Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sonic tried to still the random tremors that shot down his limbs, knowing what they meant just as he knew his racing heart would do nothing but make the situation more dire. He needed suppressant.

He needed it now.

“Sticks!” Sonic pounded on the badger’s door harder. “C’mon I said the codeword and the backup codeword to make sure the first wasn’t a trick. Lemme in!”

“Sonic?” Sticks opened her door just enough to poke her head out and looked around him suspiciously. “Who’s with you?”

“No one, Sticks, it’s just me. I need–”

“That’s what someone who wasn’t alone would want me to think so they could spring a trap!”

Sonic tilted his head in confusion at the badger, his tone tense and urgent. “What? No!”

Sticks narrowed her eyes in agitation, but then her nose twitched, and she pulled back in surprise.

Sonic rolled his eyes in exasperation, sighing heavily. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Sticks disappeared inside, leaving her door open for Sonic to follow. He shut it carefully behind him, wanting this conversation as quiet and secure as possible. He shifted uncomfortably as he watched the badger search through her disorganized belongings. She flung scraps of fabric and odd bundles of greenery this way and that. The occasional sound of ceramic shattering made him flinch.

It made sense she wasn’t prepared. He wasn’t prepared either. He shouldn’t have had to worry about this for another month at least. He was early. Well, rather, his heat was early.

He ducked his head in embarrassment at his situation, the existing flush on his cheeks deepening. Sonic the Hedgehog, world-renowned hero, acclaimed ladies’ man, and…

Secret omega.

It wasn’t that he was necessarily ashamed to be an omega. He wasn’t. It was what that status meant that freaked him out more than any evildoer ever could.

Omegas were rare and had been growing increasingly so over the past several decades. While female betas could technically become pregnant and carry children to term, it was rare as well. With the Mobian population quickly falling, governments had taken it upon themselves to ensure that every Omega was paired and mated by their 21st birthday to make the most of their childbearing years.

Sonic was almost 27.

Being tied to someone, being nothing but a baby factory? Having his freedom completely and irrevocably stolen from him?

No thank you.

He shifted nervously, emerald eyes glancing back toward the door. The others would be waiting for them. They were all supposed to meet at his shack so they could set out on this stupid mission to find Egghead. Why they couldn’t just leave it alone, he had no idea, but Amy insisted the loony scientist had been too quiet for too long, and Eggman hadn’t been at his base in weeks, if not a month. Tails had picked up a surge in chaos energy not terribly far away the day before, so that’s where they’d decided to begin the search.

Sonic dodged a random pot his friend threw over her shoulder in her haste. “Sticks, I really–”

“I know, I know! I can smell ya from over here!”

Sonic frowned uncomfortably and crossed his arms over his chest. Sticks was the only one that knew the truth. She’d been helping him since they met during his first heat, when he’d been alone, confused, and more than a little embarrassed. She wasn’t an omega, but she understood what it was like to be alone. She made sure he didn’t starve to death when he got too weak to walk and then shared with him a combination of herbs her grandmother had created for preventing heat cycles and altering baseline scents. Apparently she hadn’t wanted to pump out a kid every year either and had prevented her heats to control the number of children she and her mate had.

Sonic scoffed at the thought. What a concept. Having a choice in the matter. Not anymore. Omegas were nothing but glorified broodmares.

“Here, I found–uh oh.”

“Uh oh?” Sonic asked, panic rising in his voice. “Why ‘uh oh’?!”

Sticks held up the jar she typically kept his mix in. There was barely a dusting of herbs in it. “I thought you weren’t due for another five weeks!”

“One, are you charting me?? And two, yeah, I know, it’s early. Like, really early.”

Sticks frowned and moved toward her makeshift kitchen, setting her kettle on the stove. “I don’t like that, Sonic. That’s never happened before…. I suspect–”

“It’s not aliens.”

“Aliens!”

Sonic hung his head and groaned. “Just gimme the tea, Sticks.”

“I’m just saying. Any missed chunks of time? Funky little burns?”

“No. And no crop circles outside my hut either.”

Sticks stood back, a thoughtful hand coming to cup her chin. “Interesting. It’s less likely, but maybe the herbs just aren’t doin’ the trick anymore.”

“What?” Sonic snapped to attention. “That’s not possible. They’ve worked for…” he counted on his fingers, “going on nine years now!”

“My grandma never took ‘em this long, you know. Who knows what it’s doing to your system.” The badger turned her attention to the kettle as its whistle let her know the water within was ready. She poured the meager contents of the jar into a diffuser and added boiling water. Steam rose from the mug as she handed it to Sonic who immediately began blowing, eager to get its contents into his system.

“I don’t care what it’s doing to my system as long as I’m not forced to shack up with some alpha and crank out kids for the rest of my life.”

Sticks shrugged. “Seems kinda cushy to me.”

“You’d lose your mind.”

“What mind?”

“Exactly–” Sonic ears perked at the sound of voice approaching. “Shit! It’s them!” He hurriedly began drinking his tea, not even caring that it immediately seared his tongue and throat. The relief was near immediate, and Sonic breathed in a deep sigh of relief before handing Sticks his empty mug. “Can you find more of those herbs where we’re going?” he asked hurriedly.

Sticks barely managed a quick nod before the others were at the door.

“Sonic?” Amy called out. “Sticks? Are you in there?”

Sonic hesitantly sniffed his underarm and shook out his fur, hoping his true omega scent had dissipated enough that the others wouldn’t detect the subtle scent of heat that had started to creep in.

Sticks slid the empty herb jar into her pack and pulled the drawstring tight. “We’re coming! We’re coming! Hold your horses.” She opened her door and pushed through the others, seemingly her typically grumpy self when in actuality she was breaking them up so they wouldn’t be close to Sonic when he exited.

The blue hedgehog quickly followed after, hopping anxiously from one foot to the next as his friends stared at him curiously.

“Sonic, you were supposed to be at your shack half an hour ago!” Amy chided. “It was your idea to meet there!”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. Sticks was convinced the Froglodytes were eavesdropping and asked if I’d check it out.”

“It was an emergency,” Sticks added, picking up her favorite walking stick and pointing it aggressively toward her burrow. “I could hear them whispering! Sonic did too!”

Sonic froze, feeling the other’s surprised gazes fall on him. He looked to the side awkwardly, his attempted smile coming out as more of a cringe. “Uh, yeah… mmhm. They sure were… active.”

Amy frowned, foot tapping the ground impatiently. She glanced at her communicator. “Well, they’ll have to wait. We’re already well behind schedule.”

“Egghead’s been quiet for weeks. I think he can chill for an extra hour or whatever. Besides, shouldn’t we just be enjoying the peace for once? Why do we have to go looking for trouble?”

“He’s never been this quiet before,” Tails countered. “Knowing Eggman, he’s up to something big. Would you rather wait for him to sneak attack us?”

“I mean, kinda,” Sonic grumbled, shifting uneasily when Knuckles moved closer, a strange look on his face.

“You guys smell that?” the echidna asked, nose angled up.

Sonic gulped, heart beating frantically in his chest.

Knuckles was an alpha.

Sticks immediately pushed against their red friend, urging him toward the wooded path. “It’s the Froglodyte stench, I tell ya! They’re everywhere!”

“Smells kinda familiar, like–”

“Rotten eggs!”

“That’s what rotten eggs smell like?” Knuckles asked, completely baffled. “It smells so good, though–”

“Okay, Knuckles,” Amy sighed. “Enough about eggs! We have bigger fish to fry.”

“Fish?! That’s a relief. I’m so hungry even rotten eggs are making my mouth water…”

Sonic shook his head as he followed the others, shoulders sagging with relief he was worried wouldn’t last. This was going to be a long day, and if he didn’t get more tea soon….

He honestly wasn’t sure what he’d do.

It was, in fact, an exceptionally long day.

Knuckles managed to find an active beehive, and instead of giving it a wide berth like any sane Mobian, he’d climbed the tree that held it and tried to procure himself a quick snack. Amy had tutted and tsked as she dug into the first aid kit she was quick to remind them they’d said wasn’t needed. Knuckles had the good sense to look sheepish as she irritably fretted over him. Or at least he tried. There was a fair amount of swelling, so it was hard to tell for sure.

Tails had led them around in circles for half the day after trying out some of his new tech, and Sticks had yet to find more of the botanicals she needed to make his tea. He typically needed a daily dose for the week his heat usually ran. A monthly one was fine, otherwise, to keep his scent masked. If she didn’t find more, it was going to become very obvious that not only was Sonic actually an omega, but he was actively in heat.

To top it all, they’d not found hide nor hair of Eggman.

“Let’s rest here for the night,” Amy called out as the group trudged to a stop. The female looked around and nodded, noting the small clearing would give them a place to stretch out while the surrounding forest would provide plenty of firewood. “Tails, you help me set up camp. Knuckles, go lay down.” She grimaced as the echidna shuffled past her. “Just looking at you makes me hurt.”

Knuckles collapsed onto a particularly cushy patch of grass and flung an arm over his eyes. “I don’t like the outside,” he groaned. “It’s so angry.”

“Those bees were just defending their home.”

“I wasn’t gonna hurt it, just take a little honey. They had lots.”

“You know, Knux,” Sonic quipped as he strode by. “That’s considered breaking and entering in most civilized places.”

Amy rolled her eyes and pointed to the dense tree coverage. “You. Make yourself useful and go gather firewood.”

“Aw c’mon, Ames,” he whined. “Just a little break? We’ve been walking all day.”

“Keep whining and I’ll make you cook dinner.”

Sonic’s eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I would,” Amy countered. “Even though I know for a fact it wouldn’t be edible.”

“You’re cruel, you know that?”

Amy shrugged. “You say cruel, I say effective leader.”

Sonic sighed, turning back the way they’d come when Sticks moved to his side. “I can’t find the right plants, not around here at least.”

“What?” Sonic hissed. He pulled the badger further into the forest, mind racing. “But that dose will wear off completely by tomorrow night at best!”

Sticks shrugged helplessly. “Maybe it’s time to let the widabit out of the bag.”

Sonic shook his head. “There’s no way! Even if the others find out, they won’t look at me the same. I’ll be a ‘precious omega,'” Sonic mocked, fingers forming quotation marks in the air beside his head. “I don’t want to be treated differently, and I sure as hell don’t want to be forced into some mate bond that I don’t even want!”

“What if an alpha would help but not mark? Then you’d be functional, and your scent wouldn’t be screaming you're in baby-making mode. I could use something else like mint or sassafras to cover up your baseline–”

“What alpha wouldn’t mark an omega?” Sonic scoffed. “You know how it works. They fight over every single one of us available. If they get one, they sure as hell don’t let them go.”

“What if Amy or Knuc–”

“Don’t even go there.”

Sticks sighed and shook her head. “I’ll keep looking.”

“Please,” Sonic urged. “Or I’ll have to leave, and you’ll need to make up some sort of excuse for me.”

Sticks shot him a disbelieving look. “You wouldn’t make it two miles if your heat hits full force! You’d be too weak, not to mention any alpha nearby would be able to scent you like a shark to blood. Not all alphas are honorable.”

“I know that,” Sonic hissed under his breath. And he did. It didn’t happen often, thankfully, but it wasn’t unknown for an alpha to force themselves on an omega in heat, even force bonding them. The punishment was severe, but the damage was done. Most omegas never fully recovered.

He shuddered. “That won’t happen.”

“‘Never say never’, that’s what granny used to say, and that was before the night the kraken came.” Sticks’ eye twitched.

Sonic’s face scrunched up a bit. “Your granny was a dark little gremlin, you know that, Sticks?”

“How do you know about the gremlin blood?” Sticks hissed under her breath. “That was seven generations back, and–”

Sonic held his palms up in defense. “Forget it!” he said quickly, if a little awkwardly. “A bad joke. I don’t know anything about gremlins, swear.”

Sticks narrowed her eyes, but slowly walked backwards and away from him, eyes creeping to the sides like the wooded shadows listened in, and for once….

She wasn’t wrong.

Chapter Text

Sonic slept fitfully. Even in the midst of the shaded forest, close enough to the ocean that the breeze still wafted through the trees, he was overheated and flushed. His skin felt overly sensitive, like he could feel every strand of grass under his back, every brush of wind in his quills. His metabolism, normally already far higher than a normal Mobian, was amped up, elevating his heart rate and quickening his breaths.

The discomfort in his body plagued his unconscious. Vivid dreams that weren’t quite nightmares flashed through his mind anytime he began to delve into deeper sleep, startling him awake throughout the night. By the time the sun began to lighten the eastward sky, Sonic was already wide-eyed and staring at a ceiling of leaves.

He lay still, not wanting to wake the others, and worried at his lip. The dose of suppressant the day before had been too little. He could feel the tremors in his limbs begin again and a dampness growing at the base of his tail. He was flushed, hot, and the ache he felt between his legs was beginning to throb.

He wasn’t going to be able to make it until tonight. At best, he had a few hours before the scent of an omega in heat surrounded him and drew the attention of not only his friends, but any nearby alpha.

He was going to have to make a run for it. There was no other choice. And he’d have to go now, while he still had the strength to run. If he didn’t… the unsatisfied urges would leave his body weaker and weaker until he was bedridden in his misery for a week or more.

A biological punishment for not procreating.

He carefully stood on shaky limbs and tip-toed to where Sticks was sprawled near the remnants of their fire. He tapped the top of the tin foil hat she insisted on sleeping in and knowingly dodged the answering swipe of her walking stick. He pressed a hand to her mouth and a finger to his own, shushing her before her panic woke the others.

He froze, afraid to move, but there was no break in the rumble of Amy’s snores, and straight across from him Tails and Knuckles remained fast asleep. He quickly glanced back down at Sticks and removed his hand. “I have to leave,” he hissed hurriedly.

Sticks’ eyes shifted warily around the clearing. “Anyone could be out there,” she whispered back. “I saw a chupacabra once. It asked for directions, but I knew it was a trap!”

“That’s–” Sonic took a deep breath and closed his eyes, gathering his patience before returning his attention to his delusional friend. “I need you to cover for me.”

“And tell them what?”

“I don’t know! Whatever. Anything besides the truth.”

Knuckles grunted in his sleep, and nearby Sonic could hear Amy murmur something along the lines of, “S’good…smells so good.”

He gulped. Amy was an alpha too. And a hell of a lot more capable of putting two and two together than Knuckles. “Sticks!” Sonic insisted. “Please!”

“Fine! But just for the record, even I think this is crazy!”

Sonic didn’t answer her. There wasn’t time. With a rush of wind and a scattering of leaves and twigs, he was off and darting through the trees. Within seconds he was out of breath, flagging. His legs felt like noodles, some circuit between his mind and feet jammed and sluggish. He tried to push on, just a little further at least, far enough that maybe after a rest he could manage to get back to his hut, but his body had other ideas. With a startled cry, he toppled face first to the ground, barely managing to curl into a protective ball before he was skidding down the side of a small cliff. He bounced haphazardly off exposed tree roots and outcrops with pained grunts before landing on the water-smoothed rocks of a shallow river.

He groaned and uncurled, wincing as what felt like every muscle he had spasmed at once. He held his breath against the pain and tried to sit, but a gush of warmth along the base of his tail had him stopping halfway. “Fuck!” he muttered out loud, embarrassed and in pain.

His arms shook and he fell back against the palm-sized stones that spread out a few feet from where the water lapped and trickled past on its way to the sea. They pressed against his aching muscles in all the wrong ways, but they were blessedly cool. He allowed his eyes to close while he tried to slow his breathing. Just a moment to rest. A moment, and he would push himself up and keep going.

A rustle of small branches and leaves had a blue ear ticking slightly to the left. He felt a sense of unease settle over him, green eyes slowly opening, though he made no attempt to move. Not yet. If this was something he needed to try and get away from, he needed to save his strength. He waited with bated breath, his heart sounding in his ears. His thoughts ran crazy through possibilities. A rabbit. The wind. A lust-crazed alpha. A chupacabra?

He shrugged off that last one. Probably not a–

The sound came again. Louder. Closer this time.

Sonic swallowed hard. He couldn’t fight. Not like this. If he had a mate keeping the side effects of heat at bay with frequent couplings, he would be relatively normal, but as it was… his condition was worsening quickly. Way faster than it should. All those blocked heats were determined to make this one the worst of the worst.

He had to run. It was his only option.

He jumped up, digging for the last of his energy reserves, but it was too little, too late.

A hand closed around his throat, and he was violently thrown back to the ground. The air was knocked from him, and his vision swam as his head slammed into a rather large piece of basalt. He gripped the affronting wrist and tried to kick up with his legs, but even though he managed to land a blow, it wasn’t forceful enough to matter.

“What have we here?”

Male. Definitely male. Sonic growled and struggled, the sun blinding him and preventing him from getting a good look at his attacker. All he knew was they smelled terrible, like if rancid meat and toe funk had a baby. “Get off of me!” he managed to snarl, even as the hand on his throat closed a little more, forcing a cough out of him.

The ratty scarf he normally wore was ripped from his neck and a cold nose bumped into his shoulder, leaving a wet trail to just under his jaw. The lone male ignored Sonic’s intensifying struggles and inhaled deeply. “Omega,” he hummed hungrily. He breathed in again, and this time his foul breath puffed out against Sonic’s fur. “Unmated omega.”

Sonic’s stomach sank. Fuck. An alpha.

Why couldn’t it have been a chupacabra??

Sonic kicked. He scratched. He even tried to bite at the arm that held him, but it was no use. It made little difference and only caused his fleeting energy to flag. “Let me go, and get the fuck away from me!” he cried. His quills flared protectively, but they only tore into rock and sand. He blinked against the sun, finally noting that it was some sort of canid that was thoroughly scenting him. Sonic had to purse his lips to keep from gagging, not only from the smell, but memories he’d forced to the back of his mind nearly a decade ago. Ones no one knew about. Not even Sticks.

“Let me go, asshole!” Sonic raged, managing to get a knee up between his attacker’s legs and using it to his advantage. It wasn’t much, but it weakened the hand against his throat just enough that Sonic was able to headbutt the canine and scramble away.

A howl of fury echoed as Sonic tripped and slid toward the water, grabbing his scarf along the way. Another howl started, but abruptly cut off, morphing to a yelp even as it was followed by another male’s snarl.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Two of them??

Sonic forced himself up on shaky legs and limped, tripped, and blundered along the water, trying to take advantage of a break he wasn’t likely to get again. If only he could hide, but then they’d just scent him again, unless….

He glanced at the water and grimaced.

This was officially the worst day ever.

He strode into the clear, shallow creek, immediately gasping at how cold the water felt against his heated flesh. He tied the flimsy garment that gave him some semblance of safety back around his neck and kept moving downstream. The water was near his hips and rising alarmingly, but he didn’t know what else to do. It worked in the movies, so maybe this way he couldn’t be scented?

“What are you doing, fool?”

Sonic’s head jerked up. He knew that voice. He whipped around and immediately felt his feet go up from under him. The current wasn’t terribly strong, but enough to take him down and leave him flailing and coughing as he fought to stand again.

Strong hands gripped under his arms almost painfully, and a second later, his head broke the surface. He gasped for air, coughing and sputtering, still reflexively kicking out against the water.

“Stop!”

He immediately obeyed. “Shadow?”

Crimson eyes glowered down at him as he was hauled to safety and abruptly dropped on yet more rocks. Sonic groaned and rubbed his backside with a heated glare. “What the fuck, dude.”

“Don’t look at me like that. I just saved you. Twice.”

“I had it under control, and what do you mean, ‘twice’?”

Shadow looked at him like he’d grown two heads. “Are you so dense you don’t understand what that jackal wanted to do to you?”

Ooh… so it was a jackal, Sonic thought. Sonic would find him when this was over and make sure he was never a threat to anyone else. He’d never forget that scent.

Speaking of….

Sonic’s nose twitched. Cedarwood. Lavender. A touch of something more complex, something musky but deliciously so. It smelled good. Really good. Sonic felt his mouth water and his body heat up again despite the fact that he was shivering.

“Are you not even going to thank me?”

Sonic heard Shadow, and he thought to answer, but it was hard to focus with that scent…. He suddenly doubled over with a groan as his heat ramped up in response.

“What’s wrong with you? That thug shouldn’t have been able to keep you down.”

The last of the suppressant chose that moment to wear off, and Sonic’s true scent finally broke through strongly enough that someone wouldn’t have to be close to figure out the truth of his status.

“You’re….” Shadow started in disbelief. His nose twitched and flared, rising slightly in the air. His quills bristled and a low, deep growl rumbled from his chest. “Omega.”

That scent, the one that smelled so good, billowed up toward Sonic, stronger and more potent. He felt a fresh warmth pool between his legs. He was leaking slick now. A lot of it. He hadn’t done any of this since his one heat. He’d never experienced it as an adult, and it was… it was so much stronger. The absolute need was indescribable. The ache beneath his tail was so deep and intense, it hurt.

Shadow took a step back. And then another. “You need to leave.”

“Can’t,” Sonic muttered weakly. Fuck, Shadow looked so good with his stupid little quill cowlick and his obnoxiously cuffed gloves. And it was him. That scent was him, so intoxicating and strong. Alpha, it screamed at him, his thoughts boiled down to just a few primal statements repeating on loop. Powerful, strong, virile, mate–

Sonic stopped at that last one. Mate? Shadow? What the actual fuck. Hormones were messing with his head bad. He just needed it to stop–

Shadow was moving farther away, a cold stoic mask in place of the shocked and agitated creature he’d been seconds before.

“Wait!” Sonic called out, barely managing to hold up his hand. It quickly fell back down to his side. His blood burned with desire and lust and the absolute want for his rival of all fucking people. “I need your help.” His voice shook, and he inhaled deeply, though he immediately discovered that was a mistake because all Shadow’s scent did was make him hornier.

Shadow took another step back, though it faltered. “You have your communicator. Call one of your friends, I’ve done more than enough–”

“I can’t.”

“I don’t care.”

“Shadow–”

“Leave me out of it.” Shadow turned, his shoulders visibly tense and his breaths short, like he was trying not to draw in air.

Shadow was leaving. He was really leaving. Shit!

“I need you to fuck me!” Sonic blurted. His face burned hot enough he was positive he could cook something on it, but his pride and ego would have to take a back seat this time. “I’m an omega, and I’m in heat. No one knows except Sticks, and I’m out of suppressant. If anyone else finds out…. If people find out I’m an omega… they’ll pair me off with some random alpha, and that’ll be it! No more heroing, no more rescuing, no more running, fighting, nothing. I can’t. I can’t live like that.” He paused another moment and closed his eyes, swallowing the last of his pride. “Please.”

Shadow didn’t turn back around, but he also didn’t leave. “You have alpha friends. Go to one of them.”

“I can’t. I told you. They don’t know, and I don’t want them to.”

“Then why me?” Shadow spun around to face him, his hands curling into fists at his side. “What makes you think I would want to debase myself by being intimate with you?”

“Well, for starters, I don’t think that bulge you’re rocking there is because you’re off to do your laundry.”

Shadow growled and made to rush at Sonic, fist drawing back, but he quickly lost steam and stuttered to a stop a few feet away. He was close enough now that Sonic could see how dilated Shadow’s pupils were, how his breaths were short and fast, and his jaw clenched.

“Listen,” Sonic continued, hands up in placation, “this isn’t exactly something I had on my Shadow bingo sheet either, but look at it this way. If they mate me off, you won’t have anyone to race or fight with, and you know I’m the only one you can’t beat.”

“I can beat you.”

Sonic winked at him and shot him a suggestive look, despite his haggard state. “Yeah you can.”

Shadow groaned and ran a hand over his face, clearly at wit’s end. “Just sex? I… service you, and that’s it?”

It was taking every ounce of strength Sonic had to continue forming coherent sentences. His stomach rolled with more heat cramps, and he grit his teeth to keep the pain from his voice. “Ew, that makes it sound super creepy, but yeah, just sex. And once it’s over, I’ll have Sticks help me figure out how to get rid of anything that might… well… stick.” Sonic cringed at his own words as much as the discomfort in his body.

“That won’t be a problem.”

Sonic tilted his head in confusion. “You on blockers?”

“It’s none of your concern, but possible progeny won’t be a problem.”

Sonic visibly sagged in relief. “So… does that mean you’ll do it?”

Shadow tilted his head back to look at the forest canopy and grumbled under his breath. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yes... I will help you.”

Chapter Text

Sonic gaped in disbelief. He honestly hadn’t expected Shadow to say yes. “And you really won’t tell anyone?” he pressed. “Not a soul?”

Shadow faced him again, eyeridges narrowed in exasperation. “As if degrading myself in this way would be something I’d willingly share. Besides, would that not defeat the entire purpose of this little… encounter?”

Sonic shivered as red eyes settled on him again. Were Shadow’s eyes always this intense? They seemed to burn through him with repugnance, and yet it only added to the pressure building between Sonic’s legs. Fuck, even Shadow’s disgust was turning him on. Everything was turning him on.

