by Noah Harris
13
Luna
Julian
The problem is that it all seems so clear to him. It’s obvious to me, too, but I know the kinds of lies the heat can tell. And as usual, my heat is ruining everything. I can’t trust either of us to be realistic, it’s not fair for either of us to commit to anything at all.
And right now, nothing is realistic for Alden. Thanks to the heat or the moon. Or both.
That dream or vision I had, the one that told me I had to go find Alden, when he was dying. I didn’t question it at all at the time. Just got my suit on and ran.
Is that what love is? Is that what Alden means when he talks about earning my love?
Or what about the sheer power rippling across Alden’s face and body as he shifted up on the platform? I wasn’t afraid, just upset I couldn’t help. It hurt because it was like looking in a mirror. But even worse than that, because it was Alden hurting.
There’s another howl so loud in my ears it rings like a bell. The agony of separation. I know how bad it is for me. That sound tells me how bad it is for him.
No matter what I do, I’m being cruel. Denying Alden hurts us both worse than dying. But giving in means taking advantage of him, his naiveté. It means getting off. Mechanically, conveniently. Using each other to masturbate, until we’re hurting. That’s the most heartbreaking thing I can imagine. So, I need a third option.
I’ve found a spot where I can lurk, where the shadows from my lamplight cross each other, and I can watch him. At least bear witness, to the half-monster behind the glass. Hurling itself with wordless rage against the window, deep gouges scratched into its heavy biceps. That face, so like a beast and so little like Alden. His roaring, half pain, half desire. All rage.
I’ve been through heats that felt this way. Pain always feels worse when you’re going through it, so I can’t really say how he feels. But it’s not a stranger looking out through Alden’s mad eyes now. It’s a very familiar heartbreak.
Worn out, wrung out, cried out, I make my way back over to the rise, just past where he’d be able to see me, and curl up. I never fully sleep, but I do rest. Beneath a starless dark and the endless, awful thudding of his huge beast’s body against the glass, a drum beat of nightmares.
“Jules. Julian.”
Alden’s voice wakes me, but from so far away I wonder where he’s gone now. I’m deliriously happy, for a moment, before I remember what’s happening.
I’ll need to be cool, act normal. Let him lead the way. I don’t want to shame him, but I also don’t want to start the whole thing up again.
“Hi,” I say when I’m close enough for him to see me through the glass. “How are you feeling?”
Alden hums, and I can hear the truth in that sound. He’s exhausted, and something else. Desperate for me to come closer, come right up to the glass. It’s all too much.
“Everything hurts,” Alden mutters, finally, and I close my eyes tight against the pain in his voice. “Before, it was kind of in a good way? But now it’s just…”
I know that feeling too. I nod. Still wary of coming closer.
“So,” Alden tries again. “Did you have time to think? I have to say, I…didn’t.”
A tiny grin accompanies the wry sorrow in his voice and I finally take a seat, leaning my head back against the glass. I’m almost certain I can somehow feel his burning heat on the other side.
“Alden? Why did you lock yourself up?”
Alden’s silent for a moment, unsure. “What do you mean?”
I’m not entirely clear on it either. But I’m thinking hard. I couldn’t put a finger on everything that upset me about last night, but I’m getting closer.
“Back in Roseland…in every pack I’ve ever seen, actually. The right thing to do would be to lock up the omega. Not the alpha.”
Alden’s aghast. “Why? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I sigh, trying to fight through this confusion. What am I trying to say? It feels important. “Well, because we’re precious. An omega can’t be put in danger. Risked.”
Alden scoffs at that. “So, don’t risk them,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
Maybe it is.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Alden? It never would occur to us to do it that way. It’s always on the omega. The alpha wants, and the omega chooses. He denies it, or he gives in to it. That’s how it works. You don’t argue with a thunderstorm, you just go inside. Learn to stay out of the rain.”
Alden’s getting angry. I can feel that in his heat now, too. “That’s gross, Julian. Why would I want anything I have to trick you into giving me?”
I don’t know. There’s a lot I’m finding out that I don’t know. I never asked.
“I don’t get shifters, I guess,” he sounds more hurt. “I want to protect you, and you are precious. But who would ever think about it like that? Locking you up because I was the one losing control. It’s sick.”
Something about his affronted human dignity, his wounded pride, awakens a strange sympathy in me. As if the man in him is offended my opinion could ever be so low. Like a real alpha isn’t about prowess at all, but about…what? Safety. Protecting, not just taking.
For a second, it’s like I can see every Julian I’ve ever been, going back in a line. From here back to Flight School, to first year, Roseland, back to my first heat, to my first full moon, realizing I was an omega. And back even further. To the first time I ever learned it was better to be an alpha than anything else, and better to be anything other than an omega. All the little Julians standing in a line, sweet and sour, dark and light. And all of them needed to hear that. Needed to hear my alpha, hear Alden Armstrong, say it. I wouldn’t even have known how to think it until he just said it, out loud, and I realized I’d known it all my life.
“I’m not a thunderstorm, and I’m not a monster. I’m your Alden, and I love you. It’s easier for me to be in here scratching myself to death and jacking off to the point of injury than to imagine being out there where I might scare you. I don’t get whoever could think otherwise.”
