#omega3

"It thrills me. Your obedience," Terzo purred, looking up at Omega through his eyelashes. "I've tamed the beasts of hell, you do my bidding, and mine alone." 

"Is that so, little bug?" Omega asked, amused. 

"Yes. You would never disobey me. If I tell you to kneel, you kneel, ghoul." 

Omega slammed Terzo roughly into the wall, massive hand pinning him there. There was a flicker of fear in Terzo's eyes, a thrill from Omega flaunting his strength. 

"Will I?" 

"You… you will. You must listen to your Papa." 

"Must I?" Omega's hand slipped from Terzo's shoulder to his throat, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Am I bound to obey you, human? Do you command the powers of hell?" 

"I…" Terzo began, voice dying off as Omega's grip tightened. 

"Our obedience to you, little one, is of our own volition. You are too weak to break us, or stop us from taking what we desire. You are a creature of the earth, doomed to yield to the forces above you." 

"You… ah! You are not… above me…" Terzo whined, squirming and struggling against Omega. 

"Oh, but I am, Papa." Omega lifted Terzo easily off the ground and held him, pressing his knee into the human's groin. "And perhaps you need a reminder…" 

"Unhand… me…" 

"Hm… no." 

"Ghoul-" 

"Shut up." Omega pulled off his mask and set it aside, returning both hands to Terzo's body. One hand held him up as the other pawed at his pants, tearing them off of his slender body. Omega unceremoniously forced his legs apart, eyes locked with Terzo's as he leaned down to press a kiss to the human's lips. 

"Megs…" Terzo twisted and pressed himself against Omega, gaze full of mingled fear and lust. 

"Did someone bite off more than they could chew?" Omega asked softly, undoing his trousers and pressing the tip of his cock against Terzo's ass, earning a soft moan. "You knew this would happen. You're prepared, aren't you? Filthy human…" 

Terzo grinned, but remained silent. Omega felt his jacket pockets and, as expected, found Terzo's favorite lube lurking within. Omega carelessly slicked himself and pushed into Terzo's waiting hole, a loud, desperate whine escaping him. 

"Be quiet. They'll hear you outside, Papa." 

Terzo tried, but there was no chance of being successful when Omega was fucking him so recklessly. He came quickly, whimpering as Omega refused to let up. Tears were running down Terzo's face, leaving tracks in his paints, by the time Omega finished. He reluctantly pulled out when his cock began to soften, watching his spend drip out of Terzo and onto the venue floor. 

"That… all..?" Terzo panted, eyes glinting mischeviously. 

"Of course not." Keeping one hand on his Papa, Omega reached out and crooked a finger towards Alpha, calling him over. "I was just warming you up, your eminence." 

"Don't scream, Papa. We've finished setting up, so there's nothing but the crowd to hide you…" Alpha gave a wicked, toothy grin, taking Terzo from Omega and laying him over one of the storage boxes. He held him down, clawed hand on his chest, as he stroked himself hard and inspected Terzo's ass. He hefted his cock in his hand, lining the tip up with the human's ruined hole. 

"He can take it. He's mastered us, after all." 

"Please… ah… Alph…" 

"Shh…" Alpha smirked as he pushed into Terzo, smile widening when he felt the human tense and squirm as he was stretched to his limits, breathing quickening. "Remember, they can hear you." 

Terzo whimpered, tears running down his face, makeup thoroughly ruined. His nonsensical pleading died off, descending into raw, shaky moans. He gave up fighting, as well, and Alpha couldn't resist commenting: 

"Did Papa realize that fighting wasn't worth it? That his tame ghouls were stronger than him?" 

Terzo just whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut at Alpha's fat cock slammed into his prostate. His cock drooled against his stomach, periodically giving another pathetic spurt. 

"Make him stop, Papa. It's almost time for you to be onstage, and you're a wreck…" Omega cooed, giving Terzo a meaningful, yet mocking, look. 

"Alpha… fuck, Alpha…" 

"More? Is that what you need?" 

"Ah! No… please…" 

"Please what?" 

"Please… Need… Need to be onstage…" 

"Beg." 

"Please, Alpha… Omega… Meggy…" 

"You can go out when I'm done with you." 

"Thank… thank you…" 

"That's better." Alpha sped up, claws digging into Terzo's hips, yanking him forward onto his cock as he came. Omega quickly grabbed a rag, roughly wiping Terzo's stomach and cock before Alpha had a chance to pull out. 

"Three minutes. Dress." 

