Chapter Text
“You,” Lucifer panted into Alastor’s mouth, “Are a sloppy, fucking drunk.”
The Devil and the Radio Demon were having what the former colloquially referred to as a ‘date night’ and the latter referred to as sentimental nonsense.
It had taken a minor act of the Creator that Lucifer refused to name to start the tradition.
At first, Alastor had been insistent on keeping their relationship discreet when they’d finally gotten together after years of sniping away at each other. He’d had little interest in displaying himself as a pretty little ornament for the king, he’d said (sneered, really). He was a self-made man and he would not lose that reputation, thank you very much.
Lucifer didn’t really get it.
When he and Lilith had still been a thing, Lucifer had loved showing her off and being shown off by her…but maybe that had been part of the problem. He’d put her on too high of a pedestal and well…he wasn’t sure what he’d been to her by the end. So…okay, maybe trying to assign the sort of public affection he’d shown his ex to Alastor was what might be thought of as a Bad Idea.
So, he’d done what always seemed to work with the bitchy contrarian he’d hitched his wagon to: He opened up his ears and listened.
He didn’t just listen to the words.
Lucifer listened to all the empty air around the things Alastor said to hear the silent implications that he didn’t.
Alastor hadn’t wanted to be flaunted as a piece of frippery to a more powerful king and he didn’t want public displays of sentimentality? Fine. That didn’t mean no dates, it had just meant that Lucifer had to think smarter…to tailor the experience to the lover he had now. So, think smarter he had, and he’d found what he’d rather thought was a series of elegant solutions. After all, if the King of Hell himself wanted to rent out a jazz bar for his private use after closing once a month, who was really going to say boo to him?
The offer to have free run of the Sinner-operated dive with no eyes on them had enticed the Radio Demon and it had sort of become their ‘thing’.
Now here they were with at least two years of monthly date nights under their belt and making out like randy teenagers, Alastor’s lean lower back pressed up against the bar while Lucifer growled against his lips.
It didn’t always end up like this.
Alastor wasn’t often in the mood for sex…not that he was definitely against it (as Lucifer’s mattress could attest at great length) but he didn’t think about it the way others did. That was to say, he didn’t think about it at all. It was usually Lucifer’s idea, at which point Alastor would seem almost surprised that the concept existed at all before he’d say yes and they’d spend the rest of the night with his hooves up near his ears. But sometimes…well.
The Radio Demon loved chaos and date night had gotten a little ‘safe’ for him after a couple of years. He enjoyed transgressing, particularly when it didn’t put his own reputation in any sort of danger, and the idea of having entirely secret and illicit sex in someone else’s establishment had been the spark of mayhem he’d needed to get his motor running. They hadn’t gotten to the main event yet, no, but Lucifer’s dick was quite happy to note that they were well on their way.
Currently, the Radio Demon was entirely sauced, high on a good time, and entwined in the Devil’s eager arms.
He purred, leaning further back against the bar to show off his sleek frame and Lucifer was half-feral with desire for his sly Sinner, listening as that smooth nasal tenor purred, “My my…they say the Prince of the Pit is the master of temptation, but I seem to be the one leading the lamb astray tonight, my dear.”
“No lambs here, Bambi…” Lucifer huffed, leaning down to suck a dark hickie into the Overlord’s neck despite knowing it would be gone in a few minutes at best.
“Mmm, is that so? Have I ensnared a wolf then? How odd…I don’t feel any teeth,” his lover taunted and sweet Jesus, but Lucifer was going to bend him over the bar so hard there was going to be property damage by the time they were finished here.
“And what do you want, habibi? Hm? You want to bleed? Seems a little tame for the infamous Radio Demon. What can I give my hellcat?” The fallen inquired with false levity, sneaking his hand into Alastor’s crimson hair to give it a sharp tug.
“Well…” Alastor began to hum.
That’s when Lucifer felt it, like a radar pinging in the back of his soul…a tug upon his spirit that he had not experienced in many thousands of years.
His head snapped up and away from his task, serpentine pupils drawn tight with anxiety, “Hush.”
Lucifer was grateful, and not for the first time, that Alastor was a wary and suspicious sort of man. He could feel the way the demon pressed between his body and the bar went taut as a bowstring from one moment to the next. He’d been with the king for so long now that he’d learned the many timbres of his voice. He knew the wine-dark tone of authority Lucifer used in the bedroom when he was meant to submit, if only for a little while, but he also knew the sound of danger when he heard it.
Dropping his voice low and cutting his static from the air as if someone had flipped a switch, the Radio Demon hissed, “...What is it?”
How did Lucifer explain what he felt to a being who had no concept of the universe in the same way he did? How did he explain that the thing he felt wasn’t even a ‘feeling’ per se, but rather a knowing? It wasn’t a sound or a scent, or a touch, but instead a certainty. In an instant, all of Lucifer’s previous passion had dissipated like mist under the sun, replaced by the all-encompassing certitude bearing down around him like the pressure of a thousand fathoms.
He couldn’t explain it, but he could look his lover dead in the eyes and whisper, “It’s…it’s bad. I haven’t felt this since before the Fall. We have to get back to the Hotel. Now. Heaven’s up to something.”