“True,” Sonic muttered in agreement, the words a struggle when all that really wanted to come out was some sort of mortifying whine. “But you can’t blame a guy who doesn’t want to become an incubator for double checking.” He cleared his throat and dug his own fingers into his thigh hard enough to bruise, anything to take his mind off the inferno of need that somersaulted in his stomach. Even so, his voice was strained. “So… are you gonna come over here? Because I don’t think walking is in my available repertoire at the moment.”

“Are you going to be this pathetic the entire time?”

“It’ll get better once you actually do your part, asshole.” Sonic managed a weak glare. “Are you gonna make me crawl over there, or what?”

“That is an interesting idea.”

“Fuck you, dude.”

Shadow scoffed but begrudgingly closed the few feet separating them. Even that small action made Sonic’s breath hitch in anticipation. Shadow’s mere presence was enough to make more slick gather under his tail and his dick throb in its sheath. Shadow wasn’t the only one sporting a bulge.

Shadow stood awkwardly in front of him for a moment before scooping Sonic up into his arms. The hero yelped in surprise. “Holy–give a guy some warning next time!”

Shadow’s jaw clenched, presumably in annoyance, but no retaliatory insult came. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Sonic probably wouldn’t have heard the words. Not pressed this close to Shadow. Sonic’s mind was very quickly being reduced to mush.

Very horny, very indecent mush.

Sonic buried his nose in the crook of Shadow’s neck and breathed deeply, instinctively seeking more of the other’s scent. He closed his eyes and bit his lip to stifle a moan, but nothing could stem the dampness that now coated his inner thighs. He curled his tail between his legs, trying to hide just how advanced his condition was, but of course Shadow noticed.

He couldn’t see the other’s reaction, but he did feel Shadow’s hold on him tighten, feel his steps quicken. The physical touch alone was soothing to Sonic’s overburdened system, like it somehow knew it would soon get what it needed. The unbearable ache, the need, were all still there, but the painful cramps and nausea had faded, and in their place more desire than Sonic had felt in his life combined.

He knew he should probably ask where they were going, but with Shadow’s heart pounding against him, and the other’s breath catching anytime Sonic would shift against him, he couldn’t bring himself to care. At this point Shadow could fuck him in the middle of Meh Burger and he wouldn’t give a damn.

With that thought, the air suddenly cooled, and the light faded. Sonic perked at the change and opened his eyes only to notice he was in a somewhat familiar cave. He hadn’t been in this one exactly, but one like it for sure. Ancient purple etchings lined the walls, glowing with just enough luminescence to light a dusty path that wove between stalagmites and disappeared into the dark.

Shadow followed the narrowing tunnel with ease, the soft thud of his steps echoing against stone. The further they went, the more Sonic relied on his other senses for clues about his surroundings. It was especially dark along the path, no ancient depictions lighting their way, though Shadow was unphased and navigated as though it were broad daylight. The air was musty and damp, but laced with the same comforting and arousing aroma that coated Shadow. “You live here,” Sonic blurted with sudden realization.

The hybrid grunted in acknowledgement and twisted so that he could take the last few steps with Sonic’s head leading the way into a large cavern. More purple pictographs covered every surface but the floor, even the vast ceilings. Sonic looked up in awe, momentarily distracted from the alpha’s nearness and even his heat. “How have I never seen this before? Tails would be fascinated–he loves studying the ancient’s–”

“Mention a word of this place to anyone, and I’ll strangle you with your own tongue.”

“Aw Shads, is this how you romance all your dates?”

Shadow dropped Sonic on a pile of blankets, albeit a little more gently than before. “You are not a date. Don’t make this into something it isn’t.”

Sonic felt a surprising pang of hurt that almost felt like… rejection? He’d never thought of Shadow in a romantic way, or really… anyone for that matter. So how could he feel badly over something he didn’t want? It must be hormones playing tricks. That was the only explanation. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he mumbled sarcastically, hoping to cover up his internal fumble. He leaned back a bit on his hands, as well as he could, anyway. He could barely hold himself upright. He glanced at Shadow and spread his legs a bit in invitation. “So, you gonna come down here, or should I start without you?”

The hybrid’s jaw clenched, and his tail flicked with irritation, but he lowered himself onto the makeshift bed. He crawled over the other, forcing Sonic back and down onto the blankets, but kept himself separate with sheer strength of will. Sonic smelled… delectable. Shadow inhaled deeply and let out a low growl. His mouth watered, and his dick swelled even more in its pouch. He’d been hard as fuck the second he’d scented that Sonic was in heat. It was only a miracle that he’d found him so close to his cave. Otherwise, he’d have had no choice but to fuck him in the open.

Running with a massive erection wasn’t something he was practiced enough with to try.

“Have you done this before?” Sonic asked quietly.

Shadow noted a slight waver in Sonic’s voice, unusual for the confident, swaggering hero. “Once,” Shadow answered, a surprising part of him unsettled by Sonic’s nervousness and seeking to soothe it.

“You didn’t mate them?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Neither of us wanted it.”

“Who was it?”

“Do you want to do this or not?” Shadow scowled.

“Yeah, yeah, I do,” Sonic blundered, “it’s just that, I haven’t, so….”

That one simple statement, uttered innocently by Sonic, triggered Shadow’s instincts more than anything he ever thought could. He’d always thought himself above his more primal Mobian side, finding even his yearly ruts easy to manage in solitude, but this….

He swallowed a groan and pressed his nose against Sonic’s neck, nosing away his bandana until his fangs grazed the skin under blue fur. The urge to bite down and claim was so strong Shadow’s mouth watered, and his canines elongated. Below him, Sonic whined softly, his gloved hands coming up to push against Shadow’s shoulders. “Sh-shadow,” Sonic gasped. “You can’t mark me–we’ll be bonded.”

Shadow licked over that oh-so-sensitive flesh that his alpha side screamed was his and his alone. He sucked on it, lips curling up around his fangs as he fought to regain control over himself. Sonic groaned, fingers now digging into the muscle of Shadow’s arms but no longer pushing, almost like he wanted Shadow to bite him. Shadow could hear how Sonic’s heart thudded, how his blood all but sang, and his scent saturated the air. Sonic’s body was adamantly begging for the opposite of the hero’s words.

Shadow swallowed hard and closed his eyes, fighting for restraint. “I know,” he finally managed, voice raspy. “I won’t.”

“Do other things,” Sonic said shakily, “I want you to do other things. I need you to do other things.”

Shadow pulled back a little, just enough that his breath ghosted across Sonic’s muzzle. “What other things, omega? What would you have me do to you?”

“Touch me!” Sonic answered immediately, “I want you to touch me so fucking bad, Shadow. It hurts that you’re not.” He squirmed a little, arching his back, desperate for more of Shadow to be pressed against him.

One of Shadow’s hands came up, pulling at Sonic’s bandana to remove it, but the hero stopped him with a look on his face Shadow hadn’t seen before. Apprehension.

“Don’t,” Sonic said, unusually serious. “It stays on.”

Shadow felt the impulse to remove it anyway, his alpha urges wanting the omega’s neck bared to him, but he ignored them. He released his grip on the old fabric without a word and opted to trace Sonic’s collarbone over the fabric instead. He smirked when he noticed that simple touch was enough to make the hero bite his lip in order to silence his sounds. Any hint of fear the hero had displayed was quickly erased and replaced by need. Shadow’s hand trailed a little further down, grazing over velvet-soft peach fur. It didn’t matter that he’d never expected to be in this position with the most annoying hedgehog on the planet. Every primal desire he didn’t think he had was fully surfaced and raging thanks to Sonic’s scent and condition.

He paused over Sonic’s sternum where he could feel his rival’s heart racing. “Where do you want me to touch you?” he asked.

“You know where!”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Why?” Sonic whined. “I thought you said you’ve done this before!”

Shadow leaned back on his heels and stripped his gloves before reaching for Sonic’s hands to do the same. “I have, but I still want to hear it from you. I want you to say it, so I know this is what you really want.”

That caught Sonic off guard. He watched as Shadow tossed the damp cloth that had covered his hands to the distant side of the cave. Sonic’s bare fingers ghosted over Shadow’s before guiding the dark hedgehog to the area just above his tail. Shadow’s sharp intake of air echoed much louder than it actually was. “There,” Sonic said, voice already breathier than he’d like, “right there. That’s where I want you to touch me.”

A low rumble of approval left Shadow’s chest as he outlined Sonic’s dripping hole with a single finger. “You’re so wet….”

“C’mon, Shadow–just. Please. Get on with it already.”

“And needy.”

“I feel like I’m going to die if I don’t get your dick inside me, and it fucking hurts like hell that you haven’t, so yeah, I guess I’m a little eager to stop feeling like death.”

“We’re going to have to work on your patience, Omega,” Shadow murmured as he eased that digit inside.

Sonic gasped, hips bucking up and trying to take more. It felt so good, but it wasn’t nearly enough. His cock peeked from his sheath at that first penetration, dripping precum against his still damp lower belly. “Don’t call me that,” Sonic growled, though it was half-hearted and breathless.

“What? Omega? It’s what you are.” The finger Shadow had been using turned to two, and Sonic keened. “See? You need to be filled. Your body craves it.”

“I know what I am,” Sonic groaned. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

Shadow bent back over him, tilting his head as crimson eyes raked over his form. He curved his fingers, sliding them in and out of that tight, wet channel with a little more force until–

Sonic cried out, flailing slightly and reaching out to grasp Shadow’s arm in a death grip.

Shadow hummed in satisfaction when Sonic’s inner walls clenched wildly in response to his prostate being stroked. “What about now, hedgehog?” he taunted. “Do you like it a little more?”

“Fuck! Chaos! What the–” Sonic panted, a sheen of sweat breaking out despite the chill the cave air brought to his fevered body. He rocked his hips into Shadow’s hand, still gripping the other male’s arm with enough force it had to hurt, but Shadow voiced no complaint. If anything he seemed to be enjoying making Sonic an utter mess. The needy ache in his groin was intensifying with every movement of Shadow’s fingers. Sonic’s heart raced erratically and his heels weakly dug into the nest of blankets in an attempt to get more leverage. He needed that touch deeper.

“Just do it already,” Sonic snapped, growing more and more desperate.

“Tch. So demanding. Aren’t you supposed to submit and take what you’re given?”

Sonic’s ears pinned, and he bared his teeth, despite the fact that he’d do almost anything for Shadow to keep going. “If you want a meek bedmate, maybe you should go put your dick somewhere else.”

Shadow withdrew his fingers, much to Sonic’s immediate dismay. Was he really leaving? Or kicking him out? Shit. He couldn’t walk, how was he gonna–?

Sonic only mentally floundered for another second before he felt something hot and hard as steel pressed against his backside. He froze, his breath coming in shaky pants as he tried hard not to whimper and beg.

“Who said I wanted you meek?” Shadow pressed inward a little, rubbing his dick against Sonic’s hole, wetting it with the copious amount of slick coating the area. His cock was so hard it hurt. All he wanted to do was fuck into his rival like a savage, knot him, mark him, make him scream and then do it all over again. Shadow’s entire body quivered with barely checked restraint. “I want you to submit. It’s not the same thing.”

Shadow’s words barely registered. Sonic wasn’t thinking. He couldn’t. His being burned, and everything in his lower belly tightened to the point of near agony. “Shadow–dammit. Please!”

He squirmed and tried to pull Shadow in, but the hybrid bared his teeth. “Be still!” he snarled. His words were sharp, and Sonic’s ears instinctively folded, his body going limp as his head tilted to the side. The movement exposed his throat and placated something deep within Shadow. He brought his nose to the crook of Sonic’s neck, hot breath heating blue fur under the hero’s ratty bandana. He let his teeth graze again, even through the fabric, and felt Sonic tremble under him, still and compliant for once.

Shadow closed his eyes and pressed his hips forward a little more, feeling that ring of slick muscle open for him, but it was still so very tight. Sonic let out a soft sound of discomfort, and Shadow stopped. The anatomy he’d worked with before wasn’t the same as Sonic’s…. Perhaps he hadn’t prepped the other enough? He went to withdraw what little of him had made it inside Sonic, but the blue hedgehog immediately cried out, a forlorn sound Shadow never thought to hear from his rival. “Don’t!” the hero all but begged. “Don’t stop.”

“I may enjoy punching you in the face, but I don’t want to hurt you. Not like this.”

“It’ll hurt more if you don’t–just. Please, Shadow. This heat. It’s not like my other one. It feels like my insides are lava, and I can’t wait anymore, please!”

Maybe it was the alpha part of Shadow that sought to protect, or maybe it was just that he cared more than he should, but he couldn’t bring himself to deny Sonic. Not when he needed him like this.

He pushed himself inward, more of his cock gripped by tight, wet heat. “You’re burning up,” Shadow muttered, pulling back enough to press his lips against Sonic’s forehead. It was searingly hot. Far too hot for a normal heat, enough to be dangerous.

“Just don’t stop,” Sonic gasped, eyes closed, as he tilted his head up, kissing the underside of Shadow’s muzzle. “You can make it better, just don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

Shadow gently eased forward, taking care not to go too deep too fast and risk tearing his counterpart, but the hero was having none of it. “All of it, Shadow. I need all of it, right now, right now, please, all of it, I can’t–”

Sonic’s words were abruptly ceased by Shadow’s lips. Shadow kissed him hard, more of a punishment and a means of getting him to shut up than sexual overture, but it didn’t matter. Sonic groaned loudly and became more pliant, letting Shadow thrust forward with a little more ease. “That’s it,” Shadow murmured, breaking apart for air. With his right hand, he reached down to stroke Sonic’s cock, surprised to find it comparable to his own. He thought omega males were supposed to have smaller organs, but apparently Sonic was the exception to many of those rules. He gripped his rival’s hard length and pumped it up and down in time with short, shallow thrusts. “Relax for me. Let me in. You can take it, I know you can.”

Sonic cried out softly as he was stretched by Shadow’s girth. It was too much, it hurt, but it also felt good and wasn’t enough. It was wholly contradictory and confusing, but the incessant cramping of his stomach had faded the deeper Shadow got, and he knew, beyond a doubt, that if Shadow hadn’t found him when he did, this heat would have killed him.

The claws of Shadow’s free hand dug into the blankets near Sonic’s head, and the arm he supported himself with shook, but he froze at Sonic’s cry. “Do you need to stop?” he managed to get out. The urge to rut mindlessly into Sonic was almost unbearable. Shadow’s breathing was hard, his lips curled into a half snarl with the effort of fighting his instincts while he waited for Sonic’s answer. “Be truthful.”

“No,” Sonic answered breathlessly, “But–” He looked away, embarrassed even though his rival was halfway to balls deep in him. “It helped. When you kissed me.”

Under normal circumstances, Shadow would have held that over Sonic’s head. He would have taunted and mocked him. There was no time for that now, and no desire. The only thing he wanted was to knot and fill the omega beneath him until Sonic smelled more of Shadow than himself.

Without hesitation, Shadow lowered his head and caught Sonic’s lips in a far gentler kiss than before. He tongue traced along the hero’s bottom lip, before slipping into his mouth just as he thrust in deeper. Sonic’s sounds were muffled by his kiss, but the blue male made no move to push Shadow away or otherwise stop him. Instead, he opened his mouth, caressing Shadow’s tongue with his own until a deep, rumbling groan was worked from the hybrid, and Shadow’s hips snapped forward, fully sheathing himself in Sonic’s heat.

Shadow broke apart with a gasp, releasing Sonic’s dick to support himself with both arms. He was shaking too hard to risk one. It felt too good. “You’re so tight,” he muttered, holding still while the other arched against the blankets and tried to adjust. Sonic’s hands fisted at his sides, and his breaths were shallow and fast. Shadow kissed against his face, forcing the omega to turn his head and bare his throat again. He nuzzled under his rival’s bandana and sucked at the blue column hard and swore he could feel his canines ache with the need to bite down.

He hadn’t felt that with Rouge when he’d helped her the previous year.

He hadn’t felt any of this.

Sonic groaned, and Shadow felt the omega’s inner muscles tighten. Shadow’s tongue laved over the sensitive area where a mate mark would go and felt Sonic’s arms come around him, holding him place. He began to thrust, slow at first, shallow. Each of his breaths were hot against the flesh he wanted to badly to sink his teeth into.

“Mine,” he growled, low and deep.

Under him, Sonic moaned and nodded, something in him responding to Shadow’s possessiveness in a way that made his hole leak even more slick. The wetness around his tail was already obscene, but Shadow only hummed in appreciation. “So wet for me,” he grunted. His hips moved harder, faster. “And you feel so fucking good….”

“Please, Shadow,” Sonic whimpered, hating how pathetic his own voice sounded. “More….”

Shadow answered with a punishing thrust, finally letting go of some of his control. Sonic cried out again, but this time with nothing but pleasure and anticipation. “Yes! Fuck–just like that, right there--right fucking there, don't stop!”

Shadow didn’t need to be told twice. He pounded into his rival with a deep groan, feeling the hero’s walls grip him so tightly it was like they were drawing him in deeper and deeper. At the base of his cock, his knot was swelling, ready to be forced into his omega to keep him full. The bulbous gland pressed hard against Sonic’s entrance, even the thick girth of Shadow’s cock paling in size. Shadow wanted to knot him so fucking bad….

Sonic pulled Shadow back down and kissed him, savoring the feeling of the dark male’s lips against his. “Knot me,” he demanded in a haggard whisper. “I need it.”

Shadow hissed through his teeth, eyes clenching shut against the powerful urge that washed over him to do just that. “Sonic… there’s no going back if I do. You understand I won’t be able to pull out? Even if I hurt you.”

Sonic nodded. “I know, I know, but I want it–Shadow please.”

Shadow could hear the desperation in Sonic’s voice, the sheer need. It flipped a switch in his brain, his primal, alpha side raging to the surface of his actions and burying common sense and logic. Without another word, he hooked Sonic’s legs over his shoulders, bending the other almost in two, and thrust forward hard. Sonic’s answering cry was delicious, an almost feral sound of satisfaction.

Sonic could feel the stinging pressure of Shadow’s knot pushing against his hole with every slap of Shadow’s hips against his ass, but the alpha wasn’t using all his force. Not yet. It was driving Sonic mad, feeling so close to what would soothe this all-consuming desirous pain inside him, and having it held just out of reach. “Shadow….” Sonic pleaded. “I need all of it. Don’t hold back.”

“You want it?” Shadow suddenly pulled out, leaving Sonic miserably empty and sat back on his heels. “Then get on your hands and knees.”

Chapter Text

It took every ounce of Sonic’s strength to simply roll onto his belly. He tried to push himself up, but his limbs had no strength left. He bit his lip, and a frustrated sound that was more whine than he’d like to admit slipped from his throat. He struggled to try again, but then Shadow’s hands were on his hips, pulling him up onto his knees with ease. Sonic barely managed to keep his lower half from falling back to the disheveled blankets, but anything else was out of the question. His chest remained flush with the blankets.

Shadow didn’t seem to mind.

A hand stroked down Sonic’s spine before grabbing his tail and lifting it up. “I think I like you like this…” Shadow said, a hint of surprise in his tone. “Ass up. Presenting for me.”

“I’m not pr–” Sonic started, but was cut off by a pained groan. The heat cramps were starting to come back. “Stop screwing around and just get it over with already!”

“Impatient hog,” Shadow tsk’d, but there was no venom in his voice. Sonic felt his tail almost painfully pulled up and opened his mouth to protest, but then the fat bulbous head of Shadow’s dick was pressed against his leaking hole, and words became scarce.

Shadow eased in, slow and careful despite his earlier words. He groaned in satisfaction as his cock was easily swallowed by Sonic’s velvet heat. The cobalt male was tight as a vice but producing so much slick there was little to no resistance, and the sounds Sonic was trying to muffle with his arm were not indicative of any pain. He released Sonic’s tail and grabbed blue hips so he could pull the other to him and get every inch aside from his knot deep inside.

Sonic moaned as new places inside him were claimed, and despite the strain of taking something as big as Shadow’s cock, he needed more. This heat wouldn’t calm until he was knotted and filled. Maybe years ago it would have been fine, but not now, not after it had been repressed for so long. “Shadow–do it. Just cum and knot me and get it over with.”

Shadow barely heard him. His vision was narrowing to only the place where his body connected with Sonic’s, fixating on how his dick stretched out that tight ring. He watched in primal fascination and satisfaction as he pulled almost all the way out, and then thrust back in.

Hard.

The sound Sonic made in response set something off in Shadow. It overwhelmed the conscious, self-aware part of his brain and brought something forward that only wanted to claim and breed.

Which was almost humorous given the condition of his biology.

Shadow set a rough, steady pace that had him grinding his knot against Sonic’s weakening pucker with every thrust. “That’s it,” he mumbled, “you’re almost there. You’re going to take my knot aren’t you, Sonic? You’re going to take it all.”

“Yes!” Sonic yelped in response. “Yes–Chaos yes, I need it Shadow, I need it so bad–please….”

Shadow pushed harder, his pace quickening, his pelvic muscles tightening. “Say it again. Beg for it. Tell me how much you want it.”

Sonic clawed at the blankets, drool pooling in his mouth as he felt everything inside him coil and teeter on the edge. It fucking hurt, the sting of Shadow’s knot felt impossible to take, like it would tear him in two, but he felt certain he’d die if he didn’t get it. “Please!” Sonic cried again, desperation filling his tone.

Powerful black hips snapped forward just as Shadow pulled Sonic back tight against him. The hybrid’s knot finally breached Sonic’s entry and then–

Sonic blacked out.

Only for a second, maybe less, but then he was cuming so hard he couldn’t do anything more than cry out and rut into the air beneath his cock while Shadow let out a muffled snarl over his shoulder. Within the blip Sonic had been out, his rival had come down across his back, one hand gripping the bedding while the other hugged around Sonic’s lower belly, holding him in place. Shadow’s knot was impaled securely inside Sonic, keeping the dark hedgehog’s thrusts trapped and short, but no less powerful.

Sonic’s inner muscles clamped down, clenching rhythmically with every wave of pleasure, milking the other and encouraging his alpha to release. It worked like magic and Shadow, it seemed, wasn’t immune to biological witchcraft.

Shadow let out a savage growl and tugged Sonic to him almost painfully just before heat bloomed in Sonic’s belly. The instant relief of his symptoms, the euphoria, had Sonic’s eyes rolling back in his head. He could feel every pulse of cum from Shadow’s dick, each one further stimulating his already sensitive insides until tears spilled from the corners of his eyes and he was babbling random curses and praises. A few drops of something warm and wet hit his shoulder, but Sonic didn’t care about anything other than the sheer sense of relative normalcy he felt.

Like a miracle, the weakness, the pain of an unfulfilled heat lifted, and Sonic’s mind felt clearer than it had since the day before. He blinked heavily and then groaned in pain as he came down from his high and finally felt the stinging ache of Shadow’s knot in his ass.

“Shh,” Shadow said, “I’m going to move us to our sides. Try not to fight it when I move you, and stay as relaxed as you can.”

“Easy for you to say, you don’t have a grapefruit up your ass.”

Shadow rolled his eyes, but tried to keep the snark from his voice. Tried being the key word. “It’s not that big.”

“It feels that big.”

“Would you rather me suffocate you by lying down as we are for the next twenty minutes because at this point I’m starting to find that solution acceptable.”

“Ass,” Sonic grumbled. “Fine. Do as you must, almighty alpha.”

Shadow nipped Sonic’s shoulder in retaliation, which brought a surprising gasp from the hero instead of the indignation he expected. Shadow chalked it up to a heat-addled mind and gently brought his and Sonic’s hips down to the nest before sliding his arm under Sonic’s head and shifting them to their sides. He could tell the movements pained Sonic, though the other voiced no complaints.

He still felt a bit guilty.

“It won’t be so bad next time,” he offered softly. “Your body will adapt and get used to it.”

A blue ear swiveled back, and Sonic nodded, though his breaths were short and his sides tense with discomfort. Shadow rested his elbow on Sonic’s shoulder and combed his hands through Sonic’s quills in a way that Maria, his late sister, had done for him when he’d been in pain. Within a minute, he could feel Sonic press back against him a little more, his respiration evening out.

“Thanks,” Sonic offered awkwardly. “That feels… nice.” Another few moments of silence followed, the only sound that of their breaths and the occasional drip from stalactites further in the cave’s darkness. “Didn’t peg you as one for aftercare,” Sonic eventually added.

“Do you want me to stop?”

A pause. “No.”

“Good,” Shadow answered, continuing his slow strokes. “For what it’s worth, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“I know. I actually feel a lot better. This heat…. It’s probably all the suppressant I’ve taken, but it’s like if hormones had a boss battle.”

Shadow let out a surprised huff of amusement. “Sounds dramatic.”

“Fuck you dude, don’t try and pretend like you didn’t enjoy yourself.”

“I did.”

“You totally–wait. What?”

“I did enjoy myself. Every inch of my cock is inside you right now, and you’re full of my cum. Is that not evidence enough?”

“I guess I didn’t expect you to admit it.”

“What’s the use in denying the obvious? I don’t expend energy on useless ventures.” When Sonic didn’t respond, his movements stilled. He turned his head a little more to Sonic, a tightening of uncertainty twisting in his stomach, enough that it filtered into his voice. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you… enjoy yourself?”