"You're lucky I didn't knot you, Papa," Alpha growled as he pulled away, zipping himself back into his pants and straightening his mask. 

Terzo nodded emphatically and stood on shaky legs, struggling to pull his boxers and pants back on, smoothing his vest and jacket over them. His clothes were a crumpled, wrinkled disaster, and his paints had run so much they stained his collar. However, he didn't have time to redo them… 

He leaned heavily on Omega as he walked out, allowing himself to be led to the mic stand. He was painfully aware that his pathetic, oozing cock had already leaked through his pants, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He opened his mouth to speak, start the ritual as normal, but Omega was faster: 

"Hard to have an attitude when it's dripping down your legs, hm?" 

On the day he was assassinated, the day that even Omega had been taken from him, her face joined the ranks of his tormentors. Every moment in the pit felt like a hundred years, and few crawled by at as agonizingly slow a speed as those where she wailed for him. Wailed for love, for safety. For the life and the comfort that Terzo could never bring her now. Sometimes he’d be lured into a false sense of safety, allowed to feel the indescribable joy of having her in his arms, only to have her cruelly ripped away from him. 

“We have been waiting for you for so long,” Terzo tearfully told his daughter after they’d been wheeled to the recovery room, his voice somewhere between a chuckle and a whisper. His lips were pressed against her soft, white hair, nuzzling between her horns. “Our Starlight.” Before he knew what he was doing, he began humming to her, much the way he had before she was born. It felt as natural to him as breathing.

And to his amazement, her cries gradually quieted. He couldn’t help but let out a joyous little laugh. Her newborn smell, her weight in his arms, for real this time… It was all he would ever need again. He was sure of it. Those sensations kept him grounded, anchored to the moment and to the new nature of his reality. He’d carried her in his body long enough to trust that she was real, that this was actually happening—most days, anyway. That he was someone’s Papa, that it was no longer just a symbolic title forced upon him by people who meant him harm. 

When a large, familiar hand on his shoulder interrupted Terzo’s humming, he looked up to see his husband smiling at them through watery eyes. Omega gestured to Starlight, redirecting Terzo’s attention to the infant currently snuggled up with him. To his amazement, she was smiling. A tiny smile, her eyes still closed, but a smile nonetheless. 

“I think she likes the sound of your voice, tesoro,” Omega observed before kissing the crown of Terzo’s head. Happiness swelled in Terzo’s chest, bubbling over with nowhere left to go. 

“Eh, I am sure it is just a reflex,” Terzo protested weakly, although he wasn’t sure why. He was her Papa, after all. Shouldn’t he be special to her, just as she was special to him? She was a part of him for nine months, after all; surely it would make sense for her to react to him in particular. Sometimes, though, Terzo couldn’t help but feel as though he didn’t deserve her. Sometimes it took a lot of convincing to make him feel like he deserved anything good in this life at all.

After all, the journey to get to this moment had been long and arduous. Most of the time, Terzo felt as though he was fighting a losing battle, pursuing a fool’s errand. If he thought regaining his sanity after his resurrection was grueling, fighting to maintain that sanity while they were trying for a baby had almost been worse. He’d sworn up and down to himself that he’d let go of the idea of having children with Omega, but as soon as even a sliver of hope presented itself, he’d jumped at the chance. They both had. Terzo knew it hadn’t been any easier for Omega than it had been for himself, and he thanked his lucky stars every day that Omega had been willing to go through the profound grief of hope with him. 

Even when they conceived, Terzo never could’ve guessed, could’ve imagined, that the little girl staring back at him on her delivery day would be the very same child he’d been dreaming of for all these years. In many ways, he was in shock. How does one rationalize such a miraculous event, such a strange twist of fate? Surely something greater must’ve been at work, but thinking about it too hard threatened to give him a headache. Perhaps it was unwise to question such a gift. 

“Can you believe it?” Terzo sighed, letting his head fall back on the hospital bed, which was adjusted to an angle where Terzo could sit up and bottle-feed Starlight. Puzzlingly, he was met only with silence. When he cracked an eye open and glanced over at Omega, he saw the ghoul sitting in a chair at the bedside, head propped on his arms. Omega was staring at them lovingly with wide, adoring puppy-dog eyes. If Terzo could see Omega’s spaded tail, he was sure it’d be swishing contentedly. 

“No,” Omega answered dreamily, his voice warm and full of the happiness Terzo’s heart was currently brimming with, too.

