Chapter Text
#
When winter comes, it is rarely cold enough in the heart of the capital for the river to freeze over but this year is almost an exception. Torrential rain has belabored the city for days now, and the air holds a touch of perpetual fog and gloom that well reflects Galadriel’s mood lately. To combat the chill, the commoners are huddled up in wool and other heavy coarse materials, but Galadriel stands out still layered in the finest silks and furs, the sigil of her father’s House still adorned upon the brooch that tied her cape across her chest. Despite the recent scandal, she holds her head high as she walks through the pavilion just as night falls, towards the judgement that awaits her in her uncle’s villa.
The domus is elaborately decorated, of course, with a large maze of gardens, an outside private bath, and not one but two separate libraries, reflecting Fëanor’s high indulgent standards and opulent lifestyle. She turns to see her cousin and his page making the slow ascent up to the pavilion, their heavy boots caked in mud. Heedless of the day’s dropping temperature, Lord Curufin bears his long ancestral robes and old glinting jewelry, more fitting for a formal function rather than a simple summons to his own father’s call. The red clock still looks damp from the recent rain, but it is clear he’d taken time to make himself presentable the same as Galadriel.
She hides a frown.
She knows why she made such an effort, an inherent attempt to arm herself in clothes befitting her station despite Fëanor’s promise of retribution to cast her out to the streets because of her recent disgrace. Bitten and bedded by a gladiator after a tawdry auction, claimed by an alpha with no standing except that in the gladiator arena. The results of that one reckless night of impulse and heat have sent shockwaves through high society, and she’s known it’s been felt by Senator Fëanor’s own immediate kin like a slap in the face.
Her own father, Finarfin, another high ranking member of the Senate, hadn’t yet responded to the last letter Galadriel had sent off to him in his latest campaign overseas; she imagines he has not the heart to tell her what is only too obvious. Her mating bite will not be officially acknowledged, and everything within the considerable power of his house and her uncle’s will be done in an effort to ease the scandal from spiraling further.
Galadriel knows what this means. An immediate arranged marriage to some high standing member of the society, someone respectable, but perhaps someone desperately needing her father’s coin to line their coffers. Her mother’s cousin had already been bandied about as a potential suitor. Celeborn is a kind man, a good man, and someone she may have once liked the idea of marrying, for he is considerably more tolerable than some of her other cousins, especially those from Fëanor’s side. Yet, she could no longer entertain such talk without a rotten fester of roil in her stomach.
She is already taken. Claimed — bitten and bedded — and there is no denying that.
It matters little that her alpha was taken from her when the morning came, after her heat. It matters little that their attempt to escape had been sabotaged by one pesky guard who’d alerted the rest of his slave owner's men to Halbrand’s endeavor to abscond into the night with his prized omega.
She hasn’t been with Halbrand since, never permitted to see him in any setting, whether that is to visit him in the same brothel where they first met, or to watch his ongoing games; undefeated games for him, and rather brutal from all accounts she’s heard, more beastly than any other in recent decades. The rumors say he’s become a man possessed, more bloodthirsty than a pack of wolves. She wonders if he feels it the same as her, the turmoil of their separation. Sauron, Sauron, Sauron, chanted in the crowds by the eager mobs, so heavily that Galadriel can hear them outside the arena gates when she stands there — outside, banished, recklessly soaking in anything she can glean of him. He’s said to tear apart both man and animal with his bare hands alone, and the price of admission towards one of his matches has soared and made quite a hefty profit for his master. Where she is maligned and ruined, he has turned exalted and praised.
And it— aches. Infuriates her and by turns casts a dark shadow over her heart, and she knows not how to handle the turmoil of her emotions without cursing everything under the sun. She is, for all intents and purposes, an abandoned omega, ripped from her mate. They have a word for that in low society, alongside the orphans begging for coin in the streets. Trash. The mighty House of Finarfin would feel her ruination for years to come.
So, one can imagine Galadriel’s startled surprise when she enters her uncle’s home, only to see Halbrand for the first time in two months — across the room, garbed in more chains than she’s ever seen one man wear.
