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Chapter Text

She’s doing it again. Her hand stroking his inner thigh through his soft wool trousers under the table, edging closer and closer to his already half-hard cock. 

“Sweetheart,” Enzo says through gritted teeth. “Stop it.”

Rey pouts dramatically. Her fingers still, but don’t move. 

“Why, Papa?”

“Because we’re in public,” he says, eyeing the bustling floor of the restaurant. The finely dressed couples at nearby tables. The white tablecloths and sparkling wine glasses. The other Alpha businessmen, watching her from the corners of their eyes. “And because you know it’s against the rules,” he sighs.

Rey rolls her eyes. She’s wearing lipstick again, the lines drawn perfectly along her cupid’s bow. It makes her look older. But nothing can hide the fact that she’s thirty years younger than him, a smooth-skinned, beautiful Omega in her prime. With a middle-aged Alpha old enough to be her father.

Rey edges closer to him in the leather booth until their thighs touch, and puts her lips to his ear.

“But Papa,” she says, “I forgot to tell you…” He can hear the glee in her voice, can imagine the wicked smile on her face. “I’m about to go into heat.”

His stomach drops. That explains a lot. How lush and rich her smell has been for the last week. The dreams that keep waking him up in the middle of the night, hard as a teenager in rut. The restless, aching feeling in his gut. 

She has blindsided him, again.

“Omega,” he says, frowning. “You know you’re supposed to tell me, a few weeks in advance —”

“I know, Papa,” she says, pulling back. And he sees the grin. “It just slipped my mind.”

“That’s unacceptable,” he snaps. Now he won’t have time to gradually reduce his blockers, in an effort to keep up with her. Her smile widens, and he sees a flash of her perfect white teeth.

“It is.”

He looks up and meets the waiter’s eye, gesturing for the check. Then glances back at her flushed, expectant face.

“There are consequences for misbehavior, cucciola ,” he says sternly.

“Oh Papa,” she says. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

They meet online. How else do people meet these days? Enzo is middle-aged, and has survived two tumultuous failed marriages. Two highly-strung, flighty women who demanded his time, money and attention. Both always quietly resentful that he wouldn’t mate them. 

(There were plenty of excuses in those days. He was too busy, too important to the running of the company, he couldn’t be distracted by children. But the truth was, his Alpha simply wouldn’t do it. And their Omegas knew it.)

Enzo is satisfied with his solitude, but it’s his business partner Armitage who convinces him to sign up to the escort service.

“The other Alphas,” he tells Enzo, “they have to know you still have the juice.”

“Of course I do,” Enzo bites back.

“It’s not me you have to convince.”

The whole thing is high-end and very discreet. A bespoke service that provides Omega escorts, ready to accompany Alphas to events, dinners, balls, meetings – whatever they require. It is not, definitely not, the same as paying for an Omega’s other “services,” he is told several times by the stern blonde woman in charge. No, it is certainly not that . Although, of course, every individual case is unique. One must use their own discretion. Every Omega makes up their own mind. 

“I’m not here for that,” he tells the woman, and he believes it, then.

That’s before they meet, when he has only seen a small passport-size picture of her face, and a blurry full-length polaroid. He takes in long legs, small breasts, curved hips, a flashing smile, and her name and age. Rey.  

“Too young,” he says, immediately

But he picks the pictures up later and reconsiders. What does “too young” even mean, really, if he’s not even going to fuck her?

The first time, he takes her to an art opening. Abstract sculptures. Objects he does not fully understand, but appreciates for the way they take up space, and turn stone into meaning. It’s not the kind of thing he usually goes to, not even the kind of thing he needs her for, but he wants to show her he is not just a businessman. He is also, in his own way, a connoisseur of beauty.

She is beautiful, of course. That’s the only thing he knows about her. What he doesn’t expect is the way she meets his eyes without a trace of awkwardness. How she carries herself, loose and relaxed. The confidence of youth, perhaps, before it knows any better. 

Still, when he leans in to take her coat from her shoulders at the cloakroom, he smells her for the first time and it’s probably then that he is truly lost. He’s smelt many Omegas. He’s been married to two of them, seen them both through countless heats. He knows the lush, deep scent they have. But she is different. Rich and heady, thick enough to taste on his tongue and send all the blood in his body running straight to his knot. 

“So what do you do?” Rey asks, as he hands her a glass of champagne. 

“I make cars,” Enzo says. She smiles. Perhaps she already knows who he is. Perhaps she doesn’t. He doesn’t care.  “What do you do?” 

“I make mistakes.” She grins, something a little devilish in her eyes.

“Is that what you’re doing here?” he asks. “Making a mistake?”

“I don’t think so.”

He considers her, running his eyes down over her body. 

“No,” he says. “I don’t think so either.”

No other Alphas, he insists. He will be her only client. She will not accompany anyone else anywhere, will not hold another Alpha’s arm at a boring function, will not sit next to them at the opera. If he could insist that no other Alpha ever set eyes on her, he would. But although he can control many, many things, that is not one of them. 

Still, he has a lot of rules. Mostly, about decorum and behavior. He has, so far, excused her table manners. Her swearing. Her insolence. Not because he doesn’t mind it, but because he wants her too much to care. Now, however, he lays out what he expects, and has her sign it. 

“Okay, if you insist,” she giggles, reading over the papers, “ Papa .” His stomach turns over.

“Don’t call me that,” he snaps.

“Why?” Her confusion is genuine. He can smell the wrinkle of it.

“I don’t like it,” he says. She steps closer to him and brings her lips in, almost touching the gland under his ear. She inhales.