Sonic seemed to stiffen slightly, and for a second Shadow thought he wouldn’t answer, or worse yet, say no, but after a moment, Sonic gave the subtlest of nods. “Yeah. I didn’t want to… but I did.”

Shadow settled his arm around Sonic’s side in what might have been considered a cuddle if they were a couple. But they weren’t, so it wasn’t, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fragile softness in Sonic’s voice. “Why didn’t you want to?” Shadow asked.

“I don’t know. I guess a lot of reasons. If it didn’t feel good, I’d never want to do it again. I wouldn’t have to submit. I wouldn’t want to submit.”

There. That was the real reason. Shadow was certain. “Does it bother you? Submitting.”

“Yes,” Sonic said and then sighed. “No.” Another pause. “I don’t know. It’s confusing and… complicated.”

Shadow thought on that for a moment. When Sonic begged for him, it certainly fulfilled a deep-seated drive he’d been surprised to learn he had, but…. “Would it help if I didn’t ask it of you?”

“Isn’t that the whole point?” Sonic asked bitterly. “The omega submits to the alpha, then the alpha pumps them full of babies.”

“I won’t be pumping you full of anything besides cum,” Shadow countered, “and regardless, I don’t seek to force you into submission. If you want to submit, that’s one thing, but I have no desire to see you in a role you don’t want. I would still need to fuck you to see you through your heat, but I won’t ask you to present. I won’t ask you to beg again. I won’t call you omega or ask you to call me alpha.”

Sonic turned slightly in Shadow’s arms. “You’d do that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Shadow said, a light growl of frustration in his voice, “as annoying as you are, I still… respect you.”

“Aw, Shads. I think that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Shut up.”

“Hey, is that any way to talk to someone you respect?”

Shadow started to pull away, testing his knot against Sonic’s sore ass, and found he could almost free himself. Sonic yelped and grabbed at Shadow’s arm across his chest. “What the hell?? So much for respect.”

“Calm yourself, I was just trying to see if I could separate us.”

“Obviously not. Ha. Get it? Not?”

“Careful, or I’ll do it anyway.”

Sonic exhaled loudly and pouted. “Fine. You’re no fun.”

“The wet spot you left on my blankets would indicate otherwise.”

Sonic blushed. It was a pretty damn big wet spot. He wasn’t sure he’d ever come that much or that hard. “Will you come back with me? To the others? Stick around for when I need you again?”

“You’re seriously considering continuing your idiotic mission?”

“The others need me. I can’t just leave them alone out there.”

“You’re a risk to yourself and your friends if you draw in feral alphas in rut.”

“Not when I have my big strong alpha to keep my heat at bay,” Sonic argued.

Exaggerated and disingenuous as they were, Sonic’s words still stirred something in Shadow. Something possessive. “It would be easier if you kept my scent on you.” He burrowed his nose into the back of Sonic’s neck and felt the other shiver against him. “The more I take you, the harder it will be to hide anyway.”

Sonic gulped against his suddenly dry throat. Why did he like the thought of that so much? “I have to, or the others will find out I’m an omega. Just–follow behind us and stay close? I’ll wander away from the others when I feel another bout coming on.”

“This is a terrible idea.”

“It’s just for a few days–”

“And then what? Your heat will last longer than three days. Will you see yourself through the rest of your need?”

Sonic felt a rush of anxiety and tensed at the mention, a complex wave of insecurity and anxiety washing over him. He’d be defenseless if Shadow didn’t want to stick around. What if someone else found him? What if…. What if he found him? Sonic’s heart thudded in his ears. What if he finished what he started and Sonic couldn’t–

Sonic squashed that thought as quickly as he could, startled at the deeply out-of-character spiral. He fought against the rush of panic that had sent his heart rate skittering upwards and forcibly slowed his breathing. He was Sonic The Fucking Hedgehog. He’d never let his fear control him and he wasn’t about to start now.

Shadow could feel Sonic tense against his chest and in… other places. He gently, if a little awkwardly, rubbed Sonic’s arm in a way he hoped was comforting. “I’m not saying I won’t stay. I will. If that’s what you want.”

Sonic released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “I hate this. Being so… needy. And dependent.”

“You didn’t seem to mind a few moments ago.”

Sonic threw a glare over his shoulder. “You don’t get it. You’re an alpha. Ruts will make you extra horny, sure, but they don’t make you feel like your insides are melting, and you’ll die if you don’t get a dick in you. They don’t make you… weak.”

“Then allow me to even the playing field. I’ll satisfy your needs through your heat, and when it’s time for my rut, you’ll satisfy mine.” The words spilled out of Shadow before he could stop them. If he’d been able to kick his own ass at the moment, he would have.

“You’d want that?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself. It’s embarrassing enough to have said once.”

Sonic seemed to consider his offer, but then nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Deal.”

Shadow nodded against Sonic’s shoulder, before trying to pull out again. This time he was successful. Though he tried to be careful, the blue male pressed against his belly let out a sharp hiss and immediately pressed his legs together. That didn’t stop Shadow from seeing the trickle of white that flowed across Sonic’s ass cheek, evidence of what he’d left inside his rival.

His dick twitched, eager to fill that tight hole with more. Shadow fixated on the sight with a hungry glimmer in eye before he realized Sonic was speaking.

“--Rag or something? Tissues?”

“What?” Shadow snapped, the stifling of his alpha instincts making his response irritable.

“Do you have something I can clean up with? I’m sort of leaking all over myself here.”

Shadow pushed himself up, tucking himself away before his fresh arousal became too much to fit back into his pouch. He stalked over to the scattering of boxes where he kept his few possessions and grabbed one of the ratty washcloths he kept for bathing. He wet it with some drinking water he kept on hand and tossed it at Sonic. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

Sonic brought the rag between his legs and gingerly wiped at the sticky fluids that had pooled there. He bit his lip to keep his discomforted sounds to himself. He was sore and felt a little raw, though as far as he could tell there was no blood and he hadn’t torn, a feat given Shadow’s size. His rival had truly tried to be careful.

He got the mess as best he could and shakily rose to his feet. His ass hurt, his back hurt, but even so he was far better off than he’d been before Shadow fucked him.

“Bend over.”

Sonic’s head whipped up at that. “I’m good. For a bit at least. You don’t need to–”

“I’m not going to fuck you. I’m going to heal you. I can tell you’re in pain, and I refuse to carry you.”

“You can do that?”

“To an extent, though I don’t do it often. It depletes my chaos reserves in a way fighting doesn’t.”

Shadow came up behind Sonic and moved close. His still bare hand brushed up the slight curve of Sonic’s ass in a way that Sonic knew wasn’t meant to be sensual, and yet...

“Bend over,” Shadow repeated, the command in his voice anything but subtle. It made Sonic feel a rush of heat, something about it having the opposite effect it usually would. Normally he’d mouth off, do the opposite just because, but this time… he wanted to obey.

As much as he hated that about himself at the moment, he also wanted to be able to do more than waddle on the hunt for Eggman.

He put his hands against the cave wall at the foot of Shadow’s makeshift nest and bent over a little. Shadow kicked Sonic’s foot out, widening his stance and forcing Sonic’s hands to slip a bit so he was in a very vulnerable position. One of Shadow’s hands rested on Sonic’s lower back while the other moved between his legs, fingertips lightly brushing over his used hole.

“You’re still so wet….” Shadow whispered, and Sonic shuddered, ears tipping back. He whimpered and wiggled his ass back against Shadow.

A low, deep groan rumbled in Shadow’s chest. “Keep doing that, and the meetup with your friends is going to be postponed…”

Sonic’s lips parted on a silent gasp at the thought. He wasn’t in pain, his heat wasn’t forcing him to mate. He just… wanted it. He wanted Shadow.

That thought seemed to plunge him into metaphorical ice water, and his desire retreated to more bearable levels. He managed to keep himself still as he felt a not unpleasant warmth spread from his entrance and into his depths. Almost instantly he felt relief, shoulders sagging slightly with it.

“Better?” Shadow asked.

Sonic nodded, eyes closed as he let out a small sigh. “Loads. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The hybrid stepped back and returned to his meager supplies so he could wash up a bit as well. A jump in the nearby creek where he’d rescued Sonic would have been better, but they didn’t have time for that. The moment he’d left his release in Sonic, the clock had restarted. He didn’t know how long they’d have before the omega was desperate again.

Sonic came up at his side, and Shadow handed him more water and a new cloth without asking, knowing the other would need it. As much as the act would normally irritate him, he couldn’t help but feel the urge to look after Sonic.

At least a little. Not a lot. Definitely not a lot.

Shadow subtly sniffed the air and felt another uncomfortable jolt of arousal hit him.

This was going to be a very long week.

Chapter Text

“You’ll need to get to the badger first. Find a way to separate her from the others,” Shadow called over to Sonic as they sped through the forest and away from the safety of his cave. The sun soared high overhead, warming the air even in the shaded depths of the forest, enough so Shadow felt a light sweat break out under his fur despite the air whooshing by him. Even with the expanse of openness and some distance between them, it was still obvious what Sonic was. Whatever the badger had up her metaphorical sleeve, it had better be strong. “My scent is all over you, and you still smell of omega and heat.” And sex, Shadow thought, but he left that part out.

“I know. I just have to figure out how to do it without her thinking she’s under attack.”

“Won’t she think that regardless?”

“Yeah…. I’d probably have an easier time getting decent service at Meh Burger.”

Shadow leapt over a downed log and skated under another as Sonic kept time with him at his side. “How long will it take her to do what she needs so the others don’t recognize your condition?”

“Dunno. Never had to do this. The tea always worked before. Even fooled you.”

“I still think attempting to disguise the truth is pointless. You only put the others at more risk by not acknowledging the facts.”

“And what are those, Shads?”

Shadow dodged a series of low branches and effortlessly resumed Sonic’s pace. “You’re not in any shape to fight anything and you’re more likely to draw trouble then steer it away. Not to mention, you insult your fox’s intelligence by assuming he won’t notice your atypical behavior.”

“C’mon, Shads! It’s not that bad. Where’s your optimism?”

Shadow didn’t bother telling him his optimism died onboard a spacecraft Sonic didn’t even know existed. “It’s not that bad because I healed you. I can’t do that every time.”

“Eh, it’ll be fine–but hey. I tell ya what. If it gets too bad, I’ll make up an excuse, and we can go back to your cave. Easy peasy.”

Shadow shook his head, already exhausted despite having limitless stamina. Nothing about this was going to be ‘easy peasy,’ no matter how much optimism-flavored stupidity Sonic had.

A hand suddenly pulled at Shadow’s, jerking him to a stop. He opened his mouth to snap at Sonic, but the other quickly shushed him and pointed into the woods. Shadow’s ears tipped forward as he focused, surprised to hear Sonic’s idiotic friends stumbling their way through the brush like toddlers learning to walk.

He clenched his jaw in irritation and embarrassment. His senses were far superior to Sonic’s. He should have heard them long before the other. It must be Sonic’s condition. It was… distracting.

Sonic motioned for him to follow, creeping around the bases of more mature trees until they were able to crouch behind a thick stand of saplings.

“I don’t get it,” Amy was saying as they trailed after Tails, whose nose was pointed down at his Miles Electric. “Sonic told you the transmitter implanted in his brain by a transdimensional race of super-beings commanded him to return to Hedgehog Village and pay his overdue water bill?”

Sticks waved her walking stick in the air adamantly. “And file his taxes!”

“Taxes?” Knuckles shouted in surprise, his face slightly more recognizable than the evening before. The bee stings had really done a number. “You guys pay taxes?”

“Knuckles, you own a small business,” Amy answered. “Do you not pay taxes?”

“For what?”

“Oh my–” Amy started, running a tired hand over her face. “You have to keep track of these things! Run the numbers, budget, file the appropriate paperwork!”

“I did!” Knuckles answered, pulling out a tattered piece of paper from seemingly nowhere. The date marked was five years before and signed with a smiley face.

“Every year!”

Shadow shook his head at the exchange unfolding before him. How Sonic managed to tolerate such buffoonery was unbeknownst to him. At his side, said hedgehog was shuffling on the ground, sifting through leaves and palming what appeared to be small stones and acorns.

The hero tossed one into the air a few times and then pitched it directly at the badger who trailed the group. It hit her dead on.

Sticks immediately crouched into a defensive stance and eyed the trees suspiciously. She rubbed at the back of her neck and pulled out her boomerang while the rest of the group walked on.

“Sticks,” Sonic hissed, popping his head up once the others had gotten several more steps ahead. “Over here!”

The badger narrowed her eyes, muttering something under her breath that Sonic couldn’t make out. “Can you hear what she’s saying?” he asked Shadow.

The striped male pinched the skin between his eyes. He could already feel the onset of a migraine brought on by the sheer ridiculousness of the situation he’d found himself in. “Something about devils in the trees.”

“What does that even mean?” Sonic popped up again, careful that the others didn’t see him, and tossed another projectile.

This time the badger whirled around, unable to stop her boomerang even after she realized it was Sonic and not demonic trees that had called out to her.

“Duck!” Sonic yelped. He made a grab for Shadow, pulling the surprised hedgehog to the ground. Twigs and leaves poked through their fur and dug into skin, but Sonic knew from experience it was nothing compared to the pain of being knocked upside the head by Sticks’ go to weapon.

The boomerang flew past, but Sonic had played this game before. He pushed back against Shadow’s struggles to stand and blanketed himself over the hybrid as the crackle of snapping brush announced the boomerang’s circling path.

“Idiot!” Shadow growled, “get off me!”

“Stay down!” Sonic hissed, and by some miracle, Shadow listened.

What Sonic didn’t know was that the only reason Shadow hadn’t thrown him off was because he was applying pressure to a place that was still swollen and sensitive from their earlier rendezvous. The dark hedgehog steeled himself against his urges, fisting his hands and gritting his teeth, until he finally felt confident that if he opened his mouth, it would be words that came out and not some series of pathetic sounds.

“Get. Off,” he all but snarled.

Sonic looked down and flushed, suddenly feeling the press of Shadow’s growing desire against his lower belly. “Oh. Um. Sorry,” he muttered, pushing away from Shadow and standing. “Just didn’t want you to get a concussion, and believe me, if that thing hit you, that’s exactly what you’d get.”

Shadow jumped up and began brushing the leaves from his fur. “If I were weak like you, maybe, but I’m the Ultimate Lifeform. It would take far more than a pathetic piece of curved wood to–”

Shadow dropped like a sack of potatoes while Sticks’ boomerang continued on into the trees. Sonic fell to Shadow’s side and rolled him over just as Sticks slid to a stop a safe distance away. “Did you have to throw it again??” Sonic snapped as she caught the weapon on its return and crouched beside him.

“I was saving you from Shadow! He’s the enemy!”

“He’s not the enemy, Sticks! He’s helping me with my heat. Or he was. Now he probably has brain damage!”

“Didn’t he already have that?”

“Sticks!”

“Sorry! What do you want me to do about it?”

Sonic breathed in deeply and slowly through his nose and closed his eyes to try and gather his patience. Maybe this was how Shadow felt around him…. “I need you to cover my scent. You said you could still hide that I’m an omega.”

“Yeah, yeah. I can do that. Plenty of things to use in these woods.”

“Do it, but don’t let the others know I’m back yet. We’ll need to make sure it’s working before I’m around them.”

“I still think you should just fess up. They’re not gonna tattle on ya.”

Sonic shook his head adamantly. “No. No one else can know.”

Sticks growled under her breath but stood. “Trail us, but don’t get too close. I’ll find you after the others are asleep.”

“Deal. And Sticks?”

The badger tilted her head in question.

“Thanks. Really.”

Sticks blushed and squirmed a bit, uncomfortable with and unsure what to do with Sonic’s praise. “Don’t mention it,” she said, punching his shoulder lightly, but accidentally enough for him to sprawl backwards beside the still unconscious Shadow. Her eyes tipped down as though really seeing the dark hedgehog for the first time. “He’s not so bad when he’s out,” she muttered. “Kinda pretty. You sure you can trust him, though?”

Sonic didn’t bother to get up. Instead he scooted a little closer to Shadow so that his hip pressed into the other’s side. The contact made him feel centered. Safe.

Which… was weird, considering Shadow was arguably the one being on the planet who could put him six feet under and had already tried. Multiple times. “Yeah,” he answered after a moment. “If he wanted to hurt me, he could’ve. I don’t think he’s all that bad. Just… angry.”

“Maybe he needs a snack.”

“What?”

“Maybe he’s hangry! Never seen the guy eat before….” Her eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “What if he’s an–”

Sonic had seen that face before. “Sticks–he’s not an alien–”

“Android!”

Shadow chose that moment to stir, and with her newly formed hypothesis, Sticks found that arguably enough reason to get going. “Hang a sock if you’re doing the nasty when I come back!”

“On what? Sticks!” he called out. “There’s no–”

The badger darted back through the trees, leaving Sonic sighing heavily. “...Door.” This was going to be the most awkward, uncomfortable, and ridiculous week of his existence.

He was sure of it.

“What happened?” Shadow groaned, trying and failing to push himself into a sitting position.

Sonic pressed a hand against his shoulder, urging the other to stay put. “Give it a minute, Shads. I told you Sticks’ boomerang is no joke.”

“Boomerang?”

“Yeah, she thought you were gonna attack me.”

“These so-called friends of yours are fools. If I wanted to attack you, I would have.”

“That’s what I told her. I, uh, also told her you’re helping me out. With my heat. She said to trail behind them, and she’ll bring me some stuff to cover my scent after nightfall.”

Shadow’s nose twitched as he scented the air a bit, which was a decidedly bad idea. His dick twitched in its pouch, eager to be knot-deep in the idiot he’d tied himself to for the next week. “Is that even possible? It’s… potent.”

“Um, yeah. In theory? As long as you and I… you know… often enough….” Sonic looked away, a hand coming to sink into the back of his head quills. “I should be able to function pretty normally as long as the heat is sated. My system will think I’m with my mate and tone down the ‘come breed me’ pheromones. Then it’ll just be my omega scent that needs to be covered.”

“And mine,” Shadow added. “The more I take you, the more you’ll carry my scent.”

Sonic licked his lips, something about that statement bringing back the ache from before. “Should cover that too.” Maybe a part of him didn’t want it to….

“And what of me? You saw how the badger reacted to my presence. I doubt your friends will welcome me with open arms.”

“Shit. I didn’t think about that…”

“Are you even capable?”

Sonic glowered. “You’re sneaky, and you can do that weird teleport thing. Just follow and stick close.”

“And what? Wait for you to collapse in another wave of heat?”

“It doesn’t happen in two seconds, you know. I can feel it coming on. I’ll find a way to leave the group, then you find me, and boom, we bang, I’m fine for a bit, and you getta keep your favorite rival out of some random alpha’s nest.”

Shadow collapsed back on the ground. Somehow his head hurt worse despite the healing his body had already begun.

He’d been trailing Sonic and his group of merry misfits from the moment they’d stumbled into what he considered to be his territory the day before. It wouldn’t be difficult to continue doing so. He typically stayed just outside of earshot, but kept close enough to see what they were up to and intervene if necessary. He supposed he’d be doing what Sonic asked regardless of their current stalemate.

Minus the fucking, of course.

“This is the most idiotic excuse for a plan I’ve ever heard, and worse yet, you’re risking it all to try and find a man who doesn’t want to be found. Why not just enjoy the respite?”

“That’s… actually what I said. About Eggy and enjoying the peace and quiet.” Sonic sighed heavily and seemed almost... tired. “But the others were going to come anyway, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to them because I wasn’t there. It’s just a week, Shads, and only a few days dealing with the others. As soon as we find Baldy McNosehair, we can skedaddle back to your cave, and no one will be the wiser.”

Shadow wanted to argue. He knew he should argue. Everything about this plan, operation, idea, whatever–it was bad. But. Shadow also knew what it was like to regret not being there when the people you loved needed it.

“We’ll try it your way,” Shadow relented, “but if it goes poorly I won’t hesitate to remove you from this situation and take you back where it’s safe, regardless of your mission status. If your omega nature is revealed, it defeats the entire purpose of this arrangement.”

“This is going to work. You’ll see. But okay. Fine. Deal.”

“I’ll hold you to it, hedgehog,” Shadow muttered as he threw an arm over his eyes to block the sun and maybe aid his head in healing. “Because this will go poorly.”

Sonic flopped down next to Shadow and laced his fingers over his stomach as he stared up into the tree canopy. A small smile teased at his lips, despite Shadow’s pessimism. The gloomy gus could predict doom as much as he wanted. Sonic’s confidence in their plan was more than enough to cancel out Shadow’s certainty it would fail.

It was just a few days of peddling through the woods and covering his scent. It was simple enough. They’d get through it.

Everything was going to work out just fine.

Right?

Across the narrow strait that separated Seaside Island from the mainland, a lanky jackal cradled his broken arm and yelped as another of his pack straightened his broken nose. “Fuck!” he snarled, though the sound was muffled and nasally. “Did you have to be so rough?”

“Can it, Vier. You’re the one who let some hedgehog get the jump on you when you were supposed to be setting up the drop.”

Vier sat back in one of the few structurally sound chairs and grumbled, trading the grip on his arm to rub at his tender nose. “Wasn’t my fault!” he snapped back, before trying to reign in his anger. Dva was their second and reported only to Infinite. Pissing him off was never a good thing. “Found an omega on my way back, all alone. In heat to boot.”

The door to the coastal shack suddenly burst open, letting in a rush of briny air and a burst of brightness from the late afternoon sun. The energy in the room immediately crackled with an undercurrent of tension as its occupants hastily grabbed at their weapons. Vier dropped his eyes the second the lone newcomer’s gaze fell on him, the clattering sound of weapons lowering covering up his audible gulp. Being the subject of Infinite’s attention was never a good thing.

Their leader was tall and broad-shouldered, his presence taking up more space than his mass should dictate. He commanded attention and inspired fear. He was relentless, violent, and calculating. He’d fought his way to the top of their ranks through shrewd deception and had remained there through sheer brutality.

“What happened?” Infinite asked, voice deep and slow, like he hadn’t a care in the world. There was something cold in it, something that made the fur on Vier’s neck stand up every time he heard it.

“Vier went and got himself beat to shit by some hedgehog on Seaside. Says he got the drop done, though,” Dva answered.

Infinite took in the sorry state of one of his top five as he tied his thick white hair back with a leather thong. “A hedgehog did this?” There was no attempt made to disguise the disgust in his voice. “And you let him?”

“It wasn’t a fair fight!” Vier cried defensively. “He caught me off guard. Took a cheap shot, that’s all.”

Dva slotted Vier’s arm in a stained sling, the pain of it making the injured jackal more defiant than usual. “I couldn’t help it! There was an omega, full-on heat, just laying there on my way back to the boat. Begging for an alpha. Real pretty one too, another hedgehog but blue–”

Infinite’s attention zeroed in. “Blue?” he asked, trailing a hand over the scar that ran across his right eye. “What kind of blue?”

“I dunno–just blue–” Vier’s breath caught in his throat as Infinite’s hand closed around it and squeezed. The jackal coughed and spurted, his one good hand coming up to grip Infinite’s wrist and pry him away, but it was no use.

There was a reason Infinite was the boss.

A heterochromatic stare narrowed at Vier. “What. Kind. Of. Blue.”

“Bright!” Vier rasped with what little air he had left. “All over. Green eyes.” He sputtered and pulled, feeling the constriction around his windpipe lessen just enough that he could pull in a quick breath. “Peach belly. Smelled like–”

“I know what he smells like,” Infinite snapped before releasing his minion with a harsh shove. “Change of plans, men. We’re going to take a little field trip. It sounds like my long-lost mate has taken up residence at the edge of the world.”

“But he was unmat–”

“Silence!” Infinite snarled. “He is mine.”

The other shrank back, nodding and dropping their eyes. Appeased, Infinite strode to a pile of supplies in the corner, mentally calculating and preparing for everything he’d need to make sure his little omega didn’t escape again. Sure, it meant that the next payday would be delayed, but perhaps that was for the best anyway. Authorities from mainland agencies were already sniffing far too close. A break in activities would only help their precarious position.

“Vier, Dva, and Zeks be ready to leave by tomorrow morning. The rest of you guard the goods here and wait for additional orders.” Infinite reached down for a coil of rope and sneered. “I’ve got a reunion to prepare for.”

Chapter Text

It took Shadow’s enhanced system less than half an hour to heal his probable concussion, though he was almost willing to give himself another if it spared him more of Sonic’s rambling. The hero talked incessantly. It didn’t matter that they were supposedly trying for stealth. It didn’t matter that Shadow didn’t respond. He just kept going. For hours.

“Are you ever silent?” Shadow finally snapped as they maneuvered through thick understory. “Or perhaps this is all a ruse and you want your friends to hear us coming. From a mile away.”

“Sheesh, someone’s grumpy. Maybe you are hangry,” Sonic grumbled back. Truth be told, he’d known he was getting under Shadow’s skin a while back and was probably enjoying it a little too much. “Does Shadsypoo need a snacky snack?” he taunted.

That was it.

