#also...yeah it's extremely long

He’d gone back and forth on attending before finally caving. It wouldn’t do any harm to schmooze with Shepherd’s friends and get more backers for Shadow Company before the official launch date. More backers meant more contracts, more contracts meant more money, etc etc. 

So here he was, on his way back from day two and trying not to regret every minute of it, trying to ignore the niggling voice in the back of his head that spoke up whenever Shepherd moved or smiled or laughed or said anything. 

He’d decided to walk back to his hotel in the vain hopes of getting a bit of fresh air, a foolish endeavor if he’d ever undertaken one. 

But as his footsteps kept him marching doggedly on while the sun sank lower over the horizon, temperature dropping like a stone in the early-fall weather, the crowds began to thin as he neared the less tourist-clogged areas of the city. 

He was still trying to breathe as shallowly as possible without accidentally making himself pass out (something that may or may not have happened once or twice before) when the smog and glut of sewage/garbage/stale food/gasoline was pierced by one scent. 

Clean. Crisp. Cool. 

Melon and ocean water, sweet and refreshing and light. 

He started following it without even thinking about it, all thoughts of finding a strip club or  a bar to find a pretty thing in absolutely gone in an instant. 

Singling out the source of the mouthwatering scent was simple. His prey was a sweet little omega who’d just come out of the grocery store with a small bag and a medium size bouquet of cheap carnations. 

Pretty thing. I’ll get you the kind of flowers you deserve, angel, swear I will.  

Fuck, she was pretty. Plump and rounded in all her limbs just the way he liked, long shiny dark hair dressed in bouncy curls down her back, that perfect body wrapped up in the cutest fucking white girl outfit he’d ever seen: stockings that teased the tops of her thighs and only visible when the wind caught her plaid skirt just right, a little jacket that did probably next to nothing to shield her from the beginnings of a midwestern chill in the air, and little heeled booties that still barely had the top of her head up to meet his shoulder. 

God she was so fucking pretty when he asked his tech (hacker, but one had to shy away from that word as a PMC) to tap into the city security cameras and he got a good look at her face. 

She was all curves and sweetness there too, round dark eyes that he’d love to see glitter with the reflections of diamonds, full rosy cheeks, and a glossy, perfect, candy pink plush mouth stretched in a wide smile as she chatted on the phone to someone.  

Naughty girl, you need to pay better attention to your surroundings. Make sure you don’t catch the attention of a predator. Like me. 

He was already having to fight getting hard, fangs itching to drop and eyes wanting to flash, a low growl battled back in his chest. Her scent wove it’s way through his body like a goddamn snake, wrapping around each rib, curling around his heart, tying into knots and tangles around his veins, his bones, every part of his body and yanking tight when she laughed, bright and merry like a bell. 

No matter how much he wanted to, he didn’t follow her home. Not physically. He kept his tech on her movements, following her to her little apartment building on the cameras. 

Instantly he disliked the look of the place. Dingy, in a somewhat worn-down part of the city, and the building security he could see from a distance was fucking laughable. 

To think that a place like that was all that was protecting a sweet little omega like her from the big bad world - it made his hands itch to draw blood, made him have to fight some strange long ingrained instinct to hunt her a doe, carve out it’s heart in offering, tuck her into his silk sheets with his knot plugging her full. 

Standing against the corner of the restaurant just down the block from her building (a college age dive, by the looks of it, actually the whole district was), he zoomed in on the screenshot of her laughing, a glossy curl blown across her cheek, the cheap carnations in the crook of her elbow. 

In the hollow of her collarbone, a cheap, flimsy initial necklace, an L (Louise? Lily?). 

I’ll get you real gold. With your birthstone, honey, gonna spoil you so fucking rotten… 

One whiff of her scent and he was hooked. He’d always prided himself on his independence, one of the few alphas who made it to their mid-30s without a mate and pups. With his life in the military, it would have driven him crazy worrying about a pretty little omega home all alone, missing him. 

But now…now he could afford a luxury like that, in more than just one way. He was coming into money, more than he’d ever know what to do with on his own. 

With a pretty little omega wife, though, he’d have an outlet for it. And with all the pups he’d get on a young, healthy, fertile fucking thing like her…

Right. 

Decision made. 

A wide smirk formed on his face, the edges of it cruel as he started to (reluctantly) move back to his original path to his hotel. But not to freshen up to find a horny beta or some broad-minded alpha in a bar, no. He had the ultimate objective in mind. He needed to plan. 

With a few taps the picture of her his tech had sent became his phone background, and he set the man on digging up everything he could find on her. 

By the time he got back to the hotel, the concierge tripping over himself to offer Graves assistance, he had everything he needed to get started. 

Name, Lauren Elizabeth Hudson. Twenty one years old, a business student who was an only child without much of anything interesting in her background. She was an A student from a middle class family, who judging by their credit card and phone statements, only maintained a cool and infrequent line of communication with her. 

Perfect. 

That left him room to work his way in, color in the blank and lonely corners of her life until he blotted all of the rest of it away completely. 

In his room, he sipped on a fifteen year old whiskey and pulled together an infallible plan of attack. 

He’d let her finish college, she only had a year and half a semester left anyway, and it would give him time to solidify Shadow Company’s standing, really make it the perfect place for a recent graduate of business school, whatever that fuck one learned there, to apply to. 

And because he was reasonable, he’d let her keep at least the illusion of her freedom for a while after. Let her think she was making it on her own in the big city as a grown woman, all while he pulled her deeper into his life. 

It would take strategy, to keep anyone from touching her between now and then. He didn’t mind competition, not that there could ever be any, but when he’d looked into her social media he’d discovered that there was absolutely no evidence of any boyfriends not even dates in spite of group pictures of school dances where her friends were paired off but she was simply standing awkward and alone out to the side. 

Her social media was sparse to the untrained eye but a gold mine to Graves’. There was a largely ignored Facebook page, an Instagram that she mostly posted outfits and ‘get ready with me’s on, and a Tumblr account that had at apparently at one time been a hopping source of One Direction fantasies. The account had long gone dusty so now all her posts were untagged and seemingly unnoticed private and anonymous ramblings to the mostly inactive or deactivated follower list about the stigma of virginity and her worries about finding a partner. 

(And her heat, fuck, don’t forget the descriptions of her heat cycle, even the complains about being sore made him think about how much worse she’d be after a week taking his fucking knot, fresh bite marks scarring up her pretty skin.) 

The confirmation that she was still a virgin, completely and totally untouched in every way was enough to have him wrapping a hand around his cock and fighting not to cum. 

So yes. He’d let her graduate, lure her into an appropriate position within Shadow Company under his direct sight at all times, and to ensure he got what he wanted he’d need some carefully planned shadows implanted at the fringes of her world to encourage her to turn to him. 

Shadows. There was an idea on how to achieve that. 

He had time to figure out the specifics, figure out what would appeal to her most, craft the perfect way to get her to apply to a position at Shadow Company so he could pull her in close. 

If his patience ran out or he needed to come up with a quicker plan, there was always a convenient meeting when her heat suppressants mysteriously ‘failed’. 

At least one contingency plan would keep him calm if it came down to that. 

By the time the sun came up he’d caught a couple hours of sleep, did another fine-tuning run through of the last presentation he’d be giving about Shadow Company to potential clients, spoke to the contractors building Shadow Company HQ, got in a workout in the state of the art hotel gym, and arranged to have security cameras, trackers, and even a discreet guard (a beta who Graves couldn’t in good conscious put in the field any more but had promised to find a job he could do and damn if this didn’t fit the bill) to keep watch over Lauren.

He whistled as he got out of the shower, phone chiming with the flight details for Lauren’s new guard (Samuels had said he could get out of New York that day, so Graves had made the arrangements for him to pick up all the cameras and other supplies in Chicago to secure and bug her ratty little apartment), and as he picked up his phone he spotted a text from Shepherd reminding him about their meeting. 

Graves’ whistling died down, eyes narrowing as he considered the text. The wording. His hackles rose reading it over and over again. But fuck if he knew why. 

Just something…deep. Instinctual. 

A problem to watch, unravel as he got more information. His instincts had never led him astray, he just had to trust them. 

For the moment, he sent back an affirmative, and then scrolled back to the pictures from Lauren’s Instagram. 

He had no fucking business panting after an omega this young and innocent. Fifteen years his junior, it wouldn’t have been totally out of the question for him to have a child her age. 

And damn him to hell, but that got him hot to think about how young and innocent and sweet she was. And all his. All his. 

He traced the curve of her cheek in the picture under his thumb, cock throbbing between his legs. That smile was so pretty. He wanted to see it in person, wanted to be the reason for it. Wanted to see her smile like that at their pups. 

