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For obvious reasons, it's not widely known that the Lantsov queen prefers the company of the General of the Second Army for her heats. It's also not widely known that the mating bite on her shoulder is not Nikolai's, or that it would be impossible for it to be Nikolai's, given that the king, on top of the sin of being a bastard, is an omega himself and has his own bite hidden cleverly on his inside upper thigh. So it's rather unfortunate when, halfway to the Wandering Isle for a trade negotiation that has been a year in the making, Alina wakes in the middle of the night to find herself in the beginning of a surprise heat.
She stares at the ceiling for a long moment, listening to the creak of the Volkvolny as it rides up and down over the steep ocean waves, sends a brief, woeful Why me? to the saints, wondering what she's done to deserve this, then sighs and gets out of bed. By the light of a small orb of sun, she slathers herself in as much perfume as she can stomach--the same perfume she normally uses to keep other alphas from smelling the Darkling all over her--and goes to the king's cabin.
There's a guard posted at the door, as there always is, but he lets her in without fuss. She and Nikolai have kept separate rooms since their wedding night, which because of the nature of royal marriage no one bothers to question--convenient, since Alina's chambers in the Grand Palace have a secret tunnel which lead to the Darkling's in the Little Palace, and since it is known (though still not widely known) that Nikolai sees his mistress, Zoya Nazyalensky, nearly every night.
Tonight is no different, apparently, because Alina's entrance prompts not just one head to pop up out of the mess of bedsheets, but two--one curly and blond, one thick and dark. "Alina," Nikolai mutters, on his way back asleep, "what is it," but then Zoya's nose wrinkles and she says, "Saints, how much perfume are you wearing," shoving her head under a pillow, and Nikolai sits up ramrod straight, eyes comically wide.
"No," he says.
"Yes," Alina tells him sadly.
"Shit," he says.
Zoya re-emerges from under the pillows. "What is it?"
Alina meets Nikolai's eyes. Marriage has allowed them to skip the unnecessary bits of conversations, like the beginnings, and most of the middle. "This is a small ship," she says, going right to the end. "I could ride it out, maybe, but people are going to hear, and smell, and wonder--"
"Why you're still so hungry for it when you're locked in a cabin with your husband," Nikolai finishes, with none of her modesty. "I don't suppose Zoya could..." he trails off, looking between them, at their twin disgusted expressions. "Right. I don't suppose I'd much like to have your alpha for a heat-mate, either."
"We can invent an emergency," Alina says, forcing her way past the nauseating idea of having an alpha who is not her alpha in bed with her, "something that requires one of our attention back in Os Alta. I'll need one of your flying machines, though."
"You can have the Bittern," Nikolai says decisively, getting out of bed. He starts pulling on clothes completely randomly, almost ending up in Zoya's pants before he realizes. "It will still take a day. Zoya ought to go with you. And Tamar. You'll have Nadia for your other Squaller."
"Right," Alina agrees, hoping she doesn't sound as shaky as she feels. An entire day of heat, stuck in the air, hundreds of miles above and away from the man she desperately needs...already she can feel the feverish, throbbing beginnings of it in the cradle of her hips. She'll have to be sure to put on another pair of undergarments, before they leave the Volkvolny, or she's going to soak through her skirt, and fuck, this is going to be very unpleasant.
"Hey," Nikolai says, calling her attention. He puts a hand on her face, holding her cheek, and she may not love him the way a wife is supposed to love her husband, nor he love her the way a husband is supposed to love his wife, but there is a love there, because the other omega's touch soothes something within her. She meets his eyes. "It will be alright," he promises her. "I'll get you home to him."
***
Alina never expected that she would have a mating bond. Omegas were relatively rare in Ravka, yes, and coveted because of it, but she had never been particularly what an omega was supposed to be. She wasn't just small, she was frail, sickly, bony, with spots and lacklustre hair and hips that would likely split in two before they allowed her to bear children. What's more, she was an orphan, which meant there would be no dowry, and anyhow--the only alpha she'd ever wanted, from even before her first real heat at the age of fifteen, looked at her as nothing more than his odd little friend from Keramzin.