He locks in as soon as she pushes through the doors, and a hush falls over the entire room. He looks — rough. His body is nearly unclothed beneath all the shackles, only a pair of trousers on that look like they’ve seen better days. His chest, while layered in chains, also displays a hard warrior’s body in the sharp contrast of firelight and shadow, a vivid array of bruises and battle injuries. Small cuts covered in patches of pungent salves, a muscled discolored torso full of black and blue bruises. He is covered in a sheen of sweat, oily, and smudged in layers of dirt. But it’s his face — an untamed look in his eyes, a quiet grimacing rage, that stops her in her tracks.
Everyone else falls quiet, a room full of her uncle’s powerful contingent of people, his closest and truest allies, all of whom feel like vipers to her; she can hardly pay attention to any of them. To her left, a line of her cousins in elite garb. To her right, other rich Alphas that she knows of from her father’s line of work. Between them, the most dangerous of all vipers — her uncle.
But the world shrinks only to one person: Halbrand.
“Galadriel,” her uncle intones, sounding amused. “Welcome, welcome. The party’s festivities can finally begin.”
She has no idea what that means, but knows enough to feel a pit of alarm cave in her stomach. She walks forward, towards her uncle’s beckoning hand, feeling all eyes on her. Her eyes skitter back to Halbrand, but he says nothing as he watches her cross the room to her uncle’s side. When she places her hand in Fëanor’s hand, she can see the bulge in Halbrand’s cheek throb ominously. For a brief moment, she feels a vicious sort of satisfaction at his displeasure — she’s spent weeks, months, at the mercy of society’s judgement, while he failed to accomplish the first priority of any Alpha. To secure his omega’s safety and presence. The moment of gratification only lasts long enough for Fëanor to close his cold hand around hers and bring her palm into the crux of his elbow, drawing her closer. Galadriel goes along, reluctantly. Her uncle’s touch has always been loathsome.
Introductions are made all around, but Galadriel can hardly concentrate on the names of those she does not know. Halbrand watches her silently the entire time as she makes her rounds, her uncle eager for some revelry, and she is too absorbed with preoccupation to pay attention or question why. Her heart pounds like a battle drum at the closest proximity she’s had to her alpha since the night he claimed her.
“Go on,” Fëanor says, apparently indulgent, motioning in Halbrand’s direction. “Go say your greetings to him before we begin.”
Begin what, she does not know.
She doesn’t question it because the permission granted to her to go to Halbrand is all she hears. She crosses the room, ignoring the attention pinned to her. Halbrand stands tall and proud, but underneath his glower he has the look of a desperate man dying of thirst, seeing the first drink of water in ages. She reddens under the intensity of his eyes, but keeps herself as poised as possible. She remembers all the reasons she has to be angry with him — he’d abandoned her, been careless in his escape attempt, which had left her to the wolves. He should have known better as an Alpha. He should have provided, and cared for her, and instead she’d been left to fend for herself. An unforgivable lapse in any alpha-omega dynamic, but a nearly fatal one for one so newly formed.
He is still more physically imposing than any other man she has ever known. Galadriel stares, forgetting herself, attention darting from the shadows of his eyes, his stubbled jawline, his imposing body on full display.
“Galadriel,” he says, a low voice.
Just her simple name has her fighting the ridiculous impulse to chuck her anger to the wind and throw herself at him. Even if she hadn’t had an audience, she shouldn’t have been in such an accommodating mood. He’d —he’d abandoned her.
“Sauron,” she returns, as coolly as she can.
He narrows his eyes. He has never liked that name, she knows. A title given to him by his slave masters, the abhorred, the name bandied about in the streets and the arena to the sounds of bones breaking. It is not the name she had breathed out over and over again the last time they met, not the name she had screamed amidst her heat. Halbrand. That was a name he had given to her, and to her alone.
“Are you all right?” he asks, hushed.
She flashes him an unimpressed look. “What difference does it make to you?”
It sounds petulant. She doesn’t care.
“Omega,” he hisses. “This is hardly how I envisioned us meeting again, but you can see that I had no choice in how any of this is unfolding.”