“Your Alpha likes it,” she says.

He tries really, really hard not to fuck her. And it is not easy. 

Mostly because of the tight little dresses she wears, and the way she teeters around in heels that are too high and constantly trip her up so that she falls, quite literally, into his arms. And also the way she is always holding onto his arm for balance, always leaning against his shoulder so her hair tickles his nose and every breath he takes is filled with her scent. Or perhaps it’s the way she likes to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck when they sit in a restaurant, and he tries to order while her thumb slips a little too far, ghosting over his gland and he loses the ability to speak. 

Unfortunately for him, it gets even worse as he gets to know her. She reveals herself only in small glimpses but he collects the information and stores it away, carefully. She sketches, in a small black book that sometimes pokes out of the corner of her bag. She likes animals, all of them. Even the most grotesque street pigeon charms her. She would like to study architecture, finds it beautiful and satisfying to be inside a place where forms marries function. She is fascinated by the cars in his garage. He opens the hood of one and they talk through the engine. She already knows the name of every part. She’s an orphan, she mentions, in passing.

And she is impatient.

“I don’t want to work for you anymore,” she says one night, when he walks her to her door as usual. She’s frowning, bottom lip stuck out when she turns back on the doorstep. 

“Why?” He feels a sense of panic at the thought of her disappearing, slipping from his grasp as mysteriously as she came into his life. He wants to reach out and grip her by the shoulders. 

“Because I want it to be real,” she huffs. 

“You want what to be real?”

“This,” she says, flapping a hand in the air between them. “Us.”

He’s silent, turning her words over carefully in his head. “I’ve made it so obvious!” she yelps. Then she actually stamps her little foot in frustration. “Why don’t you want me?!” 

“Come home with me,” he says. “Come home with me right now and I’ll show you how much I want you.”

He’s forgotten how good slick tastes. Intoxicating, enough to make him feel drunk. She smells and tastes like she’s in heat, even though she isn’t. He can’t even comprehend what it would be like if she was. They barely make it through the front door, before he has her splayed out on the couch. 

Everything about her pushes at the limits of his self-control. How he doesn’t come, just from tasting her cunt, he doesn’t know. How he doesn’t knot, just from hearing her beg, from actually feeling her clench down hard on his fingers, he will never understand. How it feels, when he finally pushes inside her and she takes every inch of him, he will never be able to explain. 

Her body feels so small in his hands, his palm spanning her stomach, covering the curve of a whole asscheek. She nips at the glands on his neck – he should definitely tell her not to do that – and he feels it deep in his old bones. His Alpha is in overdrive, a non-stop voice inside him that begs to bite her, mate her, and keep her forever. This is their last chance with an Omega like this, his Alpha says, and they have to take it, right now. 

When he knots her for the first time, after she rides him so hard and so fast on his couch he almost struggles to keep up, he forgets his contract and his rules. Why would he ever make any demands of her? When she takes him this well, moaning and gripping his knot so hard he sees stars? He will never ask her for another thing. Just this. Just this, again and again and again.

Amazingly, she falls asleep on his shoulder while they’re still knotted. It lasts a long time, longer than he can remember it ever lasting before, and even in her sleep she pulses around him in sweet little bursts that suck him dry. 

She’s half-naked, the swell of her small breasts pressed against his chest, her dress rucked up around her hips. He still has his tie on. He couldn’t sleep like this in a million years. His body is already reacting to hers, as if waking from hibernation, readying itself to service a nonexistent heat. Preparing to guard an unbuilt nest. 

When he’s finally able, he slips out of her and she moans a little in her sleep. He lays her down on the couch, straightening out her clothes, and taking off her shoes. He slips a pillow under her head and drapes a blanket over her. She nuzzles into his hand when he strokes her hair out of her face.

It physically hurts to leave her there, a small bundle on his stupidly huge couch. He wonders why he even has all these objects. What does he want with a five bedroom house? The only thing he wants is right there, and he can’t have it.

Enzo showers, mourning every molecule of her that washes away down the drain. He looks down at his body and wonders, not for the first time that night, what the hell she wants with him. His lean muscle is turning to fat. Freckles to age spots. Dark hair to gray. He is fading and she is blossoming. He is delusional and she is the delusion.

Lying in his darkened bedroom Enzo is sure that when he wakes up, Rey will be gone.

He wakes, gasping, to a hand around his throat and a pressure on his chest. In the darkness it takes Enzo a few wild seconds to realize it’s Rey, straddling him, pressing against his windpipe. 

“Never,” she hisses, “ never leave me alone like that again.” 

He knocks her arm out with one clean swoop and sits up to catch her, firm hand at her jaw. They’ve never kissed, he realizes, as he presses his lips to hers and she meets him full force. Her tongue is demanding. She snaps at his lip.

“Don’t nip at me, cucciola,” he says against her lips, “my bite is worse than yours.”

“Show me.”

“Careful, or I’ll knot you again.”

“Then I won’t be careful, Papa.”

As the early dawn rays start sneaking through the curtains, he asks the question that’s been weighing on his mind.

“What happened to your parents?”

“They’re dead,” she says, simply. 

“And the rest of your family?” Rey just shakes her head, once.

“So you’re…?”

“All alone in the world? Yes.” But then she rolls over to face him and there’s a quiet smile on her face. “But don’t look so sad, Papa. It’s okay. I have you now, don’t I?”

Enzo realizes then the depth of his predicament. He is in love with her. A woman who is wrong for him in every way, except the fact that he desires her. Wants her. Needs her. And now, is falling in love with her. 

