Archive of Our Own ^beta

Vi stumbled out into the street, the cold night air hitting her like a slap as the pit’s oversized beta bouncer propelled her outside. The door stood open behind him and the sounds and smells of the club wafted out after her, chaotic and infuriating and enticing. He put himself in the doorway like a blank, scentless wall. Her boots splashed in a fetid puddle as she turned, filth seeping inside where the right sole was coming away from the leather, and she snarled at him, pure alpha frustration. The man didn’t flinch. The pit’s owner was smart enough to hire beta security for his bloodsport and so the bouncer just looked bored.

“You know the rules,” the man said. “No rut fights. Damages the goods. Bad for business.”

Vi growled low in her throat. “I’m not in fucking rut.”

The bouncer raised an eyebrow. “You nearly took Mero’s head off.”

“Because Mero’s an asshole.” Just the thought of the alpha she was scheduled to fight tonight made the edges of her vision darken with rage. He should let her back in and she would finish the fucking job, show Mero exactly whose fucking territory this is—

A huge hand settled on her shoulder and pushed her away again, interrupting her train of thought. She wasn’t in the middle of the street like she’d been a moment ago, but in the bouncer’s face like she’d tried to push past him and the steps between there and here were hazy, like her body had reacted on it’s own, had just reached up and shut Vi off. She shook her head, trying to push down the alien swell of anger, and started to be afraid.

“Sure, kid,” the man continued. “Go home. You can come back when it’s out of your system.”

“Wait,” Vi said desperately as he turned to go. He paused, watching her over his shoulder. “Can I—I mean, at least give me tonight’s pay. I don’t have any suppressants.”

Vi hadn’t had a rut since she was fifteen years old. She’d overheard people in Stillwater talk about bodies going into survival mode, saving the energy a rut would cost and spending it on making it to the next day and the day after that. Vi had always argued that it was just as likely they drugged the food to save everyone the trouble.

She never told anyone what she really believed: that her first rut had been so horrible that something inside her refused to let it happen again.

Back then, she’d been an alpha for barely a year, and when everything happened the way it had, when she’d lost everything important to her in the world, figuring out rut hadn’t been high on her list of priorities. One day she just woke up sore and tired, angry like always, a little feverish like she often did with so many people packed together. When the rut properly hit, it was the middle of dinner, and suddenly everything hurt. She remembered the way every eye in the room turned to her, glittering with hunger or hatred, and how the scents of all those bodies seemed to crowd against her, force their way inside her, a physical pressure in her head that made following a thought all the way to the end too difficult. Fear crept in around the edges of the fog, mostly instinct, a vague sense she was in danger. There were people in Stillwater that would have taken any excuse to beat one of Vander’s pups to a pulp and a rut challenge wasn’t just any excuse. Shit like that got people killed.

Sometimes she felt lucky that a couple of beta guards had swooped in and dragged her away before anyone did anything stupid. They threw her in an isolation cell and left her there for five days. At first it had been a relief. Quiet was hard to come by in prison and a reprieve from the confusing, stomach-churning scents of omegas or the competing stink of other alphas was even rarer. The cell had only the old, stale smell of someone else’s rut they hadn’t quite managed to scrub out and a steel door between her and everyone else in the world.

Later, out of her mind with need and loneliness, gagging on her own smell, biting her hands and arms for relief, she would wish the guards had left her to die.

In the damp undercity street, silently pleading with the bouncer, she could feel those same walls closing around her. She couldn’t go through that again.

“No pay for a botched job,” the man said. Then he sighed, shook his head, a rueful twist to his mouth. “Too late, anyway. Sorry, kid.”

“Please,” Vi said, but the man turned away from her and closed the door behind him.

—

She walked through the undercity streets in a fog. She knew she needed to go home, lock the door, and suffer through this as best she could, but she couldn’t seem to figure out where home was. A street would look right, and then Vi would catch some mouth-watering scent and her feet would stop belonging to her. A cramp would roll through her gut, she would double over, gasping, and when she came to she was someplace else with no idea how she got there. It was like being in a maze, turning and turning just to end up back at the start.

When she looked up and found the Last Drop standing before her in all its broken-down glory, she thought blurrily that it made sense. Sad and pathetic, maybe, a weak alpha trying to go to ground in a den where she wouldn’t be able to find a shred of her pack’s scent after all this time, but that didn’t mean it didn’t make sense. Where else was she supposed to go?

