imperative that overwhelmed all other thoughts. The cuffs still holding Rian’s legs to the bed groaned with each thrust, the strain of movement just barely restrained. But it didn’t slow him. If anything, it made the tension worse; Alta felt that it made Rian’s need more feral, his grip on Alta bruising in its intensity.

“Please, fill me,” Alta begged, feeling as his voice cracked under the weight of his own heat. “I need it. I need you.”

Rian snarled into his neck, the sound vibrating through both of them. It wasn’t a noise of refusal. It was the only kind of answer Rian could give. The alpha shifted beneath him, angling his hips as he buried himself deeper, grinding against something inside Alta that sent his vision stuttering white. Alta’s legs clenched around Rian’s waist, his body shaking with need, pain, relief—all tangled together so tightly he couldn’t tell them apart.

He felt the knot as it started to form, once again promising to lock them together as Rian’s body prepared to breed. The stretch was slow, inevitable, his body remembering the shape, the burn, the overwhelming satisfaction of being held, claimed, filled without escape. Alta cried out, a sound halfway between sob and scream as the knot pushed deeper, stretching him, filling him, staking its unrelenting claim. His hands scrabbled at Rian’s back, pulling him down until there was no space left between them, no breath that wasn’t shared, no boundary the heat hadn’t burned away. 

This was where he belonged, this was his punishment for forcing this. Split open on his alpha’s knot, branded by every thrust, every breath, every drop of scent that curled through the air like incense in a forgotten temple.

Rian’s thrusts stuttered once, twice, before he buried himself fully and held, the knot swelling wide and locking them together. Alta felt the instant it happened, his own body convulsing with it, the sheer depth of the fill, the pressure, the sensation of being completely, entirely claimed. His climax ripped through him with violent force, clenching down around the knot with helpless desperation, a white-out of sensation that left him boneless and trembling in Rian’s arms.

The alpha was still trembling too, though his muscles had begun to ease, the worst of the rut’s crescendo burned out. He breathed harshly against Alta’s skin, arms wrapped tight around him like he might vanish if not held together by sheer will. 

“You. Stayed.”

Alta chuckled as he heard Rian’s voice. The alpha still sounded out of it, but it was clear that the climax had once again given him some clarity. Alta merely nodded, not having the strength to try and find his voice again.

“What’s… your name?”

Alta let out a choked sound. God, he hated that question so fucking much. Hated that he couldn't answer it.

“Alta.”