Love. A feeling that will turn his life upside, if he lets it. A wrecking ball come to destroy his artifice of control. And there’s no stopping it. 

“Yes, you do,” he says. And means it.

Loving someone is not the same as knowing them. (Enzo’s two divorce lawyers were well-versed in that sorry fact.) It’s also not the same as knowing what they need. But for Rey, Enzo will learn. 

“Oh, fuck!” 

She’s drawing again, at the table by the window (the one with good light). It looks like a complex architectural plan, given the amount of rulers and protractors she has laid out messily, all around her. 

(He insisted she enroll in college. He pays, of course. He pays for everything. She’s lived in his house since the first night she stayed.)

“Rey?” He asks, firmly, looking up from his desk. “What have I told you about swearing?” She pouts, throwing the eraser down in frustration. 

“That you don’t like it,” she answers, with a little too much sass for his liking. 

“What else?” Rey chews her lip and when she looks up her eyes are glittering. 

“I can’t remember…”

“Rey…” His tone is low. A warning.

“That if I swear too much you’ll have to gag me,” she recites, quickly. 

“That’s right.” He looks back to his work. In the corner of his eye he sees that she hasn’t resumed her drawing. Rey clears her throat. 

“Why do you say things like that,” she asks, “if you never do them?”

“What?” He looks up and watches the way her chest rises and falls. Smells the spike in her scent. 

“Fuck,” she says. “Shit. Fucking goddammit. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Rey…” he puts down his pen, swiveling in his chair to face her. His heart rattles against his rib cage.

“Motherfucking goddamn bast—“

“Shut your mouth.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out as a command. But her mouth immediately snaps shut, and that in itself, makes him hard. His Alpha is playing now and Enzo can feel how much he likes this game. He has the uncomfortable sensation of being relegated to the passenger seat. 

“Get on your knees.” It’s not a command but she obeys like it is, sinking softly from her chair to the floor. He swallows. “Crawl to me.”

The moment her palms hit the soft carpet, Enzo stops breathing for a second in disbelief. Then she begins crawling, one hand and one knee at a time, towards him, and he thinks his heart might stop. He watches the curve of her ass sway in the air, knowing the only thing underneath that summer dress is a pair of ridiculously expensive silk panties he chose himself. 

She crawls between his knees, looking up at him with flushed cheeks, lips just parted. Eyes wide but not with fear. She runs her hands up his thighs, reaching for his belt buckle.

“Stop,” he says, and her fingers still. He leans forward, and runs his fingers along her jaw. He feels her quiver, under his touch.  “Bad girls don’t get Papa’s cock in their mouth, do they? Not until they’ve earned it.”

He smells the slick between her legs. The thick, heavy scent of her arousal. She licks her lips. 

“No, Papa,” she says, and he can tell it is taking every ounce of control she has not to grin. 

“Take off your underwear.”

She shimmies out of them, frustrated when one leg catches on her ankle. He lets her struggle. When she finally gets them off, Rey looks at him, uncertainly. He takes the scrap of fabric from her hand, and the sheen of slick coating the inside almost makes him lose his cool. He reaches up and starts to loosen his tie.

“Open your mouth.” She parts her lips, hesitantly. “Wider.” He nods at her again. “Wider.” He can see the inside of her throat now, can already imagine how it will feel when his cock hits the back of it. Not yet, he tells himself, not yet . He pulls his tie from around his neck, a long string of silk sliding in his hands. 

He balls up her sodden underwear and slips it gently into her mouth. She chokes a little, in surprise, and closes her jaw around it. “Are you going to be good?” he whispers. She nods, and he sees the wet glistening of tears beginning in her eyes. He stops. Their gaze meets across a gulf of new understanding. Slowly, she opens her mouth a little and tilts her head forward. Like a horse accepting a bridle.

Enzo feeds the tie between her teeth and ties it, tight, at the base of her scalp. Then he strokes Rey’s hair, and runs his fingers down the hollow of her cheek. “Can you taste how wet you are for me?” She nods. 

Then he leans back in his chair. 

“Are you desperate for my attention? Is that why you’re acting out?” He slides one leg out, the hard, expensive leather of his Italian shoe shining in the low light. “Why don’t you show Papa just how desperate you are?”

He expects her to look up at him in disbelief. He expects that she will need him to spell it out. That, eventually, the look of disgust will appear on her beautiful face and he will know he pushed her too far. But it doesn’t go that way. He swears, even gagged, he can see the wicked smile. 

Rey slides one knee over his leg, and lowers herself until her pussy makes contact with the hard ridge of his shoe. She squeezes her eyes shut, and starts to rock her hips slowly back and forth. Even through the leather he thinks he can feel it. Her softness. Her heat. And then the smell, where her slick is smearing against him. He regrets, suddenly, that he didn’t let her just suck his cock. It would be so much less embarrassing to barely last in her mouth than it would be to come, like this, in his pants. He closes his eyes for a second, locked in an internal battle against his cock. He can already feel his knot starting to swell, desperately. 

Rey moves faster, breathy little moans escaping her mouth, her upper body shifting against his leg. Her smell is everywhere, all around him, enough to drive any Alpha insane. 

“That’s good,” he chokes out. “Isn’t it so much easier when you’re my cucciola?” She moans at the last two words, and jerks her hips hard against him. He runs his fingers through her hair, petting her. “So needy,” he says. “But all you really need is to be put in your place.” 

He can smell that she’s close. Enzo’s Alpha roars inside him. He pulls her chin up. “Look at me when you come,” he says. She thrusts wildly against him, his shoe slippery now with her wetness. Her eyelids flutter as though she wants to close them, but she meets his gaze. “Show me you’re mine,” he growls.