Lucifer saw the way Alastor’s pupils shifted, dilating ever so slightly before tightening down, “It’s been years since the last Extermination. They haven’t made a peep.”
“Yeah,” the king could hear the distrust in his own voice…the dark and ugly suspicion, “And this isn’t small fry.”
“...Who?” Alastor asked bluntly, already pushing himself up from the bar as if they’d been meeting for a war council instead of a bit of nookie on the down-low, proper as a lord and sharp as a knife.
There was real horror brewing in Lucifer’s belly as he truly weighed the magnitude of divinity hurtling towards them like a falling star. It rooted itself into a place deep within him that had never stopped falling…that never forgot the feeling of the first angelic steel to ever cut his flesh. Its like had never been crafted since then and nothing less than that could lay him low and only when wielded by angels of true power. Angels like…
No.
“I’ll tell you once we’re at the Hotel. Shadow us there, Alastor. I don’t want to open a portal,” Lucifer said crisply, straightening his clothes.
A portal wouldn’t do here. The power signature of his own magic was still a step too close to the divine for his comfort. If any of the others sniffed it out, he and Alastor would be run to ground in seconds. Or worse…they’d lead them right to the Hotel before he and Alastor even had time to warn Charlie. They wouldn’t notice a single Sinner’s innate magic, though…no. That was just another streak of darkness on an otherwise bleak landscape.
Alastor didn’t question him, pulling the shadows up around him with barely a wobble despite his previously inebriated state. They bubbled up from the shadowy corners of the technically-closed bar, swarming their master with all the enthusiasm of an eager puppy. Preparing for the move, Lucifer once more pulled Alastor close and didn’t even have time to mourn the death of their evening before the cold-not-cold sensation of sentient shadow oozing up his body to whisk them away filled his senses.
Heaven lived to laugh in his face.
Here he’d had his prickly lover loose and content with all the makings of a truly enjoyable date night all lined up, now they were both banishing the remnants of liquor from their system as they raced to outrun potential angelic ruination.
And then, of course, because it was him…things went tits up.
Only moments into their journey, Alastor let out a miserable shriek of agony that Lucifer had legitimately never heard before in their long acquaintance as everything in their dimensional pocket jerked brutally. It was like something had dug its fingers in deep and ripped the Radio Demon off trajectory, effectively hijacking his arcane ability. Father, it sounded like it hurt.
The dimensional rift that shuttled Alastor around on a whim gave another sickening lurch as the Sinner instinctively fought for control of his own arcane gifts. Lucifer never really liked traveling by shadow, but it was leaving him even more green around the gills this time. It felt like they were trapped in a bubble being buffeted about on a tempest sea, rolling and shuddering in a tug-of-war that Alastor was rapidly losing.
Between them, Lucifer shouted above the furor, “Alastor! Talk to me! What’s happening?”
His lover was baring his teeth, face gone entirely feral as he fought about the interloping power hauling them ever onward, eyes tipping over into radio dials, “A moment, darling!”
Alastor let out another strangled sound of fundamental suffering as their pocket outside of reality was hauled figuratively kicking and screaming back in.
He’d lost the fight.
Their shadowy womb sundered as Alastor’s scream dissolved into jittering static, the sound of an eldritch radio tuning into every infernal frequency that ever existed and ever would before going bitterly quiet. The king and his lover spilled out of the shattered shadows, tumbling out onto a too-clean marble floor in the middle of the one place Lucifer thought he would never have to go again.
The Embassy.
But how…?
“Brother…”
Lucifer’s heart went cold at the sound of that voice. It was undeniably masculine - husky, yet gentle with a sort of infinite understanding to it that had never failed to flay him open in the days and years before Eden. Feeling ironically like a deer in the headlights, his golden eyes drifted up to look upon a heavenly host he had not seen without a film of blood over his vision in millennia.
His siblings.
At the head of the small council of Archangels flanking them was a being so very like him that they had been molded from the same clay, locks just as golden and skin just as fair. Their hair was long, tied off at the base of their skull with a tidy ribbon and dressed in the regalia of a military era that hadn’t existed on earth in at least two hundred years. They were turned out in blues and golds with a red cape thrown over one shoulder, their sapphire eyes glittering like chips of ice in the unchanging beauty of their face.
“...Michael,” Lucifer said, trying to sound calm and like he wasn’t currently reliving the worst day of his existence in some corner of his mind, “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.”
Michael’s face was calm, the lamb-like ears to either side of their head relaxed as the angel themself stood at parade rest, “We have committed no trespass, brother. Verily, have we remained in the Embassy as protocol dictates.”
“How very good for you,” Alastor sniped, standing from where he’d been spat out onto the floor and dusting down his coat with a perfunctory air (and absolutely zero self-preservation in his skinny body), “I suppose you’ll be wanting a cookie, then?”
Lucifer wanted to strangle him.
Scratch that. Lucifer wanted to get him the fuck out of here.
Michael looked at the Sinner as if he were less than an ant beneath their boot, and there was more truth in that than the king wanted to admit.
“Alastor,” Lucifer warned flatly.