Then there was the First Army, which required that all omegas take heat-suppressant herbs with their morning tea, which had only made Alina more sickly and the bags under her eyes more pronounced, and which, after the incident in the Fold, she'd had to stop taking anyways, since apparently they put a damper on Grisha power. After that her heats, which had never been all that bad before, were what the Corporalnik Healers called "debilitating" and "mandating alpha assistance, or she might just go ahead and die."
Alina, who was going through rather a lot at that point in terms of reassessing things she thought she knew and adjusting to an entirely new life, had been planning to go through her first heat off the herbs alone, locked up in her posh and luxurious new rooms, but as she didn't much like the idea of dying, she decided she needed to find an alpha after all. A temporary one, most likely, but still. An alpha.
The thought was daunting, never having done much more than get clumsily kissed by a boy in basic training and let Alexei stick his hand down her pants once when she'd had too much kvas. She hadn't had a heat since she was fifteen, but she remembered it as being a hugely mortifying experience, locked in the dusty old heat room at Keramzin, fingers cramped from how furiously she was moving them between her legs, hair stuck to her chest and neck with how she was sweating like she was in the grips of a deathly fever, sobbing with a want she didn't know how to name. She'd only been at the Little Palace for a month when she felt the first stirrings of her heat, a slightly sideways feeling in her stomach, and there was only one person who she knew that she might trust to see her like that, to care for her at her most vulnerable, but...
"The Darkling has never taken an omega," Genya told her with a benignly patronizing sort of softness, when Alina brought it up. "I don't think he particularly likes the idea of being slave to his own biology."
She said the last bit lightly, almost as a joke, but must have noticed that it didn't do anything to brighten Alina's spirits, because she moved on quickly, adding, "Maybe you could ask Fedyor? He seems quite fond of you."
It wasn't the worst idea in the world--Fedyor did seem quite fond of her, even though he seemed quite fond of everybody, so she asked him. And she was surprised, and a little bit insulted, when he hemmed and hawed, darting glances at something over her shoulder, and said, "Maybe I'd better not. Sorry, Alina."
As he hurried away, head down and shoulders up by his ears, she whipped around to see what he'd been looking at and spotted the Darkling's cloak as he disappeared through the palace doors.
She went after him--possibly not a smart move, given that he was very powerful and dangerous and what have you, but she was passing from feeling vaguely ill into feeling like her knees were about to give out and that when they did she'd really like to be caught on someone's cock, so she wasn't really thinking in terms of smart moves. She stormed through the dining hall and right into his private rooms, uncaring that people were not allowed back here, that those black oak doors always remained shut, and found him waiting for her, standing by his war table, hip leaned casually against it.
"Alina--" he'd started to say.
"No," she snapped, frazzled and already more than a little sweaty, so determined to be angry at him that she didn't realize how his pupils were dialated, how his breaths were coming shallow and fast, like a dog panting. "You can't just--Why did you scare him off? I need someone to see me through my heat, the Healers said--"
"You don't need someone," he interrupted, voice low and disdainful. "You need me."
She made a short, annoyed sound. "I know that," she told him, still incandescently furious even as she felt despair yawn open in her stomach like an uncovered well. "But I can't have you, so if you could just stop rubbing it in and let me choose someone--"
"Who told you that?" the Darkling demanded. He was suddenly right in her space, looming over her, and something in Alina's omega hind brain went quiet and liquid, telling her she was safe, he was here, all she had to do was lean into him--and she did, swaying on her feet, so that he caught her with a strong hand on the curve of her neck, pulling her in. He tucked his nose against her temple, his voice a low murmur. "Who told you you couldn't have me, milaya?"
Alina's breath caught wet and hot in her throat. "You've never taken an omega," she said, instead of answering.
"I've been waiting for the right one," he said softly, and kissed her.