“Yes, you’ve made your inadequacies well known.”
He straightens, the chains across his chest and arms rattling. “Careful, Galadriel.”
“The time for careful consideration is behind us, Sauron. Now we are left with the broken pieces on the table.”
You did this, the accusation hangs in the air.
He exhales sharply. “Perhaps, but the peril ahead of us is just as dangerous. Stay close, and heed my—”
“Enough,” Fëanor says.
The room falls quiet.
Galadriel turns to her uncle again, her back presented to her alpha with as much offense as she can muster; she tries to quiet the gallop of her beating heart and the furious tears gathering in her eyes. This is ridiculous, and humiliating, and she doesn’t even yet know what any of this actually is. Some grand production at the behest of her conniving uncle, no doubt. Fëanor has never favored Galadriel after she once refused him her own favor; an uncle lusting after his own niece. It is uncouth, and even as a child Galadriel had known never to allow herself to be alone with her “doting” uncle. Fëanor is mated and has several children of his own, but that has never stopped his scrutinizing gaze as Galadriel came into her own as a budding omega, not even when she’d been a mere child. She’s kept the protection of her older brothers to stave off his attention most of the time, while her father appeared too blind to the lecherous looks his own brother would give his lone daughter.
She wishes her father was here now, or anyone of her brothers. She knows she cannot count on her cousins for any protection, nor any of the strangers in the room. Once, she may have been fool enough to believe her new alpha could protect her, but these last few weeks have taught Galadriel the hard truth of brutality and power. Halbrand is in chains. He can no better protect her than anyone else. All those pointless muscles, all that capacity for violence, and still Fëanor proves to all what true power is — money, authority, respectable bloodlines, the power of the elite class. Rome’s rule lies with the Senate, and no one is more powerful than a Senator, save for Caesar himself. Not even a gladiator whose name falls upon every citizen’s lips with awe and admiration can compete with that.
“I’m sure you are all curious why I have gathered you here,” Fëanor says, to the group at large. “The recent gossip has made its way to your ears, no doubt. My lone niece, naive and too trusting, fell into a tawdry trap that so many omegas fall into. One mindless heat, and the bitch had to go and get herself bitten. And the alpha who dishonored her stands before you as well. I am sure he needs no introduction. Sauron, the abhorred.”
Each word that drips from Fëanor’s mouth feels like acidic poison, and Galadriel swallows shallowly.
Fëanor smiles. “What many of you do not realize, however, is that Sauron is no mere gladiator. He is a general of our great enemy, and one who almost costs us a war.”
Behind her, and she can feel Halbrand’s fury like it is fire raging at her back. A hush falls over the crowd, as the two men exchange some type of silent look filled with animosity and some shared private history. She knows Fëanor once took control of Rome’s armies in a distant country. She does not know the details, not even the name of this distant land, but her father had been concerned about the weakening military campaign when suddenly her uncle had returned, victorious, with Sauron captured. Fëanor’s assent to the senate seat afterwards had been a swift rise, one that had even taken her father by surprise. But with a hard won battle and victory, Fëanor had secured the people’s confidence.
“Now he has soiled my own kin,” Fëanor laments, overly dramatic. “And most would take the hit to their honor and slink away. I am not, however, my brother. I am not one to be humiliated.”
Galadriel straightens, swallowing heavily as the weight of his accusatory stare lands on her.
“Galadriel,” Fëanor intones, displeased, “is no longer any kin of mine. Tonight, I disown any ties to one so tainted. She is as good as chattel, and I will sell her off to the highest bidder tomorrow. A mated omega, perhaps, but I’m sure you’ll find some use for her still in your slave households. Her renowned beauty has not diminished, even if she has been bitten.”
Galadriel pales, seeing the greedy stares of the rich men surrounding her.
In another light, it may have been comical that this all began because she had been a patron to an auction as well. Now, the roles have been reversed and she is the item to be bid upon. She cannot suffer the irony of it much, for it’s much too choking.
She feels the rising tide of Halbrand’s wrath at her back, and she cannot stop herself from seeking refuge in it; she melts into the hard line of Halbrand’s body behind her, thankful when he accepts her weight. The chains rattle between them, but she feels the press of him against her spine and takes whatever cold comfort she can from him. It’s futile, however. Everything is lost already. Even if her father does return from overseas anytime soon, she will already be lost; Fëanor can make up whatever lies he wants to cover up her absence. He can tell her family that she’d run away, and they’d only believe him because Galadriel’s spirit and impetuous nature is only too well known.
She only has herself to blame for finding herself in such a precarious position. She is the foolish omega that brought about her own downfall, just as all the elders always warned to any budding omega. Be careful who you take as a mate, child. It will determine your destiny. She had been driven by instincts alone when she’d chosen Halbrand, and it had led to this downfall.
“She is a stubborn thing, though,” Fëanor says, with a wolfish smile. “Always prideful, always headstrong. A demonstration, then, of her breedable nature is in order. Something to humble her. So you all know what you’re buying — so Sauron can earn a little more off his debt to our society.”
Reality descends upon her, and she knows why she has been brought here tonight with Halbrand.
Fëanor is going to make Halbrand fuck her in front of all of them.
“Get her ready,” Fëanor nods to servants and guards behind her. “The entertainment will begin after supper. Clean him a little as well, would you? He smells like a pig.”
#
The outside private baths are elaborate and sprawling, befitting something that could entertain a dozen men and women at once. All of the guests, however, are already indulging deep in wine and food across the yard, and so Galadriel is left to march after her armed escorts into the chamber of private baths. The bathhouse itself has several rooms: the apodyterium, where she is told to undress and leave all her worldly belongings; Halbrand isn’t given the same requirements, following after her with a larger contingent of armed guards, still making an awful ruckus with his chains.
When she undresses, she feels his focus fully upon her body. A few months back, she would have blushed redder than a beet, but he’d already stripped her of her maiden virtue and now she is set to entertain a brood of men as he defiles her again. It hardly merits the same blushing response his gaze first inspired in her.
She undresses in a routine manner, unfeeling, numb, and makes her way towards the tepidarium.
A warm room awaits. The air is heated to prepare guests for hot baths, powered by a simple hypocaust system — furnaces under the raised floors and the hollow walls. Her uncle has spared no coin in constructing his villa. When she finds the heated pool, she climbs in without prompting. The servants begin lathering her up with soap, anointing her body with scented oils and olive oil, among other fresh concoctions, bringing a shine to her skin. All the more to make a better show of her.
When Halbrand is forced into the pool after her, the servants all skitter to avoid him and his menacing stare. He looks ridiculous lumbering in the water, still caged by shackles, but he’s at least stripped naked. The dirt washes off him slowly, and only two servants are brave enough to extend him the offer of soap and oils before the threatening look he sends them has them skittering back to Galadriel’s side.
“Are you going to ignore me all night long, Galadriel?”
She refuses to look at him. “That hardly seems like it’ll happen, will it?” she challenges, acidically.
“I will get us out of this.”
She rolls her eyes. “Before or after you’ve thoroughly fucked me like an animal for those men?”
Silence.
She thought so. “You have done enough,” she snaps. “Let us get this night over with, so that—”
“Tomorrow will be another concern,” he cuts in. “And I will not leave you to those—”
“Like you didn’t already abandon me once?”
“I had no choice,” he hisses. He comes closer, all pent up violence and fury that should not entice her. “I’ve been beaten and shackled like a dog. Been forced to fight in the arena every few days because no one knows what else to do with my rage. You have no idea the number of men I’ve killed just for a chance to get back to you—”
“Convenient,” she cuts in, snidely, “for a gladiator.”
He stretches across — and it’s almost funny how the servants all scatter out of the way, sloshing across the pool to avoid the oncoming alpha. Galadriel is confronted with the tall pillar of his body, his menacing grizzle staring down at her, just before his hand snatches up her body like she’s light as air. He drags her through the warm waters until she’s pressed against him, her cunt braced against his naked thigh.
She whines — it’s instinctive, primitive, unthinking.