He tastes the honey-like burst of her orgasm in the air, seconds before it hits. 

When it’s over, he lets her suck his cock. Of course he does. He’s weak, and will give her anything she wants.

Chapter Text

They dress for dinner. That’s one of his rules. He always spends time combing his hair back, coaxing stray gray tendrils into place. Wears a suit jacket. Even a tie. These rituals are important to him, and she knows it. (She initialed next to his list of requirements, didn’t she?)

Still, some nights she comes down without any shoes on. Or with shoes, but no dress, just a loosely tied dressing gown. Tonight, she’s wearing an evening gown, but he can see the ends are dirty where she’s trailed them in the mud. Her feet are bare. She is sitting in her chair at least, but not properly. One foot is hiked up on the seat, an elbow resting on her knee, while she picks at her food with her hands. It’s clear what this is. A provocation.

He finds himself cutting his steak into increasingly narrow slices. 

“Rey,” he says, “are you not hungry?”

She frowns, lower lip jutting out. Sulky. Pushing mashed potatoes around with one finger. It’s too much. Soon he will have to do something. Enzo weighs his options. He puts down his knife and fork. “Answer me.”

“No, Papa.” 

“No, what?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten enough today.” She rolls her eyes. Enzo’s temper flares, but he manages to tamp it down enough to control his voice. “Finish your food.”

She looks up and their eyes meet across the long table. The low-burning candles. The blue hydrangeas in the hand-painted vase from Positano. Slowly, she nudges her plate with her index finger, closer and closer to the edge of the table.

“Rey,” he warns, “do not do that.” But already the glint is in her eye, the edges of her mouth turning upwards into something that is halfway between a smile and snarl. The plate teeters on the table’s edge, hovering for a moment. “Rey…” he says again. With one more flick of her finger, it crashes to the ground, splintering into shards. Rey is on the edge of her seat, toes barely touching the ground, looking ready to run. But her eyes are set on him, expectantly.

Enzo feels his teeth set in his jaw. He has to control his face. His adrenaline is spiking, but he doesn’t want to show it. They are here again, in the place where decisions are made. His decisions. She wants consequences. He will give them to her. 

“Don’t run,” he commands. (He’s issued more commands in the last few months than ever before in his life. Stop. Be still. Roll over. Stay there. Once in a moment of passion: Come, now. (She did, which surprised them both.) The muscles in her thighs twitch, which means she wants to move, but she can’t. 

He inhales. The telltale scent of fresh slick. The curse and the blessing of being with an Omega. He can smell how wet this gets her. He is wired to respond in kind, and his body does, automatically. He wants her. But he also wants her to behave. And she wants him, especially when he makes her.

“I should order you to eat that off the floor,” he says. There’s a flush covering her neck, spreading down over the top of her breasts, quivering in the low-necked gown. She shakes like that, when she likes something. 

“Come over here.” The words release her. She slides to the ground, and crawls to him, even though he doesn’t tell her to. He’s trained her in that, at least.

When she reaches his feet, he reaches out and hooks his finger around her chin. “Up.” There’s a little flash of disappointment on her face as she stands. Maybe she wants his shoe again. But why should he give in so easily? 

(He doesn’t like to think of what he does as “punishments”. He prefers to think of them as reprimands, or correctives. How is he supposed to punish someone who enjoys it so much, anyway?) 

Instead he reaches down and grips the ruined hem of her dress and draws it up. When his hand gets high enough up her thigh he realizes she isn’t wearing anything underneath and his resolve wavers. But to give in now would be a kind of weakness he cannot abide in himself. 

 “You will sit here and you will eat,” he says, pulling her roughly into his lap, her back to his chest.

Her dress is rucked up around her waist and he feels the slide of her bare skin against his trousers. He’s already hard. Has been since he issued the command. It’s a pattern now and he should be used to it. But perhaps he will never get used to the feelings she awakes in him. (It’s not enough to say it makes him feel young again, because it’s more than that. It makes him feel like a different man entirely. Perhaps even a different creature.)

He slides her legs apart, hooking them over his, spreading her open. She’s unbalanced, leaning into the weight of his arm around her waist for support. And then, because he is not quite strong enough to resist, he dips his fingers between her legs and finds her slick and ready, burning hot. She whimpers, trying to arch into his touch. He just cups her firmly. “You will not move,” he says. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Papa,” she whimpers. His Alpha purrs at the acquiescence. Enzo loosens the arm around her waist a little, and she wobbles and moans. With his other hand, he reaches back and undoes his fly, as slowly and with as much dignity as he can manage. When he frees his cock,  it juts up obscenely between their bodies. Rey feels it brush against her back and shivers. “Please, Papa.”

“You want this?” 

“Yes, Papa.”

“If I give it to you, you have to promise to be good. Not to move. And to eat what I give you.” She makes a low, choking sound, throwing her head back. Her hair falls from her neck and Enzo finds himself eye-level with her mating gland. It’s red and inflamed and the desire to sink his teeth into it is almost overwhelming. “I promise, Papa.”

He lifts her, positioning her over his cock, and then lets her sink slowly onto it. He’s glad she can’t see his face as his eyes roll back in his head. If she could, she would know. He is barely holding on. Every punishment he devises for her becomes a kind of torture for him. And yet, he keeps playing. (Love, he knows, has already wrecked him.)

When he can breathe again, he pulls her close into his chest. The movement jostles his cock inside her and they both gasp. 