Shadow growled and shoved Sonic against a tree so hard he could almost hear the blue hedgehog’s one brain cell rattle around in his empty skull. He covered the hero’s mouth. “If you don’t shut that mouth of yours for five minutes I’ll do it for you,” Shadow hissed. His quills were raised, his muzzle wrinkled in a snarl, but then….

There was a flare of Sonic’s scent, the one that was so much sweeter, so much more intoxicating than normal, and Shadow’s anger faltered. His pupils dilated. His hold weakened just a little, enough for Sonic to–

Lick his hand???

Shadow recoiled in disgust and jerked away, but Sonic didn’t let him snap, punch, or yell like instinct demanded. Instead, the world’s fastest hedgehog used his speed to bring his mouth to Shadow’s in the hottest, most desperate kiss Shadow had ever experienced. It floored his alpha system, forcing it into overdrive and making his body respond before he was even fully aware what was happening. He groaned, pinning the other until his rapidly hardening pouch pressed against Sonic’s. He thrust against him hard, rutting into the other like an animal and absolutely blind to the world around him.

Sonic moaned into his mouth, and Shadow found that he didn’t actually mind Sonic’s noises so much in this context. In fact, he’d very much like to hear more of them.

He kept a tight grip on Sonic’s hips with one hand while the other dug into blue quills and pulled back, exposing his neck. Shadow buried his nose into blue fur and inhaled deeply, irritated that the scarf blocked easy access to the other’s scent gland, the one that made his mouth water. The one that made him want to throw good sense out the proverbial window and bite down. Even knowing what that meant. Maybe especially knowing what it meant. “You didn’t show the same signs as before,” Shadow managed to mutter, breath ruffling short blue fur. “I didn’t realize your heat needed attending again.”

“I didn’t either,” Sonic gasped back. Pressure was building in his lower abdomen, and he could feel his body responding to Shadow, a trickle of slick already dripping from his hole. “But now that you mention it…”

“Your need is only going to get worse. If I keep fucking you like this,” Shadow murmured against the other’s neck “you’re not going to be able to follow anyone anywhere, let alone find Robotnik.”

Sonic whined, his head falling back against rough bark while he tilted his head more, physically pleading for Shadow’s attention on his neck. It was something he never thought he’d let anyone do after what happened to him, never mind want them to do, but Shadow….

Shadow was different. Shadow made him feel safe. Safe enough to be exposed. At least for a minute. The sun was starting to set…. It was probably dark enough. Shadow wouldn’t be able to see anything that Sonic didn’t want to talk about, and he… trusted him not to do what had been done before.

He pulled at the scarf around his neck, loosening it and then letting it fall to the ground. Shadow didn’t question the action, just immediately buried his nose in the crook of Sonic’s neck with a deep moan. Sonic could feel the alpha shudder, Shadow’s claws digging through the fabric of his gloves and into Sonic’s hips a little harder.

“You smell…” Shadow inhaled deeply and held Sonic even closer, “so fucking good.”

Shadow’s breath was so hot against his flesh, Sonic could feel himself start to sweat. When the dark male’s tongue licked against his scent gland, his knees almost went out. “Shadow–” He meant it to be a protest but it came out a whine.

The dark male seemed to tense all over, and Sonic could feel the puff of warmth against his neck stop completely, like Shadow was holding his breath. “If I take you again, I won’t be able to heal you until the morning. We should wait until they stop for the night.”

Sonic didn’t like those words. He didn’t like them one bit. He wrapped his arms around Shadow’s shoulders and brought his legs up around ebony hips. He locked his ankles and squeezed the other tight before grinding against him. “Then don’t heal me. I can take it.”

A growl rumbled deep in Shadow’s chest. He kissed down Sonic’s bare neck, stopping to suck along his collarbone, harder than he should. He couldn’t mark the omega the way he so desperately wanted, but he could still mark him up in other ways.

Sonic wanted to care, he should care, but he didn’t. If anything, he wanted more. He wanted those dark purple marks visible on his chest, his stomach, somewhere they’d be seen so anyone who looked at him would know he was wanted. He’d been claimed. As it was, they would be almost completely hidden by blue fur and his bandana. “More,” Sonic managed to demand, even if it did sound pathetically weak.

“No,” Shadow countered, pulling away. His eyes were heated, almost glowing in the dusk as they met Sonic’s. “Not until they make camp.”

“They’ll make camp any minute, and we can catch up in seconds, even if I am waddling a bit. I need it. I need you,” Sonic insisted. “I need you inside me. I need you to fuck me. I need you to make me come. Not later. Now. Right now.”

The war within Shadow waged on his face, but Sonic could see the second he won.

“You’re a demanding, needy fool,” Shadow nearly snarled after only a few seconds of tense internal deliberation. The striped hedgehog suddenly pried Sonic from his body and roughly spun him until his face was pressed against the rough bark of the tree. “If you want it so bad, then you’ll have to deal with the consequences.”

Shadow pinned Sonic’s front to the tree and pulled out his hips until they were flush with the dark male’s growing erection. “You’ll stay just like this for me…. Hands on the tree, ass up, and you’ll keep your damn mouth shut. The last thing we need is for that merry band of misfits you call friends to come running because they heard you screaming my name.”

“Well that’s a bit presumpt–” Sonic bit his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood when Shadow yanked on his tail and ground against the building wetness at its base. He swallowed hard against all the pitiful whines that were bottling up in his throat, letting out a shaky breath instead.

“Good boy,” Shadow said, voice a deep whisper, and though Sonic knew Shadow meant it to be condescending, his cock sure as hell didn’t know the difference. The cooling evening air suddenly caressed the head of his length, and he knew he was one touch, one more filthy command away from being completely exposed.

Sonic’s reaction didn’t go unnoticed by Shadow. “You like that…” he said, a hint of surprise in his tone. Of course the hero would like praise. “You like it when I tell you you’re good.”

“Shut up,” Sonic growled back. “I do not. I don’t give a shit what you think.”

Shadow trailed a hand up Sonic’s back, sliding between his spines and burying itself into the hero’s quills. He pulled back hard, forcing Sonic’s spine into a dramatic arch. “So,” he murmured, “if I were to tell you how delicious you look like this, all desperate and presented for me, it would have absolutely no effect on you?”

Sonic shuddered, eyes rolling back in his head as Shadow’s words caressed his mind like warm velvet. “Not even–,” his breath hitched when Shadow’s breath tickled the shell of his ear, and when he spoke again his voice came out a little higher and far too breathy, “--a little.”

“Hmph. Then I’ll save my useless words,” Shadow answered, well aware that Sonic was lying. And badly. His omega’s struggles were clear in the way his tail lifted and his legs quivered, in the heat radiating from his body and the sopping wet fur left against Shadow’s pouch. Even Sonic’s scent responded to Shadow’s words and touch, flaring until it was the only thing Shadow could smell, that mouth-watering sweet combination of heated omega and Sonic’s baseline of sea and meadow.

“I won’t bother telling you that you’re dripping…” Shadow murmured. He brought the hand he had on Sonic’s hip to his mouth and hastily pulled off his glove with his teeth before carelessly letting it fall to the ground. Not a second passed before he had his fingers pressed against his rival’s sopping hole. “And that your scent makes my mouth water….” He abruptly pushed in two fingers, going deep and curving them downward slightly until Sonic let out a tense cry and desperately clawed at the tree’s bark. “I won’t tell you how good you feel, how tight and hot and eager, like your ass is so needy it’s sucking me in–” Shadow let out a ragged groan against Sonic’s ear. “I won’t bother telling you I want to fuck you until you can’t walk. Until the only thing you can do is lift that pretty ass up and take my cock. Take it over and over again until I’ve filled you up completely.”

Sonic whined, high and choked, pushing back against Shadow’s fingers hard enough that the alpha couldn’t resist adding a third even if it was a little fast. “Is that what you want?” He fingerfucked his partner harder, until those little noises he’d told Sonic not to make were near constant. “To go back to your friends with my cum dripping down your thighs? So they can see you’re mine?” Hot, velvety walls tightened and quivered around Shadow’s fingers. “You like that idea?” Shadow continued. “Leaking my cum? Carrying my scent?” Sonic keened softly at that, and Shadow pressed closer, angling his mouth back toward the other’s ear. “Maybe you want to be claimed. Maybe you want to be bred. Is that it, Sonic?”

He could hear the hero’s breath hitch, his thighs trembling uncontrollably against Shadow’s. The dark male smirked, a glint of white fang showing as he removed his fingers and brought his cock up to Sonic’s hole. Shadow’s dick had long since released itself and ached to get back inside his omega. His omega. The thought made Shadow feel something deeply primal stir in him. “Answer me, hedgehog. Is that it? Do you secretly want to be pumped full of pups?”

“I don’t!” Sonic snapped, though his body made it clear Shadow wasn’t wrong.

“You’re lying,” Shadow whispered lowly. He rubbed his cock head over Sonic’s leaking entrance, putting just enough pressure behind the motion for there to be a hint of stretch before withdrawing. “Try again.”

“I-I don–Shadow–” Sonic moaned, knees threatening to buckle. “Stop teasing…”

“Stop lying.”

“I’m not!”

“You are.”

“Am not–oh fu–!!”

Shadow chose that moment to slam forward, and all of Sonic’s belligerence ceased immediately. Shadow’s hand released Sonic’s quills in a millisecond, allowing only one blip of the hero’s cry to echo through the trees before silencing him as best he could. He nipped the omega’s ear in retaliation and didn’t pause before setting a demanding pace. “Is this what you wanted?” Shadow asked, thrusting forward roughly. “What you needed?”

Sonic’s muffled moan of assent was hot against the palm of Shadow’s hand, the shameless nod of his head unmistakable. The hero clung to the tree, fingertips digging into the bark so hard the cloth of his gloves was threatening to give way, and his sides heaved with gasped breaths. Shadow let the hand that wasn’t keeping Sonic silent trail down his spine, stopping only to play with the pert tail that was lifted up and out of the way. He gave it a firm tug, and his ears tipped forward at Sonic’s answering groan. A finger dipped down just a little further, down to the stretched ring of muscle he was forcing to accommodate him, tracing it, feeling himself go in and out.

Sonic gave a whole-body shudder, and those delicious inner walls of his clenched around Shadow’s cock. The dark hedgehog let out a deep, guttural groan of his own and watched the place where their bodies connected with a near feral intent. “You’re so tight,” he whispered. “I can feel you gripping me, like you’re trying to keep me inside.”

Sonic whined softly and shakily managed to pull at Shadow’s hand until the other released his mouth. “Knot me.”

A low rumble of a growl reverberated in Shadow’s chest as he leaned over Sonic’s back, pressing them closer together. His pace never faltered, and the wet smack of their coupling punctuated each of Shadow’s words. “I can’t heal you,” he answered tensely, the reply fighting every instinct he had.

“I don’t care!”

“Sonic…”

“I need it! I-I want it!” Sonic pushed. “Chaos, Shadow, I want it so bad!”

Shadow clenched his jaw, warring internally, but in the end he had no choice. How could he refuse his m–? He shut that thought down, the idea alone enough to make his pace stutter.

Sonic threw his ass back, trying to take more on his own. “Maybe you’re just not alpha enough. Maybe–”

“Maybe,” Shadow cut in, grabbing Sonic’s hips with both hands, “you should hold on tighter to that tree.”

Shadow didn’t give Sonic another moment’s notice before he slammed forward, ignoring Sonic’s startled yelp and deciding he no longer cared if someone heard. Let them. Sonic was his. His to knot, his to claim.

The bulbous gland at the base of his cock pressed against Sonic’s ass mercilessly, but the tight ring refused to give. Shadow thrusted in short, hard movements, grinding every so often to try and work past the barrier. He wrapped an arm around Sonic’s chest and brought the other against his front. “Relax. Let me in.”

Sonic whined pitifully, his defiant tone from minutes earlier nonexistent. “I want it, but it’s too much–” His breath caught when the stretch intensified for a second. “I can’t–”

“You can,” Shadow whispered. He softened a bit, some of the possessive urges fading in light of Sonic’s struggle to open up enough to take all of him. “You’ve done it before. Just hours ago.”

“Yeah, but I think when you healed me it undid… that. Or at least it feels like it did.”

That made sense. Not being able to confine his omega to a nest and fully look after his needs was making Sonic’s heat more difficult than it needed to be. He let out a soft growl of irritation that turned into a sigh. He abruptly pulled out. “Turn around.”

“Wha–why?” Sonic asked, though he shakily did as requested.

“So I can do this,” Shadow answered, cupping Sonic’s cheek and letting his lips brush over the other’s. “You said it helped before.”

Sonic’s eyes closed, and he licked his lips as though savoring the feel and taste Shadow left behind. “Yeah. It did. It does.”

Shadow slid his hands down Sonic’s sides until he reached the back of blue thighs. With little effort, he hoisted Sonic up and against him, humming in satisfaction when he felt Sonic’s legs come around his hips. He pressed Sonic against the tree, pulling back just enough to reach between them and guide his dick back to Sonic’s hole. He pushed in with no warning, pressing his forehead against Sonic’s as they both gasped. “Okay?” Shadow asked, a slight tremor to his voice as slick heat enveloped him once more.

“Yeah,” Sonic answered, the sound breathy and short. He wrapped his arms around Shadow’s shoulders. “It’s good. Better.”

Shadow’s gaze dipped down to Sonic’s lips as he licked his own. His cock throbbed with the need to knot and claim, but he held himself back, instead starting with slow, steady thrusts until he felt Sonic begin to move with him. Shadow let out a small sound of approval. “That’s it…” he murmured, eyes closing as they moved together. “Take what you need. Fuck yourself on my dick just like that….”

Emboldened, Sonic did exactly that. He tightened his grip on Shadow and moved his hips with more force, trying to adjust his angle, searching for that spot inside that would make him see stars. His ears tipped forward as he worked a sharp groan out of Shadow, the alpha’s scent flaring, his fingers curling into the soft flesh of Sonic’s ass. Sonic let out his own moan, distracted from his search by the powerful need to coat himself in that potent combination of cedarwood and lavender. He needed to be closer somehow–needed more.

With a sudden shift, Sonic brought an arm behind him and pushed hard against the tree, harder than he even intended truthfully. The force alone would have been enough to send Shadow stumbling back a few feet, but the added surprise had the dark male very abruptly on his back.

Air left Shadow’s lungs in a choked whoosh that quickly morphed into a deep, guttural groan as Sonic grinded down on his knot, nearly taking it. A sharp hiss slipped from Sonic’s lips, and he relented slightly, face scrunching with a bit of discomfort and frustration.

Shadow knew exactly what he needed.

He slid one hand up Sonic’s thigh while the other wrapped around the hero’s leaking dick. Sonic’s position faltered, and his inner walls reflexively clenched around Shadow’s girth. “Keep going,” Shadow encouraged as he pumped the omega’s cock. He bucked his own hips up just as he brought his thumb over Sonic’s tip. “You’re almost there.”

Sonic whined, hands coming to Shadow’s chest as his weakened muscles trembled. “This heat is going to kill me, and it’s all because of your monster dick,” Sonic growled.

“You’re going to take it,” Shadow countered, pumping Sonic a little faster. “You’re going to take it because you did it before. Because you’re the only one who can.”

Sonic felt a prick of pride and let his weight come down a little harder. There was a fresh burning stretch, but everything else felt too good to back down now. He clenched his jaw and ground down, letting out a held breath with the effort. “What about the other omega?”

Shadow’s claws were ripping through his one gloved hand and making hard indentations in Sonic’s thigh, but it couldn’t be helped. He was so close to being fully seated, and it was taking everything in him to let Sonic do it at his own pace. “I didn’t knot her,” he huffed out between clenched teeth. “Just you.”

Sonic cried out sharply as Shadow’s knot suddenly forced past his entrance and settled deep inside, and Shadow could wait no more. He flipped their positions, rolling Sonic onto his back and thrusting into him hard. “Mine,” he growled. His arms came around Sonic, holding him tightly in place as he took what was his. Sonic’s euphoric sounds echoed through the trees, loud, desperate and positively wrecked.

Burning stripes of pain spread across Shadow’s back, but it was nothing compared to the intense, mind-consuming pleasure he felt around his trapped cock. Sonic’s inner muscles were gripping him, milking him, holding him so tight that every slap of his hips was almost hard enough to bruise, and then his own name sounded in his ears, loud enough to leave them ringing, and warmth flushed against his stomach.

He groaned and buried his face in Sonic’s neck as the other clenched down around him, feeling his fangs lengthen, his mouth water in preparation for the claim. He thrust forward hard, hard enough he swore he could feel his dick bulge in Sonic’s stomach and against his own, and then he was exploding. His lips curled back from his teeth as he came, but at the last second, he did exactly what he’d done before and set his canines into the dense muscle of his shoulder. His eyes scrunched shut, and his muffled snarl sounded as his cock pumped his seed as deep as possible. It seemed to last forever, every uncontrollable pulse sending a ripple of overstimulation through the both of them.

Finally, Shadow released his own flesh and licked the blood from his lips, bowing his head against Sonic’s shoulder and quivering with aftershocks.

Sonic was in no better shape, his legs shaking so hard he swore he could hear his joints rattling. He gulped huge lungfuls of air and tried to slow his racing heart. He buried his nose in Shadow’s fur and nuzzled into him, taking more of that delicious aroma on and into him, letting it soothe after the intensity of their coupling.

Shadow swallowed hard, trying with far more effort than it should have taken to keep some of his weight off Sonic’s chest. He pulled away, just enough that he could see the state he’d left the hero in. Sonic’s pupils were blown, his eyes heavy-lidded and glazed with lust. His cheeks were flushed a deep red that reached to the very tips of his ears, and faint purple bruising littered his neck and chest.

He looked a mess. Shadow felt a burst of possessiveness. His mess. Because of him. For him.

“Kinda look like you’re gonna eat me, Shads,” Sonic quipped, even if his tone was way shakier than he intended. “Seems like you already took a bite out of yourself, though….”

He gestured toward the dark hedgehog’s shoulder, and Shadow followed his gaze with a shrug. “It’s nothing.”

Sonic wanted to argue, but he knew why the other had done it. Part of him was grateful, but an equally large part was… disappointed?

Shadow watched Sonic fixate on the barely visible puncture wounds he’d left on himself. “I wanted to bite you,” Shadow said before he could stop himself.

“But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

“Is that… normal? To do that? To want to do it that bad that you… bite yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Shadow answered truthfully.

Sonic frowned, eye ridges furrowing, and Shadow couldn’t help but want to erase the worry. Words were hard, and he couldn’t explain his reaction anyway, so he did the next best thing. He kissed him. Not because he needed Sonic to relax. Not because he wanted him to shut up. Not even because he wanted him to feel good.

It was simply because….

He wanted to.

Chapter Text

It was a soft kiss. A tentative kiss. A gesture that was a complete contradiction to most of their embraces thus far, but felt right, more so when Sonic melted right into it. Shadow took the invitation for what it was and slowly deepened it, licking into the other’s mouth and exploring it in a way he hadn’t before. Sonic’s arms came around him again, sliding up between his spines and holding him close until–

“Ouch! Ouchouchouch–fuck me,” Sonic yelped against Shadow’s lips, his whole body tensing as he broke apart with a pained whine. “Would you tell your dick to take a chill pill?”

Shadow’s ears tipped back as he closed his eyes and desperately tried to get his breathing and libido under control. His knot was far too swollen to withdraw yet, so attempting to stop his cock from responding and twitching inside Sonic was the only thing he could do. That, and possibly move them into a more comfortable position. He gave Sonic a quick peck. “Hold on.” He didn’t wait for the complaints he knew would come, just tightened his hold to jostle Sonic as little as possible and rolled onto his back.

Sonic protested with a sharp “hey!” but quickly went slack against Shadow’s front once settled. The hero had to admit this was much more comfortable. Shadow’s fluff made an excellent pillow, and the dark male’s warmth encouraged his body to relax, even if being stuck together wasn’t the most comfortable feeling in the world. He honestly wasn’t complaining. Not really. The sensation of being knotted was so deeply satisfying, it chased away the symptoms of his heat like they didn’t exist.

At least for now.

Sonic’s ears flicked forward as Shadow sighed, the slow exhale sounding surprisingly content, especially coming from his normally cantankerous rival. Shadow’s thumbs idly worked against Sonic’s lower back, gently easing some of the tension and soreness that had collected just above his tail. It felt good. Sonic closed his eyes, listening to the strong thud of Shadow’s heartbeat, and let himself be lulled into possibly the most peaceful state he’d experienced.

Ever.

“I thought you said it would get easier to take you,” he mumbled after a minute. “I think it got harder. Pun not intended.” He chuckled sleepily despite himself.

Shadow only rolled his eyes and kept working at stiff muscles under blue fur. “It wouldn’t be difficult if you allowed yourself to be taken care of,” he grumbled in response, his tone belying the deep frustration he felt. “If you trusted your friends enough to let them handle things on their own. You’re not meant to be doing things like this while–”

Sonic’s head whipped up, his lips pursed, peacefulness forgotten. “I can do anything you or another alpha or beta could do. Just because I’m an omega doesn’t make me weak.”

“I never said that.”

“You did! You and everyone else think omegas have no place in the world except for in a nest or under an alpha.”

“You’re putting words in my mouth. I don’t–”

“Psst, loverboys!” a voice called from somewhere nearby.

Shadow abruptly sat up, holding Sonic to him despite the other’s immediate objection, and snarled into the darkened woods like a thing possessed. His teeth were bared, his ears pinned, every protective and possessive instinct coming to life in an instant. To be jumped in such a vulnerable position made his alpha side desperate to protect his m–

“Shadow. Dude. Take it easy. It’s just Sticks.”

Shadow heard the words, but it was more the soothing hands in his quills that brought him back enough to realize the air wasn’t tinged with the scent of another alpha. Just beta. Not a threat. Not a real one, at least.

He stopped growling, unaware he’d continued, but made no move to loosen his grip on Sonic. “Keep back,” he called out harshly. He felt more in control of himself, but he still didn’t want anyone else to see Sonic in this position. It was for his eyes only.

“I’m not that crazy,” Sticks called back. “I know better than to poke a ruffled alpha, and I got no desire to see somethin’ I can’t scrub from my brain.”

“We’re sorta…” Sonic trailed off. His face burned with embarrassment. Of all the positions for one of his friends to find him in, stuck with Shadow’s knot up his ass was definitely at the bottom of the list. “In the middle of something.”

“Oh, I know. The whole forest knows.”

“Dammit…” Sonic groaned, head falling against Shadow’s shoulder.

“I told you to be quiet,” Shadow hissed under his breath.

Sonic glared at him but addressed Sticks. “Did the others happen to…?”

“Yup,” Sticks called cheerfully as though Sonic’s sex life hadn’t just been revealed in the most humiliating way possible. Her voice came a little closer, though her form was still hidden. “They won’t know it was real though.”

Sonic twisted his head a bit, looking for Sticks in the dark. “What do you mean they won’t know it was real? What did you do?”

“They wanted to come investigate. Amy was sure it was you screamin’. I managed to convince her it was widabit mating season, but then Tails looked it up on that fancy tech he carries around. I knew they’d figure out I was lyin’, so I slipped a little special somethin’ into their soup.”

“Sticks….”

“What? It’s just mushrooms. Perfectly natural. When I left, Tails was debatin’ a tree on the ethics of AI and Amy was giving Knuckles a makeover. I’m pretty sure she thought he was me, but that’s not important. What’s important is they’re fine, and by morning, they’ll just think they had crazy dreams!”

“You gave my brother magic mushrooms?!”

“He’s too smart, so he got double! Probably why he was losing that debate come to think of it….”

“Sticks!” Sonic struggled to get up, but it was too soon, and the tug on his sore ass had him wincing and promptly sinking right back down into Shadow’s lap.

The dark male groaned softly and then forcefully held Sonic in place to stop his moving. “Unless you want to go again,” he growled under his breath, “I suggest you stay still.”

Sonic growled his frustration. “Sticks, please tell me you have what I need so I can go make sure Tails doesn’t decide to debate something else. Like a shark. Or the bad slide of a cliff.”

“I got it. Don’t know if it’s gonna work though. I can smell you both from here.”

“I need to try at least. Especially since Tails is actively hallucinating.”

Shadow shook his head in exasperation, but remained silent. Sonic ignored him. “What is it exactly? A spray…?”

“More tea in case it helps tone down your heat and a lavender and mint wash. It’s the best I could do. It would take me weeks to make an oil. The water and tea are still a little hot, so be careful. I just finished whipping them up.”

“Where are you guys camped?”

“Quarter mile east, just in from the coast.”

“Got it. Shadow will stay close, but I’ll be around later.”

Sticks paused for a moment. “I still think this is a bad idea, Sonic.”

“For once the badger and I agree on something,” Shadow muttered under his breath.

“When has that ever stopped me?” Sonic countered. “Besides, we’ll find ol’ Eggy in no time, and then we can all go back to pretending none of this ever happened. Particularly right now. Y’know, the part where we’re having a whole conversation with Shadow’s d–”

“Enough,” Shadow snapped, voice plenty loud for Sticks to hear. “If Sonic insists on going forward with this foolish plan, then he’ll join you soon, but for the time being, leave. Now.” Shadow’s alpha side left no room for argument, and there was a swift rustle of brush and crack of twigs and then silence.