Later--much later, several days later, and Alina shuddered to think what trouble Ravka might have got up to in the time that its General was indisposed--when the Darkling had cooled down enough that it was possible for someone else to enter the rooms, Alina laid with her head on his chest, her bare body pressed against his beneath the sheets, and let him stroke his fingers lazily, possessively through her hair while Genya turned her fresh mating bite into scar tissue.
"Aleksander," he murmured, when Genya was gone.
She turned in his arms, blinking up at his face. She meant to ask What? but she was still boneless and blissed out, weak with the smell of him, of her alpha stretched out like a contented panther beside her, sore and wet with his come, feeling like she might have to spend the next few days being carried about in his arms and fucked against every flat surface in the palace, so she only managed an inquisitive little noise.
"My name," he explained. "So that next time you'll have more to moan than just please."
***
There's no way to send word ahead of them, so when the Bittern touches down in the lake beside the palace, Zoya sends Nadia running up ahead with a scribbled note. The queen can't exactly be seen charging into the Little Palace in the middle of the day, not without causing a panic and possibly a great deal of gossip, so instead they're going to have to spirit Alina back to her own rooms in the Grand Palace and hope that the Darkling's quick about making use of his secret tunnel.
Alina doesn't want to go back to her rooms--she wants to go to her alpha's quarters, her alpha's bed, where she can sink into his scent like coming home after a long journey and burrow into the place where he sleeps and feel safe--but in the last corner of her mind that's still capable of logical thought, she knows that Zoya has the right idea. This way, if anyone should happen to see her, they can pass it off as an unexpected heat, very unfortunate, but the queen rode it out alone in her private quarters as her husband was halfway across the sea, nothing for it, these things happen.
Hopefully no one does see her, though, as Tamar and Zoya sneak her in a servant's entrance to the Grand Palace, because she's certain she looks disgusting. Despite the extra undergarments, her skirts are wet, sticky between her legs. She can feel her hair plastered to the back of her neck, her heart beating fast and feverish, and her vision is so hazy and bright that she hardly knows where she's going, just letting herself be guided along by Tamar's hand on her arm.
The day-long trip on the Bittern had started well enough, in the cool night-time over the sea, but by daybreak Alina was able to do little more than lay in the closed cockpit with her face against the cold glass of the porthole and breathe, resisting the urge to stick her hands between her legs, because once you started giving into your heat it only got worse, not better, and she didn't want it to get worse while she was still alone. She felt so empty, and small, and abandoned, and like she was going to fly apart at the seams without the heavy weight of her alpha pinning her down, and that was hours ago, a whole day really, the sun low in the sky now as they rush through the palace halls, and Alina feels like she's vibrating out of her skin.
She needs the cool, calming dark of the shadows. She needs him to pin her down against their bed like a wolf with a rabbit and fuck her until she's sobbing, until she can't remember her own name or what it's like not to have him inside her or how much it hurts that she can't smell him, that she doesn't know where he is.
And then she's alone in her bed, the curtains drawn against the sunlight, tearing at the tiny buttons on her black kefta, and she doesn't remember getting here, doesn't remember Zoya and Tamar leaving and shutting the door behind them, but it doesn't matter because suddenly she feels like she's suffocating in these saints-damned clothes, and she gives up on the kefta and just reaches underneath it to peel off her leggings and her sodden undergarments, tossing them on the floor, leaving her legs bare and wet with her own slick under her skirts and her kefta, and she realizes she still has her boots on but the thought of having to unlace them to take them off is just too much, her breasts heaving inside the tight restriction of her clothes, her cheeks hot with blood and her cunt swollen and throbbing and why isn't he here.
And then, like merzost, he is.
"Alina," he says, voice strangled, "Alinochka."
She sobs at the feeling of his hands, even through so many layers of stuffy clothes. "Please," she begs, "please, Sasha," and then his hands are under her skirts, fingers sinking bruising into her bare hips, and he settles his weight fully-clothed between her soaked thighs, pausing only to work quickly between them to unbutton his own kefta and open his trousers, and then--"Oh," she moans, tension unwinding all at once as he pushes into her. "Sasha."
