Rowan
Rowan had no nest for his Heats.
The space was not provided in the rooms of his sisters, upon the old beds and moth-bitten rags. All Rowan had was the forest, the trees, the leaves, and the earth. The biting frost that dug into his skin, and the unforgiving sun that turned his flesh gold. The saturation of petrichor with the reek of his fertility.
His first Heat was in the depths of autumn with the scent of green deep in his nose, with coloured leaves singing under his body.
He'd muffled his screams within his clothes, pulled himself close and huddled. He begged that no Lonely would find his makeshift little space and kill him with their claws. He'd weaved twigs with dead leaves, stitched straw into knots that would not break, reinforced by the heavy beams of dead logs. He tried to create safety in the valley of danger.
But God they had.
A zombified beast, rotting, decaying and yet standing as it searched and sniffed, snarling. And Rowan through painful spasms, and weak knees had torn its throat out with the jagged edge of a rock. Its blood lubricating his fingers. His belly hurt so much that he was sobbing. His cock was unable to find release from too short fingers.
In wild need, he dreamt of that rotting clit. The dead Alpha in the woods, with no face, its features engulfed by shadowy dreams of growing mould. Its features were marred by the spill of pus, a cavity for a chest. It squealed.
Rowan would survive, could survive anything.
And he'd grown out of the forest, later suffered Heats not on a bed of rotting leaves, but upon metal racks and dirty sheets. It was then that he realised, in the care of illegal doctors, and nurse wannabes, in fluorescent light and the scent of spicy antiseptic. That it was not normal to be unable to cum. That his condition was not standard for someone like him.
That he was different. Like some fucking main character waiting for a princess to save him.
But being unable to find release had always been something he was familiar with. A condition he could bear, and it didn't bother him too much. If he didn't have to touch an Alpha, it was worth it. But it broke him—his conditions, his poverty, his lack. It went beyond just an orgasm. It embedded itself upon his psyche, turned him into something wild, something far more animalistic.
He yearned for something lurking in that danger.
It grew difficult for his Heats to begin in safe spaces; where nests were so readily available; where Helios would curl pretty upon his sheets; and where all their items would be splayed ready and available for him. His Heat did not come in the safety of his home, but always in the wilderness of the outdoors, as if waiting and searching for something outside. Something wrong.
The monster, with a cavity in its chest, it stumbled creaking softly in the dark.
His Heat had not come for months, so far off cycle that he'd been sent to the doctors again and again. This time he'd stared at the curl of warm light, and sank into downy feathers and silk sheets. He'd weakened, grew quiet and pondered over his rise in status and wealth. And yet Rowan would always remain the same. His Omega was the same Rowan from the woods that wanted nothing more than the vulnerability of nature, and the stink of dirt on his skin.
The Lonely that stumbled before him. The rush of adrenaline that burned in his throat, the mutated hoard that stumbled disfigured from the infection. Wings broken, wolves dripping with wispy fur, vampires with cracking glass-like skin.
How fucked up. How disgusting. He'd snarled, hands slammed upon wood, knuckles red and bruised from his own strength. His wolf had torn through him—a rush that stretched his skin, too fast, too rough. What was it about them that his body wanted? Rowan did not know, could not understand the search in his chest, the tug and then the fall as his eyes swept over thousands and saw nothing.
A dead Alpha.
A dead monstrous Alpha was what his body wanted.
When his Heat arrived for the first time in months, it was to the memory of a peach. A peach that he'd set on his desk and inhaled again and again. Until the lack of it was far too much, and he had a fist through the window, the glass spluttering down his clothes. The cold was rushing through as he breathed and breathed for a trace of that scent.
But the air was glass in his nose and throat, icy and nothing like that smell.
That divine fucking scent. And he begged for the wind to carry a gust of that heated perfume so thick with that Alpha. The burn of that witch with a smell so nectarine it had his body trembling. His cock growing, his balls tightening as it readied with its need to orgasm.
Impossible.
Fury bristling through him he'd howled, screamed his anguish into the wind, voice breaking and splintering until his breath was mere gasps. Until the feverish heat of his skin cooled in the air. He paced, hands reaching, fiddling and in the blue of frost. He began to nest with snow flurried upon his back, warming on his skin and dripping down his flesh.
God fucking damn it. He'd hissed, why hadn't he waited, hadn't he searched when the lead was still fresh. When the girls on the ground for sure was one, and Rowan was sure now with his tongue tucked between his lips that she had been his Alpha.
The Alpha that he'd have to suck dry and feast until he was no longer a beast of his body.
But the Heat came a wave so strong it'd clouded his mind, floaty and lost. He'd been delirious to it, his hands flying across the room lashing out at his staff. He'd piled clothes, and then sorted soft things, tore the edges of a sofa. He'd screamed when an Omega that was not pack, not his, had stepped in with a broom.
He'd broken it, torn it into pieces, and then.
And then it was a girl that stepped in. A girl, with no smell, no scent. A quiet antiseptic on her skin. Her bald head was so similar to the others. Her features were messy with yellow. The healing of bad bruising, the smudge of something on her eyes. A better Rowan might have recognised it as makeup, his wolf might have scrutinized the dust of powder that feigned the injury. The dip of her head that shadowed the planes of her face, hid her identity.
But the Rowan now didn't care.