Soon, he consoled himself. 

Just you wait honey, gonna make you so completely mine you’ll forget who you were before then. 

-

Two years later he was beginning to feel his patience wearing dangerously thin. 

Having Lauren actually within eyesight during the day and within reach for most of that helped…at first. And then very quickly it just started making it all so much worse.  

For the most part, things had proceeded exactly as he’d wanted them to. Samuels had kept watch over Lauren during the last three semesters of her undergrad, making sure that she never had to worry about getting hurt on late night walks home from the campus library (and because she didn’t know Graves was making sure she stayed safe, she still took all the precautions any single omega should’ve, his good fucking girl). 

And just as important Samuels had made sure through various methods that when Lauren went home, she went alone. And arrived home alone, to an empty apartment, and more importantly to an empty bed, free of any nosy little beta or overreaching bastard alpha who could’ve even thought of laying hands on what belonged to Graves and Graves alone. 

He didn’t want her because she was a virgin, wouldn’t knot her and mate her and breed her pussy full just because no one’d ever even touched it but her…but fuck he couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

That kind of ownership, that kind of proprietary claim, it was addictive to the beast prowling impatiently beneath his skin. The one that wanted to sink fang gum deep and knot. 

Fuck. 

Really he did have so much to be grateful for, including how smoothly things had gone after her time at college was over. 

When she was preparing for graduation, top of her class, god his smart fucking omega, he had a sapphire charm bracelet for her ready to go as a reward, all it took was a careful threat/bribe (the kind that Graves had long ago mastered the balance of) murmured into the ear of her guidance counselor to ensure she applied to a PA position at Shadow Company. 

It helped settle her reported hesitance to apply that it was a real position posted and meant to cover all types of experience level, and there were hundreds of applicants of varying suitability. 

But Graves had no intention of taking anyone but her for his PA. He could handle his own schedule if she turned out to be incompetent, it was the captains and lieutenants of SC’s departments that needed the actual PA’s that went through the real job application process. 

He’d planned, honestly, that she’d never work another day in her life once he got his claim on that pretty fucking neck. 

But. 

Well. 

No battlefield plan survived contact with the ‘enemy’. 

Lauren was the only flaw in his plan. 

See, she had the audacity to actually be fucking good at her job. 

At every turn she fucking excelled. Exceeded expectations, above and beyond the call, whatever corporate horseshit you wanted to call it, she did it. She anticipated his every need no matter how miniscule, could manage even his most overpacked schedules, and most importantly of all she could delegate, deal, joke, and effectively command every department and team that worked under the Shadow Company name. 

By the time she celebrated her six month anniversary at SC, she’d made herself fucking indispensable. She was integral to the way SC functioned, the contracts Graves negotiated (always weighed heavily in his favor with military knothead alphas distracted by her plump pretty body visible through his clear office windows), she was the goddamn mama to his fucking Shadows. 

They were planning a gift for her for Mother’s Day, more than half a year away. 

Samuels (still on occasional guard duty even with her in D.C. and now living in a ‘company provided’ apartment close to Graves ‘if he needed her on short notice’) had been the one to broach that particular development with him. 

And far from irritating him the way it by all rights should have, it turned him the fuck on. 

He wanted her so much the word had lost meaning, he needed her on his knot, wearing his claim and smelling like him, and she fucking refused to drop her goddamn professionalism long enough to give in. 

She wanted him. He could smell her slick, sweet as wild honey on the back of his tongue, coating his lungs every time he crowded up against her back and leaned over her as she sat at her desk, his fists braced on either side of her cute little pink wireless keyboard, dictating to her. 

Every time he flashed a smile at her, let his voice dip a little in volume, slow to the southern drawl that he only used to drop a woman’s panties, she shivered, turned her wrists up to him, pupils blowing wide and dark, head tilting just perfect to flash a strip of perfect unmarked neck. 

It was instinct. 

Lauren’s every instinct was screaming at her to park herself on his desk and lift her short little skirt and present her slick virgin cunt to him for him to relieve some goddamn tension. 

But. 

She. 

Just. 

Wouldn’t. 

Hence why Graves’ patience was beginning to wear thin. And every other fucking soul at Shadow Company knew it. 

They all got raises near the three month mark when she wore a sundress to the Fourth of July company barbecue. It was fucking ninety degrees and outside, he’d even provided a water slide bounce house for his Shadows and their kids, never suspecting that he’d get one glimpse of her soft body gleaming with sweat in the radiating summer sun, so much of her plump figure exposed to view in that short, thin fucking dress, and he’d lose his goddamn mind. 

But that was exactly what had happened. One minute he’d been talking to Oz about a job, and then the next he was looming behind her back, claws sunk into his palms, blood pooling between his fingers as he fought back a rumbling sound of possession. Luckily he hadn’t jumped her in front of the Shadows, not that he’d mind his pack seeing, but their poor kids and their soft little mates were all there too. 

And Lauren wouldn’t like her first time to be face down ass up in a hastily abandonded park as sunlight dripped over her turning her sweat into honey as sweet as her slick while he made her scream for her alpha. 

So he’d managed to keep his hands to himself. But he’d had the subtlety of a fucking grenade, stalking half a step behind her and standing way too close, almost touching, looming over her shoulder the entire fucking day, and pouring pheromones over her the entire time like a goddamn animal. Baring fangs and flashing eyes at anyone who got within arm’s reach. 

His Shadows, god fucking bless the loyal fucks, had just ensured no beta or alpha got too close and behaved like it was completely normal, acceptable behavior. Regardless of the fact that any decent alpha would have had him hung for pulling a stunt like that on an omega they weren’t mated to. 

Lauren had pretended not to notice, but he could smell her melon scent turn hot candy sweet, the ocean spray note to her scent turning balmy like she was on a beach in the Caribbean, all sweat and sunscreen and salt and hot. 

She wanted him fucking bad. 

In the past six months she’d started calling his name in her sleep, and when her false heat had hit (only a couple days long and not nearly as strong with her suppressants) she’d spent the entirety of it rubbing her cunt and begging, crying for ‘Phillip, please, need it, need your knot so much, so empty, Phillip need it need it Phillip please’. 

The security cameras he’d put into her apartment, everywhere but the bathroom, had paid off big time. 

Graves spent a concerning amount of time just watching her live her life in the off hours he afforded her, though there weren’t many of them. 

He was obsessed. 

He was in lust. 

He was in love, because she was so fucking smart, picking any new subject thrown at her within a few minutes like she was born to it. And she was so goddamn sweet, babying and worrying over Graves and his Shadows in the field, always the first voice that they heard coming back to base, worried tones turning joy bright with relief when Graves told her everyone was fine, and if they weren’t, it was her who wrote out detailed, heartfelt get well soon cards, or on the rare and unwelcome occasion it was called for, mournful letters to families. 

Every time he thought she couldn’t get more perfect, she proved him wrong. 

She had his coffee order (more complicated than a Starbucks barista’s worst nightmare) memorized and perfected within a week. 

Within two weeks she’d organized and optimized his daily meetings and check-ins so he could maximize the time he actually spent with his Shadows rather than on the bureaucratic and financial shit. 

In a month she’d mastered the communications system that since they’d opened their doors had been a fucking disaster, a tangled web of requests for meetings about potential contracts or existing contracts. What Graves used to have to waste an hour wading through to sort and categorize and straighten out, she took right off his hands and streamlined the entire process. He no longer had to waste time wading through bullshit double talk and spy wording to figure out what the fuck SC was actually being asked to do and for whom. 

She’d also mastered knowing him. Every flicker of emotion, every wash of instinct driven irritability or impatience or unreasonable goddamn demand, she was prepared for each one, and no matter how good he’d always thought he’d been about keeping himself in check (an alpha’s hormones let loose could turn to a fucking biohazard just like an omega’s), she just knew what he needed. 

Whether it was an extra coffee left as a peace offering on the corner of his desk, or a home baked cookie in a Ziploc tucked beneath folders in his briefcase as a reward after a meeting with Shepherd, or just her in his office, waiting anxiously with a smile for him to reel in to a tight hug the second he saw her after touching down in DC after returning from the field. 

No matter what it was, she always knew exactly what he needed and gave it to him without prompting. 

Save the one glaring exception of her cunt and her fucking throat. 

Her hand in marriage would be nice too but that could come after he got his claim on that pretty skin for everyone to see. 

Anticipating his needs went beyond just the emotional, too. She slipped MRE’s and energy bars into his go bag, knowing he burned through food quick with his metabolism. She packed soft, light, durable home comforts like lightweight but warm blankets for him and his Shadows. Or even sometimes she’d slip in notes wishing them luck and safety out on missions. 