At least for a minute.

“You didn’t have to be so crappy about it,” Sonic chastised. “She’s helping if you hadn’t noticed.”

“She’s enabling your bad decisions.”

“And what are you doing?”

Shadow glowered at Sonic. “Acting in my own self interest.”

It was brief. Just a flash of emotion. But for a second, Sonic almost looked like Shadow had hit him. “Got it,” the hero said, pushing himself off of Shadow despite the sharp stab of pain that said he should have waited a little longer. “Of course you are.”

“Sonic,” Shadow started, reaching out for the other. Sonic evaded with a twist and staggered to his feet. Tension and discomfort were clear on his face, but Sonic didn’t comment on it, didn’t ask to be healed. Shadow sighed and stood, tucking his partial hard-on away. As long as Sonic was near and in this condition, his dick never seemed to want to soften all the way. It was as irritating as it was uncomfortable.

“Listen,” Sonic started, tugging at the sports tape that wound around his wrist. “I know you don’t like me. I get it. And I appreciate you helping me anyway and mostly not being a dick about it.”

Shadow dipped down to grab his glove, making a face at the clear holes in the fingertips from his claws. It wasn’t like he had another pair handy. “I don’t not like you,” Shadow said, pulling it on anyway. “You’re….” He exhaled softly and readjusted his inhibitor ring over his cuff.

“I don’t know what you are, but for what it’s worth, it’s not just self interest. I don’t want you to be unhappy, or hurt, or trapped. Outside of what it means for me.” And it was true. Shadow had been those things. All of them. He wouldn’t wish it on his rival no matter how much the other drove him to near insanity.

Green eyes looked up at that, watching Shadow with an unreadable expression. Shadow wasn’t sure what came over him, but without another thought, he closed the few feet of distance between them and wordlessly brought Sonic’s lips to his. There was a brief sound of surprise, and then Sonic was pressed against him, all fight gone. Shadow’s touch slid down Sonic’s sides, following the dip of his spine and tracing the base of his tail. His tongue flicked out against the hero’s bottom lip just as he focused his energy on the area his fingertips grazed.

Sonic let out a startled grunt but quickly relaxed once he realized what Shadow was doing, leaning more against him and widening his stance. It did no favors for Shadow’s condition, his cock hardening even more as he felt his own release dripping from his rival’s entrance. He fought his urges and reluctantly broke away, giving Sonic space.

The hero looked at him in confusion. “Thought you said you couldn’t heal me again.”

“Your bad decision making is apparently rubbing off on me.”

A corner of Sonic’s mouth ticked up because Shadow’s actions said what his words didn’t, or maybe couldn’t.

He cared.

It didn’t take long for Sonic to find the tea and wash Sticks had left. His nose wrinkled as soon as he was close. “This is strong,” he grumbled as he tied his scarf back around his neck. “I haven’t even opened it yet, and it’s burning my nose.”

“It’ll have to be,” Shadow said as he came up behind Sonic. His fur was still damp from their quick dip in the ocean, and the salt did his coat no favors. At least he hadn’t had to get his quills wet. That would have been a nightmare. He idly brushed the upturned bundles back and then ran his fingers through his chest fluff to try and smooth out some of the clumps. “You’ll probably have to use it every time I take you.”

Sonic felt a shiver roll down his spine, Shadow’s words matter-of-fact, but still managing to stir his arousal. Because of the heat. No other reason. “Guess I should start now….” He unscrewed the cap of the largest canteen and sniffed once more before cringing and splashing some of the warm, scented water onto his chest. He worked it into his fur, thoroughly applying it to his neck and groin before moving to the rest of his body. He’d used half the container before he finished. “What do you think?”

Shadow took a step closer, nose twitching. His ears flicked back, and he shook his head as though trying to dislodge something unpleasant. “You smell like the dried stuff they keep on the back of public toilets.”

“Better than what’s in the toilets, I guess….”

“That’s debatable,” Shadow grimaced. “But it definitely covers up your scent.” And mine, Shadow thought with more displeasure than he cared to admit. If Sonic carried his mark, it wouldn’t matter so much, but without Shadow’s scent on him there was nothing to keep another alpha at bay if Sonic’s heat broke through.

He’d have to stay close.

“Make sure you drink the tea too,” Shadow pressed. “Even if we don’t know for certain it will help. It can’t hurt.”

Sonic eyed it with relative suspicion. “I dunno, Shads. Using the tea for so long is probably what made this all so… intense in the first place.”

“You think it will make your current condition worse?”

“Maybe.” Sonic picked up the scuffed thermos and popped open the lid. “But hey, what’s a little risk, huh?”

Shadow had many answers to that, none of which Sonic would like, so he simply watched with new apprehension as the hero chugged down the concoction.

“Ugh… that taste never gets better,” Sonic grumbled with disgust as he held a hand over his mouth like it would keep his body from rejecting everything he’d just taken in. “Bet you never had to drink hot swamp water so you didn’t bang the shit out of something.”

Shadow tilted his head in mild confusion. “No. I can’t say I have.”

“Lucky. I’d trade you my heat for your rut any day.”

“My ruts aren’t typical. I imagine a full Mobian has a harder time.”

Sonic’s head shot up at that. “Full Mobian? What does that mean?”

“I’m a genetic hybrid. I thought you knew.”

“No, I didn’t know! How would I know? You never talk!”

Shadow rolled his eyes and curled his hand on his hip. “Now you do.”

“You can’t just drop that on a guy like it’s nothing,” Sonic protested as he closed the thermos. “You’re a hybrid of what? Mobian and human? How would that even work?” Sonic got a far-off look in his eye. “Wait. How would that work….?”

Shadow took a deep, slow breath and pinched the skin between his eyes. “Do I look like a human?”

Sonic squinted and cocked his head.

Shadow threw a pinecone at him. “Idiot! No. I’m not half human. Chaos. I’m a hybrid of Mobian and Black Arms DNA. They’re a hivemind alien race that–”

“Wait, wait wait,” Sonic said, throwing his hands up in a time out. “Let me get this straight. You’re half alien??”

“Technically.”

“Oh, Chaos…. You’re an alien. I fucked an alien.”

“Technically a half alien fucked you.”

“Okay, thanks for the semantics, E.T.”

“I thought Eggman would have told you. His grandfather is the one who created me.”

Sonic paced, containers forgotten at his feet. “Okay, one, no, Egghead didn’t say a damn thing about you being from outer space, and two, Sticks can never know. She already thinks we’re under attack from aliens. She’ll have us all wearing tinfoil 24/7 for sure.”

Shadow hesitated for a moment, something in him feeling oddly vulnerable. He’d never cared what others thought of him. He didn’t require their acceptance or reassurance. But….

“Does that change things?”

Sonic looked up from his pacing. “Change what?”

Shadow made a motion between the two of them. “This. Me… seeing you through your heat.”

“What?” Sonic shot him a baffled look. “No! I mean, unless your cum is secretly toxic, you’re just… you. You’re still Shadow. Whatever your DNA is.”

“It really doesn’t bother you?”

“No? Did you think it would?”

Shadow shrugged, and stared through the dark forest. Somewhere to the south an owl called once, twice. “I’m not sure…. I’ve never told anyone.”

“Not even that other omega?” Sonic tried, but couldn’t quite keep the jealous tinge out of his voice.

“She already knew.”

Sonic opened his mouth to ask more questions, but Shadow shook his head. “Enough. I thought you were worried about your fox friend?”

Sonic slumped a bit, disappointed he wasn’t going to get more information from his mysterious rival, at least not tonight. Resigned, he nodded and grabbed the thermos and canteen before giving his underarm one last sniff. Lavender and mint accosted him, but it also overpowered everything he didn’t want the world to know. His stomach twisted, not with nausea but with a sense of unease. He couldn’t smell Shadow anymore either. He chanced a look at his rival, noting the half-alien seemed tense and conflicted.

“I’ll follow and be close, but… if your heat breaks through… your alpha friends may notice. And quickly.”

Sonic nodded, only partly paying attention. He wanted, more than anything, to embrace Shadow one more time. He wasn’t sure why. Only that he needed to. He took a step toward him and then another.

Shadow seemed to sense what he was getting at and held up his hands to ward Sonic off. “I can’t. I can’t touch you. It will only get my scent back on you.”

“Yeah. For sure.” Sonic’s ears drooped, and he turned away, headed in the direction Sticks had shared. “See you soon, I guess,” he called over his shoulder.

Shadow watched him go, his ears following his every step long after he’d gone from sight.

“Goodnight, Sonic.”

Chapter Text

Not a hint of dawn colored the sky when the small vessel Infinite had commandeered the day before pushed off from shore. The heavens above were clear and quiet, dotted with stars as boundless as Infinite’s own name. Quiet waves lapped against the hull of the boat, the occasional dip of the craft sending a few droplets splashing against the leather of Infinite’s steel-tipped boots.

The jackal ignored it all, focus directed straight ahead to the island his omega had unknowingly escaped to all those years ago. It was just visible in the distance, a dark shadow looming on the horizon. He could feel anticipation build in his body, the steady hum of it stirring in his blood. Time had done little to sate his compulsion to bring the feisty blue omega to heel. Certainly he’d had others in his bed and his claim marked more than one, even if it was forbidden, but Sonic…. His desire for him went beyond biology.

He remembered the first time he’d seen the blue hedgehog–the first and only time Infinite had been bested. He’d known then, as the younger hedgehog had cockily claimed victory, that there was only one place Sonic belonged.

And that was under him.

He sneered as he felt the fresh fury of being cheated from his prize, but then calmed himself as he recalled one very important fact.

Sonic may have slipped from his grasp, but legally? He was more his than any of the rest in his collection. Legally speaking, of course.

Infinite felt Dva’s approach a second before the other male spoke. “We’re making ground on the western side?”

“Yes,” Infinite answered, tone bored and laced with irritation. “We need to avoid the drop zone. I don’t want Barker knowing we’re there. He may report it back to Starline, and the last thing I need is another reason for that fucking platypus to call me in. He’s already up my ass about that spying, good-for-nothing bitch.”

“That bat really fooled you good, didn’t she?”

Dva didn’t see Infinite move. One minute he was breathing normally, and the next his windpipe was shuttered tight. Dva wheezed and instinctively flailed at the hand that wrapped around his throat, but there was no give. No mercy.

“I am no one’s fool,” Infinite sneered, baring his canines. Flecks of spittle flew, landing against his second’s face. “You’d do well to remember that.”

Infinite shoved the other back, sending him stumbling into Vier and Zeks who had been manning the oars. The trio scattered and tumbled over one another, breaking the silence over the sea with a loud clattering of wood on wood and sharp pained yelp from Vier whose broken arm had been roughly jostled.

With a low growl of disgust, Infinite returned his gaze forward, ignoring the grunts, snaps, and muffled curses behind him. Infinite’s feet remained flat on his perch despite the chaotic swaying of their boat, his face impassive but for the predatory glint in his eye.

Land was inching closer, and with it came the assurance he’d finish what he once started.

Sonic would be his.

In all ways. Permanently.

Everything felt hazy. In multiple senses of the word. Sonic’s mind was foggy, and the world was blurred and tilted. Colors were muted, shapes and outlines shifting like the view through a twisting kaleidoscope. Fresh nausea burned through his stomach as he twirled and flailed through some sort of cruel funhouse of warped memory, one where even sound was distorted and muffled. He fumbled and clawed his way to a vaguely upright position and tried to take a step forward as his surroundings slowly took form.

Each moment was an extreme effort, legs so slow to obey his will he might as well have been walking in quicksand. An amorphous blob bucked and reformed ahead before finally taking the shape of a vaguely familiar hut. He perked up, finding more energy, more urgency to drag his resistant body forward. Maybe it was home.

Maybe it was safe.

He pushed harder, quickening his pace, and though he was barely at anything other than a brisk walk for a normal Mobian, he was out of breath and flushed. His heart raced, beating so hard Sonic could feel it thud throughout his whole being, hear the resounding rush of blood in his ears and the strain of air trying to fill his lungs.

Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.

Anxiety flared through him as he neared the building, realizing at once why it was familiar. His stomach dropped, his breaths stopped, and his eyes widened in utter and complete horror. “No!” he murmured, voice barely a stunned whisper, and then louder, a shout “No!”

His knees went out from under him, and he fell hard, instantly trying to scramble backwards and away, but his legs refused to cooperate. One look down, and he saw why. Ropes. So much rope. Coils of it tied tight around his ankles, his knees. His arms were suddenly twisted behind him, painfully bound at the wrist. He tried to scream, but his cries were muffled by the gag stuffed in his mouth and lost to the wind as his new dulled hell was traded for complete darkness.

Sonic knew what was happening. He remembered. He remembered all of it. He knew a thick burlap bag had been tugged over his head, knew the soiled rag stuffed in his mouth was the same that had been dosed with chloroform and held to his face just hours before. He knew he had minutes before his autonomy would be on the chopping block, put there by the first person he’d ever called a friend.

As if on cue, darkness was purged in a flash of white, and Sonic was left blinking painfully, trying to clear both his mind and his sight. He snarled through the cloth in his mouth, trying to push it out with his tongue, but just as he nearly had it, a voice broke through the sound of his struggles.

“Shhh…. It will all be over soon,” the voice crooned, sickeningly sweet and all too familiar. “You’ll get what you need, and I’ll get what’s mine….” The last words were a hissed whisper, “Omega.”

The dream twisted, warping into a dizzying, crushing vortex of betrayal and horror. Time skipped, jumped back, flashed through his mind until in one anguished moment of terror, Sonic felt a sharp stab of pain slicing into the dense flesh at the base of his neck and–

Sonic gasped, eyes flying open, limbs flailing in the dark, but as quickly as he realized it had been a nightmare, he felt agony spear over and through him. He twisted to his side for fear he’d be sick as his stomach threatened to reject its meager contents. The fur between his legs was soaked, his body almost steaming in the cooler, moist air of pre-dawn. He groaned and clenched his eyes shut, hoping it would stop the world from spinning.

It didn’t.

He shivered violently, another series of cramps making his already agonized muscles seize in a way that left him curled in on himself and unable to even call out. Everything was so quiet, his short gasps sounded loud in his ears, but none of his friends roused from their positions nearby. Apparently the mushrooms they’d ingested had more than done their job.

Sonic weakly managed to untuck his chin, looking off into the forest. “Shadow…” he called, but the sound was no more than a whisper. His heart raced, his chest was tight. It felt hard to breathe. He needed his…. He needed….

“Shadow….”

Watching Sonic walk off into the forest alone had been the single most difficult battle Shadow had ever fought.

And that was saying something.

His instincts had been so strong…. Screaming at him, telling him Sonic was vulnerable, unsafe, and needed him. By the time five minutes had passed, tears and punctures weren’t the only things that marred his destroyed gloves. Blood dripped from where his claws pierced the soft, fleshy part of his palm, the physical embodiment of his internal struggles. It took all he had to stay put.

Shadow took a deep breath, then another, but it only made his feelings worse because he could no longer scent Sonic under the cloying cover of lavender and mint. He swallowed hard, grimacing as it seemed to drown his taste buds and coat his throat. It all felt wrong.

Another minute passed and with it, Shadow’s remaining resolve. He moved silently through the trees, blending with darkness and dead set on getting Sonic back within his sights. The other’s camp wasn’t far, but by the time Shadow got there he could see Amy and Knuckles passed out in random, uncomfortable positions that looked more like they’d fallen from buildings than lain down to rest, and Sonic was actively trying to get Tails out of a large tree. He could distantly hear the distraught fox decree the ground lava and didn’t envy his rival the job of calming him down.

Sticks, however, seemed relaxed among the chaos, and was curled on a mat near the glowing embers of their dinner fire, a silver funnel-shaped hat snug atop her head.

Shadow took a moment to scent the air, relaxing when he caught nothing unexpected. Regardless, he circled the camp, checking for anything amiss before finally pulling himself into the thick leaf-cover provided by a tree, not more than thirty feet from Sonic. It was as far a distance as he could manage. Being unable to smell the hero had made some inner part of Shadow near frantic, and being able to keep him in his sights helped dampen the overwhelming drive to steal him away and coat him in Shadow’s own scent.

The night wore on, quiet and calm as Shadow kept watch. In the distance, he could hear the crest and fall of waves, the singing of crickets, and the rustle of foliage in the occasional breeze. There was nothing sinister, nothing dangerous, but Shadow had never felt more restless.

He could see Sonic finally sleeping not far from the young Mobian he called brother, and all he could think of was being beside him. For the first time in decades, he yearned for the presence of another. He stamped that feeling down as quickly as it arose. Yearning was something that happened when feelings were involved, and that certainly wasn’t the case here. It was only his more primal Mobian side responding to hormones that made him feel that way. It was Sonic’s heat affecting him. Nothing more.

He took a deep breath and let his head fall back against thick bark as he looked up through breaks in the canopy. He brought one of his knees up and rested his forearm on it as he sought out constellations he’d learned what felt like a lifetime ago.

Memories and stars played across Shadow’s vision and mind, lulling him into a state of–

His ears perked forward so quickly and so hard they nearly flew off his head. He was out of the tree and crouched down before he could even process what had put him on alert. Nothing was on the air that hadn’t been there before, but… something was wrong. Shadow didn’t see it, couldn’t hear it, but he felt it.

Sonic.

Without another thought, he forgot all pretense of stealth and secrecy and darted from cover, directly to where he’d seen Sonic lay down for the night. His heart seized as soon as he laid eyes on his rival. The blue hedgehog was curled in on himself, face barely visible, eyes squeezed shut. Visible tremors ran over his body, and his breaths were shallow and fast. “Sonic!” he exclaimed softly. He gently placed a hand on the hero’s shoulder, trying to get him to open up, but it only earned him a pained whimper.

“Hurts,” Sonic weakly gasped.

“Hold on,” Shadow said, just before scooping Sonic into his arms. No snarky comment came this time, telling Shadow just how bad Sonic’s state really was. “I’m getting you out of here.”

Sonic didn’t respond. He couldn’t. If he opened his mouth he wasn’t going to be able to control the sounds that came out, and once he started he didn’t think he’d be able to stop. The tea… it must have backfired, must have made things worse. He’d been banged up plenty of times, had more injuries than he could count, but this…. He felt like he was dying.

He was almost positive he actually was.

“What do you need?” he heard Shadow ask urgently above his head. “Is there medicine? A doctor?”

Sonic buried his nose in the crook of Shadow’s neck and breathed deep. “Y-you,” he managed to get out through gritted teeth. “Need you….”

Shadow’s jaw clenched, and his brows furrowed with worry as he sped through the still dark forest. He could feel a sweat breaking out at his temples, chest, and back, trickling down his spine, and realized with a start that the reason was Sonic. He pressed his lips to Sonic’s temple and jerked back like he’d been burned. Sonic’s body temperature was far too high. Higher than it had been when he’d first taken the other to his bed. High enough to cause serious damage.

Without another thought, Shadow flew toward the shore. Within seconds, leaves, dirt, and twigs turned to sand, another second and water crashed and sprayed around them as he ran into the ocean. Sonic didn’t shout, didn’t cling to him, didn’t say anything as the cool waters rose to their chests. “Sonic!” Shadow frantically shouted. Sonic’s eyes were closed, his limbs loose and unresponsive.

Fear tore through Shadow’s heart like a bullet.

“Sonic!” Shadow held on to the other, one arm wrapped around his back to keep the blue hedgehog secured to his chest while the other cupped water and brought it to his forehead. “You motherfucker,” Shadow rambled in fury, his hand gentle but shaking as it brushed between blue ears. “You couldn’t just let it go for a few days, let someone else handle the heroing.” He splashed more water across Sonic’s chest and against his neck, trying to submerge him as much as possible. Shadow’s eyes desperately scanned for any sign of responsiveness while his heart pounded. “Wake up!” He shook the other lightly. A flash of memory tore through his mind, a sound like thunder, blonde hair, blue dress, the smell of copper– He blinked it away and shook Sonic harder, panic tightening his voice. “Wake up, damn you!”

A groan. Weak. But there. “Shadow?”

Shadow closed his eyes and fought against his urges, simultaneously wanting to cast the other into the sea and let the sharks have him and hold him close and never let him go. “I hate you,” he said, hating most of all that his words weren’t remotely true.

When he opened his eyes, Sonic had the nerve to grin weakly up at him. “I heart you too, Shadow.”

Shadow dropped him.

The hero flailed and made garbled shouts of indignation as water splashed around the pair. Shadow grinned this time, crossing his arms as he watched the other struggle, feeling it served the idiot right and using the few seconds to gain control over himself.

He did eventually allow the other to latch on to his body like a life float. He wasn’t evil.

Green eyes narrowed at him. “You’re such an asshole, man–are you tryin’ to kill me?”

“I thought about it,” Shadow answered. “But you’re doing a fine job on your own.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This utter refusal you have to admit you can’t do it all, all the time! Sometimes you have to slow down, Sonic.”

“I slow down! You’re just not around to see it.”

“Napping like a fat house cat isn’t what I mean!”

“Excuse you–? I–shit–!” Sonic’s eyes squeezed shut, and his fingers dug into Shadow’s arm to the point of pain.

Shadow relented in his anger, exchanging it for worry. Again. “What is it?”

“Hurts. Real bad.” Sonic sucked in a deep breath through his teeth, his next words strained with effort and discomfort. “I think that tea made it worse. It’s like it’s poison now or something.”

“What do you need?”

“I don’t know! Fucked, I guess? Isn’t that usually the answer?” Sonic tried to breathe through it, but even the nausea was ramping up. Shadow may have been surprisingly gracious through this exchange of theirs, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t live to see another tomorrow if he yacked in the hybrid’s chest fur. At this point, the pain and nausea were so intense it was even hard to feel the horniness he knew lay at the core of all of it. He could still feel a burning flush in his cheeks that he knew had little to do with desire and everything to do with fever. He was a mess. And not the fun kind. “Please,” Sonic continued, voice uncharacteristically tired and defeated. “It doesn’t have to feel good.”

Shadow scoffed in offense at that, but Sonic continued on. “Like taking medicine, y’know? Sometimes it’s not the best, but it makes you feel–”

Shadow refused to listen to another word. He spun his rival so the hero’s back was flush with his chest and then brushed his quills to the side. He held tight to Sonic, staying deep enough that the current toyed with the lower edges of his chest fluff. He needed the cool waters to keep Sonic’s temperature down, at least until he’d stabilized the other more. Even so, he could feel Sonic’s heat against him, making his forehead dot with sweat under dark fur. “I’m not using you for my own pleasure. Not when it’s not what you, or your body, wants.”

“I want this to stop. I want it to be over. I don’t want to be like this, Shadow! I hate it!”

Shadow kept one arm wrapped around Sonic’s chest, keeping the other in place and safe from the ebb and flow of waves while he pulled the glove on his right hand off with his teeth. He discarded the ruined fabric carelessly and immediately brought his hand between Sonic’s legs. Sonic struggled against him for a minute. “That’s not going to work! You have to–”

“I know my part in this, hedgehog,” Shadow growled back. “I will fuck you. I will knot you.” His hand began to move in firm strokes, up, down, repeat, a slow, unhurried pace. He felt the concealed member twitch under his palm at the sound of his voice, his words. Sonic, it seemed, liked it when Shadow spoke. Liked it a lot.

Shadow felt a quick swell of pride before he tipped his head toward Sonic’s ear. “I will give you what you need. But I want you to come for me first.”

“I can’t, Shadow,” Sonic whined softly, even though he could feel himself responding to his alpha’s touches. “The cramps are too much, and I feel like I’m gonna barf… it’s not exactly how I get my rocks off.”

“Then how do you?” Shadow asked. His hand moved a little lower, curling between Sonic’s thighs and teasing his hole for a moment. That worked a soft, breathy gasp from the other, and Shadow felt his own dick twitch eagerly in response. “When you retreat to that hovel you call a home–”

“Says the guy that lives in a cave–”

“How do you touch yourself? Are you impatient then too? Seeking a quick release? Or…” Shadow’s hand cupped the growing bulge and let the fleshy part of his palm press down against Sonic’s slit, right where he knew the hero’s tip would soon be peaking out. “Do you slow down? Tease? Draw out your pleasure?”

Sonic’s eyes fluttered closed, and he leaned back a little more. The pain and twisting in his gut was still there, but he was quickly finding himself distracted…. “Fast…” he muttered. “No door.”

“Mmm, as expected.” Shadow adjusted his grip slightly, letting the tips of his fingers trace Sonic’s entrance, unsurprised to find it slick, even with the water constantly washing away the traces of his arousal. “And here? Do you ever touch yourself here?” He pushed in a single finger and felt Sonic arch against him with a choked gasp. Shadow kept his arm firmly against Sonic’s chest, holding his omega in place. He added a second finger, and Sonic keened.

“Y-yes!” Sonic cried, immediately followed by, “I mean, no!”

Shadow pumped his fingers in and out, his wrist and forearm still providing some friction to Sonic’s now exposed cock. “Yes you do, or no you don’t?”