Her mind wipes out like a candle snuffed out at the wick.
“Settle now, omega,” he governs, sensing her sudden bout of slickness gushing out. It shouldn’t be apparent, not when they’re surrounded by water already, but he must smell it on her. “We’ll have time for that later. Right now, you need to know I will not abandon you to those bastards. Whatever little I have left of my honor, I vow to you no other man will ever touch you. I’ll rip the skin off his bones before that happens.”
She looks up at him, swallowing harshly. “I might’ve believed you, once upon a time.”
He flinches, tick in his jaw jumping. “I know,” he whispers, regret and shame. “I let you down. No one is more angry than me, darling.”
“I think I can challenge you on that,” Galadriel returns, succinctly.
But the anger is bleeding out of her with every ticking second, and she shifts, heat barrolling through her as she shifts herself against his muscled thigh like some beastly animal — because she can’t help herself. Because it’s been two months without him, without his scent washing over her senses, without him overwhelming her. She has been starved for so long, and there he is, finally within reach again — her alpha.
He seems equally as helpless to the connection. Grabbing her hips, a splay of his large palms over the round cheeks of her ass, calloused fingers digging into the plump flesh there — and then he is helping her in her shameless pursuits, urging her to push against him, to rut against him. “I will not let you go again, Galadriel,” he promises, and his grip slides through her wet hair, around the curve of her skull, wrenching her head back. His pupils look blown as he looks over her, eyes raking down her exposed skin, lingering on her tender nipples and pinkened skin. “I will never let you go.”
She should know better than to believe a promise like that from a man in chains.
But her clit hits his muscled thigh at just the right angle as she shifts up and down — and he groans, a low obscene sound that sends a thrill of vindication coursing through her veins. It is more than just lust and passion, though. She feels that spark of connection she has never known with anyone else flaring up at his nearness, the grunts of his labored breathing, the dark intensity of his gaze. Halbrand leisurely teases her, his mouth at her jawline and throat, his fingers making her moan as he palms her ass greedily.
“Come for me,” he demands, dragging his teeth over her earlobe. “Come for me, little one.”
She does, and it’s explosive and freeing, a wild tempest of a thing — and then in the very next second, she is crashing back to reality again.
The servants are watching her, and she’d entirely forgotten they’d existed.
“When the time comes,” he tells her, gently, coaxing, “keep your focus exclusively upon me.”
#
She is barely given anything to cover herself up, once the bath is finished. There is little point, she knows. When she is led back towards the main house, they guide her to a larger bedchamber than any other she has ever seen. The group of her uncle’s political friends are all gathered in the outskirts, and the bed is set center stage — surrounded by white gauzy curtains tied back to four large posts around the bed, a bed that seems big enough to hold three or four people easily. She climbs onto the center of the mattress upon prompting from some servant, but Halbrand hisses at them when they touch her. A weary glance back, and the servant and all the guards subside and then it is only Halbrand helping her climb up, settling her on her back against the pillows and the firm mattress.
“The chains are a bit much, aren’t they, Fëanor?” an elderly man says, laughing.
Halbrand is still draped in so many it is almost comical.
Fëanor frowns. “You should have seen what it took to corral him. More beast than man, this one is.”
“I doubt he’ll fight us when he has the girl to fuck,” the old man argues.
A pause, and then Fëanor nods reluctantly. A guard begins removing some of the shackles. “—not all,” Fëanor quickly cuts in, and they leave a single set around Halbrand’s hands and his collar tied to a long metal chain. “Good,” Fëanor says, indulgently drinking wine. “If he acts out, cut off his airway.”
Her breath catches, while her entire body trembles in fear. Her knees fall open instinctively to welcome the weight of Halbrand in between as he climbs the bed. He clicks his tongue in disapproval when she immediately tries to draw her thighs closed again around him, and he curls both hands around her knees and pries them open again, keeping her legs parted—presented, on display—but only for him. From this angle, none of the others have much of a view because he shelters her body beneath his. The omega in her can’t help but preen a little at the hum of approval escaping his lips, when he finds her slick. She can feel the weight of his favorable gaze between her thighs, and it burns. Then, finally satisfied with his fill of looking at her cunt, he finally moves forward to fully cover her again.
He’s so large that he blots everything else out, at first. The frame of his wild hair still drying in reddened curls around his stubbled face; his eyes, intense and watchful, focused exclusively upon her; his mouth, dropping roughspun words of encouragement and comfort barely above a whisper. “Eyes on me, love,” he breathes, and she nods diminutively.
“Give us a show, good niece,” Fëanor prods glibly, gesturing with a hand to get on with it.
She has never hated a man more in her life.
Tears spring to her eyes as the horror fully descends, as the performance she is expected to put on comes into sharp unrelenting focus. Even as her hands fall to cover herself up, she knows it is futile.
Fëanor looks mocking in his pity. “You’ve always been a wild one, Galadriel. Where did you think wild omegas turned up, except on their back?”
“I will have my vengeance upon you,” Galadriel spits out, heatedly. “You have always underestimated me.”
Fëanor laughs. “Amusing. Your alpha once said the same thing to me ages ago. Still, here we are.”
Before she can respond, a finger tucks under her chin and draws her attention back to the man currently on top of her. “Galadriel,” Halbrand says, softly. He is kneeled over her indecently, but the look in his eyes refuses to belie any mortification or anger. Instead, he looks steady, his voice clear with conviction. “Look at me. Pay attention only to me.”
She turns silent, her raucous infamous tongue for once silenced. She doesn’t protest when Halbrand reaches forward to delicately undo the lacing on her barely there dress, easing the two sheer sides open, letting it pool to the blankets in a pile of sheer white. Galadriel just — lets him. She lets him murmur mindless words of comfort, lets him press a blistering kiss to her lips, a kiss of benediction more than lust, slowly easing his sinful tongue inside her mouth coaxing a reluctant response.
She closes her eyes against the rage in his gaze even as he finishes undressing himself with a single hand; the knot of his trousers is already undone, he only needs to push the material off with one single shove down his hips.
She wonders why the fluttering in her stomach is not fear, not solely fear. It is a relief, perhaps, that it is Halbrand before her, her alpha, even if Fëanor promised worse and more.
Then, “A finger,” a voice speaks up from afar, prompting. “To start.”
Her eyes fly up in alarm. But instead of following the instruction, Halbrand bends to lick her breast. The sudden wet and warm sensation draws her attention abruptly away from the audience, and perhaps that is the point. He’s probably used to ignoring the mob chanting and jeering at him; killing a man, fucking a woman — he’s been used as entertainment in the most foulest ways a slave can, especially an alpha. Still, he seems more focused upon her discomfort, her anxiety.
Like a faithful bowed in supplication, awestruck with divinity, Halbrand lavishes her skin with wet suckling kisses and soft warm lips that leave a trail of sudden heat running down her spine.
Despite the horrors of the situation, her body begins to melt to his familiar touch, her core heating, wet. She runs her hands over his hair, tangling it in the curls, drawing his gaze to her face even while he suckles wetly upon her nipple like a newborn babe. Despite herself, she moans aloud and that gets a knowing chuckle from the audience.
But the moan does more than that — Halbrand’s eyes darken at the noise, and then turn entirely black and possessive. It is as if he forgets himself in that moment, forgets where they are and who their audience is because the gentleness turns into a forgotten sentiment. She feels the air spike with the familiar signature of his alpha scent, and one hand possessively slips down her thighs, trailing sparks of heat, harshly tugging her closer with a palmful gripping the curve of her ass. He digs his fingers in, as if testing the ample weight of her flesh, seeing how it gives into his kneading. It distracts her, staring down at him, feeling his pleased groan against her chest. It keeps her focus on him.
The rest of her thoughts disperse in a burnt flash of startlement as he pushes in with his cock, a sudden breach. He fingers her clit with his other hand roughly, and her pride turns to tatters, her hips shifting forward into his thrust, a clenching greedy bid, undone by her own arousal. Her body gives way to his, a whimpered cry to the onslaught of his driving hips.
In one single demanding thrust, he is hilted to the root of him inside her.
Then, it is an animal unleashed.
He fucks her like he’s angry, just as furious as she’s been all these past weeks and months — like the separation has been a crime, and this fucking is a punishment. His hips slam into her with brutal determination, and he pulls back just enough to look her squarely in the eye, not letting her catch her breath or get her bearings. He doesn’t let her think. His hips snapping, hair falling over his face, savage grunts into her skin, thick strained rasps — as he sheathes himself inside of her with sharp thrusts that only build and build.
The sight of him so untamed sets her ablaze, blood igniting with a primal recognition. His face is stained red with exertion, like he can’t hold himself back and she finds she does not want him to. The bruising shape of his fingers in the milky white of her skin, his eyes glinting with deranged desire, his focus complete and resplendent upon her and only her.
No one is more angry than me, darling, his words return to her.
Just as her own response comes to mind, too. I think I can challenge you on that.
So, she meets his thrusts with her own — hips rising to meet his, to outpace his maddening rhythm, to beat him back at his own challenge. But before she knows it she’s squirming as she comes, panting and writhing underneath him, moaning his name in a gasp that’s the same as admitting defeat. She comes once, then so swiftly a second time it is hard to distinguish one from another. It builds like a crescendo, an orchestra of pleasure. She screams, and sobs, and he fucks her through all of it like a man driven beyond madness.
The punctuated rhythm of his fucking makes the bedpost quake, a clang of the iron-wrought posts against the wall, metal-on-brick. Occasionally, she can hear the whispered barbs of the uniformed men surrounding her, their groans of pleasure, their delight, but she entertains it no more than she had the servants back in the baths. It would take a barbed whip lashing across her back to overcome Galadriel’s singular focus.
She wants to scream, so she does, and she’s so close to coming a third and final time when he jolts suddenly, and spills himself inside her, stilling with a few jerks and a broadening knot that affixes them together.
Galadriel is caught on the precipice of her orgasm, just a few thrusts shy of coming again, when there is a blade pointed at the hollow of Halbrand’s throat, making his heavy breaths hitch for only a moment. “What?” he mutters, annoyed. “Not a good enough showing for you?”
When Halbrand draws back, Fëanor taunts, “Let’s see about that infamous stamina of yours, shall we? Take her again.”
His cock twitches inside her, a beast raising his head at the challenge.
#
The performance lasts nearly all night.
He repeatedly takes her—over and over—until he’s satisfied himself thrice over and she’s lost count of her orgasms. Galadriel is a dazed mess of slick, sweat, and spend when they’re finally granted a reprieve for an hour because his knot is embedded so deep inside her she fears his seed will take root.
Her uncle’s men diminish as the night wanes, more and more leaving as Halbrand’s stamina outlasts the majority of their attention spans. By the middle of the night, there are only a handful left, but she ignores those still lingering at the edges of the room as much as she can. Her lips are kiss bruised, red and swollen; the marks on her body ripe and fresh from his fingers and his teeth. Her lungs burn, her thighs burn — she’d ridden him like a horse twice now, coming twice as many times in the venture. It may have been her least favorite position after he’d already taken Galadriel on all fours, knees and hands, but she can’t hardly clearly think for all the haze of lust overwhelming her. She might as well be in heat.
“Go to sleep,” Halbrand murmurs, threading a hand through her sweat-damped hair, gentle, coaxing. “Rest, while you can.”
She closes her eyes as his knot softens inside her, and the next thing she knows, she’s asleep.
She must sleep longer than she anticipates.
She must sleep like the dead, for it is only the sounds of brutal violence that pulls Galadriel awake again. The sight that greets her is one worthy of the gladiator arena. A bursting gush of blood is the first thing that Galadriel sees, as Halbrand slams a man’s head back into the wall with an audible crack, his brain matter left splattered on the bricks. She can’t quite follow how he got out of his chains, and then she realizes suddenly that he hadn’t; he is just utilizing them as a weapon now, wrapping the metal links around his knuckles, using it to break a man’s teeth, then across a second guard’s neck, choking the life from his body with the length of the chain.
The unfolding violence is brutal to watch from this up close, as Halbrand dispatches one after another, shockingly quick and efficient as he decimates their enemies. Limbs severed with a guard’s own sword; a death groan of another as he chokes on his own blood. Her eldest cousin lies dead in a pile of bodies in the corner. Galadriel is only able to note the broad brush strokes of his barbaric ferocity as she lifts herself up from the bed, and gathers a discarded sword from the ground.
While Halbrand dispatches the last guard, the largest and tallest, in a series of savage hits that leave the man lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor, Galadriel gradually approaches the only other one left alive. In the end, only Fëanor remains, which she’s sure Halbrand had done by design. Fëanor is collapsed against the far wall, huddled in a corner, ashen and shocked witless by the violence. His face has bled of all color, much less the standard stain of arrogance that usually prevails upon it.
“Uncle,” she greets. “I think it’s time we had a discussion about your unjust treatment of me.”
With a roar behind her, Halbrand finishes the last guard.
The silence that falls afterwards is complete and resplendent.
Halbrand comes up behind her. “Tell her, Fëanor,” he prompts, grunting. “Tell her what you promised me when we last met in war.”
Fëanor looks briefly from one to the other, shrinking back. “You were a fool to think I’d honor any promise given to you.”
“Perhaps,” Halbrand grunts. “But you were so desperate to claim your brother’s power. You wanted his inheritance and title so much you were willing to make a deal with the devil to get it. Only you didn’t count on me—”
“You should have killed my brother immediately,” Fëanor hisses. “Instead, you dallied — so I had you brought into Rome in chains as a slave.”
“And now I will kill you as a free man,” Halbrand taunts, a hand settling on Galadriel’s hip from behind. “After claiming the omega you prized so much.”
“No,” Galadriel says, heatedly, gripping the sword tightly in her hands. “You will not be the one to kill him, Halbrand.”
There is a wolfish grin at her ear. “As you wish, My Lady.”
Fëanor’s screams are silenced in the night, just as a red dawn rises.
#
“He wanted you to kill my father?” she asks him, later that night as they’ve fleeing the villa.
“Not just him,” Halbrand returns, unashamed and blunt. “Your brothers, too.”
“What was it my uncle promised you in return?”
“Money, power, certain victory against his army. He’d have promised almost anything for what he wanted.”
“So why didn’t you go through with it?”
“Before I laid eyes on your father, I—” he stops, looks at her with light in his eyes. “I saw you first.”
That stills her in her tracks, shocked. “When?”
“It was nearly two years ago now. I saw you in the marketplace. I— scented you even in the midst of the masses. I knew then, what I know now. You were meant to be mine.”
A quiet hush falls over them both, and she can no longer deny that, not now. “So,” she studies him, carefully, “you went back on your word because of me?”
He nods and looks away, flustered and angry. “And your uncle’s retribution was making me a gladiator in the games.” When he looks back, there is fire in his eyes again. “But it was like lightning striking twice when you came across me again at Waldreg’s auction. You have no idea what it took to restrain myself when I saw you again.”
She can imagine, actually.
She nods, and starts marching through the darkness of the night. “Whatever comes next, we must deal with all the men that witnessed our mating first. None can be left to survive.”
His eyes sharpen against her quiet rage, bloodlust matching bloodlust. “None will,” he promises. “But that is only the beginning. You understand, don’t you? I may be a mere gladiator here in Rome, but I have my own army, Galadriel. I am a General. I am a conqueror.”
“What? You would make me a Queen?” She stops and looks back at him, understanding and a shared wisdom in some dark fantasy of a vision. “And you, My King?”
“We could be insatiable together, Galadriel.”
She isn’t sure that a promise of a conquering rule is something she should trust, but she finds herself clinging to it. She doesn’t know what the future will bring for them — enemies, surely, without her family’s protection for certain. He talks of war as if it is inevitable, but she knows they have each other, at least. She is never going to let them be separated ever again. That is her vow.
It is enough, for now.
It will have to be enough for whatever is to come their way in the future.
#
fin.