Lauren also had a knack for knowing which jobs to take, and which jobs not to. Her instincts, like most other omegas, were top fucking notch, and he’d buried far fewer of his Shadows since she’d started sorting through contracts and presenting them to him in ranked piles of which ones she thought were good bets (not just safety wise but financially or even as building blocks for the future), and which ones she didn’t. 

She was actually the one who had nudged him into making Laswell his point of contact with the DOD and thus all of SC’s operations in Urzikstan, effectively limiting his professional contact with Shepherd except for formality reasons. 

He never would’ve gone through with that on his own. He had some still foreign and frankly unwelcome sense of loyalty to Shepherd for helping him rise through the ranks of the Marines and enabling him to set up Shadow Company at all. 

Even though since the day he’d met Lauren, that instinct that had his hackles raising and his fangs itching around Shepherd had only gotten stronger. He’d never found anything concrete enough beyond just - bad fucking vibes. Nothing he felt could justify shutting Shepherd out. 

But Lauren only had to suggest that Laswell, being outside the military structure and technically outranking Shepherd when push came to shove since the CIA was far less rigidly regulated than the military, was the smarter bet, and the safer bet, and he’d made the switch without another blink. 

Lauren knew every corner of him and Shadow Company, and held it in her cute little manicured hands like treasure. 

And Graves was losing his mind trying to pretend to be a gentleman. 

Honestly he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out without just pouncing on her one day when she flounced into his office with a wide, pretty smile and a sweet ‘Good morning, Phillip’. 

The alpha’s urges got stronger every day, the beast roaring that he was a coward, he was just asking for some other fucking alpha to come in and try to take what was his, his, his- 

So the plan had to evolve. 

He didn’t bother starting small, not after the disaster of the Fourth of July barbecue that jolted him into an early rut and poor Lauren into an early false heat. 

For a too-long, too-infuriating week he’d been locked into the rut rooms at SCHQ, snarling and ripping the place apart while his cock drooled unfulfilled between his legs, knot throbbing unhappily. Any time the meal slot had been opened he’d made a dive for it, claws out and roaring demands for Lauren. 

His poor Shadows had to spray him with bear spray every goddamn time. 

Good men, defending their mama, no matter how enraged he’d been at the time. 

Still, the experience had proved Graves had to take Lauren with a much firmer hand. He’d given her the opportunity to make the right decision for herself and take him up on his flirting and his courting offers, and she’d shied away for the sake of ‘professionalism’. 

Graves would have to do the right thing for her. So he would. 

The plan in essence was simple: fuck with her suppressants, build up the courting behavior by careful degrees in the exact order that would most discourage her from speaking up to tell him to stop until it was far too late to reject him without humiliating herself (something his poor sweet little omega couldn’t stand to do, not with an alpha like him, thanks to a billion years of evolutionary instincts), and then swoop in when her suppressants failed and she was left ripe for the mating. 

It would take two months for the suppressants to fully clear from her system, for her to be able to have a real heat, a full heat. 

He’d already waited two years, he could manage another two months. 

Tampering with her prescription was stupid simple. Samuels had the replacement of fake pills from SC’s Research & Development team (triple tested and certified safe) ready to go, and all it took was a ‘surprise’ overnighter to have Lauren help him go over the details of a new contract with an operation in Istanbul to keep her distracted and off her normal schedule while Samuels broke into her pharmacy and made the switch. She picked it up the next day on her way home from work, none the wiser. 

And since it would be two months before her system cleared and her suppressants ‘failed’, Graves took that time to lay the right groundwork. Something he thoroughly enjoyed. 

It started with casual touches. Little things that couldn’t be brought up without making his sweet omega sound crazy. Smoothing his hand over her shoulder, letting it fall to her lower back to get her attention, cupping her chin briefly while talking to her a mile a minute, tucking her hair behind her ears with just a hint of claw tracing the tender shell light enough it would leave her wondering if she’d imagined it. 

He got bolder with it than that after a bit, leaving his hand on her lower back when they walked, pressed firm and steady to guide her where he wanted her, or even his hands on her waist, standing behind her on elevators or escalators, just a little too tight to be casual or subconscious touching. 

Each touch left a little of his scent on her, bonfire smoke and the smell of freshly baled hay like a broiling Texan summer evening. And she never scrubbed it off. Never stopped him when he let his fingers find the guard collar over the glands on her neck that she only wore for when other alphas visited Shadow Company (never around him, the wanton little omega inside her unable to stomach the implication of trying to keep his teeth out of her neck, god such a good fucking omega for him), and she’d just stand there and leak slick when he’d tap the stainless steel caps that covered her scent glands lightly with a smirk as he said he just wanted to make sure it was on securely. 

She knew he was marking her, her texts with her best friend (who he’d arranged to have conveniently hired right out of graduation, through a contact of his in DC so she’d have someone close that he could keep watch over, and wouldn’t get too lonely when he was in the field) got increasingly guilt tinged as she bemoaned that she fucking liked it. 

The best friend won big points with Graves for shamelessly encouraging her to just let him knot her. 

But Lauren, for some godforsaken reason, seemed to think that if she did it would be a mark against her honor or something. Kept going on about how it wasn’t ‘right’ for her to have sex with her boss, how it wasn’t ‘professional’, how ‘important’ her job was to her. 

Seriously, her being actually so good at her work was making the whole plan to keep her barefoot and pregnant at home seem increasingly unlikely and increasingly unacceptable to him. 

By then, the thought of anyone else even trying to do Lauren’s job, to take her position and place at Shadow Company (the Shadows’ fucking mama for god’s sake) had his shoulders rolling and a growl rumbling in his chest. No. He’d have to make some readjustments and figure out a new balance to strike for when he got his claim on her. 

Even though she knew he was marking her and liking it, finally admitting as much in a desperate midday text to her best friend (right after Graves had swept his palm over her bare scent gland and told her what a ‘good girl’ she was for her work preparing a presentation for him), she thought that somehow he was just a flirt. That he didn’t mean it.  

He fumed in his office, temper boiling hot as he struggled to keep himself seated, to stop himself from rearing up and closing the distance between them to lay her down on her goddamn desk and fuck her raw where anyone and everyone could see how much he did mean it. 

So he’d had to step it up. 

Just faint, bitch-ass touches like that weren’t going to be enough to prime her for what he had planned, anyway. Not when his omega was being so stubborn. 

Gift giving came next. 

He’d always flirted with mate-courtship rituals with her since she’d been employed, carefully toeing the line between things that made him look like he was just a normal, thoughtful boss and an alpha hunting a mate. 

The gifts got more blatant, less easily explained away by the ‘proper’ rules of such things. 

He went from buying her lunch every day (and dinner/snacks/coffee during overnighters) to arranging for a private chef to prepare her every meal for her. Rich, decadent meals, and he completely ignored her protests that she wasn’t a starving Victorian child, he was spoiling her terribly. 

‘Good. Want you spoiled, baby. Company perk as my best girl, sugar. Gotta keep you well rewarded for all the hard work you do, honey, don’t think I don’t appreciate it.’  

After that was the car. Nothing too flashy or too high powered it’d scare the holy hell out of her every time she even breathed near the gas pedal. A Rolls Royce in a custom pearl white, custom creamy calf leather interior, with every goddamn safety and luxury upgrade they offered. Presented to her with a baby pink bow on the hood after a day she’d worked herself so hard the poor thing had cried. 

(He only felt a little guilty about arranging that kind of pressure cooker on her, but she’d have rejected the gift if he hadn’t done it that way.) 

‘You do so fucking much for me, honey, you know you do. Work so goddamn hard and you’re so fucking good at it…I had to, sugar, had to give you something back. Be good for me and let me, yeah?’ 

Next was a new guard collar, gold and designed to protect her scent glands from an unwelcome bite but to still show them off. A more decorative and borderline scandalous version of the one she’d already had. 

Scandalous because if one looked very closely at the filigree, when viewed from the inside or through a mirror it was plain that the filigree was just his initials woven in gold to cover her scent glands, soaking in that sweet melon and sea scent rather than dispelling it like the traditional stainless steel. 

‘My job to take care of you, make sure you’re protected from these knotheads, honey. I take that job real fucking serious, you know that. Gotta let me, sugar, or I don’t know what I’ll do.’  

In older eras, the gift of a guard collar was as much of a declaration as one could make. The step right before an official claim bite. The meaning had softened some since then, and use of the protective measures like a guard collar had largely gone out of style as traditional bite-mating faded out of use as well, but it still was nowhere near a casual or meaningless gift. 