“This is where you belong, isn’t it, cucciola?” he whispers in her ear.  Her little gulping breaths are so sweet. The way her voice breaks when she answers: “Yes, Papa.” The way he knows it's his cock inside her that is making her behave. It makes him even harder.

He reaches for the thin strips of steak on his plate and picks one up between his fingers. He brings the meat up to her parted lips and feeds it into her mouth. She accepts it, and he rests his fingertips on her throat to feel her swallow. “That’s it,” he says. “You were hungry after all.”

“Yes, Papa,” she says, licking away the salt. 

He feeds her like that, until he is satisfied that she is satisfied. He feels every tiny movement of her body, every little twitch and clench of her trying so hard not to move. It takes every ounce of self-control he has not to pull out and thrust back into her. Not to seek his own relief from the torment of being gripped by her tight little body, even as he feels the slick dripping from her onto his trousers. If his Alpha could howl in frustration, he would. But Enzo is firmly in charge this time. And he can wait. 

But not forever.

He pushes the plate aside and she hums. His free hand finds the top of her dress and pulls it down until her right breast is exposed, and he can roll her nipple between his fingers. Her hips jerk of their own accord. He stops, the rosy little bud held tight. “Did I say you could move?”

“Papa, please,” she whines. “I need it.”

“You need what?”

“I need you to fuck me.”

Enzo smiles into her hair. He clears his throat. “Well, I need you to stay still.” Her inhale sounds like a sob. He twists her nipple again and she groans. He could bend her over the table right now. He wants to. “If you can come like this on my cock, and stay nice and still,” he swallows, “then I’ll fuck you. How about that?”

“Yes, Papa.” There’s no sass this time. Just desperation. He releases her nipple and reaches between her legs to find her swollen, slippery clit. The second he touches it he feels her spasm around his cock. It knocks the air out of him. She’s so close. All it will take is a few soft strokes and…

“Please knot me,” she begs, brokenly. 

“Not here,” he bites out, fingers working her.

“I’m going to –”

“Yes, baby.”

She grips the table with white knuckles, the tell-tale wave of anguished little moans escaping her mouth, as she starts to pulse around him. He feels the gush of slick as she comes, easing the way for his knot. It’s swollen and ready, already bumping against her. 

“Papa,” she cries out. The word sends him over whatever edge he’s been teetering on. Enzo thrusts up into her body hard, once, twice. The third time his knot catches and he’s coming inside her in agonized bursts. The feel of his spend inside her forces her into another orgasm – it always does – and her body heaves and shakes with it.

When the last tremors have passed, she leans back into him, her head resting contently against his shoulder. Her breathing is even and calm, and his hand strokes meaningless patterns on her stomach. 

“Thank you, Papa,” she says.

After that night, Enzo doesn't make her sit in her chair anymore. Instead, he lets her kneel on the floor between his knees, head resting on his thigh, and he feeds her from his plate, by hand. 

It’s easier that way. For both of them.

Chapter Text

When Enzo looks around for Rey she has disappeared. He wanders idly through the crowds of party guests in their floral dresses and linen suits, glasses of sparkling white wine held precariously in their hands. 

He knows she’s still here somewhere because there’s a faint trace of her scent still in the warm air. 

Out of the corner of his eye Enzo sees Armitage sitting at a metal table under a wide striped umbrella, deep in conversation with two other Alphas. Enzo knows he should join them. Parties like this are good for business. Agreements made at the end of long summer afternoons, when everyone has had a little too much to drink, often go his way. But these days Enzo always makes sure to stay at least somewhat sober. Let the young Alphas puff out their chests and gamble their prospects on a drunken bet. He plays for keeps now.

As he reaches the edge of the crowd, Enzo catches a glimpse of something in the gated orchard a little way down the hill. A flash of white disappearing up into a tall apple tree. His stomach turns over. 

“Rey.” He is standing at the foot of the tree. It’s old and gnarled. A survivor bearing a heavy load of fruit on its branches. “Do not make me come up there.”

He can see her bare white leg swinging from a thick branch. Rey giggles. 

“Oh Papa,” she says. “Don’t be silly.”

“Come down, now.”

He hears a crunch as she bites into the hard flesh of an apple. 

“I like it up here.”

“It’s not safe.”

He feels the frustration tightening in his chest. What if she refuses to obey him now, with all the guests watching? With an audience of competitive Alphas? Men who he senses think he is too old for her, that they could do a better job, that all she needs is a good knotting from a young buck and then she would behave. 

“Rey, I am warning you.” Her leg stops swinging. He wrinkles his nose at the annoyance in her scent. 

“It’s my birthday,” she says petulantly. “I can climb trees if I want.”

It’s her birthday but it’s his party. His house. His reputation.

“Don’t make me do this.” A hint of sweetness as her scent spikes excitedly again. 

“Do what, Papa?” 

He’s unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves. He might be gray-haired now, but still, he is not to be trifled with. His Omega will be seen to do as he says, one way or another. If he has to climb a tree to do it, Enzo will climb a tree. 

It’s easier, actually, than it looks, to scale the rough bark, and find a footing on the tree’s wide forking branches, even in his formal shoes. He does it so quickly that Rey scrambles backwards in surprise, until she’s perched on her heels, and he sees her dress is ripped and torn once again. Enzo pulls himself up to stand, until he’s almost level with her on the branch above. 

“Get down,” he says. “Now.”

A command is a command, and she cannot disobey. Still, she does so sullenly, a cloud of acrid unhappiness in the air around her. He guides her, hand on the small of her back, through the crowds of guests, and she does not raise her chin to look at them. Just stares at her feet sulkily. 