She feels herself fluttering convulsively around him, and he buries his face against her shoulder, breathing hot and wet against her neck as he draws out and thrusts back into her, spearing her open. Her legs go up around his waist, higher than his waist, wrapped around his sides, heels of her boots digging into his spine as he settles into a rhythm and starts to fuck her in earnest, and they haven't said more than two words to each other since he got here, since she got home, but it doesn't matter, because they can converse just as well with their bodies.
He knows how to fuck her. He knows to put his weight into it, to work at it, to be rough. His cock knows the place inside of her that makes her throw her head back against the pillows, so he can seal his mouth over her throat and suck, his hips know the angle to grind down so that the flat plane of his adonis belt rubs against her clit with every downstroke, he knows that when she breathes in sharp and breathes out long and shuddering, her cunt clenching around him, that she's about to come--that all she needs to come is for him to press an open-mouthed kiss to her flushed face and murmur, "Come on my cock, milaya--"
She obeys in an instant, her whole body unraveling around him.
He fucks her through it, then gentles, hips slowing to careful little stutters. Her first orgasm takes the edge off, they've learned over the years, but it only takes it off for a few minutes, so he needs to stay hard. And he is hard--saints, so hard, and so huge, it always feels like her cunt wants to clench down more than it can, like he's too big for her muscles to tighten properly, and the feeling makes her crazy.
"Alina," he murmurs, turning to claim her mouth in a kiss. "Hello."
"Hello," she says back, laughing lightly.
"Good trip?" he asks.
"Oh, you know." She shifts teasingly against him, smiling when he can't stop a short, involuntary thrust. "Being away is never as nice as coming home, is it?"
He smiles, hidden close in the private space between their faces. This is the only place she ever sees him smile--when they're in bed together, alone, shut away from prying eyes. It makes her unimaginably fond, and tender, wanting to do all sorts of things like apologize for marrying Nikolai even though they'd all three of them agreed it was the best decision.
She's still surprised, sometimes, that the arrangement works. Aleksander is a possessive alpha, and she knows that under other circumstances he'd enjoy walking up to her in public and pressing kisses to her mating bite, sliding his hands around her waist, pulling her away from state dinners with a look in his eyes that told everyone exactly what the Darkling intended to do with his omega once he had her behind closed doors--but as it is, all his hunger, all his need for ownership, has to be confined to these moments. To their bedroom. To her heat.
Which is not to say that he has never whisked her away from a state dinner, but he does do it discreetly. Unlike now, when there is nothing discreet about the ravenous look on his face, or how the stuffy, warm cocoon between her bed curtains has darkened with shadows, or how he shifts his weight to one side, working a hand between them to open the top of her kefta, exposing her mating bite.
His lips ghost over it, and then his mouth seals over the mark his teeth left, tongue laving at the scar tissue.
Alina's breath catches in her throat. "Aleksander--" she says.
She can feel the heat starting to build again, her cunt clenching less with the aftershocks of orgasm and more with intent, and he must feel it as well--of course he does, of course he can feel it--because he shoves a hand under her skirts, fingers touching the place where he's still buried inside her, rasping through the wiry hair at the root of his cock for a fleeting moment before he settles in with two fingertips rubbing lazily over her clit. She grabs onto him, hard, fingernails digging into his kefta.
"Sasha--"
"Shh," he soothes, voice a low rumble against her bare shoulder. "One like this, milaya. We don't want to waste my knot."
She swallows thickly, nodding, and focuses on the feeling of his fingers moving slickly over her superheated flesh, over that tiny bundle of nerves just above where his cock has stretched her wide open. But it's not enough, it's not enough, and--"Sasha," she begs, close to tears, feeling needy and childish, and he says, "Shh, Alina, I've got you, I'll take care of you," and rubs her clit so hard that it shoves her over the cliff into her second orgasm.