Lauren’s dark eyes were wide as he put it on her, her breath catching, melon and sea spray scent hot like summer as her slick dripped into her skimpy little thong beneath her short fucking skirt as he touched his thumb to the biometric lock, and it chimed prettily, accepting his scan. 

Dark eyes met his, but that candy pink mouth didn’t protest even though he recognized the flash of shocked understanding there. The collar would only lock, and thus unlock, for him. Not for any other omega, beta, or alpha, not even for her. Just Graves. 

She’d licked her lips, swallowed hard and thanked him. Thanked him, quiet and breathless, his good fucking girl, so goddamn sweet just for him, all his, all his, all his. 

Finally came the big guns. 

Real scent marking. 

He started with a blanket from home saturated with his scent. Nothing dirty like an item of clothing he’d worn during pre-rut, at least not to start, it was just a blanket he’d had for years that had been in his den long enough for his scent to carry the bonfire/fresh hay between the threads and in the stitching. 

He was working her harder than usual in the lead up to this, though he was extra sweet to her to make up for it and keep her reeled in close, and so during another ‘surprise’ overnighter he dropped the blanket unceremoniously over her shoulders. 

With the edges bundled up right over her bare throat. 

‘Drafty in this damn old barn, sugar, don’t want that fucking air conditioner to give a sweet thing like you a cold, now do we, honey? You ain’t gotta worry about a thing, though, I’ll take good care of you, don’t I always?’ 

She’d cuddled up with it nice enough, let herself soak in his scent like she was lounging in a hot tub, but had made a big stink about giving it back to him rather than keeping it. 

A few days later, he upped the ante and gave her one of his hoodies. An old one, from a few logos ago in the Longhorn’s history, the orange faded and the cuffs threadbare, the string in the stretched out hood entirely gone. And again - totally saturated in his scent. 

Not just an old, worn in, osmosis kind of scent carriage either. But fresh layers on the fabric, too. He’d worn it the night before, a hand working his knot while he watched Lauren picking out her clothes for the next day, still naked and wet from her shower, skimpy towel slipping off of her plump, rounded body. 

He hadn’t cum on the fabric, not directly, just let the hoodie soak up the scent of his arousal, his sweat, his need, the faintest teasing curl of his cum clinging to the edges of the hoodie. 

And if he could smell it, it would be intoxicating to Lauren. 

He’d pretended to not be watching her when he handed it to her in the chill of his office, DC long gone dark beyond the ceiling to floor windows of his windows affording him a perfect view of the city. 

‘Here, sugar, forgot that blanket at home. This should work to keep you warm, pretty girl. What’re you balking for, honey, you ain’t an Aggie fan, are ya? No? Then be good and put it on, sugar. Go on now, you heard me.’ 

She’d sat there, trembling, wide eyed, leaking slick and the scent of hot melon saltwater taffy everywhere. And then, she’d obeyed. Pulled it on over her head. When her face emerged into the hood her lids were heavy and hanging low, already drowsy, the scent of her slick getting worse by the minute. 

Her arms wrapped around herself and for a full three minutes he just sat and greedily watched her bask, wrapped up in her alphas scent. 

Scenting her like that, basically drugging her with it was a dick move, bullying her into it even more so, but he didn’t fucking care, not when it got him that, her purring soft and sweet into the collar, manicured fingers twisted tight in the cuffs, arousal and heat pouring off of her. 

Eventually she managed to clear her head, sitting up and trying to blink away the omegan need turning her gaze glassy and knot-dumb. 

Graves didn’t even pretend to not be paying attention, loving the hot flush on her cheeks when she met his gaze. 

‘Ya look so fucking pretty, honey. Don’t tell ya nearly enough, do I? Need to be better about that, sugar, don’t let me slip. Wear my clothes so good, don’tcha? Like they were made for ya, baby, ain’t they?’ 

Winking, he’d left her to flounder for a reply. 

She wore the hoodie home, and he watched her security cameras to see her not even able to make it to her bedroom, falling down against the wall in her hallway with her graceful hand stuffed between plush thighs, furiously rubbing the cuff of one sleeve against her cunt, whimpering his name mixed with ‘Alpha, alpha, alpha, please,’. 

That video got saved to the folder with her false heat. 

He’d always been tactile with her, dropping kisses on the top of her head or her temple. He did it more often now, and not just on those places, but also on her cheek, the bolt of her jaw, the crest of her ears when her hair was swept back or tucked behind them. 

His hands brushed over her body every fucking opportunity he found, just a little too firm, or a little too close to the vulnerable nape of her neck, or lingering a little too long. 

He let a select few of the things he used to carefully keep in his head and locked behind his tongue start to slip. 

‘Like that dress, honey. Pink’s so pretty on you, baby, makes you look like a fucking dream.’ 

‘You smell good, sugar. Like fucking candy, always so sweet. Know how good it makes me feel to walk in this office and smell that?’ 

‘I like you with your hair down, baby. Looks so soft. Stay still, sugar, no, don’t say nothing, be good for me, behave, just lemme - fuck, yeah, knew it’d be soft, angel. You’re my soft girl, honey, aren’tcha? So sweet like fucking sugar.’ 

‘That presentation you made was perfect, baby. Went off without a hitch. Almost pisses me off those knotheads were too busy staring at you outside the conference room to appreciate how good it was. I know they scare you honey, but that’s what you have me for, you know that. I’d never let nothing happen to you, sugar. I take good care of my best girl, don’t I?’ 

At first these comments made her squeak, blush bright crimson, and flounder for the quickest excuse to find refuge at her little desk outside his office. 

But the more he made them, the bigger the cracks in her armor became, until even when she retreated she was pressing her thighs together at her desk trying to find some relief in the pressure, in the scrape of lace over her clit, but they both knew the only release she’d get would be with Graves’ fat knot stuffing that virgin cunt full. 

He could feel her teetering, could feel her will beginning to fray, but he wanted to be absolutely certain. 

Needed it to be without question that she trusted him beyond anything else. 

So he gave Samuels a new job. 

The poor man’s brand new beta (he’d made a habit of popping a bottle of Dom for the Shadows when any of them got mated, Samuels had been no exception when he’d mated just a month after coming back to DC for good) was on emergency deployment as a medic for one of their ops, so Samuels had begged for an extra outlet rather than destroy their den in his anxiety, one Graves was only too happy to provide. 

He tasked Samuels to return to shadowing Lauren full time, and this time to make it visible. Intimidating, escalating, the works. 

A hooded figure watching her from the mouth of an alley on her daily jog at dawn. Following her through the evening farmer’s market. Showing up in the shadows at the corners of parking lots, and from a different car every time on the same level of a parking garage for her favorite little downtown area of boutiques and her spa that she visited every weekend. 

Lauren noticed first thing, his good girl, his careful, obedient little omega. Took extra precautions, borrowing a stun gun from the armory, asking Graves shyly if he’d please put her guard collar on before she went home every night, finally accepting his offers to walk her to and from her car every day, moving her jogs to her building’s gym, calling him ‘just to chat’ when she was out alone anywhere. 

It was good, but not enough. 

Graves needed one last push to scare her into turning to him fully. He was toying with the idea of a note from her ‘stalker’ under her door that would have her running to Graves, teary eyed and needy, to protect her. 

Appealing to her alpha for help and safety, which he’d be only too happy to provide at the low price of her taking his knot and his claim. 

They were closing in on the two month mark. Biology differed person to person, situation to situation, and often suppressants left an omega’s system quicker if they had an alpha engaging in courting rituals stirring up their instincts (check), or if they were stressed (again, check). 

Graves had notified Laswell he’d likely be unavailable in person for a couple months back when he was starting the whole process, hinting he was preparing to bond, and she’d taken it with a nod like any other piece of information he’d given her, congratulating him with a stone-faced smile he thought was hilarious. 

He knew she had an omega of her own at home, and being the sort of commanding beta she was she obviously understood the hard work that went into taking proper care of them. She got it without him having to spell it out. 

And actually she’d made a strange comment about his absence opening up a ‘perfect opportunity’ for the 141 that, if he actually read into what she said he might have laughed for days about how great minds thought alike. 

So work was covered, his Shadows knowing without having to be told that Graves was close to getting his fangs in their mama’s pretty neck. They were good men, even the biggest knothead alpha on his payroll didn’t let his eyes linger too long on Lauren. They were loyal to their bones to their commander, and they knew who she belonged to even if she was pretending not to. 

Lauren herself was ready to buckle and give in, it would just take one last push, he was sure, but it had to be the exact right one. He had to run all the scenarios in his mind, weigh the risks and rewards properly. Too much was at stake to fuck this up now. 