She wasn’t even surprised when the challenge came, a low voice cutting through the fog, asking, “You got a death wish?”

Vi turned, her hackles rising, rut washing the street gray and featureless except for the alpha leaning against the brick. She might have looked indifferent, almost bored, if not for the way her scent rose like a storm around her as if it could physically push Vi back.

Sevika. It was always fucking Sevika.

Vi took a step toward her. They would fight now. It wasn’t what she wanted, what she needed, but it would be something. She forced her way through the cloud of Sevika’s scent, ignoring the way her senses crowed danger, too caught up in imagining how her fist would feel against Sevika’s jaw, how her blood would smell spattered on the stone. It would be something.

“Answer me, pup,” Sevika commanded.

Her body responded before her brain could catch up. “No,” she snapped. She stopped, confused, like the word belonged to someone else. The anger crested again when she realized what Sevika had done. How dare she order her—

“Funny way of showing it,” Sevika continued, unmoved. “The only reason some alpha punk isn’t out here kicking your shit in is because we’re in my territory. Guess they left you all for me.”

“You here to kick my shit in, then?” Vi’s voice distorted around the growl in her chest. Why was she still talking? Didn’t she want to fight Vi?

Sevika pushed herself off the wall and closed the distance between them. Every muscle in Vi’s body ratcheted to the breaking point, her hands shaking, tendons standing out in her neck as she waited for the blow. Sevika’s scent was overpowering. Hot metal and smoke, an edge Vi wanted to throw herself against, that she wanted to hurt, to destroy, grind to a paste until Vi was the only thing left. But there was something else, too, that held her in place. A memory emerged from the rut haze, or not a memory, not one specific thing, but a collection of small moments blending together, bleeding into each other until Vi couldn’t find the seams.

Sevika smelled familiar. Vi blinked hard, trying to remember where she was, somehow both outside the Last Drop with a rival alpha and inside it, a pup hiding behind the bar, that same alpha across from her with a drink and a cigar, comfortable, confident, her scent like a firm hand on Vi’s head. It wasn’t like Vander’s scent, sharper than his tobacco and sawdust, a hint of fire beneath a caramel whiskey sweetness, but it meant the same thing: protection, safety.

“That what you want?” Sevika said, responding to a question Vi couldn’t remember asking. The anger had drained away again, leaving her cold and shivering with adrenaline. Sevika was close enough to wrap her hands around Vi’s throat and Vi that would have let her, something incoherent and hungry trying to burst through her skin, that wanted to bare her neck and let Sevika—

Vi recoiled. Registered what Sevika said. What she meant. Violence swirled uncertainly in her stomach, leashed momentarily by bewilderment and a new, hot revulsion.

“What?” she panted. She was so hot. The undercity was usually cool, but she was sweating through her shirt. “You— We can’t— we’re both—”

Sevika threw her head back and laughed, a sound of pure condescension that made Vi’s skin prickle with goosebumps. Her fangs caught the light, white in the darkness. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

No. It wasn’t. She had never considered it before, and it wasn’t going to happen anyway, so why would she be worried about it? She was trying not to think of it now, but rut closed a rough hand around her brainstem and filled her head with unwanted images, all skin and teeth and sweat, a body pressed against hers, like hers, hard and hungry in all the same places.

Her jaw ached fiercely and, though she’d been trying her best to ignore it, so did her cock. Sevika watched her with a self-satisfied smile, like she knew exactly what Vi was imagining. Vi breathed hard through her mouth, grit her teeth, and said, “I’m not some fucking freak.”

“Sure you are,” Sevika said, making Vi bristle again. “Maybe it’s bad manners topside, but you’re in the undercity now, pup.” She said manners like it was something filthy, turning everything backwards. “Undercity folk do whatever they want. You’re undercity, ain’t ya?”

A snarl tore out of her. She didn’t care what Piltover alphas did or didn’t do. She was undercity, just as much as Sevika—more than Sevika. Vander’s pup by everything but blood, and Vander had built the undercity, had given everything he had to its people, given everything for Vi and Powder and lost everything, too, and Sevika wanted to act like she was better than Vi? Because Vi had been locked up instead of stuck down here? Because she’d gone topside to try and fix things? Sevika didn’t know a fucking thing about her, but Vi would show her—

She lunged and swung for Sevika’s head, her blood rushing in her ears. This was what alphas did, growled and bled and fought for dominance. Sevika was just trying to get in her head. Use her rut against her, make her stupid. But Vi was strong. She would win.

She thought that right up to the moment her fist met empty air and she overbalanced on the wet stone and stumbled past Sevika. The other alpha was on her in an instant, wrapping her metal arm around Vi’s neck and yanking her upright. Vi choked, her hands flying to the arm to try and pry it away from her throat. Sevika’s other hand splayed flat against Vi’s stomach, an incongruously gentle touch, pulling her flush against Sevika and holding her in place.

The swell of Sevika’s cock pressed against her ass. She was hard. Vi burned like she might burst into flames, and thrashed and snarled and snapped her teeth, trying to squirm free. Sevika just put more pressure on her throat until dark spots popped in front of her eyes.

She put her cheek to Vi’s. Her hot breath ghosted over Vi’s face, making the knot in her stomach winch tighter. “We can fight, if that’s what you want. But you won’t win and, even if you did, it wouldn’t make you feel better.” Sevika loosened her grip and Vi sucked cold air into her lungs, which should have cleared her head, but she was melting, dripping through Sevika’s fingers. Sevika dragged her tongue up Vi’s neck and Vi’s eyes rolled back, her knees buckling, grabbing for Sevika’s arm just to keep herself standing. “Or you could let me help.”

Vi whined, a choked, ragged sound, something Sevika dragged out of her, not an alpha sound at all. Her skin was sticky with sweat and it clung and dragged at Sevika’s skin like her body wanted to glue them together. She was so hungry, she needed so badly, and Sevika felt good. Vi had already fucked up so much. Once more wouldn’t make a difference. Her hand dropped, grabbed for Sevika’s hip, pulled her against Vi, as good as asking. But Sevika held her still.

“Sevika,” she gasped. “Please.”

A satisfied rumble against her back. “Good little alpha.”

—

The door to the Last Drop was unlocked, or maybe broken, but there was nothing left inside worth stealing. Sevika hauled Vi into the destroyed bar without letting go of her, like she was worried Vi might try to escape. She couldn’t tell Vi was caught fast in the trap of her rut and the strength and smell of Sevika’s body. There was no reason she might want to escape, not when relief was so close, not when it felt like her body was trying to tear itself open and swallow Sevika whole.

Sevika flung Vi against the bartop and Vi folded over it, her elbows splayed against the old, polished wood. Sevika molded herself to Vi’s back. Her face was in Vi’s hair, taking greedy sniffs that Vi knew she shouldn’t allow—she wasn’t some omega to scent and claim—but all she could do was press back against the solid weight, demanding more.

“You smell so fucking desperate,” Sevika growled into her skin. She pawed at Vi’s hips, grinding hard against her, the edge of the bar digging bruises into Vi’s ribs. “No topside omega pussy for you down here, huh? You’re stuck with me instead.”

There was something Vi should say to that. Some snarling, snapping defense of the only omega who had ever invited Vi into her bed, but she was beyond words, could only sob with need because Sevika was touching her but she wasn’t touching her enough. There was still a ghost of Caitlyn at the back of her throat—she always smelled like sunlight to Vi, and now it was burning her, unbearable. She threw her head back and sucked in little tortured gasps until all she could taste was Sevika.

When Sevika reached around to pull Vi’s belt open, Vi didn’t immediately register what was going to happen. She thrust against her hand, hoping for friction, her cock throbbing and desperate for any attention. The world beyond the bar had gone soft and indistinct, less real than this endless moment and the promise of Sevika’s body, so the thought of Sevika having plans was nonsense, literally unthinkable. She didn’t have a clear picture of what those plans entailed until Sevika shoved her pants and boxers down and started palming her ass with greedy fingers.

A bolt of animal panic struck Vi. Instinct had her scrabbling at the bartop, trying to crawl out from under the rival alpha, but Sevika wrapped her mechanical hand around the back of Vi’s neck, forcing her head down, the sharp points of her claws pressed lightly to Vi’s throat.

“Easy,” Sevika said calmly. Her scent shifted, the smoky edge of it softening into something almost sweet, like Vi was a pup that needed to be comforted or a heat-sick omega she had to quiet. “I’ll make it better.”

Vi whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut, humiliated more by her reaction to the smell than the way her need was boiling over. Her cock bobbed in front of her, untouched, swollen, and weeping. Alphas didn’t act like this. Alphas didn’t want this. “‘M not your—fucking—omega,” Vi ground out between pathetic noises she couldn’t swallow.

Sevika chuckled. “No chance of that.”

With inhuman speed, Sevika’s metal hand leapt from her Vi’s neck to her hair, grabbed a fistful, and snapped her head back, forcing a hiss of pain out of Vi. When she drew breath to curse Sevika out, Sevika’s other hand pried her jaws apart and forced two blunt fingers into her mouth.

“Bite me and I’ll knock your teeth out,” she said.

Vi swallowed, locking her jaw open against the intrusion. Sevika gave a short, satisfied hum and started to lazily explore Vi’s mouth, testing the points of her fangs, pressing Vi’s tongue flat and stroking back toward her throat. Vi hung there, drooling, trapped between Sevika’s probing and the solid bulk behind her. She stretched her jaw wider when Sevika added another finger.

“Good boy.” Sevika withdrew, slapped Vi lightly on the cheek with her spit-slick hand, and reached between them again.

“Fuck!” Vi gasped. Her body seized like she’d been electrocuted at the first cool press of Sevika’s fingers against her hole. She arched away, trembling, afraid it would hurt and afraid of how badly she wanted it anyway, realizing with dread that she would endure any amount of pain to keep Sevika pressed against her. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as she forced her rigid muscles to move and pushed herself back, whining low and broken when the tip of one finger sank inside.

And then it was gone again.

“Don’t rush me,” Sevika chided. She braced Vi’s hip with her metal hand, holding her still. “I can make it good if you relax.”

Vi huffed in frustration, shoulders up around her ears, eyes closed so tightly she could hear the muscles vibrating in her skull. She was trying. She didn’t know how.

Sevika came down against her back again, her fingers patiently rubbing the rim of Vi’s hole. She hooked her chin over Vi’s shoulder, rubbing against her cheek to cheek, trailing the edge of her jaw along Vi’s neck, first one side and then the other, until Sevika’s scent covered her own, like she belonged to—

“I said, relax,” Sevika breathed against her ear.

There was something wrong with her. She did.

Her shoulders fell. Her fists, driven hard against the bar, unknotted. She ducked her head and nuzzled up against Sevika, trying to get more of that smoke-and-sugar smell, working it into her hair, tilting her chin up to bare her throat. Sevika nipped appreciatively at the hinge of her jaw and when her finger slid inside of Vi again it barely hurt at all.

There was a stretch and a burn, but no pain, or at least not the kind of pain that made her want to stop. She felt alive and in her body the way she only ever did in the middle of a fight, warm and loose, every part of her attuned to the other person, action and reaction, waiting for the impact. She squirmed against Sevika’s grip, wanting more, wanting her to grab the slippery, insubstantial thing that was all Vi had ever been and hold still it inside her body until Vi didn’t have to be anything else.

It seemed to go on forever and Vi was surprised, disappointed, when Sevika withdrew entirely, only to take a shivery little gasp when she returned with two fingers. Her cock jerked hard toward her belly and she wrapped a hand around herself, squeezing the oversensitive base, and the simple relief of pressure where she needed it pulled a moan from her. One finger had already felt like so much, she didn’t see how she could take any more, but she couldn’t pretend she didn’t want it. She was practically dripping onto the floor.

“Yeah, you can touch yourself, pup,” Sevika said. She kicked Vi’s legs as far apart as they would go with her pants around her knees, but neither of them were willing to pause long enough to take them off. ‘That’s it. Let me in.”

Vi did as she was told while Sevika stretched her open, so slick with precum she could hear herself fucking her own hand, an unsatisfying, frictionless glide. She bore down on Sevika’s fingers, letting out little whines and gasps every time she thought she was full and Sevika made her take a little more, shivering whenever Sevika drooled more saliva into the cleft of her ass to keep her wet. It would be so easy for Sevika to hurt her. Every second that passed was another mark against her sanity. She was spread open the way she’d only wondered about at her most lonely, in the middle of the night in her cold cell at Stillwater or her grimy undercity flat that wasn’t much better, and then she’d wake up the next morning and pretend she didn’t need anyone or anything. She should be afraid, threatened, fighting back and making Sevika take it instead, so everyone would know how strong she was, but she wasn’t. She didn’t want to. Sevika was filling something in her that had been empty a long time.