He manages to keep control of himself for a minute, holding still while she spasms around him, murmuring sweet nothings into the skin of her throat, but she can feel his cock throbbing inside her, the heartbeat of it, and she knows that it must hurt, how hard he is, and now that she's had her second orgasm she's starving, there's not going to be any more taking the edge off until she's well and done, and he smells so good, and all she wants is for him to bite down and break her skin and fuck her like a wild animal until neither of them can move, until she's impaled limply on his knot, his weight pinning her to the bed, his mouth gentling at her raw, bloody bite and his come filling her up, so she says, "Move, Sasha, please."
"Pushy," he remarks, but he sounds breathless.
And she doesn't complain, because he braces one arm next to her head, the other going down to pull her thigh open, baring her to him, her skirts and kefta pushed obscenely up to her waist, and starts to move.
Alina is always embarrassed, once the haze of her heat clears, about how useless she is like this, how she can't do anything but lay back and let her alpha fuck her. She'd voiced her concerns to him once, in the sweaty, exhausted aftermath, after they'd wiped his come off them with a cloth but before they'd managed to stagger into a bath, and he'd laughed gently, fondly, and pulled her into a closed-mouth kiss, gathering her up against his chest, and said, I like when you're spirited, milaya. I like when you push back, and bite me, and ride me...but I also like when I can fuck you so well you can't feel your toes. I like when you are desperate, and sobbing for it, and completely at my mercy...
Well, he must be perfectly happy now, because she is desperate, sobbing for it, and completely at his mercy.
"Saints," she gasps, hands raking down the velvet back of his kefta--or she would, if she could remember the word saints, or in fact any word at all, but she can't. All she can remember is the shape of her alpha's cock in her and the punishing drive of his hips slamming into hers and how her spine feels like it's melted to some sort of liquid gold, and she realizes that the shadows in the curtains of her bed are starting to fade under the onslaught of bright sunlight, but it's a distant sort of realization, since the Darkling's teeth are settling into her shoulder, gentle at first, then firmer, then a sharp spike of pain that shoots straight to her cunt and makes her go completely boneless, the leg he's not holding slipping from around his waist to splay open on the bed, because she can't hold it up any more, she can't grab onto his back anymore, all she can do is rest her hands on the back of his head while he sinks his teeth in and fucks into her, the noise of it wet and obscene and slapping and saints, she still can't remember the word, but saints, it feels so good, and she can't do anything but come, and come, and come.
Vaguely, somewhere past the bright sea of orgasmic pleasure, she's aware that he's coming as well, his knot swelling, stretching her to the point of pain as he shoves into her once, twice, and stills, their anatomy stuck together, hips sealed tight without a single inch of space. She makes a soft sound against the side of his head, stroking his hair as he shudders through his orgasm, then gasps as he lets go of the bite, teeth tugging out of her. The cool air stings on her re-opened wound, but it's hard to care when she can feel his knot pulsing inside her, shooting rope after rope of hot come, his weight crushing her flat into the bed, their hearts beating against each other--when she feels content for the first time in a very long almost-two-days.
They are, objectively, in quite a filthy and disgusting way--both with their keftas still on, absolutely coated in sweat and come and pungent pheromones, and Alina knows she must look a mess, her face bright red, her hair damp, her legs spread wide beneath the pinion of his hips, bare cunt throbbing lushly around the hot fist of his knot, but she cannot bring herself to care. And judging by the soft, affectionate kisses he peppers over her forehead, over her nose, her cheeks, hands moving proprietary up and down her sides--he doesn't care either.
"We're going to have to remember to invent an emergency," she remembers suddenly. "When my heat is over. To explain why I had to rush back to the palace."
The Darkling hums, lifting up on his elbows--the motion moving his cock inside her, sending a fresh spike of heat to her belly--and kisses her. "Why don't we let Nikolai handle that."
"Well," she starts to protest. "I ought to--"
"What you ought to do," Aleksander interrupts, with a lazy roll of his hips that tugs at her swollen cunt, "is let your husband do the politicking, while I give you what you need."
Alina's lost her words again, arrested by the feel of him.
"Sasha," she says.
"I'll take care of you, milaya," he promises, voice low. And he does.