He honestly can’t, it’s all over his voice. And in that moment, he reminds me of something, just over the horizon, just on the tip of my tongue, that feels like it’s about to crack me open. What is it?
Strong but soft. That Captain Harbaugh thing, the thing we both love. That’s what Alden is talking about. Using all that strength to protect and lift me up, rather than just for getting what he wants. Because what he wants is to protect me and lift me up.
“I think you’re a very good man,” I say quietly, unsure what I’ll hear myself saying next. “After all this time thinking you were so high above me that I didn’t deserve you. And now I have you, and I still think somehow I don’t deserve it.”
Alden sighs. “That doesn’t give me any options. How do I possibly…”
And when I finally turn around, Alden’s face in the window is beautiful again.
“You don’t. You can’t convince me.”
Alden’s face falls, but I’m smiling through the tears now.
“But I am convinced.”
Alden’s shocked into that joyful awe he gets when no one’s watching.
“I’m going to open the door now,” I say, still a little unsteady, and Alden pulls back, afraid, arms up in protest. But I get it now. The Orion story was right. I found peace with the wolf in Alden. I’ll find my way to the man.
I just never expected that to be the scary part.
“Up there it could get to be so the waystation felt haunted. There were a lot of things getting louder and louder, like ghosts wanting revenge. Secrets like I love you, and I’m a shifter. Lots of surprises waiting to jump out.”
I nod, passing him some jam for our makeshift picnic. We’re still somewhat tentative around each other. A little anxious. I think he’s embarrassed or maybe he’s just waiting for the next disaster.
“But when I was in there, howling, I felt the opposite. Like so
mething was missing. Without you. It was like I was haunting myself up there. But down here, it was the hole you left that filled up with ghosts.”
The moon was around for four and a half billion years before anybody stepped onto her beautiful surface. Dry. Too hot and too cold, too dark and too bright. Lifeless. What was on the far side, the dark side, the side nobody ever saw? Nobody knew. It could be anything, so it was everything. That’s what Alden’s saying. Infinite monsters crowding into the tiniest bit of shadow. But until we came here, the moon was really nothing, just an empty stage waiting for the players to appear.
Alden Armstrong has spent his life imagining himself as clean, cold and pure as that moon. Reflecting his father’s light, the captain’s. Even Darius shone bright enough to tell Alden who he was.
“I thought you were the sun, the new light that was going to tell me who I am. What being a shifter is really about. What being a different kind of man is about. How to love men.”
I quirk an eyebrow at that. He didn’t need much help in that department. But I know what he means, and I want to hear it.
“But the truth is I’m not reflecting anything now. You’re not the sun, you’re a colonist. You showed me how alive I already was, without needing anybody else. I just wanted you and loved you. Even when I was just a beast, totally gone, I could feel you out there. I remember how you made things make sense.”
I take his hand in mine, slowly and carefully, so he won’t jerk away, so he won’t stop.
“I thought when I finally saw you, you’d be a mess. Pathetic and wrung out, like I felt. But it was your peace, this core of strength in you, and how you wanted to comfort me, that just undoes me. I don’t know what to say, or how to respond, because I’ve never seen it. It’s like you see how much I need, and how afraid I am, and you don’t care. You just want to make me feel better. You want to help me be better.”
Alden Armstrong says I’m like a garden, and I didn’t really understand it. But now I do. He’s so rich with secrets, and full of life, joy. And I’m the gardener, tending to it. To him. With reverence and delight.
His omega.
“You know, the whole time you were in there you could have turned the lights on.”
Alden grins, slurping down the last of our coffee. “I know. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want the world to start yet. I had to make it okay first. Before other people were allowed to exist again. You needed to be mine.”
“It’s not going to be easy.”
He still doesn’t know just how hard it will be. The outside world is just as harsh as the worst pack, and you’re all alone in it.
Or at least, we were.
“I don’t really need things to be easy, Jules. I just need you to be there.”
“Then let’s turn on the lights! Let’s get started!”
He grins, leaning in with a quiet moan of desire, and I can suddenly feel how amped up we’ve both gotten.
“Alden?” I whisper, with a question in my voice.
But I already know the answer.
While we’re alone on the moon, for the last time, we’re the first lovers to choose her for their home, first shifters to walk upon her surface.
While that is still true, I want to be his. I want to make him mine. So, tentative at first, that tender bruised place still inside us both, where the beast took us by surprise.
Testing the limits of touch and heat, pushing the limits of desire, like we’re afraid of shattering each other. I want it to be special, perfect. I want it to mean everything it’s supposed to mean.
Naked, on our knees, I want to crown him in flowers. I lean across to kiss his generous mouth, take his strong, forceful tongue between my lips. My hands on his shoulders, his chest, and my mouth following. I want to spend an hour on every inch of him, down to the last detail.
Naked, here in the half-light, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. Muscled bodies as they move, proud cocks hard and happy between us. With his breath in my ear and his hands running nails down my stomach to my hip, I swear I can see the stars coming out.