“I don’t–I hadn’t–I never tried it!”

“Really?” Shadow moved a little harder, a little deeper, curling until Sonic cried out sharply. “But you seem to enjoy it so much….”

“S-shut up.”

There was a very evident waver in Sonic’s voice. Shadow couldn’t stop his answering smirk, and why should he? Sonic couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see the pink in cheeks, the darkness in his eyes, the way his face was angled toward the other’s simply so he could feel the brush of his fur against his face and nuzzle more of his scent on to him. He breathed in deep, closing his eyes as he moved his touch back to Sonic’s cock. He stroked firmly, but slowly, occasionally bringing his thumb over the head and feeling his own dick throb with every hitch of Sonic’s breath.

“I want you to come for me, Sonic. I know you can. I know you want to.”

“Shadow.…” Sonic panted.

“Come, and I’ll give you what you need…” Shadow whispered. “Come, and then I’ll take you just like you want.”

“Hard?”

Shadow groaned at that, his own length releasing against Sonic’s ass. His hand tightened around his rival’s cock as he angled his hips just right, letting his swollen tip ghost against Sonic’s leaking hole. He brought his muzzle down to Sonic’s shoulder and inhaled deeply right over his hidden scent gland. “As hard as you can take.”

Sonic cried out softly at that, moving in time with Shadow’s strokes. “I want your cum in me so bad, Shadow….”

“I know you do.” Shadow’s cock pressed in a little more, just enough to threaten to breach Sonic’s tight ring, but he held himself in check. Barely. Sonic, however, did not approve of his restraint.

“Fuck–please, Shadow! C’mon, Chaos I want it–”

“Then come, and you’ll get it.”

Sonic nearly sobbed in protest, but Shadow could feel just how hard he was, how close. The blue hedgehog in his arms struggled, trying to work his hips back until finally Shadow had had enough. He quickly twisted his rival around and used his enhanced strength to lift the other onto his shoulders, putting that delicious peach cock right where he wanted it.

Without a word, Shadow took Sonic’s entire length down his throat, moaning into the hero’s stomach as his nose pressed into peach flesh. Above him he could hear Sonic crying out, grabbing onto Shadow’s quills so hard he was sure a few would be missing, but it was well worth it. Not more than a few seconds later, Shadow felt Sonic curl over his head, babbling obscenities and cries of Shadow’s name while the hybrid sucked him down and dry.

Shadow took everything, swallowing it all down greedily, and Sonic was nothing more than a shivering mess of limp hedgehog against his face. He pulled back and gently helped Sonic slide down his body, enjoying the feeling of quivering thighs and raspy breaths. He expected Sonic to berate him, make some sort of snide comment, but the second the omega was able, his lips found Shadow’s in a deep kiss that had Shadow’s toes curling in his water logged air shoes.

“Again,” Sonic breathed into Shadow’s mouth, “But this time I want what you promised.”

Shadow brought blue legs up to lock around his hips and slowly began to walk out of the water and toward solid ground, eager to fulfil his omega’s demands.

He didn’t stop kissing Sonic for a single second.

Chapter Text

Time became meaningless. There was only a burning, all-consuming desire that made the world begin and end in a symphony of moans and a tangle of black and blue limbs. It could have been an hour, it could have been three. Sonic didn’t know, and he didn’t care.

How could he when Shadow was inside him, filling and stretching him, touching him in ways that made him feel–

Sonic shook his head slightly as his mind cleared and pushed that unfinished thought way, way down. It wasn’t real anyway. It couldn’t be. What was real was a much-improved physical state.
Multiple rounds with Shadow had sent the agonizing cramps high-tailing, and his stomach had settled like he hadn’t just been at death’s door. His body relaxed, and his temperature dropped like he’d taken the world’s most powerful fever reducer. Who knew? Maybe he had. Maybe Shadow’s cum had medicinal properties. He was half alien, after all.

“What are you thinking?” Shadow asked, his voice a husky whisper as he idly combed his fingers through Sonic’s quills. His breaths had just settled, and his limbs felt loose and taxed in ways they usually weren’t. The previous sleepless night and recent explicit activities were catching up to him, and Ultimate Lifeform or not, he was tired. Deliciously so.

Sonic’s eyes were closed, but he was by no means asleep. He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly in a long, sated sigh, the last tremors of pleasure occasionally still leaving his toes curling in the open air. “How do you know I’m thinking anything?” he answered finally before it turned into a yawn. “Don’t you usually say I’m too dense to think?”

Shadow yawned back, unable to stop himself. “Perhaps what I’m seeing is an attempt. Your ear twitches. Sometimes you make strange facial expressions or move your head like you’re having a conversation with yourself.”

Sonic grinned and turned his head inward to press a kiss to the inside of Shadow’s elbow. The hybrid’s arm was currently serving as his pillow and protection from the hard cave floor. The hole in the cliff they’d sequestered themselves in wasn’t Shadow’s, and it wasn’t comfortable, but it was private.

“I was thinking maybe your cum is medicine. Basically.”

“...what?”

“Yeah, y’know. It makes me feel better. Takes away pain and fever. You’re like… hedgehog ibuprofen.”

Shadow’s hand paused mid-stroke in Sonic’s quills. “I think that fever killed your one remaining brain cell. You should cease your attempts at thought. You’ll strain yourself.”

“Hardy har har. See if I ever give you a compliment again.”

“That was supposed to be a compliment?” Shadow traded blue quills for gently running his fingers over the soft shell of Sonic’s ear. The hero’s back was pressed against his belly while they waited for his knot to go down for the third, and hopefully final, time. As much as Shadow took pride in his stamina, even he wasn’t sure if he had another round in him right this second.

“Yes! What? Like you could do better? When have you ever complimented me? Besides that whole panther thing you weirdly meant as an insult.”

Shadow scoffed. “I distinctly remember complimenting you several times just minutes ago.”

“Telling me my ass feels good doesn’t count!” Sonic felt a fresh swell of pride regardless, but Shadow didn’t need to know that. “It can’t be sex-related.”

“How is a compliment relating to my cum not sex-related?”

“Because we’re not actively having sex.”

“Your rules are ridiculous.” Shadow rutted his hips forward, reminding Sonic just how connected they were. He let the hero’s answering groan roll down his spine and to his cock, which eagerly twitched deep inside Sonic’s heated channel. “You’re stretched around my knot,” he murmured against the ear he’d been stroking, “full of everything I’ve given you since you woke up, and this isn’t sex?”

“I just–” Sonic grumbled, flustered. “Fine. It can be sex-related, but keep my ass out of it.”

“Fine.” Shadow settled and let his touch descend down and then up a blue arm as he pondered for a moment. “Your fur is soft,” he said finally.

Green eyes followed the path of Shadow’s fingers as they traced along his elbow. “It is?”

Behind him, Shadow nodded. “Very, but especially right here.” Shadow’s hand fell down just a little more, to graze over the peach fur of Sonic’s lower belly, narrowly avoiding some of the remaining mess their most recent rounds had left. “It’s like velvet.”

Sonic was quiet for a minute, caught off guard by the simplistic sincerity in Shadow’s statement as well as the hybrid’s touch. “You smell good,” he blurted in response. Shadow’s touch paused, and Sonic’s ears flattened a bit in embarrassment. “Not just–now. I mean, obviously, you smell amazing now, but… I mean before my heat. Before all of this. You’ve always smelled good to me.”

Shadow tucked his arm under Sonic’s, wrapping it around the omega’s chest. “What do I smell like?”

“I dunno. Like flowers a little? And the forest after it rains in the summer. You just smell sort of… right?”

A powerful wave of possessiveness washed over Shadow at Sonic’s admission. He knew the other’s compliment was just that, a compliment. It didn’t mean anything. But, it made some primal part of him puff up in satisfaction. His omega liked his scent. He nuzzled under the slightly damp bandana Sonic had once again insisted on keeping around his neck and breathed deeply. He let his tongue sweep out across blue fur, right over Sonic’s scent gland. “It’s mutual.”

Sonic shivered, and his muscles tightened around Shadow’s knot, forcing a deep groan from the hybrid. “Shadow…” Sonic warned, even though it was far too breathy and weak to caution against anything. Given his history, he should be afraid right now, trying to twist away, but… it was Shadow whose arms held him. Not Infinite’s. The last thing he wanted to do was pull away.

“I won’t,” Shadow reassured softly, though he sucked at the spot he’d just licked, savoring Sonic’s taste as much as his scent.

“But you want to.”

Shadow didn’t say anything. There was no point in denying or confirming when his urges were so obvious. Of course he wanted to. He wanted to bite down more than anything. The strength of his desires has left his own right bicep littered with new puncture wounds and sticky with drying blood. It was all instincts and hormones, but it was strange to want it so badly with Sonic and not to have felt the compulsion at all with Rouge.

Silence fell, the only sound the soft peppering of kisses Shadow left along Sonic’s shoulder, and the nearby washing of waves along the shore. Dawn had risen, the sun’s light entering their temporary sanctuary in gold-casted rays that illuminated the signs of their previously rushed intimacy. Stone was marred by claws and quills, and Sonic’s sports tape littered the space between their scattered shoes and gloves like the tattered ribbons from a child’s gift.

Sonic was nearly as naked as he could be.

All but for one thing.

The scarf around his neck suddenly felt heavy and tight, like it was choking him even though it was loosely knotted, same as it always was. Shadow’s kisses pressed down over the thin cloth, and for the first time, all Sonic could think about was how much he wanted the barrier gone. Even in the light of day. Even knowing that Shadow would see.

Hesitantly, he reached up and tugged at the knot that secured his bandana. His heart beat wildly in his chest, but there was no stopping now. He wanted Shadow to know. He wanted him to see. He wanted to show Shadow this part of his past he’d not entrusted to even his closest friends, not even his brother.

Shadow pulled back to give him room, watching in confused silence. Sonic swallowed hard as he felt the cloth fall away, baring his neck and shoulder. He kept the scarf bunched tightly in his hand, clinging to it like a security blanket.

Shadow immediately buried his nose in the crook of Sonic’s neck with a sound somewhere between a growl and a purr. “You smell like me,” he murmured with satisfaction as he inhaled deeply. His hips thrust forward, grinding into Sonic’s ass hard, his knot rubbing against the other's prostate. Surprised moans slipped from peach lips, and Shadow’s ears tipped forward in appreciation of them. “I want my scent all over you…. Every inch. Inside and out.”

“I–ah–” Sonic gasped, feeling himself hardening again, despite his absent heat symptoms. This definitely wasn’t the response he was expecting. “I’m, uh. I’m pretty sure it already is, Shads. You’ve come in me like… five times in 24 hours.”

Shadow shook his head. “It’s not enough…” He pulled back, brushing Sonic’s quills further to the side when he saw it. A slight break in cobalt fur. His brow furrowed as he brought a finger up to trace the faint line that traveled right over Sonic’s scent gland.

Sonic immediately tensed. “I-it’s not what you think–”

“Have you been claimed?” Shadow meant to sound angry. He was angry.

He sounded hurt.

“No!” Sonic tried to twist his head around to look at Shadow, but the other’s knot was still too swollen, and he was stuck like he was. He sank back down and turned his nose into Shadow’s elbow to let the alpha’s scent settle him. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t want it. He tried, but I got away–”

“Someone tried to force their claim on you?” Stone cold fury ripped through Shadow. Red bled into the edges of his vision. “Who? When?” he snarled.

“Shadow–”

“Where are they?”

“Shadow!”

“I’ll kill them. I’ll rip their limbs from their body. I’ll tear out their throat. I’ll–”

“Shadow,” Sonic said softly. A tremor ran through him, the memory of what Infinite had done enough to make his body react to the trauma whether he wanted it to or not.

For all his violent words and the promise of retribution behind them, Shadow didn’t hesitate to curl more into Sonic. His arms held his omega a little tighter as he tried to curb his rage. His voice shook anyway. “When?”

“I was 17. I hadn’t presented. I thought I was a beta. He knew, though,” Sonic rambled in a rush. “I don’t know how, but he knew I was an omega. I thought he was my friend.” Sonic's voice was quiet, staring at the far cave wall like it was a mirror to the past. “He waited. For years. Made me trust him. Until that first heat. I didn’t even know what was happening to me, but he did. He drugged me, tied me up, and then he tried to….”

Shadow was quiet, but trembled just as much as Sonic, the restraint of his anger testing his strength of will more than ever before. While he seethed, his touch remained gentle, soothing. He kissed the sliver of scar like the act would make the hurt it had caused go away. Erase the cruelty of another. He did it again, and then again. “But he didn’t.”

“He didn’t.”

“How did you get away?”

“I was starting to feel weak, didn’t have my speed, but he forgot something really obvious.”

“What’s that?”

Sonic twisted his head a bit, his flattened and relaxed quills harmlessly brushing against his alpha. “Natural hedgehog defense system. Cut his face up, I think. I don’t know. I didn’t stop to check. Some of the ropes came undone, and I took off. Sticks found me. That’s why she’s the only person who knows I’m an omega. She took care of me, and when I didn’t have anywhere else to go, she brought me here. Then I met Tails, Amy, Knuckles, and… you.”

Shadow’s thoughts and feelings warred with each other. He was furious, pained, desperate to both undo what had happened and ensure that it never happened again. His canines dipped further into his mouth, aching with the urge to erase the mark another had left with one of his own. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together so tightly he could feel skin break against the sharp, elongated points.

“He did bite me…. Maybe he didn’t manage to claim me because I pulled away, but–I’ve been marked. The way the law stands….”

“You belong to him,” Shadow whispered in stunned realization.

Sonic nodded. “That’s why I wear the scarf. That’s why no one can know. He’s bad news, Shadow. The worst. He can’t find me. If he did, he’d hurt anyone I care about to get to me, and it’s not like I have the law on my side. I can’t risk it.”

“He won’t touch you. Never again.”

Sonic eased himself off Shadow’s cock, ignoring the gush of fluid that leaked from under his tail as he turned to face his m–rival. He rested his head back on Shadow’s outstretched arm and met crimson eyes. “You don’t know him like I do, Shadow. One on one, I could take him down easier than a hoard of badniks, but he’s not like you, or me, or even Eggman for that matter. He manipulates. He twists things, and he makes people do–” Sonic paused and looked away. He worried at his bottom lip. “I should have gone after him a long time ago.”

“You were scared,” Shadow said simply.

Green eyes flew up and narrowed. “No!” Sonic snapped. “I wasn’t scared. I was just–”

“Scared,” Shadow cut in again. He ignored Sonic’s glare and gave him a stern look. “Don’t. Don’t argue. I know what it feels like to be stripped of your free will, and if the mere thought of it makes me uneasy, it must petrify you.”

“Hey–” Sonic growled, but Shadow continued unbothered.

“You’re an omega, but outside of your heats, you’re capable of putting up a mid to fair fight.”

“Once again–hey!”

Shadow cupped Sonic’s muzzle with his free hand and brushed his thumb across short peach fur. “What I’m trying to say is you’re not helpless. He won’t catch you off guard again. You decide who gets to touch you. No one will take that from you again.”

Sonic softened slightly. “And what about during my heats? When I’m… weak.” Sonic’s ears tipped back at the admission, the words alone leaving a bitter taste on his tongue. “What happens then? When I can’t defend myself?”

“You have your friends–”

“You know I don’t want them to kn–”

“And you have me.”

Sonic’s eyes widened, and he swallowed hard. Something confusing and almost hopeful fluttered to life in his stomach, a strange but pleasant sensation for once. He hesitated, unsure of what he was feeling and afraid to look too closely. “That’s just the hormones talking, Shads.”

“It’s not,” Shadow answered softly, realizing with a terrifying shock that it was the truth. He would do this again. He wanted to do this again. In fact, the very thought of anyone else ever seeing Sonic through his heat made him want to set the world on fire. “I would do this again.”

“Why?” Sonic asked, voice equal parts wonder and confusion. “I get helping me now. It snuck up on me and you don’t want to lose the only racing partner you have, but…”

“What else would you do? It’s too intense to be on your own, and you refuse to ask one of your alpha friends.”

“Maybe I could ask Am–”

“Don’t,” Shadow immediately snapped. His muzzle flushed pink at the ferocity in such a simple word. He cleared his throat. “She has feelings for you,” he tried to cover. “It’s obvious. It would only complicate things.”

“And this isn’t complicated?”

“No,” Shadow lied a little too quickly. He swallowed all the other words he wanted to say and fought to keep his increasingly confusing feelings from showing. “It’s a simple transaction.”

Green eyes searched red, and Sonic felt something new and warm stir in his chest because Shadow was full of shit. The hybrid could say whatever he wanted, but his actions spoke louder than his words. Sure, they weren’t about to become mates and sail off to the stars, but it wasn’t so cold as what Shadow described. Not even close. Shadow cared. At least a little.

Sonic pushed against the hybrid’s chest, forcing him on his back and straddling him in the blink of an eye. He let his bare fingers comb through Shadow’s chest fluff, watching how the white tufts curled around his touch. He ignored the alpha’s previous words and lifted his gaze to meet Shadow’s. “You said I get to choose who touches me.”

Shadow grunted in surprise at the change in position but nodded at Sonic’s words. “I did.”

Sonic licked his lips, a single finger trailing down over Shadow’s stomach, gliding across silky black fur until he teased the area where Shadow’s barely softened cock rested heavy across his stomach. He could see it harden before his eyes, like it felt the weight of his attention. His own mirrored it. “You get to choose too.”

“What do you mean?”

“My heat symptoms are gone. I don’t need it. At least, not right now,” Sonic said, even as his mouth watered, and his hole leaked with a viscous mixture of his slick and Shadow’s cum. “But… I want it. If I get to choose who touches me, I choose you.”

Sonic caught Shadow’s wrists just as the hybrid moved to grip blue thighs. “But you get a choice too, Shads, just like you said. I’m not gonna croak this time if you don’t. You don’t have to.”

“I never had to.” Shadow easily twisted out of Sonic’s hold and had the hero’s hips in his hands not a second later. He bucked up just as he pulled the blue male against his erection. “I made my choice then, and I’m making it now. If I didn’t want to be here, if I didn’t want to do this, I wouldn’t.”

“You know that means you sorta like me, right?” Sonic smirked as he moved in sync with Shadow, each roll of his hips steady and unhurried. “Not that I’m surprised. I’m pretty damn likable.”

“A damn nuisance is what you are.”

Shadow made to roll their positions, but Sonic pushed him back down with all his renewed strength. “You mean damn sexy?”

“Definitely not.”

“That’s not what this guy says,” Sonic said as he lifted himself up a bit, just enough to take Shadow’s length into his hand. The alpha’s cock was rock hard, a drip of pre beading at the tip and looking far too delicious to ignore. Without thinking he slid down Shadow’s thighs and brought his mouth down so he could lap up that delicious drop.

Shadow’s breath hitched, his hands forming fists as the powerful muscles beneath Sonic flexed and quivered, all that strength and potential for destruction folding under his touches and tongue. Sonic may be an omega, but this alpha was his. His to touch, his to fuck, his to make quiver and moan and beg. A whole new rush of desire burned through Sonic as he brushed off a few more of the self-imposed shackles from his secondary sex. He wasn’t giving up control. Not with Shadow.

He was taking it.

Chapter Text

Sonic reveled in his newfound power.

He let the flat of his tongue roll over Shadow’s tip like he was licking at an ice cream cone, aiming teasing little flicks at the sensitive slit and underside. The hybrid panted in response, ebony stomach dipping and rising with fast, stuttered breaths. Sonic let his lips ghost down Shadow’s shaft, extending his tongue as though he meant to take more, but pulled away just to torment. He watched Shadow’s face, noting how the hybrid’s eyes were fixed on him, pupils blown under a half-lidded gaze. “You get this hard for all your rivals, Shads?”

“Only the mouthy o-ones,” Shadow shot back, obstinate even if his voice wavered a bit at the end.

Sonic laughed, a genuine smile breaking out across his face. “Was that a pun?” He let his tongue draw little circles on Shadow’s most sensitive flesh. “Not too bad. Maybe I should give you a reward.”

“I’m clearly superior to you in all ways, including your stupid quips–” Shadow groaned, and his eyes squeezed shut. His head fell back against stone, and his back arched. “Fuck–” he hissed as Sonic took him in and sucked like–

Like he swallowed chili dogs whole on a daily basis….

For once, Shadow didn’t care that Sonic had the palate of a pot-bellied trucker, because it sure as fuck was paying off now.

Sonic groaned around Shadow’s cock, forcing it deeper even though the stretch in his throat was difficult to manage. His hand wrapped firmly around the base, just above Shadow’s knot, pumping up and down as Sonic let the saliva that had pooled in his mouth dribble down. Was it great lubrication? No. But was it hot?

Abso-fucking-lutely.

Sonic couldn’t get enough, not of Shadow’s taste, the way he felt in his mouth, the sounds he made–fuck. If he thought Shadow sounded hot before, this was a whole other level. With Sonic’s mind free of heat fog, he could fully savor each one, and Chaos…. The fact that he was the cause of those broken little moans and cries? His spank bank overfloweth.

“That’s it,” Shadow praised, finally allowing his hands to drag through blue quills now that he had a slightly better grip on his control. The first minute had been so overwhelming it was all he could do to be still and not fuck up into Sonic’s mouth with a roughness he didn’t want to unleash just yet. “Like that…” He pressed down on Sonic’s head, but only a little. “Open your mouth wider for me. A little more.” A broken groan left Shadow, his next words breathy and fast. “Now take it, all the way. Get it in your throat. I know you can do it.”

Sonic’s ears tipped back, his back dipping so his ass was high in the air as he pushed himself down, triggering a gag reflex he thought he’d lost years ago. He coughed and sputtered but didn’t let up, feeling Shadow’s dick force open his throat until Sonic’s nose pressed into warm black fur, and his lips kissed Shadow’s knot.

“Fuck!” Shadow gasped, “You’re so fucking good for me. So good.” He stroked Sonic’s quills, letting the blue hedgehog up for a breath before pressing down on his head. “Again. Hold it this time.”

Sonic instantly complied, Shadow’s praise doing things to his head. He took the hybrid to the hilt in one go and held steady while his throat rejected the action, constricting frantically around the intrusion. Shadow’s immediate cry of pleasure was more than worth any discomfort.

Shadow let out an honest-to-god whine, sweat beginning to trickle down his temples as Sonic brought him to the edge in an embarrassingly short amount of time. Praise tumbled from his lips, abundant and unfiltered. “Fuck yes–you feel so good. S-shit! You’re perfect, so fucking perfect for me. Don’t stop–”

When Shadow’s quads began to tremble against the inside of Sonic’s thighs, he knew the alpha was close, and while part of him desperately wanted Shadow to flood his mouth, he was thoroughly worked up again. He needed Shadow’s cum inside him. Deep inside him. Where his omega instincts told him it belonged.

Sonic popped off with a gasp for air and had his hips over Shadow’s not a second later. He pressed Shadow’s swollen tip to his hole, circling it and letting Shadow feel just how sopping wet he was. He bit his lip and whined softly, legs trembling with need, not weakness. “Tell me you want it, Shadow. Tell me–”

Shadow sat forward and gripped Sonic’s hips so tightly his claws left marks under blue fur. The dark male pulled him down on his cock, watching Sonic’s thighs part more with every thick inch that disappeared into him. It was slow, achingly slow, and he watched Sonic’s face as he did it. His lips hovered just a breath away from Sonic’s. “I want it,” he panted as searing wet heat engulfed his throbbing dick. “It’s all I can think about.” He groaned into Sonic’s mouth as he hilted himself with ease, their previous rounds evident by Sonic’s relaxed inner muscles and copious amount of slick. He licked at the hero’s lips as he ran his tongue along his own. “You’re in my head, and I hate it. How you feel, smell, how much I want–” Shadow cut himself off as he bottomed out, and Sonic grinded on his knot, already eager to have it back inside.

“Want what?” Sonic asked as he wrapped his arms around Shadow’s shoulders and rolled his hips.

“You–” Shadow’s lips closed the sliver of space between them, crashing down just as his arms wrapped around Sonic’s back, holding him close as their bodies moved together.

It was intense, just as much as the other times they’d done this, but it was different, weighted. The context of the need had changed. It wasn’t about survival or convenience. It just… was.

Sonic moved his hips a little harder, each movement a new attempt to get Shadow’s knot to slip into place. “You feel that, Shads?” he mumbled against Shadow’s lips. “Feel how wet I am? That’s not just me. That’s you too. That’s your cum dripping out of me.”

Shadow felt a feral, primal rumble work its way out of him as he turned his attention to Sonic’s neck, nipping and sucking and clinging by a thread to his omega’s wishes not to be bitten. That scar taunted him, and though no scent lingered from the other alpha–a sign that further indicated Sonic had never been claimed–he almost imagined he could smell it on cobalt fur. It made Shadow mad with possessiveness. “Then I think you need some more….”

Sonic moaned and nodded as he tilted his head to the side, exposing himself to Shadow. The hybrid pulled himself away even though his canines had dropped in his mouth, aching so much it was almost hard to talk. He brought his hands to Sonic’s stomach and hummed in satisfaction when he felt a slight bulge that moved in time with their thrusts. He watched the faint play of shimmer on peach fur as Sonic’s insides shifted to accommodate his cock, knowing it would be even more obvious once he worked his knot back in.