He soothed the pressure on himself (the impatient slavering beast in the back of his head starving for a hot, slick cunt to sink his knot into, a pretty neck to sink his fangs into) by reminding himself he could always drug her, mark her, and tell her when she woke up that he’d saved her from a omega smuggling ring. 

SC actually had a whole division for hunting those down, contracted through the United Nations. Lauren had helped him organize their terms for the contract to send to legal in her first month. 

It wouldn’t be out of the question as a sequence of events at all. 

And no harm would have actually come to her, so. No harm no foul. He’d be able to talk her round in a couple days he was sure if everything else fell through and he had to take that route. 

The last two months he’d mostly been going through the motions while at work. How Lauren thought he’d be able to get anything accomplished with her sitting out there getting hotter and more fertile and needy by the day was baffling. 

Most of what he did during the days when not training his Shadows or keeping up with the barest amount of meetings and corporate fucking nonsense was watch Lauren and plot. 

Also messing around with the plans for the house he wanted to build for them and the pups he’d breed her full of, but working on that just made him horny, and he was at work. 

He wasn’t so much of an animal that he’d take her virginity on the cold marble of his office fucking floor. 

Famous last words. 

-

It was a fucking Wednesday. 

A normal, purely fucking average Wednesday just like all the other Wednesdays that had come before it. 

He’d walked into the building at 6:02 am, got in some morning combat drills with some Shadows until eight when he showered in his private suite and got dressed for the day while reviewing Lauren’s careful, detailed hand-printed notes in her bubble letter handwriting about a potential contact for expanding operations of SC by planting a few discreet bases for the Shadows in strategic areas over the globe. 

By eight thirty he’d had her observations and recommendations memorized (exactly in line with his thinking, if a little conservative, his tender hearted omega liked playing by the rules and asking permission), and he’d been there in the parking garage waiting for Lauren to pull in her customary half hour early in the car he’d bought her so he could open her door and help her out. 

She blushed and smiled the same as always. “Good morning, Phillip.” 

And he grinned, inhaling the scent of melon and sea salt so deep he could taste it. “Mornin’, sugar. You look so pretty today, honey, you break my heart.” 

That blush only got worse, and he stepped in close, keeping her still with a hand on her rounded waist as he shut her car door after picking up her bags to carry for her. 

As customary she tried to protest. “You really don’t have to, Phillip I’m supposed to be your assistant-” 

‘Oh c’mon, baby, I ain’t so old I can’t carry your little work bag and my own damn breakfast.” He chuckled, kissing her temple, squeezing her waist, leaving his scent on her side by brushing up against her. “Be a good girl and humor me, sugar, have a little heart.” 

“…oh alright,” she relented breathlessly, brushing nervous hands over her dress as her scent heated. 

He’d walked her inside, just like normal, letting her calm herself down by babbling about work, just like normal, and at least paid half attention to it. She always had something of worth to say. 

Lauren’d brought him his coffee and a high protein breakfast for him to eat before their standing conference call with Legal about developments in contract negotiations (so many fucking steps to these goddamn things it was actually insane, the legalities were fucking stupid), and he had something sweet, a blueberry and lemon muffin today, waiting for her in his office. 

He let her direct the conversation to the day’s agenda for a good ten minutes but he couldn’t hardly pay attention, too consumed with watching the healthy pink flush on her face, the shine of her glossy perfectly curled hair as she moved it over a rounded shoulder, the swell of her mouth - was it his imagination or had her mouth gotten poutier somehow? 

Since replacing her suppressants, she’d seemed like she was fucking glowing or something, like her body knew that this was how she was supposed to be, sweet and fertile and ready for her alpha to breed and knot at his goddamn leisure. 

Not even the stress of her ‘stalker’ seemed to dim it, especially not when Graves was constantly telling her low and sweet how pretty she looked and making her blush and duck her head, biting her lip like it was a brand new piece of information even though he told her every damn day. 

Her scent was stronger too…sweeter. As a baseline, it had gotten thicker, headier. 

Several times now over the last week he’d had to resist the instinct to drop his head into her neck and lick over the glands he swore swelled a little when he stood too close or put a firm hand on her lower back. 

She was so fucking close to giving in he could taste it on his tongue. 

But she had to make the first move, the only way to assure she’d never have any reason to question anything about their relationship. 

Or, perhaps more accurately, the only way he could soothe his own pride after pouring two whole goddamn years into just getting this far. 

Was it too much to arrange for her to make the ‘first’ move? Make her grateful that he’d accepted her begging, pitiful pleas to make her his omega? 

He just wanted her to be grateful. That was all. 

Hubris, as it were, came before the fall. 

The day proceeded as normal, same boring fucking corporate bullshit meetings that should be emails that his finance and HR departments refused to leave him out of or just make emails, and more bearable were the same training drill observations with the Shadows. Stepping in where he saw the opportunity to correct them, patting them on the backs and shoulder, rapping on their helmets and calling praise and orders to answered ‘yup yup!’s same as always. 

Same lunch as always, even, with Lauren on the other side of his desk talking about messages he’d gotten in the last four hours while he chided her to eat more of her pasta- 

‘Come on sugar, just another couple bites, I work you so hard, honey, just let me make sure you’re well fed yeah? Don’t give me that look or I’ll put you over my knee, don’t think I won’t, sweetheart. Be good for me now, go on, do as you’re told.’ 

Just like normal he left her horny, flushed, confused and probably stuffed full (but not in the way either of them would like most, unfortunately) while he went to go at least pretend to read through some paperwork and respond to a few idiotic emails. 

Everything was fine, normal, expected as he went back to work after their shared lunch. 

At first. 

Then something shifted at exactly 2:12. 

Something…itched. 

A burr under his metaphorical saddle, a splinter under his skin between his shoulder blades, a clench in his gut he’d only ever gotten before the whistle of a mortar sounded in the air. 

Something was wrong. 

He glanced up from where he’d been skimming through an update from Laswell about the 141 being ‘out of commission’ for a good month and a half in preparation for a return to Urzikstan she expected Graves on the ground for as well. 

Out in front of his office was Lauren’s desk, visible through the floor to ceiling glass partition. The fresh bouquet he’d given her just on Monday was sitting in pride of place, Lauren sitting where she belonged in her sweet little tight skirt and crisp white button down, dark hair swept up in the heat brought on by the strong afternoon sunlight pouring in through the huge windows. 

But what didn’t belong was the tension humming through her ample body, tightening her shoulders and the sweet line of her back. The tight, protective curl of her elegant hands into fists, one inching ever closer to the Coach purse she’d bought herself with her first bonus (that cost a fraction of what he’d given her, he was going to teach his girl what it meant to spoil herself if it killed him). 

What really didn’t fucking belong in the atrium of the executive suites, hounding his PA, was General Herschel fucking Shepherd. 

Graves was standing, stalking to the door without conscious thought. His forebrain with the plans and the careful manipulations and the lethal cunning was gone, replaced by the alpha beast who was watching an intruder intimidate his fucking omega. 

He’d already decided to kill Shepherd before the man even reached out and put his hand on Lauren’s vulnerable nape with a sick smile on his face. 

Alpha pheromones and the scent of frightened omega were thick in the air when he crashed through his office doors, sending glass flying everywhere, fangs drooling as he roared a challenge loud enough to shake the goddamn foundations of his own fucking building, any kind of warning be damned, claws reaching for Shepherd’s smug fucking face. 

The sick oily creep of Shepherd’s pheromones and Lauren’s fear was all he could smell. 

Higher thought just sort of. 

Vanished. 

All he knew was - 

Threat. 

Rival. 

Scared her. 

Touched her. 

Blood. 

Blood. 

Blood. 

Some undetermined amount of time later, a cool, shaky hand gently pressed against his shoulder. 

He froze, fist halfway down in a vicious punch. 

The red mist of rage began to thin, and he slowly became more aware of things. 

First, Shepherd was unconscious, face damn near caved in from Graves’ fist. If Shepherd had gotten a hit in, Graves didn’t feel it. His chest was heaving, his limbs burning with exertion. 

Blood coated his fists, sprayed finely over his face. 

His body was fire-hot head to toe, only relieved where Lauren (had to be her, had to be, could smell her melon-sea scent still soured by fear but getting sweeter again) had her on his shoulder, fingers cool through the thin fabric of his dress shirt. 

“Ph- …alpha,” she whispered, voice cashmere soft. “Will you get up?” 

Alpha. 

The animal inside of him preened, relenting. For the moment. It was good and right for her to call him that. 

To ask him so sweet, submissive and pretty. Even if she knew he’d always give her what she wanted, what she needed. 

He let Shepherd fall to the ground, his other hand unclenching from the grip he’d had on the lapel of the other alpha’s dress uniform. 