I can’t stand it a second longer. I press myself against him, my arms so tight around him he gasps. I can feel his cock beneath mine, pushing slickly between my legs as we embrace. The animal in me lets out a whine, and he laughs into my neck. But even with his hands gripping me tight, shaking with desire, he knows I need to drive. At least for now.
He confines himself to stroking my hair, hot breath at my neck. I can’t resist a few quick strokes, first my own hard length and then his, before my hands travel up again. Stroking his neck, his back. Looking deeply into his eyes, as I lay him down.
“You’re very big,” I say, lying down on his chest, and we both stare at his cock, which tenses at the attention. The skin of his balls is soft to the touch, wrinkling and smoothing again. Looking up at Alden, his proud grin as he admires his thick cock is more than a little sexy.
“Do you like it?” he says, with a husky smile in his voice.
“It’s beautiful, that’s what I like about it. The way it curves here,” I say, touching the underside with a feather-light touch, making him hiss with surprised pleasure.
“And I like the way it looks from down there,” I say, running knuckles up the underside, from the thick root to the tip. “How about you?”
He laughs, shifting me up his chest so he can look into my eyes.
“I love your tight, sweet little hole, and I love your cock. It’s nearly the same size as mine, but it looks even bigger because you’re smaller than me. I loved it back in school, in the showers. Because when your pubes were wet it looked so huge, even when it was soft.”
It’s news to me, and welcome news at that. I shiver with lust, trying to imagine every shower we’d ended up in together. Almost glad I didn’t know back then, or I wouldn’t have just been worried about occasional boners. I would have been rock hard every single time if I’d known he was looking.
The way he’s looking at me now, running his fingers up and down my spine as he drinks in my gaze, smiling like he’s looking at art and not a man at all. Sighing softly, every now and then, in his joy.
My cock suddenly pulses against his, and his eyes go wide. He can sense it, the crest in my heat. Smell my rising desire. He knows what’s coming.
“Do you need me to…can I…”
The questions die on his lips, trapped by my hungry mouth.
“Don’t go anywhere. Don’t do anything.”
He looks torn between ecstasy and panic, as I run a finger around one nipple, teasing my hands through the thatch of hair on his chest.
“But I’m going to…I can feel your heat, it’s bringing me on. It’s making the…”
I reach down, with an excited curiosity, to feel him where his cock stands, straight up, between my legs. The hint of a knot forming there, so sensitive he groans again while I graze it, and growls so deeply as I stroke it, squeezing the shaft as I go, that it tickles my whole body.
I work him slowly, getting myself ready with one hand while the other strokes him, exploring his hole and balls and that hardening at the base of his cock. I’m wet and hard, and for a moment I forget myself entirely, bending over him to take it into my mouth. A sudden move that leaves him gasping, then whispering my name in delight.
The way he breathes and looks at me. This man saying my name over and over. Julian. The man and beast inside him howling together like a chorus. Like it’s everything he’s ever wanted, the most sublime happiness he could ever imagine. With his arms full of me, taking my hungry kisses. It’s that look of desire, of supreme joy, that sends me into overdrive.
We move as if choreographed. I lean back, pulling him up onto his knees and raising myself carefully into his lap. His eyes are shining, his body entirely still.
“Julian, I want you. I want to be inside you, forever.”
The heat of him opens me up, and I realize it’s going to be much easier than I’d always imagined. A few moments of quiet focused breath
ing, looking into his loving eyes and I can feel him pushing into me as I rise and fall. Every twitch and tiny movement echoed in waves across his shuddering body as he comes alive to the sensation.
“Oh my god, Julian. Julian this is…”
Slippery and strong and tight and hot. I can feel it drawing shivers from him, and the jerking of his eyelids and mouth as I move tells me just how much he loves it. Moving faster on him brings his face rearing up to mine with desperate force, searching my mouth with mindless heat.
A hiss tells me I’m better off slowing down for a moment. There’s a certain pride in having him so close to the edge that only makes me hotter. Alden lies back, guiding my hands to run them over his thick and hairy body himself, staring up into my eyes with such love I feel enveloped by him.
“I thought...I knew what it would…be like. But this is completely…”
The tiny catches and gasps in his breath are so erotic, these tiny moments of lost control, that I want him to keep talking forever. Just so I can hear the interruptions his pleasure causes.
My hands are pushing at his chest now as he looks up at me, lost for speech. I smile, silent enough, but he can see it all in my eyes. The need, the exquisite pleasure of him deep inside me, touching that burning star again and again. Thrusting his hips up against mine. Testing and teasing me now, watching my face as I groan and gasp. Seeing my pleasure makes him even harder. I can feel it. And when he takes my cock in his hand, stroking it hard, I lose control above him, shuddering in ecstasy.
He moves me now with his own rhythm. Shoving me up with his hips, hands playing slick along my length, gripping it fiercely in turn. My head thrown back, I can feel a roar building in my throat. I see stars, and all I am is the place he pleasures. His hands are like a drumbeat saying love, love, love and I find myself perilously close to the finish line, when all of a sudden, he goes still.
Breathing too hard to speak Alden looks up into my eyes. Not alarmed exactly, but wary. I can feel something happening within me and his eyes grow wide.