Once she’d made it clear she was done with her bottle and had again dozed off, Terzo gently traced over Starlight’s delicate features. He ran the back of his finger across the planes of her cheekbones, her jaw, her chin. When he reached her nose, he couldn’t help but gaze on in wonder and amazement. That was his nose, too. No matter how much their little girl took after her Daddy, she would always carry a part of her Papa with her. Terzo had never liked his nose; it reminded him too much of his mother. Before seeing it on his Starlight’s face, he never would’ve wanted to curse a child to carry that particular feature with them their entire lives. But seeing her with it now, Terzo had never felt prouder, more comfortable in himself. Everything about her was perfect—especially her nose. 

Taking pains not to wake her, Terzo brushed a stray lock of silvery hair out of Starlight’s face, then turned his attention to her hands. Her darling, tiny hands, fists now loose and relaxed from slumber. He gently kissed the clawed tips of each delicate finger. As he lightly grazed the palm of her hand, he was amazed to feel her grip his index finger and hold on tightly. His baby girl, here, in his arms, holding onto him. Perhaps she had been waiting for him just as long as he had been waiting for her. 

Terzo was sure that his sniffles were going to alarm his husband, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He let the tears flow freely down his face, but they could only linger there for a moment before Omega wiped them away. “She is perfect, amore,” Terzo croaked.

Omega’s eyes were watery now, too. “She is,” the ghoul whispered before taking Terzo’s face in both hands and kissing him softly. 

It didn’t take long for Omega to overcome his fear of breaking the hospital bed by joining the rest of his family, now that the temptation was even greater than it had been before the C-section. Before he could actually see and hear and touch their daughter, before he ever got the first hit of that newborn smell. Soon, they were all snuggled up together, Omega watching over them as they got some much-needed rest. As Terzo drifted off, he couldn’t shake the nagging fear at the back of his mind that perhaps this, too, was a dream. He didn’t know who to thank when he woke up and his Starlight was still there, but he’d do just about anything in repayment for that blessing. 

Day two in the infirmary saw Terzo getting antsy, desperately wanting to take his family home. The fluorescent lights, the scratchy pink gown, the uncomfortable hospital bed, the cold and sterile plastic bassinet unfit for his principessa… It was all beginning to wear on him. He knew how important it was to the health of both the birth parent and the child to stay under observation for the first 72 hours, but dammit, he wanted to go home. He’d asked Omega to at least go home and get some rest so that his poor ghoul wouldn’t have to sleep in a chair or crammed in a too-small bed, but true to his nature, Omega had refused. Still, Terzo got the sense that he wasn’t the only one feeling cooped up. 

There was a knock that snapped Terzo out of his thoughts. Startled, his head snapped up so quickly that he felt something in his neck pop. As soon as he saw who was standing in the doorway, his mood immediately lifted; it was little River!

Well. Terzo still saw him as “little” River, the way he was when they’d first cared for him on the weekends. But the truth was, the water ghoul now had nearly a foot in height on him, much closer to Omega’s size than the human’s. He was wearing a full suit, a deep navy that complemented his skin tone nicely. In his left hand, he carried a beautiful bouquet of pink roses, peppered with dainty sprigs of baby’s breath. In the right hand, there was a bottle of champagne. A brilliant smile spread across Terzo’s face. 

River crossed his arms and sauntered across the room towards Terzo’s bed, a mischievous grin on his face. “So, I hear you’ve replaced me,” River teased as his eyes fell on the newborn quintessence ghoul kit fast asleep in the bassinet. Terzo felt guilty for not holding Starlight at all times, but he’d been under Omega’s strict orders to try to sleep when she did. Terzo felt all of the color drain from his face at River’s remark, his heart skipping a beat as his mouth fell open. River saw his expression and barked his characteristically bubbly laugh, then sat down on the edge of the bed and patted Terzo on the shin. “Relax, Uncle Terzo, I’m just pulling your leg!”

Terzo was too relieved to be irritated by the joke. River had been their honorary nephew for damn near thirty years by that point, babysat weekly by the two of them until he was five years old. Taking care of River had been the thing that made Terzo realize for the very first time that he wanted a family with Omega. So, River being jealous of their new baby? It had already crossed Terzo’s mind, no matter how irrational a fear it was. River would always be family to them, no matter what. 

Omega snorted from his chair at the bedside. “You know he takes these things seriously, Riv,” he admonished, although a little too playfully for Terzo’s liking. “He used to be scared of getting caught playing with the other kits in the wing. He was so sure his only nephew would be jealous.” Terzo shot Omega a glare for so casually airing out his insecurities. 