Chest still working hard like bellows feeding his internal fire, he stood, slowly, by degrees, never taking his eyes off of Shepherd, keeping his body in between the other alpha and Lauren like he was somehow magically still a threat as he let Lauren gently pull him with a grip on the back of his now ripped and bloodied dress shirt toward his office. 

A new scent emerged over all the blood, over the smell of Graves’ rage and Lauren’s fear (and something…sweeter, fuck, fuck, fuck) that had Graves tensing all over again, snarling slick and sick. 

It was Oz, calm and level-headed, unmoving. 

Seeing the beta helped clear his head, but not as much as the sweet nothings, the pretty pleas Lauren was giving his back, rubbing his tensed muscles, trying to appease her alpha but keeping careful mind not to overstep or even let her hands be visible to the new interloper. 

Graves swallowed, forcing the animal back far enough to get some fucking words out. “Clear the floor. Get out. Stay out.”  

The last two words were snarled, growling clicking threateningly in his chest, echoing off the too silent walls of the atrium. 

Oz nodded once. “Commander.” 

Graves backed Lauren through the smashed glass doors of his office, the glitter of the shards over marble scattering under their feet. But those doors were just for show. When they were inside, he used the margin of control he’d wrangled back to press the hidden button in the wainscoting, and it beeped, reading his thumbprint. 

Lockdown doors rolled down from the ceiling, covering the door and all the windows, sealing off his entire suite. From one large wall that he’d hung some overpriced modern art on swung down a couple panels. One for supplies - medical, arms and munitions, non perishable food, water. 

And one for a bed, just barely big enough to fit Graves himself. But hey, he’d never anticipated this being the place he mated his omega. 

Lauren, cause she was a good fucking girl, only sighed when the lockdown settled with some ominous clicks and beeps. Light still poured in through the now much smaller windows, but it was dimmer from the one-way glass he’d installed, so they could see out but no one could see in, and the front view of his office that had awarded him his perfect view of Lauren and her desk at all times was covered with material they’d reverse engineered to be missile-proof. 

They were alone. Completely and totally alone. 

His sweet little omega was locked in a room with a beast and there was relief blowing cool and sweet through her scent, chasing away the sour tinge of fear and the wrong kind of salt, the tears kind of salt. 

He felt her body go lax, slumping toward him as she laid her forehead on his still tense back. 

“That…that was scary.” 

With the world safely locked away, and Lauren safely locked in with him, Graves was free to turn, hauling her into his arms, burying his face into her neck, growling unhappily when he found the faintest trace of Shepherd’s metal and soil scent trying to cling to her. 

A few scruffs from his five-o’clock shadow took care of that, and she smelled much better when she smelled like him. 

His growling softened, but didn’t silence, just morphed to something he’d deny was anything like a purr when his head was clear again. 

But for the moment, when he was still fucking burning head to toe, every muscle aching for some goddamn relief that’d been two fucking years in the making - he couldn’t think straight. 

“Y’alright sugar?” His voice was trying to be sweet, but it sounded twisted, like a clawed hand lashing out from a dark corner to latch on to her soft little body. “Did he scruff you?” 

“No,” she sniffled, hands cupping his head, framing the back of his skull, carding gentle fingers through his hair, his perfect little omega content to dangle there where he held her tight to his chest, arms corded around her back. “No, he — he didn’t get that far.” 

Scruffing an omega made them go limp, and if done hard enough by an alpha wielding pheromones like a weapon the way Shepherd had to have been to soak the whole fucking atrium with his goddamn scent like that - it could make an omega fucking catatonic. Completely unaware and unable to fight back, unable to speak. 

The idea had his body trembling, his temperature climbing again. 

Lauren’s hands didn’t falter. “Alpha,” she started sweetly. “I think -  I think you might, uh, you might be-” 

“Rutting,” he answered through gritted teeth, burying his face deeper into her neck. He knew the signs. Knew what this feeling of a wild itch beneath his skin and in his gums, the unbelievable heat gathering as his knot thobbed and started to fill, sweat already coating his body. 

But he couldn’t be fucked with himself when Lauren was in his arms like this. She was softer than he’d dreamed she’d be, her perfect body had so much give and plush fat to it and it made him almost want to whine. “God, you’re so fucking sweet, sugar, like watermelon fucking candy just coming off the goddamn stove, does your slick taste that fucking sweet too? Or do ya taste like a fruity cocktail drunk on the beach, like ya’ve been rimmed with salt from the sea?” 

She whimpered, quietly. 

And then he smelled it. 

A fresh wave of heat slick. 

He’d smelled her get aroused around him before, had been the reason for her pussy getting slick and puffy beneath her skirts, dripping into her panties. 

But not like this. 

This was boiling sugar, like melons on the vine ripe enough to fucking burst, like actually having sex on the beach with the sand and salt crusting to your sweaty skin. 

He knew what this was. What it meant. 

Confirmation. 

Victory. 

Finally. 

“You’re in heat,” he said, the corners of his mouth curling up. 

Finally. 

“I know,” Lauren panted, arching her neck to give him more room, that slick-heat-need scent getting stronger. “I don’t…uhn, I don’t understa-ah!” 

“Shh,” he crooned, moving her over to the bed, knowing it could take the abuse he was about to put it through, even if it really wasn’t big enough for this, he could make it work, and it’d be more comfortable for Lauren to lose her virginity on a bed no matter how cramped than on the goddamn floor. “Lemme take care of you, sugar. S’my fucking job honey, fuck, god, gotta get that fucking slick on my goddamn tongue or I’ll lose my fucking mind-” 

“Alpha!”  

He froze, pulling away from her just enough to meet her eyes. 

God, please, give him the strength to talk her round, give him the fucking brain cells to keep the animal in him from just convincing her with the weight of his cock when her her heat hit in full. 

She didn’t look all that scared though. More like she was trying to remember something…or how she wanted to say something, from the way she started and abandoned a sentence a few times before just blurting out- 

“Do you love me?” 

The words were soft. Needy. Tears gathered in dark, glassy eyes. “I c-couldn’t stand it if you j-just wanted - just wanted to-” 

He caught her fumbling mouth in a kiss, swallowing the nasty thought before it could spill onto the floor between them and leave a foul taste on her tongue. 

“Course I fucking love you,” he told her, hands tight on her waist holding on for dear life to keep himself from reaching for something else he shouldn’t be touching at that moment. “Fell in love with you the first fucking second I saw your picture. Spent all that time trying to get you to fall in love back, thanks for noticing, sugar.” 

His teasing didn’t land. A soft hiccup escaped her, and he pulled back again to see a few tears roll down her face. Relief, again, thankfully. 

“I noticed,” she promised as he caught the tears with his thumbs, rumbling soothing noises deep in his chest. “I fell in love then too. You take such good care of me…ruined me for everyone else, alpha, could never want anyone but you.” 

The rumble in his chest revved louder, his eyes flashing, cock throbbing in his slacks. “Good girl,” he praised, thick and dark. “My good fucking omega, sugar, that’s what you are.” 

She shivered, and he could taste the wave of slick gush from her cunt as her eyes rolled back briefly. “Please, alpha,” she begged, looking at him through her lashes, baring her neck, showing off her swollen scent gland. “Want you to claim me.” 

Another jolt, the temperature in his body raising once more as the words alone, the wanton position spread out on rough cotton sheets in his goddamn office pulled him deeper into rut. 

“Gonna give it to ya, promise, honey, you just lay there and take this knot.” He tugged out the tie holding her hair back, groaning when it spilled free glossy and dark over the rough sheets on the too small bed. 

Her eyes were nearly entirely black, glazed with heat-drunk lust as she moved restlessly beneath him, making pretty, sweet little cooing and mewling noises as he tugged off her clothes. He’d taken care not to rip them (much), though he wasn’t nearly as considerate for his own clothes. 

A growl vibrated his gritted teeth as he pulled off her shirt and exposed her tits, cupped in perfect, virginal white lace. 

“Pretty, pretty, pretty,” he crooned, claws gently running over the peaks and making her back arch, a beautiful, addictive, needy sound spilling out from between her lips. 

One claw beneath the band, and it snapped. He flung the lace aside. She’d never be able to wear white again after this, so why should he keep it nice? 

The flimsy, scant little scrap of white lace covering her cunt got similar treatment, though he raised the sopping fabric to his face first, eyes rolling back in his head and knot pulsing painfully as he sucked her slick from the fabric. 

Just like hot watermelon saltwater taffy. Like blood, too, a little, like in the way that a properly rare steak was, so the juice just made you hungrier. 

“Alpha,” she moaned, little claws biting into his sides, trying to tug him down to cover her body. “S-stop that.” 

He groaned, looking over her head to toe. He wanted to memorize this. The taste of her heat slick thick as molasses on his tongue as he sucked on her lace panties, her laying spread out beneath him completely naked, scent glands swollen, heavy tits blushed and straining, and that perfect, needy, fertile fucking virgin cunt peeking from between round spread thighs. 

“Can smell it,” he rasped, dropping the panties, his hands fitting around her hips, pinning her down to the bed as he lowered himself down so he could get a proper look. “Fuck, look at her. So fucking small, darlin’. Y’never put anything inside this pretty thing?” 

A whine was her only reply as he buried his mouth against her, lapping right from the source. 

His knees buckled, vision spotting and he growled against her cunt, yanking her closer to lick deeper. She was so fucking sweet. So goddamn motherfucking sweet, and she, she even - 

“Y’even taste tight,” he grunted against her clit as he met her burning gaze, looking down the length of her soft body. “This poor girl. She’s been needing me, ain’t she? N’you’ve been keeping her from me, omega.” 

Tears clumped her lashes together, puffy lips pursed in a pout as she babbled, “A-alpha-” 

“This sweet fucking cunt’s been empty, ain’t she?” He rubbed his chin against her, watching greedily as her body spasmed, her eyes rolling back. “N’you kept it from your alpha. Ain’t that selfish, darlin’? Ain’t that cruel?” 

“M’sorry, alpha,” she stammered through her tears. 

Almost mockingly he shushed her, still rubbing her clit with his chin, his mouth, lapping up her dripping slit, hands bruising her hips as he kept her still. “Sorry ain’t enough, darlin’. Gotta teach you a lesson so y’never do it again, hear?” 

He wrapped his lips around her clit, sucking a little, making her shriek, the sound just edging over to animal before he pulled back and said, the words vibrating her clit, “Gonna have ya cum once on my tongue. Gotta make ya cum empty first, s’punishment.” 

She whimpered, more tears spilling free, but her cunt still dripped, her thighs shaking. She was already so close. 

“And then,” he soothed, kissing her sticky inner thighs, scraping fangs lightly on the tender skin there. He’d leave proper marks, maybe even a few scars some day. But not today. “Then I’ll give you your alpha’s fat fucking knot. Give you a bite on that pretty neck so everyone knows you belong to me, darlin’.” 

“Yes!” She tried to buck her hips, blind and mindless. She was deep in heat, deep enough that it was flirting with criminal territory to only now bring up marking her so permanently. But that was the point. 

Everything he’d done, all this time he’d put into getting her here, to this moment, it had finally paid off. Now she was so needy and heat-blind she was operating on instinct alone, instinct to please her alpha, instinct to get fucked, to be mated. 

She thrashed on the bed, nails raking at his forearms, scratching him up like a naughty cat as half-formed, mindless pleas poured out of her mouth. “Need your knot, alpha, need you to bite me, need it so bad, please please please!” 

He didn’t bother answering her verbally. Just fixed his mouth around her clit and sucked. Hard. Rubbed back and forth and in circles with his tongue over that tight, sensitive bud, watching and listening to every little move she made, every sound that came out of her, finding what she liked best and shoving his foot down on the gas on each of them until she finally just - shattered. 

Slick spilled out from her clenching, still untouched little hole as she screamed, every muscle in her body locking up tight, back bowed, dark hair wild beneath her as he just kept sucking and licking her clit to get her through it. 

And with every pulse of her cunt he felt an answering one in his cock, his knot painfully swollen, hips moving in soft, faint little ruts as he fought to keep control rather than give in to the rut. 

Not yet. Not yet. He’d rut her wild all next week without a care for comfort or consideration, because by then she’d be mated and his pleasure would be her pleasure, and her pleasure would be his pleasure. He wouldn’t have to be as careful then. 

But for now? No, now he had to do it right, make her cum like a good girl on his fat knot as he filled her with his cum. 

He’d meant to keep talking, both as a way to reassure her it was still him, aware and in control, and to keep himself somewhat sane. But then one of her little claws actually drew blood. 

One fine lined scratch down his arm. 

Next thing he knew he had her on her stomach, ass up high and held in place by his hands as he knelt on the narrow bed, the fat tip of his cock notched against her pussy. 

She was trembling. But her scent didn’t have a single whisper of fear or doubt. Just that boiling sugar of heat slick need, watermelon and sea salt slick still coating his tongue, his chin, his cheeks. 

He moved one hand, smoothing his palm over her round ass, up the line of her spine that he’d admired do long from his desk chair. 

Until he settled it on the back of her neck. 

Not squeezing. 

Just holding. 

Threatening. 

She whimpered, her pussy clenching down desperately around nothing. “Please alpha,” she begged, the words clouded and almost indistinguishable through her tears. “Please, please, please, please!” 

He pressed his palm down on the nape of her neck, fingers curling around the vulnerable spot there perfectly sized for him to squeeze her right there, just like this, just for him alone to make her mind go blank and her back arch high, cutting her off mid-word as he shoved his hips forward. 

The fragile barrier of her hymen popped, so completely he would’ve sworn he heard it, as he shoved deep into her tight, overwhelming heat, a too loud snarl as he bared his fangs, covering her back with his body. 

Mine. 

God she was unbelievable. The tight, tight stretch of her cunt squeezing and spasming as his fat knot threatened around the tight ring of her entrance, her soft body throbbing beneath his, plush and hot and sweet. That scent of hot watermelon candy and the salt of her slick still on his tongue as his mouth watered. 

Perfect. 

That was what she was, fucking perfect. 

Words were totally beyond him. 

He wanted to tell her how good she felt on his cock, how good she was being to squeeze down so tight he had to punch his hips hard to fuck her properly, her thighs shaking before she’d even taken half a dozen thrusts. 

To tell her how soft and pretty she was like this, his own perfect little omega all cock hungry, so dumbed down just from getting fucked that she couldn’t even properly speak any more. 

How perfect she was to cum, screaming for her alpha, gushing slight around his knot, walls fluttering as she begged and mewled so prettily for a knot to plug her up and breed her full. 

Mine. 

But he couldn’t get the words out. All that came out was animalistic vocalizations in varying volume as he fucked her the way he’d wanted to for years. 

And godfuckingdammit but he didn’t want this to end, either. He’d only take her virginity once, and he was going to fucking enjoy it. Wanted to exact his revenge, just once, for her making him wait this long for what he’d always owned. 

He’d be sweet to her the rest of their lives, but for once, just for right now, he wanted to be mean. 

So he ignored her clawing up the mattress and the pitiful omega whines getting wetter and the tang of salt getting stronger in the air as she started crying, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she went unfulfilled, her heat unanswered. 

The two of them were burning up, feeding into one another’s hormones, fanning inner flames higher and higher and it was fucking addictive. 

This was all she’d ever needed, all Graves had ever needed, one bruising hand on her plush hip keeping her angled just how he wanted as he fucked her as hard as he liked, but not as deep as she needed, only torturing her with the threat of his knot. 

But he couldn’t hold off forever. 

She was too hot, too tight, too wet and sweet, and he’d been kept from her for too long. He’d made her cum twice, and that was good, but the alpha needed to knot. He needed to mark. He needed to mate. 

He needed to mark her up, inside and out. 

Now. 

Before anyone, even God himself, could step in to stop him. 

Mine. 

A low, threatening growl rumbled out of him when Lauren’s sweet pleas grew louder, tone turning from begging into the beginnings of frustrated anger. 

That wouldn’t do. 

That would never be a tone he wanted her to use on him. 

One more deliberate squeeze of his hand around the nape of her neck to make her go limp again, cutting off the growing demands and the thrashing of her body. Seeing her like that, feeling her go lax and submissive, knot-hungry and needy as her slick dripped off of his balls - fuck. 

He moved the hand covering her neck, slipping his arm around her chest to hold on to her opposite shoulder as he opened his panting mouth against her swollen scent gland, the skin searing against his equally heated lips. 

“Mine,” he snarled as he held her down and popped his knot in with one hard, relentless thrust. 

She screamed, but she didn’t have time to do anything else before his fangs sunk deep into the spot that they’d longed to mark for two fucking years and drained his balls inside of his mate. 

The pleasure was so blinding everything around him went white. The feeling of her body stuck between his knot and his fangs, every breath tugging on his sensitive gums, every pulse of her blood inside her skin enough for him to feel her tighten around his cock she was stretched so thin, so tight. He knew she’d be hurting, he was too big and he’d been fucking mean, hadn’t stretched her for it at all. 

But god it was so good like this. 

How she was meant to take it. 

And god, she took it so fucking good. Cumming like a slut, like a good little omega all over her alpha’s fat fucking knot the second it locked and his teeth pierced her scent gland. 