His lover cut him a sharp look and in that moment the Devil realized he was actually scared. There was a tension at the corner of his smile, the lips peeling up to reveal gum. Of course. Of-fucking-course his demon was so determined not to show fear that he’d mock the oldest angels in existence out of sheer spite.
He had to get Alastor out of dodge.
“Michael, that still doesn’t explain why you were here. Okay, yeah, you didn’t technically break any rules and we’re all so grateful for that, but why? Hell’s been minding its manners down here just…y’know…being Hell. We didn’t exactly need an intervention.”
Michael’s cold eyes turned back to him and it was such a relief to have his ancient attention turned from Alastor.
The first archangel’s voice rang out again and Lucifer forced himself to resist the innate comfort that Raphael exuded.
Raphael was the tallest of the whole host, their skin a peachy-cinnamon tone with a dusting of darker freckles just beneath the gemstone green of their rounded almond eyes. Their tidy ginger hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and most of their svelte body was concealed beneath a heavy greatcoat of white and green.
“Lucifer, be at ease. Your sibling has no quarrel with Hell. They are here out of a sense of concern for you.”
Lucifer scoffed, “I’m sorry?”
“Well, I think it’s stupid, but you know Mikey,” chimed Gabriel who was currently lounging sprawled in a forgotten office chair, “They’re stubborn.”
The Messenger of God was a robust, dark-skinned angel with a head of well-maintained, lustrous curls festooned with beads of all origins. Here and there rainbow colours had been woven through her curls, giving her the distinct impression of a joyful tropical bird. She dressed the most informally of all her kin, currently garbed in acid-wash denim with pops of neon and all sorts of whimsical, chunky jewelry adorning her wrists.
She did not look happy.
Her sister - a short and rubenesque woman perfectly dressed pussy-bow blouse, pencil skirt, kitten heels and cloche hat - looked just as unhappy. She pouted through ruby painted lips and peered out from beneath the fringe of her pin-straight ebony bob. All three of her eyes were narrowed in frustration at her sister, her olive-toned skin distinctly flushed with pique.…but that was just Uriel. Lucifer couldn’t recall a time when their sister hadn’t looked like she’d eaten a lemon.
“Gabriel! You know this is important for the balance of the worlds to be maintained. I would thank you to take this seriously.”
“Everyone, please stop fighting.”
The final speaker was the one Lucifer was most surprised to see.
Azriel, the Angel of Death.
Compared to the rest of their siblings, Azriel was the most unassuming of all, a petite figure lacking all the colour and grandeur of the other archangels. Their hair was a mess of asymmetrically cut curls, sheared near up to the scalp on one side while the other hung down around their flickering ears. Their eyes were solid white and did not see in the ways of others, blind and yet not. They wore simple clothes…a collared shirt and loose slacks that trimmed in tight to their narrow belly. Over the top, they wore an oversize coat draped with a stole embroidered with mourning lilies.
Every inch of them was pearly pale…a soothing monochrome.
“Enough.”
Michael’s voice rang out above them all and at last peace fell over the room while Alastor and Lucifer were left at the center of the chaos.
“Brother. We know well that your queen has abdicated her throne. We know well that in the time she sat upon that throne her heart ever longed to war with Heaven. Compassion over wisdom has ever been your weakness, brother mine, and it blinds you to the vipers in your garden. Think you the Exterminations our seraphim arranged would have occurred had you brought Lilith to heel for the good of all?”
Azriel visibly winced behind Michael, their face pained.
Lucifer angled himself in front of Alastor discreetly and frowned hard at his sibling, “Okay, and? Look, if you’re here to take me to task over Lilith, then it’s between us. Alastor doesn’t need to be here.”
Alright, well his siblings being here to fuss over the divorce was incredibly belated, but at least that much made sense.
“Your Sinner is the crux of our current unease,” Michael informed their brother, dashing his burgeoning hopes of smuggling Alastor out of their little family reunion, “and has been the topic of much discussion betwixt us.”
The Devil willed his lover to be silent now as he countered, “Alastor? He’s -.”
Uriel cut him off, waving a hand as a thick file materialized in it which she proceeded to flip through at remarkable speed, “Alastor DuBois, born 1900 in New Orleans, Louisiana in North America. Died 1933 in same location. His sins on Earth contain but are not limited to serial murder, heretical behaviour, intemperance, acts of wrath, and anthropophagy.”
“Goodness, but I was busy,” Alastor murmured and Lucifer very nearly whirled on him.
He blew out an unsteady breath, “Yeah, so he killed people, ate them, wasn’t a big fan of dear old dad, and drank liquor. It’s Hell. There are five people the next district over with a shockingly similar rap sheet.”
But Uriel was going on, “In death, his soul accrued power at an alarming rate through a series of violent erasures. He is currently sitting near the top of Hell’s power structure after a mere ninety-two years and made his presence known as an associate of the Princess of Hell during the final Extermination.”
“...Alright, time to cut the shit and tell me why you’re all here. I’m done with the games,” Lucifer finally spat when she was done talking, “I know perfectly well who Alastor is.”
He didn’t like all the focus on his Sinner and he had realized that avoiding using a portal hadn’t saved them at all. It never would have. His siblings had been sniffing for his lover’s power signature as surely as they’d been monitoring his. Alastor wasn’t just caught in the crossfire of a celestial pissing contest, he was the damn cause of it (which was going to make the man’s ego impossible to deal with if they both made it out of this encounter).
“Do you, though?” Uriel sighed at him, waving her folder scoldingly, “You’ve got a track record of infatuation with the wrong sort of mortal, you know. If you were listening to Michael at all, you’d know that, but you always were such a terror about listening -.”
“Think, brother,” Michael said where they stood with that terrible sword of theirs at their hip, cutting off their sister’s tirade, “Once have you let your heart deceive you into taking into your House a mortal soul with more ambition than love for you and once did she seek to topple the Divine Order. Once more have you chosen a mortal soul with a lust for power far exceeding the thin boundaries of his compassion for others.”
“Do you mean to imply,” Alastor said, transatlantic strained under the weight of the acid in every word, “That you believe I’ve engaged myself in a multi-year entanglement with Hell’s most profound idiot just to get into fisticuffs with you?”
Gee, thanks.
“They are saying,” Uriel sniffed, “That we can’t be sure and we aren’t going to take a risk on another Lilith debacle.”
Alastor’s smile ground together so hard Lucifer was amazed there wasn’t blood running down his jaw from the force of it. He hardly had time to focus on it, though, as the deeper meaning behind their words crashed through his psyche like a stone.
Oh Father in Heaven, did they mean to erase Alastor?!
Fury began to build in Lucifer and flames roiled just beneath his flesh, begging to be unleashed. Would he never know peace? He was recovering, damn it…recovering at last from the crippling trauma of his reality-shifting fall so very long ago and the remnants of a marriage gone very badly. Alastor had been the one to do that for him, taking him by the nose and hauling him bodily out of his wallowing to make him face the wreck he’d become. Alastor was the one who’d pushed him to realize his own might (albeit through prodding and generally being a smarmy prick), and now they wanted to just…take him away?
But Raphael was quick to interject, every sweep of his greatcoat wafting the scent of medicinal herbs as he took a step forward, “Lucifer, Michael doesn’t want to hurt Mr. DuBois. They just…they want to be sure.”
“Of what?”
“That he loves you, duh,” Gabriel said, swinging around to face her one-time brother, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, at first they were all smitey about things, but we convinced them that would be wrong. Because like…” she leaned to snatch the file from Uriel, flapping it in the air, “The Alastor guy does have a capacity to love. See, right here. Practically a saint around his mother.”
Uriel snatched the folder back, “Inaccurate! You, Raphael, and Azriel convinced them it would be wrong. Statistically speaking, Alastor’s file is weighed against him.”
Lucifer was seriously considering grabbing Alastor and hauling him through a portal that his siblings wouldn’t be able to reroute, but he stayed his hand just a bit longer.
If he rabbited off now, he could potentially place his partner in even deeper shit than he’d started in, so he made himself calm the inferno inside of him to keep them talking, “...So you’re not going to smite him. Why drag us all the way to the Embassy then?”
“Because we must be sure that what roots deep in your Sinner’s bespoiled heart is love for you and not hunger for the lofty heights of power an association with you awards him. Consider, brother. If his love is sincere, he will think first of you and yours. He will consider your comfort and the safety of your kingdom…a safety which is not assured if he seeks to violate the vaults of Heaven,” Michael explained.
“...But if he doesn’t…” Raphael said, though his eyes were sad as he spoke.
Making a decision, Lucifer stepped back to draw Alastor near to him. Fine, they wanted to threaten his lover? Then Lucifer would broadcast that there was no hurting the Radio Demon without going through him. He knew Alastor would hate the implication of weakness on his part, but he could deal with it because they were facing the very angel who had laid Lucifer low once long ago. Alastor wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance and Lucifer could not tolerate that.
“Fine then. I know you’re wrong, but fine. Tell me what we have to do to get this over with so you guys can head back up to Heaven and get the fuck out of my domain.”
It was Azriel who spoke this time, gentle as the lapping of the tide on a summer shore, “We devised a test.”
Lucifer’s tone was so flat it surpassed two-dimensional as he stated, unimpressed, “...A test.”
“A trial!” Gabriel declared, throwing her hands into the air.
It was official. Lucifer was enduring the most stupid existence there ever was.
“Love transcends the boundaries of flesh and reality, brother. I have seen mortal souls parted by death recall well their love when reunited in paradise. You two will enter into a test whereupon your Sinner must fall in love with you once more, if indeed he even loves you now. He shall be wiped clean of your history and you shall not meet him as you are now,” Michael said, raising a hand.
“It is our belief…” Raphael intoned slowly, “...that when stripped of all but what he is at his core, the truth will be shown.”
“If you succeed, then you are free to go with our blessing. However, should he fail to feel true devotion in his heart of hearts, we are prepared to protect you from the pain his eventual betrayal would bring.”
“You’ll erase him,” Lucifer accused, pulling Alastor impossibly tighter as the buzz of irate static fell off the Radio Demon in waves.
He was surprised then when Alastor pushed away from him, taking a new position in front of him and facing down the entire host with his head held high. His spine was straight as a ramrod, his ears standing tall while his aural aura fell to a hush all around him. Father, it was like watching the video footage of him facing down Adam all over again and it took all of Lucifer’s resolve not to simply snatch him away from the jaws of certain death.
Alastor’s voice rang out, heavy with derision and pride, “While I’m not usually interested in airing my dirty laundry for the masses, if the ‘higher powers’ wish to play voyeur then who am I to stop them? Do your worst. I do have work to get back to and a very lovely date night you’ve effectively ruined.”
How could Alastor manage to terrify and electrify Alastor in equal turns? How could he, with just a few sing-song notes of scathing mockery, inspire the Devil himself to both quiet awe and towering horror?
With his agreement, Michael let his hand fall and it was like someone had cut the strings on Alastor.
In an instant, everything simply went out of him. Snuffed like a candle, the rigidity instantly dissipated from his body. His bright eyes rolled back, lids closing over them as he just…crumpled.
Lucifer rushed forward to catch him before he could hit the floor, heart in his throat, “Alastor!”
“Be at peace, brother, he’s safe,” Raphael murmured, “He merely dreams in another place. You’ll join him there for the test when you’re ready. We will watch over you both in the meantime.”
Carefully, Lucifer lowered Alastor until he rested on the floor, looking like nothing so much as a broken doll.
He cast his golden stare up to Michael and found his sibling looking back at him, watching his every move not with scorn but with the military precision that had been built into them by their Father, “...Hell of a way to remember you’re my family and you’re supposed to care about me, Mike.”
There was the faintest twitch of something like doubt at the corner of his twin’s mouth. Lucifer was almost sad for them…or he would have been if he wasn’t so fucking rattled by the evening’s events and what yet lay before them.
“We’re sorry, Luci…” Azriel said, their voice so very, very rueful.
Lucifer took a deep breath and lowered himself to the floor next to the slumbering, vacant body of the Radio Demon, “Let’s get this started. And I’m warning you now…tough love or not? Good intentions or not? If something…if anything…happens to him, you’ll wish you’d kept treating me like a stranger.”
He turned so he was looking on Alastor’s face and slowly…slowly…closed his eyes.
Everything went white.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Alastor was in Hell.
Alastor was in Hell, and the worst part was that he had done nothing to deserve his rotten, stinking lot.
His memories of how he came to find himself in this moment were fuzzy at best.
His life before all of this was so nondescript as to be perfectly forgettable. Born a member of the lesser Beast Folk caste in a country already well known for the poverty of its common folk, he had been no one. Alastor had lived a quiet (if resentful) existence with his mother in their country hovel at the edge of the village, doing their best to keep their heads down. His mother had been a Cunning Woman, a folk healer who was at once necessary to their way of life but also resented for being only a step away from ‘witch’ in their eyes. Keeping the goodwill of the people kept their necks out of the noose.
It had worked. It hadn’t been good, but it had been a life…day after day after day indistinguishable from others to the point that Alastor couldn’t really recall any one in particular for most of his existence. It was like an oil-paint smear of faces and events that blurred until he couldn’t distinguish the edges of them clearly anymore…at least not until his mother died.
That day was seared into his mind like a scalding brand had been laid over the soft folds of his brain. It was a lurid forest fire that seared its way through the dimness of every mediocre day before it.
His maman had been his everything.
She was the one who cared for him, lowly half-beast bastard that he was. She was the one who had taught him the folk wisdom of the world, the likes of which the common citizens could only fear. She had also been his last remaining social protection.
Alastor was an Omega.
It had been a hateful fact of his existence, but not one his mother cared to subject him to. She was a perfectly respectable Beta and his parent besides, making her a suitable guardian for him. Omegas of the Empire were rare commodities to be protected and acquired, unable to live on their own. An Omega was required to be either mated to an Alpha or in the household of an elder family member who could safeguard them until an advantageous mating could be arranged.
As Alastor’s father was not in the picture, he had been a ward of his mother. She was uninterested in mating him off to any of the pitifully dim Alphas of the village beyond, nor in sending him to the local lord to have a selection made for him. Instead, she had cultivated herbs to keep his heats at bay, kept him safe at home, and scared away any covetous lout who came sniffing around their door.
But she had died.
She had left him alone and the wolves circling their door had closed in.
Suddenly the blurry quality of his memories were no longer bland, but harried. Alastor couldn’t tell one experience from another because there were so many and they happened so fast that he could barely catch his breath. He’d laid his mother to rest in secret, but she was such a singular figure that she was soon missed and then Alastor was lost.
He’d fought when the first Alpha came courting. Hell, he couldn’t quite remember what had happened, but he’d killed the man.
He’d become a problem after that…a fell omen the town wasn’t terribly interested in dirtying their bloodlines with. A mongrel witch-son with death in his eyes? Subjugating him simply wasn’t worth it when there was another avenue. You see, many times when a particularly fine Omega was taken to the Lord’s Manor, the village that provided the little filly was gifted with tithes of food or other necessaries that could sustain them for a year or more. Alastor, while dangerous and half-blooded, was a striking creature of not-inconsiderable worth.
The man was slightly older than most preferred to start breeding Omegas, a lean thirty-three years, but he was youthful of feature and yet untouched. His eyes were flashing rubies peering out at the world from below thick lashes, his angles beautifully sculpted and his hair a windswept mess of scarlet curls. Soft freckles dotted the bridge of his patrician nose and his head was crowned in twitching ears and small antlers. His body was strong and the villagers had certainly hoped that his vicious nature would show the Lord of the Manor that he would produce fine children when finally brought to heel.
Alastor had fought like a wild thing, though the finer details of his trials escaped him.
He remembered pain…struggle…outrage at the utter unfairness of it all as he was hauled from his childhood home to be bartered like a barnyard sow. He remembered blood and flashing teeth and being spirited away in the dark of night in chains. He remembered mockery when he had finally been presented to the Lord - not fit to be a bride of his house, but exotic enough for a higher calling. Alastor’s captors had been rewarded handsomely and he had been forced into bondage and transport once more.
He remembered hunger greater even than he’d experienced in his mother’s house on the long journey that followed, starved just enough to take the fight out of him but not so much to devalue him as an asset.
He remembered nausea as he was forced into a carriage for the first time in his life and hauled for miles and miles away from the only home he’d ever known.
He remembered bitter tastes on his tongue as he was force-fed herbs he could only half-name. They had tried slipping them into his meager food, but not even hunger could erase the ancient folk wisdom from his mind. Alastor knew what medicinal herbs tasted like and could not be tricked into consuming them of his own will.
He remembered confusion after days of being half-starved and sedated with little sleep as he was whisked into a grand building far larger than the Lord’s Manor, vanished down into underlevels full of perfumed steam. Alastor had panicked as he was ushered to the edge of a sunken pit full of hot water, thinking he would be boiled to death. He had been humiliated to learn it wasn’t a torture, but instead a luxury…a bath that wasn’t drawn from freezing well-water pump than stank of sulphur.
His world blurred again in a panoply of invasive handling. He was scrubbed from head to toe and back again, forced to sit for long skin treatments that baffled and agitated him. His fur was conditioned to a high shine, his hooves trimmed, the tips of his antlers cut like an animal’s, his nails buffed, and his curls groomed in a way that made his scalp ache.
Voices blurred all around him while he was incarcerated there in the lower depths of…wherever he was. He had no idea how long he was imprisoned below by these soft-handed, soft-voiced nothing people…no sign of the sun to tell him. It could have been hours or even days and he suspected keeping him disoriented was the point. Alastor had tried fighting if only to be deemed too troublesome so he could be put out of his misery, but that hadn’t worked and he was too confused to attempt escape under his own power.
He tried to grasp on to the threads of conversation around him. After all, Alastor was beaten down, hungry, and exhausted, but he was hardly stupid.
Occasionally snatches of information filtered through.
His captors had debated piercing his ears and nipples, but decided against it before the needles were brought out since he wouldn’t have time to heal. Heal? For what?
More confusion, more blurry memories, and then the poor man found himself forced into a familiar, hated garment.
A mating gown.
In their society, an untouched Omega being gifted to their mate was fitted in a white gown meant to ceremonially announce their purity to their intended. For the lower class, it could be as simple as a linen shift, but for the nobility that occasionally traveled through their village on the way to better places? They could be as varied and elaborate as the exotic birds that sang in far off jungles Alastor would never see.
Alastor’s stomach sank when he realized that his was perhaps the most ornate he had ever seen.
It was a high-necked affair that had surely never been meant to be worn by a living being that needed to breathe. The bodice was structured like an architectural marvel with hanging sleeves slashed up to the shoulder, the skirts heavy to prevent too vigorous a stride. As Alastor was wrestled into the atrocity festooned in elegant seed-pearls he felt more like a doll than a person. His head was forced high like a fine hunting horse by the neckline, his rib swing obstructed by the stiff corseting penning him in, and his feet hindered by the sheer weight of the skirt material. Even the ivory-pale embroidery was wrong, depicting writhing knotted snakes instead of his own stag heritage.
If Alastor hadn’t had a minder as he was finally taken out of his strange, jasmine-scented prison, he would have happily thrown himself out a window.
He wasn’t given any time to look at his surroundings, hustled sternly up stairwells, through doors, and down corridors until he was delivered to the room in which he currently found himself. The final insult had been a bitter pill forced between his teeth, his mouth and nose pinched shut until he had no choice but to swallow. Only after that was a golden chain attached to his ankle, clipped to a ring in the middle of the floor, and then he was left alone.
Speaking of where he currently found himself…
Before his captors had left him to his fate, Alastor had been forced to kneel at the foot of a bed so egregiously luxurious Alastor wasn’t sure it even counted as one anymore. The whole room was luxurious, larger than the Omega’s entire home had been once not so long ago and so very clean. The stone floor was covered with hand-woven rugs threaded through with ornate patterns of foreign origin, shielding him from the cold. The walls were likewise hung with detailed tapestries, and all of the furniture was made of heavy, dark wood of great age and value. Rather than admire the beauty of it, Alastor was sickened by the unfairness.
He and his mother had struggled in the mud while men existed who lived like this?
In a small act of petty rebellion, Alastor had stood some time ago and set to pacing as far as his chain would allow (woefully short of the tall stained glass window he spied on the far side of the room). If he was going to meet the Alpha he’d been painstakingly prepared for, it would be on his own terms. He didn’t care if he was beaten. He didn’t care if he was a disappointment. He intended to fight even though his hooves could only carry him so far and he was still so hungry…and so hot.
Why was he hot?
It was midwinter even now, and despite the warmth of plush rugs there was still a bite to the air. Alastor shouldn’t be feeling this warm…like there was a steadily stoking fire growing beneath his skin. Perhaps the dress was simply too thick and he was stifling?
Alastor didn’t have much time to think about it or worry over the unseasonable heat as feet echoed up the hallway beyond. There was always the possibility it was going to be more attendants come to torture him or to make sure he was still kneeling (they’d have to break his kneecaps for that). However, there was also the possibility that the Alpha he had been kidnapped for was making their appearance known and he needed to be ready for them.
Even woozy, sick, tired, and angry, Alastor refused to greet his new master as a lesser. He pasted a sharp smile on his face and waited to meet his fate.
~*~
Lucifer opened his eyes in a world not his own.
He came to consciousness in the middle of a scene, walking up a long stairwell. It was so abrupt he very nearly stumbled, but a hand shot out to take him gently by the elbow to steady him. Off-kilter, Lucifer’s head snapped up to stare at his saviour.
Azriel’s familiar, doll-like face stared sightlessly back at him from behind milk-white eyes, their expression soft and sad, “Easy, brother.”
Lucifer took in every inch of his one-time sibling.
Rather than the more casual angelic garments they’d worn in the halls of judgement or from the long years they’d known one another at the universe’s infancy, now they were kitted out in something Lucifer vaguely recalled from a time when Medieval Sinners had begun to fall into Hell many centuries ago.
He hadn’t expected this.
Staring in terrified wonder at his sibling, Lucifer rasped out, “...What?”
“I don’t have long, Lucifer, but I’ve come to offer you counsel for your trial.”
“But…Azriel, why?”
Azriel sighed and tilted their head away, “...Because there are rules here you need to understand or, true love or not, you and your Sinner will never stand a chance. I petitioned our more…reasonable siblings to permit me a few stolen moments before we began.”
Lucifer touched a hand to his brow as false ‘memories’ he had never lived through shuffled up against his real ones, telling him who he was meant to be here, “I don’t understand…”
His sibling reached out with one marble-cool hand to grip his fingers, guiding his hand down so they could grip his in both of theirs, “Listen to me very carefully because this is the only help I can give you. Think. Think really hard. You and Alastor didn’t love each other at first the same way you love each other now, did you? You had to learn what you know now. You had to learn each other. You had to learn what it meant to love each other.”
Eyes the colour of shifting abalone were fixed on his, pupil-less and fathomless.
Then the Angel of Death bit their lower lip, the pale rosebud of it crinkling under pure white teeth, “You can’t rely on your history to win the game. You have to remember the reasons you fell in love in the first place. You can’t grow a flower without the right seed, Lucifer…so plant it”
The Devil shook his head sharply and leaned into his sibling’s face, “I mean why help me?”
Azriel turned sightless eyes that still saw so very much onto their sibling and breathed out, “...Because I stood by while your existence was ruined once. I still don’t know if I agree with everything that happened, but…you’re my brother and you deserve a fair chance to save this Sinner.”
“And why save a Sinner?” Lucifer challenged, not quite trusting the boon.
“...Death is the great equalizer, brother. It isn’t my place to judge souls, simply take them where they’re meant to be. I remember them all, you know. Every last one. Even him. I can’t…I don’t…Lucifer, I don’t want to see one of my souls erased…especially not if it…if it hurts you. I can’t win this trial for you, but I can give you this advice,” Azriel said at last, “What you do with it is up to you. Isn’t that the gift you granted the mortals?”
Lucifer considered his youngest sibling before nodding at last and focusing on this new ‘reality’ he’d have to navigate if he had even a single, ragged scrape of hope of saving Alastor’s blackened soul.
This was no Earth of any place or particular time that had ever really existed, so there were no messy details for Lucifer to trip over. It was a fabricated world of a vaguely medieval origin…a world in which Lucifer was no less than an emperor of a vast and mighty imperium. He searched out the edges of the simulation and learned that this was a world of sexual dimorphism more extreme even than the one that existed in reality, not just a world of biological bearers and sires, but something far, far deeper. It was a caste system he sat squarely at the top of as an ‘Alpha’...and currently one without something vitally important that he understood was called an Omega?
He had no idea where Alastor fell in this new world, but it was the one they would both inhabit until they either succeeded…or failed.
Lucifer’s mind cleared enough to ‘remember’ that he was walking up to his quarters and he cocked his head, bird-like, at his sibling, “Will you be with me?”
Azriel shook their head, “I can’t be. I need to leave before Michael notices my divine signature in this pocket. Just remember what I told you and remember why you were drawn to your Sinner in the first place...and what drew him to you.”