Her behavior is ridiculous. Yes, she has always been difficult, at times. But this is a new kind of rebellion. He threw this party for her, at her request. She chose the flowers, the wine, and the food. Consulted on the list of guests. Drew a detailed plan for how to set the tables on the veranda. She hovered anxiously outside his office door holding two dresses, almost in tears because she couldn’t decide which one to wear. 

He has been nothing but patient. So why this, now? And what is he supposed to do? They will talk, he decides, inside, away from prying eyes. He will tell her this is unacceptable. She will be apologetic and demure. She will say sorry for embarrassing him. All will be well again.

Instead, as soon as they are through the french windows and in the living room, where the gauzy white curtains are blowing in the evening breeze, she flinches away from his hand and he sees her eyes are red and glassy. 

“Don’t touch me,” she hisses. 

Enzo takes a step back in surprise. 

“Rey?”

She turns on her heel and runs from him, heading for the stairs.

Enzo is a civilized man. He prides himself on being well-mannered, to a fault. Yes, he loses his temper sometimes, when pushed. But no one could ever accuse him of being unreasonable.

And yet. There is also a deeper part of him that operates purely on instinct. That knows an Omega running is a signal to wake from its slumber and make chase. That remembers how to hunt. 

He is following her before he knows it's happening. His Alpha is loud, a snarling, snapping presence in the back of his head that demands he catch his Omega before someone else does. In this heightened state, he can track her scent even more clearly, through long corridors and around corners until he is outside her room.

Her room. The one she chose the week she moved in. A small, south-facing spare bedroom of her very own. (Not that she ever sleeps there. Still, it’s a symbol of her independence. A gift, to a girl who has not had many things to call her own.) He has not been inside since. 

But the door is cracked and his Alpha pushes him inside. 

The scent is almost overwhelming. Enzo closes his eyes and exhales to stay in control. His Alpha is buzzing, furiously, a swarm of bees itching under his skin. When he opens them again, Enzo’s eyes refocus and he sees the mess. Clothes and books are strewn across the floor. Half-finished pencil drawings and empty mugs cover the desk. The curtains are drawn against the sunlight, and the room is dim and dark. And Rey is nowhere to be seen.

Enzo swallows. His mouth is watering. She is here, he knows it. 

“Omega?”

He hears a whimper. The softest, smallest noise, coming from behind the half-open closet door. Enzo reaches out and pulls it open, stepping towards the threshold.

And finds he is sinking to his knees. 

He almost can’t see her at first, in the tiny dark space. But the scent is overpowering. It is like someone bottled and distilled the essence of Rey, and then doused him in it. The narrow closet is filled with a twisted tangle of blankets and pillows, and when his eyes finally adjust he sees Rey, curled up in the middle of them. Her shoulders are shaking, her whole body vibrating under his gaze.

His Alpha knows exactly what he’s seeing and growls possessively, but it takes Enzo’s mind a few seconds to catch up. 

This is a nest. 

She built it, here, in secret. Hidden away from him.

Enzo crawls forward, two hands inside the door. But there’s no room, he cannot cram his large body any further in. 

“Rey,” he chokes. “Come out. Please.”

“No,” she sobs, kicking at him with dirty bare feet. He manages to catch one ankle. His Alpha wants him to pull, hard enough to hurt her. To drag her out and into his arms. But Enzo will not do it. He senses that this time Rey does not need force, but gentleness. 

“I can’t come in,” he says softly. “Your nest is too small.”

Her chest heaves, tears running down her face. A bloom of sourness in her scent. She tries to pull away, to crawl further into the darkness, but he grips her slim ankle firmly. 

“I didn’t mean it’s not… good,” he says quickly. “I can see you worked hard. And it’s good, Rey. It’s so good.”

She stops thrashing. 

“Why…” Enzo tries desperately to clear his mind. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” 

They’ve spent so many nights together. Days too,  during her last heat in his bed as he struggled to keep up with her, locked together until he couldn’t feel where he ended and she began. And she had never shown a single sign of nesting. Had never even looked twice at a pillow. 

Her skin is clammy, sweat beading even on her calf where he holds her. 

“Why won’t you do it?” she sobs.

‘What?”

“Why won’t you bite me?’ 

“Bite you?”

She lunges forward suddenly, grabbing at his lapels, managing, somehow, to pull him a little further into the closet. Her face is so close to his that he can’t see her, only feel her warm breath in his ear. 

“Why won’t you mate me?” 

It comes out somewhere between a snarl and a whine. Rey might be speaking but he can hear the cadence of Omega in her tone. His nose is close to the scent gland on her neck and it takes everything he has not to bury his face there and suck until it's swollen and she’s pliant in arms again. God, how much better they would both feel if he did. But then any hope of a sensible conversation would disappear. 

Why hasn’t he mated her? The reasons run through Enzo’s head in an endless stream. Because she’s too young. Because he’s too old to be a father. Because he doesn’t deserve her. Because he wants it too much. Because it would break him if she ever changed her mind. Because he wanted to convince to stay without forcing her to, without tying her to him with a bite. Because he loves her and so he will never cage her, even if  the last thing he imagines every night is his  teeth sinking into the soft spot at the nape of her neck. Because it would join them in a union far more sacred than any of his failed marriages. How can he tell her all that? 

“I –” he begins. But she’s already snarling again, pulling away. 

“If you don’t want me, I’ll leave. I won’t stay with you like this.” 

“Rey, please –” he’s grabbing at her again, trying to find purchase on her, gripping the hem of her dress in his hands and feeling it rip. She growls in fury, clawing at him. 