His hips rolled in lazy, half-formed thrusts trying to press his cum deeper, despite the fact that the head of his cock was rammed up against her fucking cervix like this. 

The haze of rut cleared slightly with that first load, the chill of the air conditioner beginning to reach him again. 

He could feel the sweat on his back, the scratch of the sheets under his knees, the thundering of his mate’s heart. 

Could feel the bond, new, fragile, growing stronger as it formed in his chest. Filling in a hole he’d been keenly aware of his whole life, the perfect puzzle piece slotting into place. 

The relief was so keen he whined, grinding sharper against her hips, another hot, thick pulse of cum streaming out into her womb as he bit down deeper. 

Lauren whimpered, but her scent didn’t sour. Just got sweeter. 

“I c-can feel you,” she stammered. “God…Phillip…” 

He could feel her too. 

The aches and strain his her lower half from the brutal way he’d fucked her. The sharp sting in her throat. The need still simmering, but no longer boiling now that she had a load in her. Her heat was quelled for now, but it’d be back with a vengeance and he’d give her everything she’d ever need. 

Could feel something not physical, too. Something cool and sweet, like a freshwater spring tucked away in the heavy woods in high summer, refreshing you when you skinny-dipped to cool off. 

Something that was just…Lauren. 

Just like that, the perpetual anxious itch between his shoulder blades and the looming shadow of fear and dark possessive jealousy in the back of his head just vanished. She was his. Totally and completely and forever now. 

Not a goddamn thing that anyone could do about it. 

“Mine,” he said, or tried to. 

She flinched, and this time the flash of her pain made his stomach turn. 

Reluctantly, he pulled his mouth off of her neck, licking the trickles off blood off of her heated skin, a soothing rumble passed from deep in his chest right against her back, against the nape of her neck. 

And because she was a good fucking omega, she begged him not to, to keep them there, please alpha she could take it- 

“Shh,” he soothed, rough and dark. “Did so good, darlin’. My good omega.” 

He kissed her cheek, sticky with dried and fresh tears and sweat. Spreading his knees out, he pressed her down harder into the bed, settling in, smirking slightly when the pressure of his body over hers immediately made her relax again. 

“Gonna be locked a while yet,” he crooned happily. “Let’s get comfy, yeah darlin’?” 

He’d have to get her something to drink, something to eat. Thank god he had ready to go nonperishables, but this was still a far cry from an omega’s carefully curated and intimately familiar nest. 

Just meant he’d need to be extra attentive even after her heat, make sure she bounced back well. Course, she’d be doing it at his side, too. 

That made him smile against her cheek. 

Her cunt was still milking his cock, and every now and then he’d pump a new pulse of cum into her. 

If he’d been in a more self-aware state he’d have tried to say something truly filthy to her about it. But he really couldn’t at the moment. 

Not with her already making the cutest fucking sleepy noises as she found his hands and threaded her small, plush manicured fingers through his, yawning into the scratchy sheets. “Thank you, alpha.” 

His lips drew back from his teeth as that alone made his balls draw up again, grinding his hips against her cunt as he came once more. Black spots danced over his field of vision even with his eyes shut tight. 

“Gonna breed you again, sugar,” he murmured, kissing her temple, settling heavily over her body as he felt her drop off into sleep. “Get some rest. Gonna fucking need it, darlin’.” 

-

Laswell was waiting for them on the other side of the doors when Graves finally gave in to Lauren’s sweet urging and raised the emergency seal. 

She didn’t flinch, more credit to her, at the sight of Lauren practically mauled and drowning in Graves’ clothes in his arms even though Graves himself was only wearing a pair of boxers. Not even the scent of a rut/heat den being unleashed after a whole week seemed to have any effect on Laswell. 

“Graves, for the love of god.”

He grinned at her like an asshole. “Laswell, you remember Lauren, my mate?” 

Lauren waved from her perch in his arms, blushing. “Hi.” 

For a moment, Laswell’s narrow gaze didn’t move from Graves. She was analyzing him, picking out pieces of information and putting them together. Not that he didn’t think she already knew the full story already. 

If anything, he’d hope that she’d known exactly what his plan with Lauren was from the very beginning, otherwise she wasn’t nearly as good at her job as she should be. 

So he stood there, grinning like a total dick, unphased by her scrutiny or judgment. 

Sighing, Laswell turned to look at Lauren and immediately softened. “Hi. You alright, kiddo? This knothead didn’t hurt you?” 

Lauren puffed up like a bird, scowling cutely. “He’d never. He’s been nothing but a gentleman.” 

It didn’t escape his notice that a muscle in the beta’s jaw flickered, but he did appreciate that she managed not to laugh in Lauren’s face. 

Raising a hand, Laswell forestalled any other soliloquy. “Alright. Long as you’re not upset, kid.” Leveling her gaze on Graves, she sighed again. “You know Shepherd’s in a coma.” 

“Awh,” Graves said, trying to fight off the clenching jaw that wanted to lock, the curl of a growl that wanted to click into place. “Here I was hoping he’d be dead.” 

“It’d be less paperwork,” Laswell admitted to them without blinking, voice dry and eyes fixed on Graves. “After all, jealous alphas going feral over their omega being dropped into an unexpected heat is so commonplace it’s got its own fucking form in the DOD.” 

Graves blinked. “Really?” 

“No, knothead.” She paused. “Well, technically yes, but that’s not its only purpose. Anyway, the point is that you’re gonna have to go in front of the Supreme Court and explain yourself when they get around to the case.” 

Shrugging, Graves blew a raspberry. “Whatever. He touched my omega and tried to scruff her. DOD classifies that as a hate crime. I was triggered by my mate’s heat and went to an aggression rut. That I didn’t kill him proves I’m not feral.” 

“Or that your omega’s got you on a short leash.” 

Lauren snickered, and Graves chuckled, waggling his eyebrows at them both. “Now that she definitely does.” 

Now Laswell rolled her eyes, sighing again. “Yeah, I definitely should have just emailed.” 

Shifting in his arms, Graves felt the shift in Lauren’s emotions go from blissful happiness to slight anxiety before her scent changed a note. “Why did you come? Is everything alright?” 

Immediately, Laswell nodded. “Everything is under control. Oz kept Shadow Company running, from what I understand everything is proceeding as expected and under control.” 

Remembering their earlier conversation, Graves tilted his head, eyes narrowing slightly. “And 141?” 

Laswell paused, staring at him, expressionless. “Taskforce 141 is currently on sabbatical. They will be back in three weeks.” 

So she had managed to find them mates. 

He grinned wide. “Timing worked out perfectly then, huh?” 

“I don’t know what you mean.” Her cool gaze warmed once more as she turned to Lauren. “I really came to warn you both about the Supreme Court hearing, whenever that happens, and that we’re still on track for deployment in three weeks.” 

Lauren’s hand went tight on the back of his neck, and he felt her gut swoop with dread. “Oh,” she said bravely, trying to force her voice to be braver than she felt. “Thank you, for that.” 

A worried little rumble revved in his throat as he kissed her cheek, holding her tighter. “We’ve still got three weeks then,” he soothed her. 

After a moment she nodded, but tucked her face against his throat. 

“I need to get you home, baby,” he frowned. “Need to get you to someplace you can make an actual nest and get some actual sleep.” 

She’d been wound tight as a watch spring in his arms, but at that she loosened a little. “…can we order food from Maurice’s?” 

A smile tugged at his mouth. “Course we can, honey. Anything you want.” 

The ill-ease he was feeling from her settled, and he glanced back at Laswell. 

She had a strange expression on her face. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve said she was almost fond. 

“Thanks for stopping by,” he said brightly. “Always nice to see work acquaintances first thing after a mating.” 

Rolling her eyes again, Laswell turned on her heel. “Three weeks, Graves, and then wheels up.” 

He ignored her departing words, grinning down at Lauren. “Three weeks isn’t nearly enough time alone with you, darlin’…” 

She peeked up at him, dark eyes wide and soft, exhaustion tinging the edges. 

“But it’s a damn good start, ain’t it sugar?” He kissed her, lingering, tasting her soft, swollen and much abused lips as he began to walk. “Let’s see if I can beat my record for quickest commute home, hm? And on the way you can order dinner.” 

Or follow orders and play with her puffy little clit until she came all over his custom leather interior, whichever. 

He’d decide in the car. 

He had that option now. Had all of the options now. Had everything he’d ever wanted, actually. 

Against her mouth, he sighed, squeezing her tight. “I fucking love you.” 

The bright flash of surprise and glee, then the wave of warm, heavy adoration and love came barreling through the bond.