River leaned in to press a quick kiss to Terzo’s cheek in greeting, then quickly rose to his feet, his face giving the impression that he’d just realized he left the stove on. “Dammit, I didn’t bring a vase for these! Where the hell—” he cut himself off and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, much to Terzo’s surprise. “Heck. I mean heck.” Terzo pressed his lips together, holding back a smile. 

Terzo was impressed by the self-correction around Starlight, and very appreciative. Although she was too young now to pick up on foul language, he knew that one day, she would be. River knew that Terzo never liked it when he swore, because in many ways that were tough to admit, Terzo still viewed him as the same sweet little boy they’d cared for all those years ago. The first time he’d heard River swear, he’d half-heartedly threatened to wash his mouth out with soap, a threat he’d often heard Secondo’s mother use against her son when they were growing up. He’d never dream of actually doing it, but as River wasn’t familiar with the saying, he took it literally, and cleaned up his language… for a little while. Now that he was older, he did as he pleased, but he knew Terzo didn’t approve. 

“Where the heck am I supposed to put these flowers now?” River continued, much quieter this time as his face flushed a darker shade of blue.

Omega grumbled. “I’ll go get one from our quarters, I suppose,” he said with a put-upon sigh, the chair creaking as he stood. Once he was on his feet, Omega stretched and cracked his back. Terzo felt guilty for how uncomfortable his husband must be in the room’s too-small armchair, a chair that was quite cramped for someone with a frame as large as Omega’s. Why did they even have furniture that looked as though it was designed exclusively for the petite when they knew ghouls lived and worked here? 

As soon as Omega was gone, River shuffled his feet awkwardly, looking for something to do. He’d always been quite the hyperactive little boy, always needing some form of stimulation. Terzo could relate; he’d been much the same way for most of his life, and even now as he’d calmed with age, he still frequently fidgeted, or worse, bit his nails. That had only gotten worse during his pregnancy, anxiety and restlessness running high in those last few months. 

“Did you get Primo’s permission before you raided his rose garden?” Terzo broke the silence, a smile audible in his voice. 

River’s attention snapped back to Terzo, and it took the water ghoul a couple of seconds to process what had just been said. When he got it, River grinned from ear to ear, showing his fangs. “Do I ever ask permission for anything?” 

Terzo rolled his eyes playfully. “No, my little typhoon. No more than the ocean asks permission to come in for high tide.” River’s smile widened. A thought occured to Terzo; something was out of place. “What’s with the suit, piccino?” Terzo teased. He had to admit, though, River was looking quite sharp. 

“I wanted to make a good first impression on the little lady,” River answered, his voice full of mirth, but also a sincerity that made Terzo’s eyes sting. 

They waited for Omega to return, and this time, the quiet was comfortable and interspersed with light conversation. It didn’t take long for the quintessence ghoul to make it back; Terzo got the sense that he wanted to spend as little time away from his family as possible right now. It was only as Omega was putting the bouquet in the fine crystal vase that Terzo remembered the champagne sitting on the end table as well, the cold bottle now sweating in the ambient room temperature. 

Terzo gave River a reproachful look. “You know I’m not going to drink that.”

“Why not?” River protested, offended. 

“River, I have just had a baby! Drinking alcohol would be very irresponsible of me!” Terzo told him off, feeling like he shouldn’t have to explain something so obvious. River rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. 

“Dude, I know she’s bottle-fed. You’ve had nine months without a drop, you deserve at least one glass! To celebrate!” River stressed. Terzo’s brow furrowed in indignation. 

“Dude?” Terzo repeated the offending word in disbelief. River flushed again at his mistake, averting his eyes from Terzo’s reproachful gaze. 

In the end, Omega had to run home once more to grab champagne glasses, something that River had also overlooked. It was quite endearing, really, the way River’s train of thought flitted about. He did his best on his own, but sometimes he needed just a little bit of support. Terzo never minded. 

“To Starlight,” River announced once Omega returned and they’d gotten everything set up, holding his glass out toward the other two adults. 

“To Starlight,” the new parents echoed as they clinked glasses, and Terzo took a drink. There was a warmth that filled him that didn’t come from the alcohol; it felt as though a piece of him had finally fallen into place, a long-empty chasm in his heart finally filled. He closed his eyes, uttering those sacred words again like a mantra, a prayer, an affirmation: