by Aiden Bates
"Yeah," Darren said. "I have. But not, you know, with whatever it is you're fucking me with."
"Okay," Blake said again. "So you... God. You don't know anything, do you?"
Darren was trying to twist around to look at him, but Blake gently held him in place. "You need to hold still, darling. You'll pull on the knot, and I'm not down enough that I can pull out. Don't hurt yourself."
"Knot," Darren said like a disbelieving echo. "You have a... Oh my god."
"Yeah," Blake said, feeling the word twist a little in his mouth, come out flat and a little sharp. He’d never thought it could be a bad thing. Never thought of it as strange. "Yeah, baby. I have a knot. I thought you'd kind of know that. But that's okay," he added quickly when he felt Darren tense in his arms. "It's okay that you didn't know."
He reached up and stroked a hand through his omega's hair, stroked the other over his chest and belly.
"When you said you didn't have a pack, last night, that no one had ever taken care of you, you meant that you were... That you'd never had a pack at all? That no one had ever taught you anything about who you are?"
"A pack?" Darren shook his head. "I meant that my parents died when I was 6 and I've been passed around the foster system ever since. I don't remember them at all. They told me that I wouldn't, at this point. Because of the head injury from the car accident."
It was Blake's turn to provide a disbelieving echo. "The car accident."
"Yes," Darren said, turning his head to look up at Blake with his eyebrows furrowed together. "Why is that weird?"
"Okay," Blake said. "I guess I'll have to start at the beginning. And the beginning is this. You're a shape shifter."
Darren went very still in his arms. For a long moment he didn't say anything. Blake hardly felt him breathing.
"If I'm a shape shifter, he said finally, "Why haven't I ever shifted shape?"
That was a good question. The first shift was usually triggered by some stressor, unless the shifter had grown up with a pack and had been trained from childhood. Most shifters these days had. In the old days, back when shifters had spent a lot of their time lonely and on the run, it hadn't been so uncommon for a shifter to learn that they were one when they suddenly got too angry one day and changed.
"Usually the first shift happens for a reason. You get angry. Or you're trying to defend yourself or someone else."
Darren laughed. "There's you're problem then. I don't really defend myself. I definitely don't defend anyone else. Never had anyone to defend. I'm probably a mouse shifter."
Blake's laugh was much less bitter than Darren's. "You aren't a mouse shifter, darling. You're a wolf."
He felt the shudder run through Darren's body, and then Darren was turning again to look at him, wide-eyed. "I'm a wolf?" he asked, his voice tight in his throat. "You mean to tell me that I'm really a wolf? That I can change? That-" He cut himself off because he sounded like he was ready to choke on his own words, his voice shaking more than his body was. "I..." Tears spilled over.
"Oh, sweetheart." Blake wasn't sure why he would be upset about leaning that he could take a wolf's shape. It was kind of a cool thing to be able to do. But he reached out all the same and brushed the tears form his mate's face. "You don't need to fear it."
"Fear it?" This time when Darren laughed he sounded as though he laughed because he could not stop, and there was a light in his eyes that Blake had only seen flickering there before. "I'm not afraid, Blake. I... Oh my god. Do you even understand what this means?" His eyes were searching Blake's. "Every night I dream about being a wolf. All growing up, all I wanted was to be Julie – or you know, Darren – of the wolves, and move to Alaska and live with them."
Darren looked down into those suddenly excited brown eyes.
"And you're telling me that I can," Darren continued. "You-” He stopped as abruptly as though he'd run into a wall.
Blake laid his palm against Darren's cheek, looking down at him still as his expression changed, drawing in on itself.
"What is it, sweetheart? What's wrong now?" And there was no ire in his voice, only worry.
"This is all some kind of elaborate joke, isn't it?" Darren whispered, fear in his voice. "I don't know how you even knew. I don't talk to anyone. It's not like there's anyone who could have told you. I'm the only one who knows. So how did you know that you could come here, and that it would..." He choked back the words that would follow, tears spilling over again. "God," he said, reaching up to brush them away with a sharp, impatient gesture. "I'm so pathetic. No wonder none of them wanted me."
He was trying to pull away again, wiggling on Blake's knot, which was swiftly going down, the scent of distressed omega making it deflate so he could pull out of his mate and go see to the danger, but Blake held Darren still and didn't pull back.
"It's not a lie," he said. "Darren. It is not a lie. I promise you. I swear on everything I hold sacred that I am not lying to you and never would."
Darren stopped squirming to look up at him, miserable and flushed with shame, his eyes still wet.
"I can prove it to you," Blake promised. "If you'll let me? Give me just a minute, and I'll show you, I promise."
After a moment of silence, Darren nodded. "Okay," he said softly. "I'll let you prove it."
Blake let a sigh of relief escape him.
It was another moment for his knot to go down, and then he slid out of Darren, feeling his boy wince a little at the sudden rush of wet as he moved out. When he stood, Darren sat up too, not wanting to be laying down in front of him, vulnerable. He sat up cross-legged on his bed, and laid his hands on his knees, and he watched Blake with eyes that said he wasn't expecting anything, that he had given up on expecting anything from anyone long ago. No one had ever given him what he needed. But Blake was going to give it to him now. He was going to lay his own mark over Darren's past, was going to fill him up with so much love that there was no more room for pain. He knew now why he had been brought here, to this small town in Iowa. Blake had been meant for him. And he was meant for Darren. Together, they would be one piece.
"Okay, sweetheart. Good. Just sit there and watch me, and I'll show you."
He lifted his arms above his head, stretching. He had to convince Darren, because if he couldn't, then Darren would leave, and if Darren left they would both be in trouble. A mating bond, once made, did not break without death. And if Darren went too far, hated Blake too much, then it would kill them both before it let either of them go. He hadn't meant to bite the boy, but it didn't make him feel any less guilty for it now. He hadn't given Darren much of a choice beyond staying with him, and what did they really know about each other?
In the center of the floor, Blake moved in a slow circle, swinging his arms, tipping his head from side to side. The stretching didn't exactly look very elegant or dangerous, but it would help when he made the shift, and he could look elegant and dangerous then. He turned to face Darren once more, and reached for his wolf.
The wolf spread through him vein by vein, nerve by nerve, and he felt the first chances begin to take place, dropping to all fours as bone shifted and teeth grew, and then he was a wolf, sitting before Darren with his ears pricked forward and his tail wagging, and Darren was looking at him with wide eyes. Slowly, slowly, Blake moved closer, laying himself down on his belly so that Darren could reach out and touch him.
A gentle hand settled down on the top of his head, moving very slowly, and then Darren was scratching behind his ears, and Blake's tail thudded against the floor, making Darren suddenly laugh. The sound bubbled up out of him like it wouldn't stop, and new tears were spilling from his eyes, but Blake could tell these tears were not ones of pain, and he nudged in closer, snuggled himself up under Darren's arm until Darren wrapped the arm around him and drew him close, leaning into his support.
"Oh my god," he was saying, over and over. "I can't believe it."
And then he turned and looked down at Blake.
"Okay," he said. "I do b
elieve it. Because you showed me. But I need to know more. I need you to tell me."
Blake reached again for the shift, and a moment later he was sitting against Darren's side still, but in his human form, wrapping an arm around the slight figure in returning, and drawing his boy in close to him.
"What do you want to know, sweetheart?"
"Keep going again from the beginning," Darren said. "Where you left off. I'm a shape shifter, who can shapeshift into a wolf."
Blake nodded.
"Relevant to you, there are several kinds of wolves, which you may already know: Alpha, beta, and omega. What you will not know is that in wolf shifters, the omega is the one who can carry children. Female betas can also carry, but only in omegas can the male bear a child."
Darren's eyes were enormous.
"Are you telling me I can get pregnant?"
Blake nodded.
"I can get pregnant," Darren said. "And I'm in heat, and you didn't use birth control."
Blake grinned a little self-deprecatingly. "Yes," he said. "We did not use birth control."
"Okay," Darren said, more to himself than to Blake. "Okay." And he took a deep breath and let it out slowly "Well that's totally new and unexpected. I definitely didn't see that coming at all." And if his voice shook a little in the beginning, he had smoothed it out by the end, and he was looking up at Blake with wide, trusting eyes.
It was, Blake thought, almost better that it had happened this way, that he had claimed Darren as his own before he had known that Darren knew nothing, for this way there was trust between them. Love and warmth. And Darren trusted him, whether he knew it or not, because he didn't have to know he was a shifter or an omega for the bond to take its effect. It might be someone lessened by him not expecting it, not simply given in to it, but there were biological imperatives.
"As you have guessed," Blake said. "You are an omega. And I am an Alpha. Your Alpha. I claimed you last night, in the heat, though it had not been my intention in the beginning. Usually one courts, and I ought to have invited you to meet my pack, to gain the approval of those I live with before taking an omega." He smiled. "But it seems that I was not interested in such long and drawn out protocols, because last night I disregarded them all."
"You claimed me," Darren said, and though there was a flicker of fear in his eyes, there was wonder in his expression. "And you will... You cannot leave me now?"
Blake shook his head, reaching down and drawing his omega closer. "No, my darling. I can't leave you now. And I wouldn't, even if I could."
Darren turned his face against Blake's shoulder. "Everyone else has left me," he said softly.
"I won't," Darren promised. "I won't leave you, sweetheart. You're mine. And I am yours just as much. We belong to each other now."
Chapter Seven
To belong to someone – and to have them in return – was something Darren had never thought he would have, and yet here he was being promised a future with a man who could turn into a wolf. And that was a little weird, but it was also really fucking cool, and maybe, if he was a shifter too, then Blake could teach him. And he could apparently get pregnant, which was a little more weird than the wolf thing, actually, but maybe he did want it. The idea had made him come, just a few minutes ago. Getting off to it in the middle of sex was a little different from actually being interested in having children, but he didn’t think he would mind, really. And maybe that was a little more proof of what he was.
“So what happens now?”
"Well," Blake said. "That depends a little on you. The fact of the matter is, I did bite you. We're mates. For wolves, that's forever. And I know that it's probably upsetting, but I'll do my best to make it up to you, sweetheart, I promise."
"You know something funny?" Darren looked up at Blake. "It should be upsetting. I mean, it's like an arranged marriage. You're stuck for the rest of your life with someone you hardly know. But I'm not upset. Even though I feel like I should be. Which probably means I'm super screwed up in the head. So desperate for love that I'll take the very next person to come along, but, I can feel you."
And he could. He could feel Blake like an echo, warm and fond, and there was a tenderness in him every time he looked at Darren that Darren hadn't known it was possible for anyone to feel for him, and he was pretty sure that could be enough. He managed a smile.
"So I guess if I'm screwed up in the head, at least you're stuck with me, and you can't run away screaming once you figure it out."
Blake laughed. Darren loved the way he sounded when he laughed, and he wasn't sure if the warm flush of pleasure that he felt at coaxing the sound was something that people always felt, or if it was an omega thing. Because Darren didn't know about shifters, but he knew about wolves. He knew that omegas were the submissive wolves, and in humans it probably translated differently, even if those humans were also wolves, at least a little bit. It translated like this: wanting to make his mate smile, make him laugh. Wanting to hear Blake's low, rough voice tell him how good he was.
"Can you teach me how to shift?"
Blake smiled.
"I can. And I can take you back north with me. To Minnesota. To meet my pack."
To meet his pack. Fear twisted itself into a knot with anticipation in his stomach. He would have a pack now. Blake's pack. Because he belonged to Blake.
"Will they be made that you made me your mate without their permission?"