“I won’t be bought and owned!” she yells furiously. 

They grapple in the narrow doorway, until he manages to grab one of her wrists and twist it painfully behind her until she yelps and stops struggling. Enzo pushes her down, pinning her legs under him, until their noses almost touch and he can feel the rapid rise and fall of her chest pressed to his. Her ruined dress is ripped to the thigh, and he realizes with a jolt that she’s bare underneath. 

“I want to do it, Rey,” he says softly, trying to ignore that the struggle is making him hard. “God, I want to. Just stop fighting me.”

“Why don’t you, then?” she whines, circling her hips against him. “Why won’t you give me what I want?”

“I will. I will.” 

She turns her head to the side, exposing her neck to him. Her hair is sweaty and tangled. He sees the pink edge of her gland at the nape of her neck, and his tongue swipes over his canines in preparation, mouth already watering. She has never made herself so vulnerable to him. He could take whatever he wants. His arm shakes with the effort of holding her still. 

“But not like this, Rey,” he whispers. “Please, let me do it properly, cucciola.”

Even for this ancient thing, there is a protocol. Or at least, Enzo believes in one. It is a rite, older than the Church, older even than whatever came before it. And more sacred than both. If he is going to do it, he will do it correctly. 

Unfortunately, that means he has to give up something in return. Enzo holds the small bottle he collects from the pharmacist every month as he sits on the curved edge of the bath in his shirt sleeves. Small pills that keep everything in check. Pills he has taken every day of his adult life to keep the peace inside him. So he could concentrate. So he could succeed. So he could build everything he has. 

He rises and opens the wooden cabinet above the sink. He places the bottle carefully on the shelf next to his shaving brush. There it will stay. He will not take any more until it is done.

It doesn’t take long. Within five days he starts to feel it. The gnawing, burning ache in his gut. The never-ending parade of lewd thoughts behind his eyes. The low, rumbling voice that runs in parallel to his own grows louder and more insistent. His Alpha is angry with him, he realizes, for holding back this long, and thrilled to be unshackled a little bit more each day.

Still, Enzo tries to banish the thoughts from his mind. Tries to keep working. Tries not to think about the young woman upstairs locked in her room, who has agreed not to come out until the timing is right. Until both their bodies are ready. Not only is it bad luck to see her, but he fears that if he does, his control will snap. Already, she dominates his thoughts. He falls asleep at his desk, and dreams of her slim ankles, of burying his face between her legs until she begs him to stop. He wakes with a jolt, hand palming himself, feverish with need. But even that is not allowed. A cold shower. Another cup of coffee. This cannot get much worse.

They agreed to do it in his bed. She can build her nest there. It will be soft and easy on his knees. With her in heat and him in rut, neither of them will be able to think, so he makes lasagna, boiling each long noodle one by one, just like his mother did. Cuts up fruit and cheese and meat into tiny squares. Fills glass bottles with ice and water. 

Everything will be as it should be. That way the only unknown factor will be the two things inside them, Alpha and Omega, who call relentlessly to each other across time and space.

He knows it is time when he smells Rey on the stairs. Lush and ripe as a promise. He has been pacing for what seems like hours, jacket thrown to the side, sweat beading on his forehead. It’s early evening and the relief he feels when he scents her coming down is overwhelming. Enzo can not stand one more night of this. The time has come. 

When he meets her in the hallway, she is naked. He did not expect that, somehow. Her hair is loose and wild. Her body seems to tremble in the last glow of the fading day. He freezes in the doorway, part of him afraid to come any closer to this new creature. Perhaps when he gets her back upstairs, into the familiar comfort of his room, she will look less otherworldly. She will be his Rey again, his cucciola. 

But for now she looks like a wild cat. Lithe and strong. Poised, as if  —

“No, Rey,” he says, too late.

She grins. And turns. And runs.

The light is fading and Enzo stumbles on a tree root as he chases her through the forest. Adrenaline surges through him, senses spiking so that every crunch of dirt under his foot resounds in his ears. She is barefoot, moving so fast she’s just a flash of white skin between the dark branches. 

Enzo didn’t want to do it like this. The rite may be primeval but they don’t have to behave like beasts. But once the chase has begun there is only one way it ends. It’s the oldest story there is. Even now, he feels himself giving over to it, bit by bit.

Outside, her scent is diluted in the evening air. He also smells the ripe apples and plums in the trees, the warm, sluggish trickle of the river down the hill, the feral note of rabbits digging in the undergrowth. Still, she cuts through it like a knife. Rey. Her scent is so lush it’s almost sickening. Sweetness with a musk of death about it. Of blood. Entrails. Things killed so that predators can survive. 

His mind is darkening too. There’s less and less sense to his thoughts, the faster he moves in the growing twilight. The sounds of forest hush the deeper they go. He hears only his heartbeat, and the noises that might be hers. Footfalls on soft loam. Hastily caught breaths.

Enzo feels a rumbling vibration in his chest. A true growl, low and deep and pure.

There’s a moment where he reaches for her name to call out to her, and finds it is gone. 

Who is she? 

Omega. 

And who is he?

Alpha . 

Nothing else matters now, in the fading light. Nothing but the sharp point of his canines against his tongue. Nothing but the burning itch of his glands. Enzo stops to pull off his shoes so that he can move faster. Already his shirt is torn and ripped, so he tears at the buttons and flings it away. Now, he must be unencumbered. He must be free.