But her body was only satisfied for so long. She humped her fist frantically, whimpering on every exhale, chasing a release she couldn’t reach, not like this. An alpha in rut needed to fuck and tie and breed and no matter how much she wanted it to be, this wasn’t enough. Sevika would take what she wanted and get bored and Vi would be alone again, out of her mind, gone, like she’d been when they’d finally cracked open the cell in Stillwater and found her bleeding on the floor. It would have been kinder to beat her unconscious and leave her in the street than to give her this only halfway.

Sevika touched something inside her that made her see white.

She came in a messy rush over her hand. Sevika dragged the orgasm out of her on a length of barbed wire, the pleasure a knife in her gut. She hadn’t even popped her knot. She didn’t know that was possible, and when the last trembling aftershocks faded she felt achy and fragile, her rut less appeased than it was whetted to a keen razor’s edge poised to split her open.

“Sevika,” she pled weakly, sparks dancing up and down her spine.

“That’s it. Nice and soft for me.” Sevika grunted appreciatively and took her hand away, which Vi wanted to protest until she felt Sevika fumbling with the fly of her own pants. Oh. Oh fuck.

“Wait, wait,” she said, twisting against Sevika’s hold. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight over her shoulder. Sevika had freed her cock, which stood proudly between them, but more than that; her eyes blown dark with only a thin rim of silver, breathing heavily through her nose, her teeth bared just enough for Vi to see the tips of her fangs.

“What?” Sevika said, a dark current of frustration edging the word. “I know that wasn’t enough.”

Vi shuddered at the matter-of-fact way she said it. Sevika knew exactly what it felt like to be in Vi’s body, knew how angry and desperate and hungry she was, caught in the middle of a battle between her biology, her pride, and some nameless third thing that was winning handily, growing stronger all the time. She swallowed. Her hand, the one that wasn’t a sticky mess, fell to where Sevika was still holding her steady. The prosthetic ticked gently against Vi’s skin, all sharp points and restrained power. Sevika could probably fracture her hip with no effort at all. Instead, she hesitated a moment, then grunted and let Vi go, taking half a step back like that was as much distance as she was willing to surrender.

Vi turned, putting her back against the bar, resisting the impulse to hide herself, still hard despite her orgasm. She felt cold without Sevika against her and need hazed the edges of her thoughts again, a feral, reckless desire to bare her throat and let Sevika do whatever she wanted. She bit her lip and dredged words up from the dark pit where all her higher brain functions were slowly disappearing. “I’m not your omega.”

Sevika’s expression didn’t change. “Didn’t say I want you to be.”

The same words from someone else might’ve been raw disdain, but Vi heard something else in them, something that put a thin, deep crack in the wall she’d raised around her heart. She’d rebuilt it higher and stronger since the fight with Cait in the cistern, and buried beneath that wall was a truth she kept forgetting. A rule she broke again and again. Never let anyone see you. If they knew, they would hate you.

But Sevika didn’t. Not for this, and this was all that mattered right now. Vi tried to find the right words—I don’t want to be mounted, I won’t let you pretend—but she settled for reaching out for Sevika, reeling her back in until their hips were flush. Her awareness shrank to where Sevika’s cock pressed hot and hard against her. Sevika growled low in her throat and ground them together, deliberate and teasing, and Vi hissed like she’d been burned.

“Okay, pup,” she said, voice thick with her own hunger. “Have it your way.”

Sevika wrapped a broad hand around them both and Vi saw stars. She grabbed for Sevika’s arms, metal digging into her palm, the taut muscle of Sevika’s forearm flexing as she moved. It felt so good, so much better than her own hand, fuck, she couldn’t imagine an omega’s cunt feeling this good. She rose up on the balls of her feet and thrust into the circle of Sevika’s fingers with arrhythmic twitches of her hips she couldn’t control, punctuated with high-pitched, staccato whines. She would come again like this. Maybe it still wouldn’t be enough, but she would let Sevika use her until they were sore and filthy and exhausted, just as long as Sevika didn’t stop.

“Feel so good like this,” Sevika growled through her teeth. She leaned forward, crushing Vi against the edge of bar, and rubbed her jaw over Vi’s cheek, scraped her teeth against her ear. It put Vi’s face in Sevika’s neck and her eyes fluttered closed. “All hard and needy for me. Not thinking about your princess now, are you?”

Vi shook her head fiercely, dragging her mouth against Sevika’s skin. She smelled unreal, scent pouring off her vicious and wild, a cloud of possessive alpha so thick they should have been invisible in the fog. Vi dragged her tongue along Sevika’s clavicle, the slick trail shining in the low neon glow from outside, and then sealed her lips around her swollen scent gland, licking and sucking, rooting for more. It was like trying to catch smoke in her mouth. Her teeth itched.

“Fuck!” Sevika grunted. She pulled Vi off her with a wet pop and stepped away, gripping the base of her cock.

Vi keened in frustration, not fair, she’d been so close. She babbled something to Sevika, the words not quite lining up into sentences, but Sevika answered like she understood.

“Too close.” She sounded out of breath, which set something in Vi crowing in triumph, practically preening. “I’m not the one in rut. And I’m not done with you yet.”

Vi wasn’t sure how long that would be true. She didn’t know if alphas could set each other off the way an omega’s heat did, but Sevika was sucking down Vi’s rut stink like it was a clean topside breeze and her eyes were deep, black holes. If this was Sevika not in rut, Vi couldn’t imagine how she would look half out of her mind. Like Vi was now. She shivered with greed.

“Please,” was all she could say.

Sevika surged against her with a snarl. Both of them fumbled to rip her pants down over her boots, getting in each other’s way more than anything else. The moment one of Vi’s legs was free, Sevika yanked her off the ground with a hand behind her knee and hooked an ankle around her hips, leaving Vi balanced precariously on the edge of the bar. They slid against each other again, Sevika leaking almost as much as Vi. Her cock was flushed a pretty dark brown and Vi had a brief, intense desire to put her mouth around it just to see how much she could take. Sevika wasn’t small, certainly larger than two fingers, but like this they didn’t look that much different. She thrust against Vi a few times, smearing herself with Vi’s precum, and then pulled back to place the tip against Vi’s hole.

Something prodded the back of her mind, reminding her she should be afraid, but she wasn’t. There was just a sick, bottomless want cracking down the middle of her chest and for once she knew exactly what she needed to make it stop.

“Do it, do it, fucking do it already.” Sevika didn’t answer, her careful attention on the place she was pressed against Vi. With a flash of hysterical despair, Vi thought it wouldn’t work, that it wasn’t meant to work, and then the head of Sevika’s cock sank inside with an exquisite stretch of almost-pain. She gasped, eyes widening in shock, hands knotting in the front of Sevika’s shirt. “Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck.”

Sevika groaned, eyes falling closed like she was savoring the first sip of bourbon, which Vi might have appreciated if she’d been capable of noticing anything except the way Sevika was splitting her open.

“Please,” she said, over and over, a meaningless stream of “please, please, please, please.” She could have been asking for Sevika to stop, or wait, or just pleading for more, but it was impossible to know what she wanted. For one perfect moment, she didn’t want anything. She was just sensation, a receiver tuned to Sevika’s frequency, hands on her hips, breath in her mouth, the trembling tension in her core as she held them both up, Sevika sinking into her a little at a time, taking everything Vi could give and then demanding more.

Vi must have been making some kind of noise, because Sevika was shushing her, eyes screwed shut in concentration as she fucked into Vi with short, rocking thrusts. “Hush, pup, relax, taking it so well.” She grunted when Vi clenched down around her. “Fuck, you’re so tight. Gonna take my knot, little alpha?”

Vi’s voice broke around a moan. She didn’t know if she could, she didn’t know if there was room, but every stupid, rut-fogged corner of her brain insisted that she could and she would. Sevika took Vi’s cock in hand again and Vi’s body lit up like a flickering neon sign, head falling back with an anguished cry as Sevika pushed inside the final inch, right above the swell of her knot.

She froze like that, chest heaving like a bellows as her overwhelmed nervous system tried to make sense of Sevika heavy and twitching inside her, a distant pulse thrumming against Vi’s walls that must have been Sevika’s fucking heartbeat. Sevika nosed along Vi’s clenched jaw and, holy fuck, they were close, which was stupid, she was inside Vi, but they was so close, the humidity of her mouth clinging to Vi’s skin, her voice more vibration than sound when she said, “I’m gonna break you now, pretty boy.”

Then she pulled back and drove the whole length of her cock into Vi with one smooth thrust.

Vi howled. She curled toward Sevika, clutched the back of her neck, trying and failing to catch her breath because it felt like Sevika was inside her fucking lungs, punching small bruised noises out of her. She couldn’t move, just hung helplessly from Sevika’s strong shoulders. Every thrust of Sevika’s hips forced her up into Sevika’s hand and every dazed twitch into her fist made Sevika brush some new spot inside of her. She wasn’t in control and, with the inarticulate demands of her rut mostly silenced by the immediacy of skin and sweat and scent, she couldn’t remember why she’d wanted to be in the first place. Sevika would do whatever she wanted and Vi would take it, Vi would be so, so good—

A drop of ice raced down Vi’s spine when the hard edge of Sevika’s teeth scraped her neck.

Her heart rocketed into her throat, but the rest of her body went liquid at the threat, falling limply back against the counter. Sevika made a low, frustrated noise when Vi dropped out of reach and bent close over her, hiking Vi’s hips up and bracing one knee against the bar top, the new angle promising the first stretch around the final obstacle of her knot. Sevika’s mouth went back to her throat like metal shavings to a magnet, sucking at the soft hollow below her jaw, worrying her straining tendon, trailing down to tease again at the heavy, swollen gland at the base of Vi’s neck.

“Dont,” Vi gasped. She brought her trembling arms up to push Sevika way, found instead that they grabbed at her and didn’t let go. “Don’t—fucking—bite me.

Sevika hesitated, panting against Vi’s neck, the pitch of her growls softening a little. She shook her head somewhere below Vi’s eyeline, her bangs ghosting against Vi’s cheek.

“Sevika,” Vi said, a plea and a warning. Sevika leaned in slowly, gave a sharp, deliberate nip right at the edge of the gland, and Vi’s body strained toward her without her permission, aching for the sweet sting of teeth.

“You’d like that,” Sevika rumbled. “You want it. Mated to some scumbag undercity alpha. Just a needy, desperate pup that needs a firm hand.” She squeezed hard around the base of Vi’s cock, where her knot was starting to form, and Vi keened.

“No, no,” she babbled, clawing at Sevika.

“What would your princess say if she saw you? My mark on your pretty fucking neck. My come dripping down your legs.”

A shudder wracked Vi’s body. She didn’t want to think about Caitlyn, but it was too late. She saw it clear as the Piltover sky. Saw Caitlyn’s eyes widen in confusion and disgust at the mark printed in her flesh, proudly proclaiming she was undercity trash for all to see, indisputable proof that she belonged.

“Say it,” Sevika demanded. The sharp point of a fang pressed dangerously against the gland, dimpling the skin, and Sevika’s voice came thick and muffled, smearing spit into the curve of her neck. “Say you want my bite. Say you want my fucking knot, you want me to breed your tight little ass, fuck.”

This struck whatever was left of Vi’s mind as faintly absurd, but rut or no rut, an alpha was an alpha, and there was a much larger part of Vi, whether it was her alpha instincts twisted back on themselves or just some buried part of Vi herself, that screamed yes yes breed me breed me BREED ME.

“I want it!” she cried. “I want it, please, Sevika, please, please.”

With a roar, Sevika forced her knot into Vi’s strained, fluttering hole with a bright shock of pain that immediately became an obliterating rush of yes good stretch yes full yes mine yes and the warm spill in her gut lit her on fire from the inside out. Sevika’s teeth clamped firmly in her neck and her hand was trapped between them, wrapped around Vi’s knot with perfect pressure, her cock staining Sevika’s sweat-soaked shirt, rubbed raw with every aborted thrust as Sevika emptied herself inside Vi. She was so close, the need contorting in her body like violence, like a scream trapped in her throat, like a fractured Hexgem sizzling and sparking, one careless touch from tearing them both apart.

Her eyes rolled in their sockets. The rut had pulled her out of the driver’s seat, or maybe it had blurred the edges too well and now Vi and the primal need to fuck and come and claim were the same animal, too far gone for anything like caution or restraint. Her jaw ached like a bad right hook and her teeth were too big for her mouth, drool running down over her chin, and Sevika was right there smelling so sweet and perfect and fucking hers.

She lurched forward with a deep, wordless growl and snapped her teeth less than half an inch from Sevika’s throat. She would have gotten what she wanted if Sevika hadn’t released the hold on her neck and reared away. Vi snapped once, twice more in frustration, her fangs coming together with an empty click.

“Fuck,” Sevika said with an small, anxious laugh. Her expression was slack and hazy with her own orgasm, cock still twitching inside Vi, adding another weak jet of come to the heat pooling in Vi’s belly every time she rocked her hips, and she barely seemed fazed by Vi’s outburst. Cool understanding lit in her eyes. It was like a balm against Vi’s skin. Sevika knew what she needed. Sevika would give it to her. The thought was enough to stun Vi into quiet complacence long enough for Sevika to do—whatever the fuck she was going to do.

Which, unfortunately, was take her hand off Vi’s cock. Vi yowled. The sudden loss of pressure was indistinguishable from pain and she arched her back, straining against Sevika’s weight, forgetting about the place they were tied until pain tore through her thighs and lower back and she collapsed, dizzy, against the bar.

Sevika hissed through her teeth, muttered something like, “Gonna hurt yourself,” and then her metal fingers circled Vi’s knot with precise, careful strength, not moving, just holding fast where Vi needed it. Vi whined, bewildered and pleased and a little scared of the cruel edges pressed where she was vulnerable, delicate skin flushed against the cold steel palm. She couldn’t even ask, couldn’t speak, not with the urge to bite hiding behind her teeth, and she couldn’t hold it either, the rut pried her open, fangs gleaming and sharp, and Sevika shoved her forearm between her jaws like a gag.

“Do it,” she commanded.

Vi didn’t think. Just bit down hard. Sweat-salt and resistance, then the yield, the give, skin parting around Vi’s teeth, iron trickling over her tongue. Her rut howled when they locked together, Sevika’s knot stretching her out, her teeth fastened in Sevika’s arm. She swallowed convulsively, a pitiful noise dripping out of her, her nose full of the smell of blood.

Sevika’s prosthetic tightened a degree, just this side of pain, and a possessive flare of smoke-scent billowed over them like standing inside a house fire. Vi’s orgasm struck with the force of an explosion, a wave of heat and light that broke against her and seared her mind clean.

—

Awareness came back to Vi a little at a time. The edge of the bar digging into her back. An unpleasant sticky feeling from the sweat trapped inside her jacket. Her legs looped lazily around Sevika’s hips, pants dangling from one ankle. Sevika pinning her down, taking their weight easily on her prosthetic arm. Vi’s knot had deflated already with nothing to tie, but Sevika’s still held firm.

She swept the corners of her mind, searching for discomfort or fear, trapped like she was, but a content alpha smell smoldered around them and Vi found she really didn’t mind.

After awhile, she worked enough enough moisture into her sore throat to say, “I fucking reek.” There was space for words in her head again, hunger temporarily satiated, and even though all she wanted was to curl up to sleep like an animal after a good meal, she wasn’t going to let Sevika think she’d fucked her completely brainless.

“You?” Sevika scoffed. “I smell like some desperate whelp’s first rut.”

“It’s not my first,” she complained. Her overheated skin still managed a self-conscious flush. But it was her first, in some ways. The first she had spent with someone else. Maybe under other circumstances, she wouldn’t have picked Sevika, another alpha, an enemy, but now—well, she’d take this over her actual first rut any time. “Maybe finish somewhere a little more comfortable next time.”

“Pretty demanding for someone stuffed full of my knot,” Sevika husked.

Sevika had her face in Vi’s neck, laving her tongue over Vi’s skin, spreading her scent everywhere she could reach. Her bite hadn’t broken the skin, but it had left a tender bruise that ached at even that gentle touch. The taste of blood lingered in her own mouth, but there was nothing where she had bitten to tie them together. Disappointment touched her faintly, a cold draft whispering between them.

“Maybe I’ll knot you,” she pouted.

Vi felt Sevika’s laugh in every part of her body. She started to purr, draped over Vi, two alphas stuck together like the punchline to a bad joke, and didn’t even seem embarrassed. The lingering chill inside Vi melted and she tucked her nose into the hollow of Sevika’s throat, happy enough to soak in the pleased smell of her alpha while she had it without worrying how long it would last.

“I’d like to see you try, little alpha,” Sevika muttered into the soft place below her ear.

Vi knew a challenge when she heard one.