Blake shrugged. "They'll be a little less than pleased. A few of the council members are very traditional, but they won't throw you out. Not unless they throw me out too, and they won't do that. I may not be Alpha of the pack, but my uncle is, and he's not going to let them do anything to harm me, or you, I promise.
Darren nodded, though he was still afraid. He trusted Blake with the kind of trust that must have been a side effect of the bond, but that was okay, because so far Blake had been nothing but trustworthy. Nothing but gentle. And he could feel Blake, the honesty in him.
"I do want to go with you," he said, looking around his tiny apartment with its single bookshelf and ancient mattress. "There's nothing for me here, at all." He almost laughed. "God, you can't imagine how many times I've wanted to just walk out of my job and never come back. And now I can. Which is... kind of crazy." He suddenly stilled. "Oh. Unless you need me to have a job? Because if you need me to have a job, I can. I mean, I'm good at some things. I know I don't have a college education, but I've been working at Walmart, and at the call center. I'm sure they have a Walmart in Minnesota."
Blake laid a finger over his lips.
"I do not need you to have a job,” he said. “If you wish to have one? That is an entirely different matter. One we can certainly discuss. But no, I do not require that you take one. I make enough to support us both in my own work."
Darren nipped gently at the end of his Alpha's finger, and it was funny how easy it was becoming to think of him that way. Blake looked down at him.
"Are you sure you wish to do that, darling?" he asked, eyebrows lifting. "You never know how I'm going to react to you biting me."
Darren was fairly certain, from the rush of amusement and arousal that he had felt wash over him, that he knew exactly how Blake was going to react. Though his cheeks flushed at his boldness, he let his mouth slowly slide down Blake's finger, and his tongue traced a line along the underside. A new wave of heat was rising inside him, making him want. Blake growled, and then there was an arm around his waist, spilling him onto the blankets, and Blake was following him down, and kissing him like he was making a claim, hand tangling in his hair. Yes, Darren had been pretty sure of how Blake was going to react.
----
The heat was a week long. They spent it fucking like rabbits in his increasingly rumpled blankets and completely ignoring his phone, and his increasingly irate bosses. He really just didn't care about them. Didn't care about anything other than Blake, and Blake's cock, and Blake's hands, and Blake's mouth. All of which were very important things to care abo
ut. And in between waves of the heat, when he was laying quietly in Blake's arms, nibbling on whatever food Blake had managed to cobble together from the nonsensical gathering of foodstuffs in his cabinets and fridge, Blake would tell him more about being a shifter, and more about Alpha's and omegas. He told him about Minnesota, and the town where he lived on the edge of a lake. The house where Darren would live with him when they returned.
On the last day of Darren's heat, he was almost sad to see it go, except that he thought he might like a chance to be with Blake without the heat driving them both. When he was thinking clearly, and he could remember everything, and they could take it slow. They lay in bed together after, curled close around each other, sated and sleepy, and Darren reached out and turned on the computer, put on a movie and watched it with Blake's arms around him. Then, together, they slept.
The next morning, Darren woke for the first time with a completely clear head, and didn't immediately think about sex. Well, that wasn't exactly true. He just didn't immediately think about how much he needed Blake's knot inside him, filling him up, getting him knocked up. And yeah, that had become a lot bigger part of his fantasies. The morning after his heat, Darren woke up thinking about Blake's cock, and how much he'd like to have it in his mouth. Glancing up at his still sleeping Alpha, Darren shimmied down under the blankets and settled between Blake's legs, careful not to wake him. Then he leaned down and pressed his lips to the head of his Alpha's cock.
It really was a perfect cock. Or maybe he was just biased. Darren supposed, as he slid his mouth slowly down the length until the head of his Alpha's cock brushed the back of his throat and he had to pull back, that it didn't matter much, either way, because he was the one currently seeing it. The one currently taking it into his mouth again until he couldn't take it any deeper. Blake moaned above him, and then the covers were thrown back, and Blake moaned again. Darren lifted his eyes to see grey ones looking back at him, hungry, and a pleased smile on his mate's lips.