Shadow moved his touch to Sonic’s throbbing length, pumping the other in time with the merging of their bodies, and felt the hero clench almost painfully around him in response. “You’re so goddamn tight,” Shadow growled out. “Even after I’ve had you again and again. You’re like a vise, like you won’t let me go until I give you what you want.”

“Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just keep fucking you like this and never let you pull out again.”

Shadow thrusted up harder, putting a hand behind him to brace himself while the other continued to work Sonic’s dick. “Would you like that?”

“Yes, fuck–please!”

Shadow’s hips snapped forward brutally, forcing his knot into Sonic in one merciless move. The hero all but screamed, and Shadow loved it, basked in it. He pumped Sonic’s cock in a blur, wanting to force the other into a climax so he could hear his overstimulated whimpers as Shadow fucked him with his knot. Maybe it was slightly sadistic, but he knew by now that Sonic loved it just as much as he did.

“Shadow! Slow down–I’m gonna–I can’t!”

A mere second passed, and Sonic exploded. He was left clinging to Shadow with one hand while the other tried to pull the alpha’s grip away from his dick, his sobs and cries echoing in the cave as he painted both of their bellies in sticky cum. Sonic’s hole clenched and quivered around Shadow’s cock and knot, but never once did he ask Shadow to stop.

The hybrid didn’t release his hold, didn’t stop thrusting upwards in slow, sharp snaps of his hips. Sonic whimpered desperately, his inner walls frantically convulsing with endless pleasure as he was pushed into overstimulation. “Shadow! Shadow–please-c’mon–I can’t–” the hero gasped in one long breath. “It’s too much!”

“One more,” Shadow murmured. “You can do it.”

“I can’t!”

“You backing down? Tapping out?”

Sonic growled and nipped at Shadow’s bottom lip hard enough to bruise, unable to refute the challenge in Shadow’s words. “I hate you.”

Shadow just grinned and rolled them so he could fully work his swollen knot deeper inside Sonic’s dripping hole. “That’s fine by me,” he answered, a short groan leaving him as he circled his hips and pressed forward as hard as he could. A fresh spurt of pre or cum, Shadow wasn’t sure, spurted from Sonic’s dick at the action, the omega’s abused prostate somehow finding more fluid when he should have been long dry.

Sonic half snarled at the rough treatment, overstimulated, but somehow still enjoying it and wanting more. Fuck, Shadow always made him want more. What was this?? He wrapped his legs around black hips and held on tight while his hand worked between them to gather the fresh cum streaking his belly. He took the wet mess, and in some sort of angry, defiant, and maybe a little possessive but definitely not territorial move, smeared it across Shadow’s chest fur. “Mine,” he growled, his own canines glinting in the strengthening rays of sun.

Shadow didn’t think. His lips collided with Sonic’s in a hard, desperate kiss, his tongue delving into the other’s just as his hips lost their steady, deep rhythm and became frantic. “I wish I could fill you up,” he growled suddenly. “Make your stomach grow with something more than just my cock.”

Sonic let out a raspy, broken moan at the thought. He didn’t want that. That was part of the whole point of not being mated, but–

Fuck, he did want that. The idea of it at least.

“You get so tight every time I say that…” Shadow pushed himself up and grabbed Sonic’s legs so he could fold the omega in on himself. He pressed his hands on the backs of Sonic’s thighs for leverage and pulled back enough to threaten to remove his knot before he thrust forward hard. He groaned in pleasure at the newfound depth the position offered. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my biology has changed. Maybe I’ll fuck you enough it won’t matter either way,” he grunted. “Keep you nice and full.”

Sonic couldn’t stop the broken keen from leaving him as Shadow managed to get deeper than ever before. He panted and nodded, completely entranced and lost in the fantasy Shadow offered. “Yes! Fuck–do it. I want it! I need it–”

Shadow’s pace faltered, his climax painfully close. He let go of his restraint and let his alpha side at least have the satisfaction of potentially breeding his omega, even if he couldn’t mark him. “I’m almost there–” Shadow grunted and redoubled his efforts until the sound of their hips colliding echoed like gunshots. “You’re mine. Mine to fuck. Mine to breed,” Shadow growled.

That last statement sent Sonic to the moon, right to the edge of the orgasm he said he couldn’t have. “Shadow!”

The hybrid dipped his head down just as his body seized, and his thick cock emptied, but not to claim. Instead he took Sonic’s twitching dick into his mouth and sucked. Hard.

That was all it took. Sonic screamed as he came down Shadow’s throat, the exchange of cum blurring the edges of his vision and forcing his back to arch until only Shadow’s weight kept him grounded. He sobbed. He shook. He fell apart and came back together, and he did it all in Shadow’s arms.

He gasped for air as the alpha looked up at him with heated eyes. Sonic didn’t have to hear the words to know what Shadow was thinking. His expression said enough. “Yours,” he answered without hesitation, chest heaving with exertion. “Yours.”

That seemed to satisfy his… rival. Shadow came off his dick and leaned forward with hands on either side of Sonic’s head before he kissed him slowly, but very thoroughly.

Sonic pulled away, sucking down oxygen like he’d been underwater. “Air, Shads! Unlike you, it’s a requirement for me.”

Shadow chuckled, the sound deep and warm. It made Sonic smile back without thinking.

“You really had me with some of that dirty talk. Didn’t know you had it in you. You’re a freak, you know that?” Sonic said, batting at Shadow’s shoulder affectionately.

“You are what you eat, Sonic.”

Sonic laughed at that and wrapped his arms around Shadow’s shoulders to pull him down, nuzzling him with a contented sigh, when words he’d never once felt before formed in his mind. Ones he nearly felt compelled to say. Ones people–who were definitely not him–wrote songs, ballads, and poems about, and ones that people definitely didn’t tell their rival/sometimes fuck buddy.

Sonic tensed and pushed the thoughts and… feelings… down. Way down.

But not fast enough that Shadow didn’t feel him tense.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“Nah, I’m fine. Wouldn’t mind a change in position though. You’re surprisingly heavy.”

“Muscle weighs more than chili dogs, which is what I assume you’re made of.”

“Okay, funny guy,” Sonic said dryly, though there was a layer of fondness in it. “If the comedy show is over, could we flip positions?”

Shadow grumbled, but held Sonic close as he rolled onto his back. The shift painfully tugged at sensitive and sore flesh as was typical, but Sonic didn’t mind. He didn’t mind any of it.

Maybe he didn’t even mind being an omega if it could always be like this.

Sonic’s eyes fluttered shut as he tucked his head into the crook of Shadow’s neck and breathed deeply. Every muscle in his body seemed to relax as his alpha’s scent saturated his senses. He felt safe, protected, sated, and as Shadow’s arms tightened around him, he knew this was the only choice he planned to make. Shadow or none. What that made them, he wasn’t sure. Maybe it didn’t matter as much as he worried it did. Maybe whatever this was, was enough.

Within a minute, his complicated thoughts were lost to the steady sound of Shadow’s breaths and the thrum of his heart. Exhaustion overtook him.

He didn’t feel the lips softly pressed to his forehead as he drifted off.

Sonic slept deeply.

Too deeply.

He didn’t hear the skittering of shell particles and sand on stone until it was no more than a few dozen feet away from the little alcove he and Shadow had taken refuge in.

Even more surprising, Shadow didn’t either.

He ducked his head down on Shadow’s chest where he’d fallen asleep, ears flattened. A growl rose from Shadow’s throat as his eyes flickered open and he picked up on Sonic’s tension. Sonic quickly put his hand over the hybrid’s mouth, praying to the ancients, the gods, and anyone else that was listening that he’d still have two whole hands after doing so.

“Are you sure he’s in here?” Amy called as she looked around. “Doesn’t seem like a place Sonic would hang out…”

“Well, technically speaking, this is where his left shoe is,” Tails answered. “But logic would follow that he’s here, too.”

“Fuck,” Sonic grumbled under his breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He looked around, quickly noting that not only were he and Shadow as naked as a Mobian and half-alien could be, they reeked of sex, omega, and heat. Drying cum coated their bodies, the cave wall, and the cave floor. Sonic’s shoes were nearly a dozen feet apart, Shadow’s air shoes not much better, and between the two of them, they only had three moderately usable gloves.

A series of stalagmites served as a natural barrier between the opening of the cave and where Sonic and Shadow hid, but that didn’t mean that Amy and the others wouldn’t stumble upon their den of iniquity in 2.5. They were lucky they hadn’t been spotted yet.

Yet being the keyword.

Shadow pried Sonic’s hand from his mouth. “Tell them,” he hissed. “The truth.”

“Sonic?” Amy called.

“I told you! The dryer gnomes are at it again! First they come for your socks, and the next thing you know your left shoe is missing!”

Sonic had to hand it to Sticks. She was really trying.

“Smells like rotten eggs again,” Knuckles added, voice coming closer. “But if there are eggs, where are all the chickens??”

“I smell it too, Knuckles,” Amy said, “but it’s not rotten eggs. It’s strange, almost like–”

“Don’t come any closer!” Sonic shouted. He grabbed at his bandana and slipped off Shadow as he hastily tied it back around his neck. Fortunately they’d slept long enough for Shadow’s knot to go down, and both their cocks had returned to their pouches. Not that they still weren’t a mess and Sonic's ass a whole new level of sore, but not having to conceal a hard-on was definitely a win in his book. He ignored the discomfort in muscles he didn't know he had and ducked down low, well out of sight. Hopefully.

“Sonic?” Tails questioned. “Are you okay? What are you doing all the way over here?”

“I was… I’m…” Sonic wracked his brain as crimson eyes stared at him expectantly. A second ticked by.

Two.

His heart was going to burst.

Three.

He couldn't take it.

Four.

He panicked.

“I'm taking a dump!”

Shadow’s mouth fell open in shock. He blinked hard. “What??” he mouthed.

“Yeah,” Sonic continued, looking at his alpha with an awkward cringe and a helpless shrug. “Smells… real bad, so. You guys should all stay over there.”

“Maybe Sonic is having a different reaction to that tainted food we ate last night,” Tails explained to the others, though Sonic was still able to hear.

“Yeah!” Sonic was quick to agree. “I think I’m allergic to… whatever we ate. Messed me up so bad I can’t even remember what it was.”

Shadow closed his eyes and collapsed back on the stone floor. He tried to knock himself out in the process but unfortunately for him, it didn’t work. He wondered if Sticks still had her boomerang handy.

“Sonic has eaten expired chili from the Meh Burger dumpster,” Amy said, countering Tails. “And he’s never had an issue, and you want to try and blame my perfectly fine cooking that was so good we blacked o–”

“Hey those cans weren’t that expired!” Sonic called out with open indignation. “Everyone knows expiration dates are just suggestions anyway.”

“No they’re not!” Shadow seethed at Sonic before running a hand over his face in disbelief. He’d had his tongue in that mouth…. He shuddered at the implications. It had to be hormones. That’s why he’d stooped this low.

“Well can you wrap it up?” Amy asked, voice hurried and impatient. “Tails says we have to go in there.”

“What!?” Sonic gripped his quills, and looked down at himself, then at Shadow who gave him the most menacing stare he’d seen to date. He gulped. “You can’t! I’m– out of toilet paper! Yeah. Um. Sticks! Sticks can you bring me some of that, um, fancy stuff!” He looked down at Shadow’s bare hands and felt a wave of possessiveness. He didn’t want the others to see. He wanted to be the only one who knew where Shadow’s crimson stripe ended. “And maybe another pair of gloves?”

“Why gloves?” Tails could barely be heard going through his pack.

“BecauseIdidn’thavetoiletpaper,” Sonic all but shrieked. There were no crickets in the cave, but Sonic swore he heard them anyway.

“Sonic the Hedgehog, you are disgusting,” Amy said before Sonic heard her move further away.

“Agreed,” Shadow muttered at his side.

“Can’t you chaos control away?” Sonic grumbled under his breath.

Shadow shot him a dry look. “You have three options. One, abandon this pathetic excuse for a plan, admit to your friends what you are, and return with me to my cave. Two, I heal you and you come up with some additional hairbrained reason for why I’m here, or three, and I’m partial to this one at the moment, you waddle your way through your mission contemplating all your bad decisions and their consequences. Alone.”

Sonic narrowed his eyes. “I hate you.”

“It’s mutual,” Shadow spat back.

A moment later, footsteps approached. Shadow instinctively growled in warning but was quickly shut up by an apple being thrown in his face. “An offering for the hangry one,” Sticks said as she cautiously approached.

Shadow looked like he was about to throw the apple back with ten times as much force, but Sonic quickly scrambled between them. He started to stand, but Shadow pulled him back down, Sonic’s bare hands wrapped in his. “It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before,” he whispered, wrenching away from Shadow’s grip. “She’s a beta, ace, and a wannabe nudist. Trust me when I say she doesn’t care.”

The ‘I care’ was plain in Shadow’s expression as Sonic pulled away, but he said nothing as the badger pulled a few items from her bag. “I don’t think this is going to work,” she said as she handed Sonic a thermos. She kept her eyes averted even though the stalagmites still acted as a short privacy fence. She had enough nightmares as it was. “You smell like a pay by the hour motel room. What are you doing all the way out here anyway?”

“Heat got bad–”

“Bad?” Shadow snapped, poking his head up as he sat and leaned back on his heels. “You almost died!”

“You need to listen to your body, Sonic,” Sticks cautioned. “I’ve not heard of a heat this intense before. Heat death may be rare, but it’s still a thing.”

“One more time. I just need to try one more time,” Sonic protested. “If it gets bad, I’ll leave with Shadow. Hedgehog’s honor.”

“I have an easier time talking sense to the voices than I do you,” Sticks said as she tossed a balled up pair of gloves at him and then another. “Brought ya two. You should thank Tails. I didn’t figure you’d want Knuckles’, not with the alpha scent on them.”

“Thank you,” Shadow said as he pulled the fresh garments on, finding them a bit small, but functional.

“Don’t mention it. And Sonic?” she asked as she tossed their shoes and Shadow’s cuffs over.

“Yeah?”

“You both better use that wash. Your scents are blending.”

“Blending?” Shadow asked. His background left him with gaps of understanding when it came to Mobian customs, terms, and apparently, even biological functions.

Sonic flushed and grabbed the bottle of heavily scented water, unable to meet Shadow’s eyes. He shrugged. “It happens sometimes. With mated pairs.”

“Bonded pairs. Usually,” Sticks corrected. “Never heard of it happening outside of a claim.” She cupped her chin, deep in thought before bending down to close her pack. “It's probably because of the alien stuff.”

Shadow’s head whipped up towards Sonic in shock while the blue hedgehog frantically shook his head at him and made a severing motion at his neck. He zipped his mouth and made a motion of throwing away a key. Fortunately, Shadow had seen Maria do the series of actions enough to know what it meant. Sticks apparently wasn’t in on his mixed DNA. She was just being… Sticks.

“Probably not aliens,” Sonic said, awkwardly still holding the thermos. “But I guess you never know for sure, um. Mind, uh… giving us some privacy, Sticks?”

“Why?” she asked gruffly, as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder. She pointed to where Shadow’s head was just visible over the ledge. “He got something I ain’t seen before?”

This time it was Sonic’s eyes that went wide, his face burning. “No–I j-just–I mean–”

“Yes,” Shadow answered simply. “Now leave.”

Sticks shot Sonic a look of confusion, but shrugged and moved away without another word.

“Couldn’t you have lied?” Sonic asked as he slid down to tug on his shoes, lamenting that he hadn’t asked for a clean pair of socks too. His were still damp with sea water and didn’t smell… awesome. “Now she’s gonna hound me until she figures out if you’ve got two dicks or something.”

“Tell her the truth. I don’t care.”

Sonic frowned at that. He absolutely would not be telling Sticks that Shadow had a deliciously large alien dick with ridges that–he felt his cock twitch in his sheath and grumbled in irritation. Thinking about Shadow’s otherworldly bits and pieces should not turn him on this much.

“So what’s it going to be, hedgehog? Have you come to your senses?”

Sonic shook himself from his NC-17 thoughts and watched as Shadow adjusted his inhibitor band over the cuff of his glove. “I want to try. I need to.”

“Why? Give me one good reason.”

“Because they need me.”

“No they don’t. Try again.”

“You wouldn’t understand!”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t have friends!”

Shadow flinched like he’d been hit, but then his stoic mask was quickly back in place. “Turn around.”

“Shadow, I–”

“I said. Turn. Around.”

Sonic closed his eyes as he did what Shadow said and soon felt the other’s touch below his tail. It wasn’t the usual gentle caress, or soothing press of fingers. It was almost… clinical. It made some part of Sonic ache like he was missing something. Something he’d grown to need just as much as the release Shadow provided. It made Sonic feel cold, and he knew it was his fault. He knew he should say something, apologize–

But he didn’t.

Once Shadow’s fingers withdrew, Sonic stood and began lathering himself in the scented water. The overwhelming, cloying scent made his eyes water, but he used it to scrub the drying cum from his body and drenched his bandana in it. He didn’t make eye contact, but he could feel Shadow’s gaze, the weight of it heavy and uncomfortable.

“I can’t chaos control,” Shadow said softly. “Not until my reserves build back up.”

Sonic held out the half-empty bottle, but looked away. “I know. And thanks. For healing me.”

Shadow didn’t comment, just took the offered wash. The sound of streams and droplets of water hitting and pooling on stone sounded, joined by the slick brushing of fur. The space between them felt more strained than it had ever been. Sonic opened his mouth to say something, anything to make it better, but closed it as his friends re-entered the cave.

The group's eyes fell on Sonic first and then darted to his side. Their voices rang out as one.

“Shadow!?”

Chapter Text

The sun had barely crested the eastern horizon, and the air was already thick and balmy with humidity. It made Infinite’s palms sweat under his dark fingerless gloves, and his fur grew uncomfortably sticky. It wasn’t much different from the mainland, but the sensory experience did nothing to improve the jackal’s foul mood.

He tipped his nose into the air as he walked along the beach, taking in short quick huffs, but it was useless. There were the expected notes of sea, sand, and salt, and under those, hints of hibiscus, plumeria, pine, and wood smoke. Traces of civilization lingered if the breeze shifted just right, but despite all the things he could smell, there was one thing he couldn’t.

Omega. Heated omega.

Infinite’s tail swished behind him, more like a cat’s than a jackal’s. It divulged his darkening demeanor to his squad, who worked quickly and quietly to secure their boat under a cover of brush and debris.

Infinite turned to them, closing the distance along the embankment in quick, near threatening strides, noting with twisted satisfaction how their gazes instantly dropped, and their ears flattened. They were scared of him.

Good.

“Vier,” Infinite barked, calling his underling to him.

The lighter jackal tossed the rope he’d been holding into the boat and scurried to Infinite, kicking up a deep trail of sand behind him with his blundered movements. “Yes, sir?”

“You know this island better than any of us. What can we expect to find?”

“It’s sparsely populated. There are a few small tribes of peoples and one larger village. Locals consist of various Mobian species, with only one known human in the area that lives on a rocky key approximately two, two and a half miles away.”

“This village you mentioned, anyone there going to give us trouble?”

Vier shook his head, combing a hand anxiously through his short, white hair. “Not that I know of. Barker has said they’re idiots, but not much else. We don’t chat much during drops.”

Infinite nodded and called out to his second. “Dva. Find the town. Figure out what there is to know about a blue hedgehog. The color is unique. There won’t be two.” He turned his attention to the last member of their group, the youngest and newest, but also the shrewdest. “Zeks, go with Dva. I need both of you spreading something vague about an alpha looking for a lost mate. Make it flowery, play on this stupidity Barker claims is rampant. Don’t mention names. Use no more detail than it’s a hedgehog. Keep a low profile.”

Zeks nodded, the action throwing a tuft of white bangs over his tattered headband into his eyes. It made him look boyish and innocent when he was anything but. The jackal brushed them aside, yellow eyes intense and focused. “Should I hold onto the paperwork you requested before we left?”

“Yes. Keep it secret, keep it safe. I’ll contact you if there’s any issue requiring its use. Otherwise, I’ll send Vier to inform you when I’ve located my omega. At that time you can all reconvene here, though don’t expect me immediately.” Infinite sneered as he turned his gaze inland. A rush of anticipation swept through him, and his mouth all but watered at what was to come.

“My mate and I have some… catching up to do.”

Sonic wasn’t sure he’d ever seen his friend group look quite so comically baffled.

Or Shadow so annoyed.

Both observations were saying something.

Sonic took a deep breath and smoothed the fur over his stomach one last time to check for messes as he stepped away from the safety of his and Shadow’s temporary nest and toward more lies. He subtly kicked away a few lingering scraps of his sports tape and hoped to the gods that no one inspected the slightly shiny droplets that speckled the floor.

And the walls.

He should probably hydrate at some point….

His stomach twisted with nerves he didn’t normally feel, and his legs wobbled despite Shadow’s healing. He felt better for sure, way better than when Shadow had found him a few hours before, but… something wasn’t quite right, like a headache you’d taken medicine for, but could still feel beyond a veil of numbness.

Shadow followed wordlessly, his usual stoic mask affixed to his face making him seem uninterested and apathetic.

Sonic knew he was anything but.

A few more seconds, a handful of steps, and Sonic stood at the mouth of the cave, blinking painfully, nearly blinded by the sun’s harsh reflection off the ocean.

He rubbed at his eyes with one hand, holding the other up in placation as Amy summoned her hammer. “Guys!” Sonic called out. “It’s okay! Chill!”

“What is he doing here?” Amy asked. The others crouched defensively at her side–except for Sticks, who sighed and began peeling a banana.

Shadow crossed his arms and looked at Sonic expectantly and with no amusement. His expression clearly voiced the same question.

“Umm…” Sonic gulped, wracking his brain. “Emotional support?”

Amy’s hammer dropped to the ground in utter befuddlement. “What?”

“Well, see, Shads here, he really loves caves–” Sonic pulled said hedgehog into his side, bracing himself for retaliation but continuing anyway. “And he’d never been in this one. He was coming to explore, heard me in there all alone and was such a nice guy he came to check on me.”

Sonic knew his excuse was bad when even Knuckles looked disbelieving. He ignored the urge to dab at the nervous sweat beading at his temple. “I’d asked him to do that blippy thing he does and bring me toilet paper, but you guys beat him to the punch!”

Tails’ brows furrowed as he eyed Shadow warily. “Seriously? But then why do you guys both smell like Lady Walrus?” He made a face and waved his hand in front of his nose. “It’s burning my olfactory receptors.”

“It was better than the alternative, buddy.” That at least was the truth. At least as far as Sonic could see it.

“So… you’re friends with Shadow now?” Knuckles asked. “And he’s nice?”

“Yeah!”

“No.”

Shadow and Sonic glared at each other. It lasted all of two seconds before Sonic threw his hands up in defeat at his dark rival. “Seriously, Shads?”

“Someone recently told me I don’t have any friends.”

“Aw, Shadow,” Amy said, taking a step forward. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

Shadow gave her a look like he’d just noticed her existence. It quickly morphed into a cold frown once her words fully processed. He may not be able to smell her over the cloud of perfume that coated him, but he knew what she was. Alpha. He had to steel himself not to growl and instead only snap a quick, “I don’t need your pity.”

“But what about my friendship?” Amy suggested with a singsong voice that was a complete contradiction to her accusatory tone not a full minute earlier. She clenched her hands together and tucked them under her chin sweetly. “Our bookclub has been needing a new–”

“No.”

“But–”

Sonic patted Shadow on the shoulder and waved Amy off. “We’ll get there, Ames, give it time. Besides, he hasn’t dropkicked any of us yet, so that’s pretty good progress already.”

“The day is young, hedgehog,” Shadow muttered dryly.

Sonic rolled his eyes but kept his hand on Shadow’s shoulder. The hybrid hadn’t shrugged him off, and the contact settled him. “Ignore him, he’s mostly safe, and he’s coming with us!”

“Mostly?” Tails asked, uncertainty giving his voice a slight squeak. The fox grabbed his tails like that would stop Shadow from grabbing them and spinning him into something like he had so often in the past. “And he’s coming with us?”

“Yup. He’s turned a new leaf. Seen the light. Returned from the dark side–”

Shadow ran a hand over his face. “Enough. They get it.” He took a deep breath, trying and failing to make his body language seem friendlier. Warmer. He dropped his arms and tried to smile. The effort only seemed to make the others more wary. He sighed. “I am familiar with many of the local cave systems, and I–” he cleared his throat, trying not to choke on the words. “Want to help.”

“Why?” Amy asked. Her eyes narrowed a bit. “You’ve never wanted to help before. Why do you care if Eggman’s missing?”

“Boredom,” Shadow shrugged. There was some truth to the statement. He made it a point to stay away from the mainland, and there was only so much to do on an island he could lap in less than a minute. “But most importantly, damage control.”

“He’s been following us since we left and hasn’t killed us yet,” Sticks added, mouth slightly full. The others gaped at her, and she shrugged. “I’m just sayin’, he could be useful.”

“I knew that ominous foreboding feeling I’ve felt since we left wasn’t food poisoning!” Knuckles declared, though mostly to himself. “It was just Shadow!”

Amy gave the echidna a look and shook her head before focusing back on Sonic. Her hammer disappeared to wherever it went when not in use, and her shoulders sagged with the exhausted defeat of a mother being asked for a snack thirty minutes after mealtime. “Fine, but this is on you, Sonic. You’re vouching for him, so if things go south, you’re the one who gets to sedate Tails through his night terrors.”

“It was one time–” Tails argued, but Amy held up her hand to stop him.

Sonic released Shadow and held out his arms. “That’s not fair! He was basically rabid! He bit my ear so hard he pierced it, and then it got infected! What was I supposed to do?”

“Handle it like an adult!”

Shadow turned from the near brawl unfolding before him and toward Sticks, who’d just finished her banana and was snacking on some shelled peanuts. She held out the bag to Shadow. “Want some? They’re extra healthy because I blessed them before we left.”

Shadow gave her a mildly dubious look but accepted a handful. “How are they still alive?”

“Dunno,” the badger grunted. “Knuckles ate a four-leaf clover once. He thought it was cilantro.”

Shadow paused for a moment, looking from Sticks to the chaos before him that had all the emotional maturity of a playground sandbox. “You’re the sanest out of all of them, aren’t you?”

Sticks popped a few more peanuts into her mouth. “Yup.”

Twenty minutes, one beach-side bar fight, and two tantrums later, Shadow found himself tailing the back of the group with Sonic as they began their journey into the cave.

Sonic had managed to get the crew to all but run past their intimate hideout by saying he’d spotted a poisonous cave slug (not a thing), but then Knuckles had fainted, and Shadow had had to carry him.

Fortunately for everyone involved, the Benny Hill-inspired chaos hadn’t lasted long–though Shadow was still left wondering, for the millionth time, why he’d ever agreed to help Sonic in the first place. The far easier thing would have been to say no. He should have said no.

But he didn’t. And if he could go back and do it again, he wouldn’t.

He wished he knew why.

They walked mostly in silence, only the soft padding of their feet and occasional drip from a stalactite breaking the heavy atmosphere. The air was dense with moisture, so much so Shadow could occasionally see his breath, though the temperature was markedly more comfortable than it had been by the sea. The light in the cave was dim by any normal measure, and would have been pitch black if not for a secondary feature Tails had engaged on his Team’s accessories. Belts, sports tape, and gloves glowed with fluorescent light, with their shoes the brightest, casting their shadows upwards against the stone walls and dwarfing Shadow’s own. He had no such gear–not that he needed it–but it was a visible reminder that he was an outsider.

He didn’t belong.

Sonic wasn’t wrong when he said he didn’t have any friends. He didn’t, and he hadn’t. Not for a very long time. Rouge may refer to him as such, but he wasn’t sure he was much more than a convenient add-on to particularly difficult missions she undertook for a government organization on the mainland.

One he was all too familiar with.

He shook difficult thoughts from his head, sparing a quick glance to his right from the corner of his eye. Sonic seemed deep in thought. An extraordinary occurrence that made Shadow’s shoulders tense with unease. The hero worried his bottom lip, still slightly swollen from Shadow’s attention, and kept his eyes on his feet, unusually quiet. The white light the weave of his bandana produced washed out his coloring a bit, but Shadow could still make out the telltale flush that dusted his muzzle and knew if he pressed his hand there, it would feel overly warm and feverish.

Again.

“There’s some sort of weak energy reading somewhere nearby,” Tails said, breaking Shadow from his growing concern. The kit’s voice seemed louder than usual, echoing in the vast and hollow space in a way that made the fur on the back of Shadow’s neck stand on end. Something about the sound made him inwardly flinch, like he was somewhere he shouldn’t be, and now attention had been brought his way.

The fox didn’t seem to share his trepidation.

Tails had his nose pointed down toward his tablet as it had been much of the trek. He shifted it sideways in his hands, head tilting with it as he tried to make out the twisted pathways his drones were mapping ahead of them in real time. “It’s not something I’ve seen before. Not exactly, anyway. I guess it’s a little similar to what Sonic has put off in testing, but it’s almost like… a dying battery?”

“Is this what you picked up before we left?” Sonic asked.

Shadow spared him another look, wondering how the others couldn’t possibly have already picked up the difference in his tone, his posture, his mannerisms–

“Nope. Again, similar, but different bandwidths. Like… energy cousins!”

“And you think this signature you’re tracking will lead you to the Doctor?” Shadow asked, wondering if he could somehow get them to call off the mission altogether. “It seems like a weak link. Wouldn’t you be better off checking his base again?”

“The last time we did, I hid a device that’ll notify me when there’s a new heat signature of Eggman’s size and proportions, but as for the energy spike…. Well, the one that triggered my sensors the other day seems to have been a one-off. We explored all over the area where it pinged and haven’t recorded a second. So… it’s this or nothing. It’s our next best clue.”

“What about the village? What if he goes straight there?”

“Thought about that! I left some babysitter drones here and there, and look!” Tails tapped his screen and then twisted the tablet around to face Shadow. A black and white video feed of Meh Burger played seamlessly. The camera zoomed in on motion, and Shadow got an unexpected close-up of Dave the Intern picking his nose. He grimaced and looked away.

“See!” Sticks said, pointing at Shadow’s expression. “He’s worried about the radiation too!”

“There’s no radiation, Sticks,” Amy said, an edge of impatience finding its way into her tone. “We’ve talked about this.”

“Wait–is that why we’re all glowing?” Knuckles added.

Tails looked like he needed a concussion about as much as Shadow.

“Why would I give you, or myself, something that’s radioactive?” Tails asked.

“Maybe he isn’t Tails,” Sticks quickly added. “Maybe he’s a cyborg replacement from another dimension!”

Tails sighed heavily. “Sticks, the secret codeword is ‘secret codeword with a side of apricots.’”

Sticks narrowed her eyes, but nodded her head. “You’re off the hook this time….”

“It works like a long-range baby monitor,” Tails addressed Shadow as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “We can check in any time we want, and it’s set up to let us know if there’s a problem. Besides, Sonic could make it there in a few minutes, easy! Right, Sonic?”

Shadow turned to face Sonic, but the hero didn’t meet his eyes. Instead, the hero gave his brother a reassuring smile and thumbs-up. “Right! Egghead wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Tails grinned.

Shadow fumed.

The fox turned to lead the group further into the cave, and Shadow didn’t hesitate before grabbing Sonic’s arm and pulling him closer. “You’re lying,” he hissed under his breath as soon as the others were far enough ahead. “You couldn’t run right now if your life depended on it.”

Sonic’s ears flattened, and he looked away. “I could if theirs did.”

“So you’d give your life for them, but you can’t trust them with what you are?”

“It’s more complicated than that, and you know it! I told you why!”

“Well maybe you shouldn’t have!”

Shadow regretted the words the second they left his mouth.

The flush disappeared from Sonic’s face, and his eyes widened before turning cold and steely. Without another word, Sonic stormed ahead and left the hybrid with only the company of his namesakes.

Ahead and just around a bend, Shadow could see Sonic start to near his friends. He saw how unsteady the hero looked, how his strides wavered, how his tail was low and not long from being tucked between his legs to stop the flow of slick that was sure to increase. It made Shadow furious. Furious at Sonic, furious at himself, the situation, his friends, everything with a heartbeat in a five-mile radius!

If he just didn’t care so damn much, then–

He tripped over his own feet and nearly left an imprint of himself on stone. He closed his eyes, stopping for a moment to take a deep breath and attempt to slow his suddenly racing heart. Panic rose at the edges of his psyche. He inhaled until his chest was fit to burst, counted to five, and released slowly. Three deep steady breaths, one after the other. Just like Maria had taught him back on the ARK. Between them, all he could think was how stupid he’d been. How naive. How blind.

He cared about Sonic. It was obvious. Blatantly so. Not just now, but before too. It wasn’t hormones and instincts. It wasn’t the draw an alpha would feel toward an omega. It went further, deeper than that, and it had for who knew how long. Shadow had said it himself, after all. He’d looked Sonic in the eye and told him he didn’t do things unless he wanted to. Shadow wanted this. He wanted Sonic.

Completely. Irrevocably. Permanently.

He wanted him as his mate.

The voices of the rest grew faint, only occasional echoes reaching his ears, and still he stood motionless in the dark. A mate was the last thing Sonic wanted. That was the main reason they were doing what they were. The omega didn’t want to be tied down, didn’t want to be outed, didn’t want the connection that came from bonding. Shadow had been told he was sterile long ago, so while children weren’t something he would burden Sonic with, the rest….

What a fine goddamn mess he’d found himself in. He’d developed feelings for the most obnoxious, dim-witted, self-destructive, and extraordinary person he’d ever met and condemned himself to being tortured by the realization he could never have what he wanted.

He hung his head and began to walk, feeling exactly as he had for the past seven decades.

Alone.

Chapter Text

Shadow’s words felt like a physical blow, one that struck sharp and true in the center of Sonic’s chest. It made him want to wrap his arms around himself to ease the lingering ache, to leave, run, go somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t here, but he couldn’t. Only a handful of hours since his heat had last been sated, and already he could feel the end of the line approaching.

His fur was fluffed from the cave’s chill even though a cold sweat trickled down his spine. His legs felt heavy and unsure. His hands shook, and his face burned, and most mortifying of all, slick was gathering under his tail and beginning to drip down his thighs. His body protested its emptiness with stomach spasms he’d been able to ignore so far, but not for much longer. He was a goddamn mess.

Again.

He hated it. He didn’t want to stop. He didn’t want to slow down. He didn’t want to admit that even though Shadow had managed to lay open an old wound, he still wanted him. He needed him. Even now, all he wanted to do was turn around, find Shadow, and beg him to make it all stop, but he didn’t.

And he wouldn’t.

He knew he’d hurt Shadow with what he’d said earlier, but he hadn’t thought one mistake of a sentence would so easily erase the ground they’d gained in their relationship. Or rather, what he’d thought they gained. Shadow’s response, that Sonic shouldn’t have told him about Infinite, made him feel that they were back to square one. Back to what they were before.

Rivals.

Nothing more.

The very thought made Sonic feel raw and vulnerable in a way he hadn’t expected. Maybe it was the hormones, but he felt oddly… rejected. He’d laid bare a part of himself he’d hidden from all others, and at the time he’d felt accepted and protected.

He should have known it wasn’t real. Hadn’t life taught him as much?

“Whoa… do you guys see this?” Tails called out, breaking Sonic from his conflicted, confused, and heat-addled thoughts. He could just see his younger brother disappear around another bend and found himself, for the first time in his life, struggling to catch up.

The winding path they’d been following opened up into a huge chamber, large enough it was difficult to make out exactly where its far side ended. The stone ceiling tapered up to a point, giving the entire space the feeling of being in a caveman’s circus tent. It would have been difficult to conceptualize the vastness of the room if not for the same purple etchings that decorated Shadow’s home carved into every inch.

Sonic walked where the pictoglyphs started on the wall nearest him and traced his finger over the edge of a series of images. He felt the shallow grooves under his finger and pulled away to see that nothing stained his glove. Whatever material had been used to give the etchings their color and glow, it wasn’t coming off. They were a little different than the ones he’d seen before, both in and outside of Shadow’s cave, almost like what would be expected from different handwriting styles. The angles were sharper, the sets tighter, but more uneven, like they’d been made in a rush. It made Sonic think of an offhanded comment Amy had made once about how anxiety could impact handwriting. Maybe the ancients who’d made these had been stressed, or in a hurry.

And she thought he never listened.

One of Tails’ drones zoomed overhead, the whir from its tiny blades reminding Sonic of an oversized mosquito. The tiny bot scanned the images in front of him with a ray of flattened blue light, much as it had the majority of the cave.

“Can you translate it, Tails?” Amy asked from Sonic’s left. Sonic glanced her way, relieved when he realized she was walking the wall away from him. He couldn’t let her get too close. Not now.

“I’m trying.” Tails cocked his head and moved further down the chamber to where a shallow creek trickled by, its edges lined with a thin coating of fine grain sand. “They’re coming back as older than anything we’ve seen before. A lot older.”

“I’ve decoded a few more since the last time we compared notes,” Amy said, hopping across the creek and gazing upwards. “That one there!” She pointed to what seemed like a burst of stars sprayed out in the shape of an upside down palm tree. “We thought that meant space, but it doesn’t! It better aligns with energy or power.”

“You got that from the artifacts we picked up a few years ago?” Sonic asked. He cringed at the sound of his own voice. It sounded weak. Raspy. Fuck. He needed to figure out how to get away. He looked around, failing to spot Shadow anywhere. His stomach fell. Had he made the other so angry he left?

“Those and a few others the Gogobas found,” Amy continued, oblivious to Sonic’s inner crisis.
“I’ve been compiling our knowledge of the ancients and researching archaeology here and there between Eggman battles. That race sure knew how to tell a story. I just know there’s a romance fueled, fated lovers story in here somewhere. I can feel it!”

“Are you sure?” Knuckles scratched his head and gestured over his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure everyone is dead in that one over there.”

Sure enough, Knuckles wasn’t wrong. The group joined the echidna who stood on the opposite end of the chamber where a series of rudimentary drawings depicted Mobians of various species splayed out and clearly deceased.

“Yup. That’s death and destruction,alright,” Sticks confirmed, nodding at the image. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”

“Maybe it’s depicting a plague, or some other illness that killed off the ancients?” Amy asked.

“No,” Tails said with a shake of his head. His voice was uncharacteristically somber. “That’s not what the ancients looked like. That’s us. It means we’re going to die.”

Sticks shrugged, unphased. “Called it.”

“What do you mean we’re going to die, Tails?” Sonic asked. “In a–philosophical we’re all going to die someday kind of way or… apocalyptic kind of way?”

“Oh yeah, um,” Tails glanced at his screen again. “Definitely apocalyptic.”

“Great.”

Amy was less blasé. “Tails… can you elaborate? Please?”

“I’m still missing several gaps in the translation, even with the new symbol you decoded, so I can’t say this with 100% accuracy, but it looks like most of this has to do with some sort of energy imbalance.”

Sonic pinched the skin between his eyes. It was slick with sweat. “So, what? There’s a disruption in the Force, and we all go kaboom?”

Tails rolled his eyes at Sonic. “You’ve watched way too many Tommy Thunder movies.”

“You’re the one who said it was apocalyptic.”

“I just mean the inevitable end of the world.”

“And that’s not dramatic?”

“Hey, isn’t this the symbol for alpha, beta, omega?” Sticks asked. She’d grabbed her peanut bag and was snacking again as though talk of the end of the world was an everyday thing for her.

To be fair, it was.

“Yeah,” Amy agreed, as she glanced over at Sticks. “It’s sprinkled throughout everything they drew here. It must be important.”

“It is,” Tails said. “The symbols are tied to the one you deciphered, Amy. The ones that mean energy. There’s also these recurring swirls that look to be topped with weeping willow trees. You don’t find that tree around here naturally, not even back then, so I’m not sure what it means…. All I can tell is that something happens with the energy, there’s a slow decline, and then everyone dies.”

“Awesome, sounds–” Sonic shuddered and grabbed at his stomach, panting through a new wave of intense pain.

And then another.

He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t pretend anymore. He doubled over, a pained sound escaping him.

“Sonic!” Tails cried.

The fox immediately stepped toward him, but Sonic held up a hand. “Don’t! Stay back!”

“But you’re still sick!”

Sonic shook his head frantically, waving his brother off. “S’fine. Just a little stomach–” he grimaced and sucked in a breath through his teeth, “--ache.”

“You don’t look so good, Sonic,” Knuckles said. “Like that time Amy said we should play spin the bottle.”

Amy glared at Knuckles, but frowned with worry as she turned back to Sonic. “What he means is you look like you’re going to pass out! Why don’t you let us–”

“No!” Sonic’s quills bristled, his knees wobbled. “Just stay back. Don’t come any closer!”

Knuckles’ nose wrinkled. “Do you smell that? It’s the rotten egg smell that smells….”

“Good,” Amy said faintly, looking at Sonic. Her pupils dilated, and she licked her lips. “It smells good.”

Sticks grew tense while Tails just seemed confused. “I don’t really smell anything, guys, but it’s probably just a pocket of sulfur. Sonic, is it your stomach? Is the smell making you sick?”

Sonic managed a nod even as a wave of agony speared threw him, and he dropped to a knee. His tail tucked between his legs, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he was actively dripping slick onto the cave floor. His stomach tightened with nausea, and his mouth flooded with saliva. He was gonna be sick. His vision swam, sweat trickled down his temple, and his chills grew strong enough to make his teeth chatter. Fuck. Not like this. He didn’t want them to know!

Amy lunged toward him as he fell, to help him he was sure, but even so his instincts sprang to life, and he snarled weakly in her direction. She wasn’t what he wanted. She wasn't who he wanted.

She wasn’t Shadow.

Amy recoiled, startled, but the nearness had done the trick. He could tell by her expression. The kind concern, the warm infatuation her eyes normally held, turned confused and then shocked. Her mouth fell open, her hand flying to it as she gasped.

She knew.

“Sonic….” Her voice wasn’t threatening or lustful. It was soft. Pitying.

She reached for him again, but a dark blur passed between her and Sonic, echoed by a growl so vicious and feral even Sonic felt a jolt of fear before he realized who it was.

“Get back!” Shadow snapped. He crouched in front of Sonic, ears pinned, teeth bared. “Don’t touch him!”

Amy snarled back and called her hammer to hand while Knuckles fixed Sonic with a perplexed, yet mildly disturbed look. Sticks jumped between Amy and Shadow, arms outstretched to keep distance between them. “Sonic,” the badger called over her shoulder, though she didn’t take her eyes off the two alphas. “I don't think your secret's a secret anymore.”

Sonic’s other knee gave out before he could respond. He barely caught himself before he smashed face-first into unforgiving stone, and then he found he couldn’t answer. It was all he could do to keep from whimpering, and he was already mortified enough. He refused to lose his last shred of dignity by becoming even more pathetic in front of his friends.

“His temperature!” Tails exclaimed, anxiety making his voice sharp and fast. “It’s way too high! My diagnostics say he’s exhibiting heat symptoms, but that can’t be right. He’s a beta!”

Sonic groaned, and Shadow’s ears tipped back toward the sound, but no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t reach out. Not yet. He needed his arms free and his wits about him in case he needed to defend Sonic. “Tell me where I can take him,” Shadow growled out, forcing his brain to work through the panic of seeing Sonic’s condition. The same internal loop of words ran rampant in his brain, telling him his mate was in pain, dying, needed him. “Somewhere close. Private.”

Tails looked at him blankly, before realization dawned on him. Scared as he was, his yellow ears pinned, and he showed his tiny canines. “You’re not taking my brother anywhere. Especially like this!”

“If I don’t, he’ll die.”

“Then let us have him,” Amy countered. “He should be with us! We’re his friends, we’ll keep him safe.”

Shadow’s fists rose and his fangs flashed. Instinct spoke before he’d thought the words. “He’s mine,” he hissed in warning. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, battling the urge to fight what his alpha side saw as threats to his mate. They weren’t, not really, and they didn’t have time for this. Sonic didn’t have time for this. He needed to get him somewhere safe now.

“Shadow’s been seeing Sonic through his heat,” Sticks finally blurted. “He’s already half bonded to him, can’t you see? He’s not gonna hurt him.”

“Shadow….” Sonic managed weakly.

The need in Sonic’s tone had Shadow at his side in the blink of an eye. Without care or thought for what the others might think, he dipped low to sweep Sonic into his arms. “Hang on,” he whispered into Sonic’s ear. “Just a little longer.”

Sonic groaned as the sudden shift sent shockwaves of pain through his system, but most of it was muffled as he reflexively turned into the crook of Shadow’s neck and breathed deep. The scent of his alpha soothed his frazzled systems just as the familiarity of Shadow’s body against his own relaxed his cramping muscles. Gone was the bite from Shadow’s earlier words, chased away by an answered need. They weren’t forgotten, just overtaken. Being in Shadow’s arms felt so safe, so secure, there wasn’t room for anything else. It was like napping in his hammock, or basking in the sun. It felt right. It felt safe.

It felt like home.

Tails gave Sticks a conflicted, almost pained look before his shoulders sagged, and he turned back to Shadow. He adjusted the goggles atop his head and brought his tablet back up, accessing the map his drones had made. “At the back of this chamber there are multiple pathways. Take the second from the right and follow it down until it opens up again. It’s a dead end, you can’t miss it. It looks like there’s some sort of water feature there and enough space for you to do… whatever you need to do.”

“Tails, you can’t be serious about this!” Amy argued. “He’s not safe!”

Tails ignored her and met crimson eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was small. Scared. “He’ll be okay… right?”

Shadow swallowed. Uncertainty and fear clouded his own heart and mind, but he spoke the truth. “He will. I won’t accept any other reality.”

Tails gave him a short nod. “Go. I’ll make sure the others don’t follow.”

Shadow didn’t need any more encouragement. Without another word he sped off, away from Sonic’s team, away from the etchings and the foretellings of eventual doom, and toward a place where he could hopefully chase Sonic’s heat away for as long as they needed.

His eyes adjusted immediately, though the same purple pictoglyphs occasionally appeared to lead the way. In seconds Shadow was at the tunnel Tails had said to take and through it, noting that they were descending deeper underground as the air cooled further. The fox hadn’t been wrong, and his instructions led true. The path abruptly opened up into a space the size of a small house. A pool took up most of the area, fed, Shadow assumed, by the same creek that had cut through the chamber they’d been in moments ago. The ceiling was tall, though not as vast as the largest chamber, and the floor was mostly flat except for a sprinkling of stalagmites. The reservoir was supplied by a gentle waterfall that flowed off an overhang a dozen or so feet from the ground. The current was gentle, allowing the stream to fall to the pool like heavy raindrops in a downpour.

Shadow darted for the water, hoping it would do as it had before and bring Sonic’s temperature down, but it wasn’t as deep as he’d hoped and needed. He moved through it with little care for grace, and every emphasis on speed. Droplets sprayed left and right, his wake sending waves to the far shores as he strode toward the waterfall. It wasn’t as efficient as submerging Sonic would be, but it would work.

It had to.

He held Sonic close as he took them both under the steady cascade and let the cold droplets soak into Sonic’s fur and quills. Green eyes were closed, but Sonic had a death grip on Shadow’s chest fluff, almost like he was afraid Shadow would let him go.

As if Shadow wanted to. As if he even could.

“Sonic?” Shadow said gently. His thumb brushed the soft blue fur on Sonic’s arm. It looked almost bare without the ridiculous strips of sports tape the hero normally wore. “Are you with me?”

A choked groan left Sonic, only muffled by lips pursed in pain. He nodded sharply. “It’s bad again.”

“I know,” Shadow answered. He waited a moment, giving the water time to do its job before he asked, “Can you stand?”

“Dunno. Maybe.”

Shadow slowly released Sonic’s lower half, but kept a tight hold on him otherwise, continuing to support most of his weight just in case. Sonic’s legs shook like rickety toothpicks, but they held.

Sonic gripped Shadow’s shoulders as he tipped his face up and met his alpha’s eyes, surprised to find them filled with unconcealed worry and not anger.

“Are you okay?” Shadow asked.

Sonic had just enough energy left to huff bitterly. “My friends, including my brother, not only know I’m an omega, but got to see me leaking slick everywhere like a damn fire hydrant, and I’m stuck in a cave with a heat that’s trying to kill me every couple of hours. But yeah, sure, I’m just peachy.”

Shadow’s ears flattened, and he sighed heavily. Part of him wanted to snap, berate Sonic for putting himself in this position to begin with, but he could hear the pain and fear mixed in with the sarcasm that dripped from Sonic’s words. He could be angry later. He would be angry later. But right now his mate needed something else from him. “I’m sorry,” he said instead of the pejorative list his mind had been curating for the past 24 hours.“I know this isn’t what you wanted.”

Sonic’s expression softened and his gaze fell. Tiny rivulets traversed his muzzle like the tears he refused to cry. “I never wanted them to see me like that.” His voice was quiet, almost unheard over the ambient sounds surrounding them. “Ever.”

“I know.”

“Did you see the way Amy looked at me? How they all did? They feel sorry for me. They pity me. The weak omega at the mercy of biology.”

“I did see, and I think we saw different things. She wanted you. The pink one. Amy.”

Sonic pulled back a bit in surprise before he shifted uncomfortably. “Amy’s always sorta had a thing for me–”

“I could take you back.” The words caught in Shadow’s throat like a wad of sandpaper, cutting, choking, wrong in every way, but he forced them out. “You’re stable enough now…. If you would rather her help you–”

“I don’t want Amy. I never have. Not like that.”

“Then the other, the red–”

Sonic shut Shadow up with a crushing kiss, quick and rough and insistent. “I don’t want him either.” He cupped Shadow’s muzzle and kissed him again, softer this time, slow and tender, molding his body to Shadow’s, exactly where he belonged.

“I want you, dumbass.”