When he looks up, she is there, half-hidden, peering around the side of a thick tree trunk. So, she has crept up and surprised him, again. The smile on her face is indecent. Her scent is even more so. The heat is fully upon her and she is ripe and ready. There is no way he can risk any other Alpha discovering her out here, naked and vulnerable. He must do it. Now.

Enzo lunges at her and Rey sidesteps so that he stumbles forward, catching himself on one outstretched hand. With the other he reaches for her ankle as she shimmies away. His fingers circle it and pull. She yelps as he drags her down, her knees scraping on the rough tree roots. Her soft stomach hits the dirt and he climbs the back of her legs with his hands until he grips both sides of her tiny waist.

“ Be still ,” he commands. 

Finally, the preamble is over and the ceremony can begin. 

He reaches up and softly brushes the tangled mess of hair away from the nape of her neck. Leans down the licks a broad stripe across the soft pink mating gland nestled there. The one he has avoided touching for so long, even as the sight of it obsessed him. 

The taste of her fills his mouth, thick as honey. Her whole body quivers beneath him, back arching, fingers scrabbling in the dirt. 

“Please,” she whimpers. “It hurts.” She doesn’t mean his tongue, he knows. It’s not him, but the absence of him that hurts her now. Which means it’s time. 

Somehow he is still wearing trousers and he has never hated them more as he battles with the fastenings. But eventually, after a few seconds of pure torment, he is naked and his cock is free. He can hardly bear to touch it, his own hand such a poor imitation of what he needs. But still, he doesn’t want to hurt her. Reaching between her legs, he gathers up some of her slick, hot and viscous, and runs it over himself. Her body shakes so much when he touches her there, where her thighs are wet and glistening, that he’s sure she will somehow manage to break out of his command and run again.

He lines himself up behind her as quickly as he can, as though he can pin her there with his cock. It’s not easy, despite the slick. She’s so tiny everywhere, and he’s only pushed half-way inside when she comes for the first time, shuddering and moaning.

The chase has undone them both. Any gentleness Enzo might have hoped for is gone. He pushes through the tight resistance of her muscles, feeling them still spasming around him, and  throws his head back at the sheer ecstasy of finally being where he belongs. The moment he’s fully seated inside her, gripped on every side,  he realizes he is fully in rut, for the first time since he was a teenager. His Alpha surges up, gripping her hips and  pulling her ass towards him so her back arches into a hollow curve. 

“Perfect,” he babbles mindlessly as he ruts into her. “Perfect, perfect girl.”

“Papa,” she moans. “ Alpha .”

Part of him wants to press her cheek into the dirt until there are tears in her eyes and she promises never to run from him again. Never to disobey him. Never to put herself in a danger he cannot rescue her from. But his Alpha knows that’s not the way to keep her. Not what she truly wants.

Enzo cups his hand around her neck and prizes Rey up until her back is pressed against his chest. He fucks her, holding her body flush against his, one hand around her neck and one pressed into her low belly where he can feel himself inside her. 

“Do you really want this?” he asks, lips against her ear, mouth full of her hair. She does, he knows she does. Has made her say it so many times and in so many different ways in the tortured evenings after her birthday. But he has to hear it one more time.

“I want…to be…yours,” she whimpers between thrusts. “Please.”

He stops moving, and she twists under his hands in frustration.

“I already belong to you, Rey.” His voice sounds so certain. Any trace of doubt is gone, lost in the chase. “Either way. I want you to know that.” 

Her hips stutter, and she flutters around him. 

“Give me everything,” she demands haughtily, her hands coming up to pull at his jaw and guide his mouth to the nape of her neck, just where she wants it. Enzo buries his face in her, sucks at her mating gland again and is lost.

Three more thrusts and his knot is swelling painfully fast, catching her, growing larger and harder than he can believe. He feels her heart rate jump where his mouth is latched against her gland, her body trying to pull away in panic. 

“Hush, Omega,” he says, the arm around her stomach hard as iron. “You can take it. You have to.” He strokes at her neck soothingly. “Let me in. Let me in and I’ll give you what you want.” Something in her softens at his words  and he slides all the way inside. 

As his knot locks into place, Enzo steels himself. He is an important man, part of him remembers. He has done many important things. Of all of them, this might be the one that matters most. 

He sinks his teeth into her soft, willing skin.

They lie, entwined, in the darkness. Two connected bodies under an endless sky. Around them, the sounds of the wild. Inside them, their own wildness, at peace.

Enzo is buried so deep inside Rey he wonders if there is any way back to himself. And whether he even wants there to be. From time to time they shudder together, as one of them topples into another release, wringing more pleasure from each other’s bodies until there’s nothing left. 

Finally, after what seems like hours, he is able to pull out of her. He mourns the loss, even as he does, reassured only by the fact that he knows she’ll need him again soon. That she will never stray too far from him now. That there’s already  a chance he’s left a trace of himself inside her that will seed itself.

Rey rolls towards him, hands feeling in the darkness for his face. 

“Take me inside, Papa,” she says. “I’m ready to be good.”

Chapter Text

More than anything, Enzo is tired. So, deeply bone-tired. Tired of waking up at night to rock sleepless babies. Tired of carrying heavy toddlers to and from cars.

Tired of giving piggy-back rides and crouching under the stairs during hide-and-seek. Of the frustrations, the feeding, the nannies, the school fees.

But then there is also the intense adoration of it all. The cherubic faces of his children once they are finally asleep. The smell of their tangled-haired heads. Kissing skinned knees.

His mate, hovering in the door, a mischievous smile on her face as she delivers the news.

“This is the last one, Enzo,” she grins, holding out the positive test. “I promise.”