And then, just like that, the Angel of Death dissolved into the air from whence they came to wait out the rest of the trial, leaving Lucifer alone to finish his long walk up to his chambers. With Alastor’s existence hanging in the balance, the Devil couldn’t afford to dither and he climbed the rest of the way up, polished boots echoing off of stone walls and heart in his throat. Lucifer thought the architecture was at least somewhat familiar here, reminiscent of a castle that Johannes Weier fellow had accidentally summoned him to sometime in the mid-1500s.
Goodness, but he’d given that poor man a fright.
Pulling himself out of his wool-gathering, Lucifer found himself standing before a hefty carven oak door emblazoned in the center with an artistic rendering of the morning star. On either side it was flanked by voracious serpents, their jaws wide to consume the light of dawn.
Ha fucking ha.
Lucifer rolled his golden eyes dramatically and laid a hand on the door, giving it a little push and noting that he retained his inhuman strength in this form when it opened easily under his will.
It opened with a soft creak and what lay beyond briefly arrested the Prince of the Pit.
Standing there, tall and proud with the most beautifully arrogant smile on his face, was Alastor.
He was turned out in a snowy white gown cinched in at his starved waist and buttoned all the way up beneath the point of his sculpted chin. His eyes were foggy with lack of sleep and what was surely hunger…and something else? His narrow piano fingers trembled every so slightly where he held his hands at his sides and his entire posture spoke of unrestrained mutiny. Instead of putting Lucifer off, that murderous rage sparked a familiar affection in the king’s breast and he was drawn forward a step, thick carpets muffling the authoritative click of his boots.
Before his eyes, his lover took a subconscious half-step back as his smile sharpened, and the faint movement wafted the most novel scent through the room.
First it smelled of fresh jasmine, body-heated and sultry like blossoms growing starry-soft on a Louisiana vine at the height of a New Orleans summer.
Then it smelled of musk…faintly of the almost-clean-laundry scent that always rolled off of Alastor’s fur and the spicy redolence of his more human skin.
And beneath all of that? A whiff of something dark and forbidden - it smelled like the way sex clung to Alastor’s skin in the pregnant seconds before knee-quaking orgasm; pleasure and possibility indivisible. It nearly took Lucifer out at the knees, that smell…tightened his trousers and dilated his serpentine pupils until they were full-moon-wide in his face. It did positively unholy things to his brain.
Beyond conscious thought, Lucifer felt something purely animal ignite like dry kindling in the seconds following a lightning strike in his gut. Alastor was intoxicating at the best of times even when he wasn’t in the mood for sex (which he frequently wasn’t), but now he hit the king’s system like a drug. Lucifer wanted to crowd him, to pen him in against the footboard of the hysterically overdone bed and bury his face in the crook of his Sinner’s neck. He wanted to taste his skin, to bite, to bury his way under those skirts and see if the scent was stronger at the crux of Alastor’s trim legs. Lucifer wanted to hold him down so he couldn’t squirm away while he scented, tasted, delved deep until his pretty stag was bleating…
A nasal tenor sharper than the finest razor (though deceptively shaky in a way the Devil certainly wasn’t used to) cut through his reverie, “And you’re it then? The crass creature I am shackled to?”
Lucifer’s first reaction from a place he didn’t recognize was offense. How dare this frail, sweet-smelling creature speak to him in such a way? It wasn’t their place. It wasn’t what they were built to do. For that matter, how dare this Omega not avert his eyes and fall to his knees in his presence? He should be silent for inspection, should know his place…
Lucifer had to forcibly restrain a gasp as he surfaced from his own instincts, mildly horrified by the track his thoughts had taken.
His Alastor’s submission had to be earned and never taken. Not like that.
The Devil swallowed thickly and thought about Azriel’s words. He had to remember what had drawn him and Alastor together in the first place, “A creature? Maybe. The Emperor? Certainly.”
Alastor was a prickly asshole and he hated when he couldn’t get under Lucifer’s skin with petty insults, but he was intrigued at the same time. So, if Azriel was right and Lucifer had to remember what it was that had set them on a collision course in the first place? Then he had to roll with his lover’s punches. Hadn’t their fascination felt like hatred at first?
Lucifer caught the moment Alastor’s eyes flickered at the edges, clearly fighting not to widen in surprise before he said blithely, “An Emperor? Well!”
It was almost cute how even an Alastor devoid of memories was so like the one Lucifer was madly devoted to. After all, his Alastor hated feeling like he’d missed a trick or been caught on the back foot. His Alastor was a man who would tear down all of civilization just to build a tower from the rubble so he could spit in the eyes of kings.
Okay. Lucifer had to be smart this time. He had to use his head if he wanted to keep his heart.
Alastor liked it when Lucifer played the part of a king - not the swaggering, smarmy persona that he pasted on when he was feeling insecure, but a true master of all he surveyed. It was best to start this encounter out on the right foot. Lucifer calmed his racing heart and tamed his boiling blood, throwing his shoulders back and tipping his head so he was gazing at the stag with calm amusement.
“I know. Hold your applause, sweet thing. Now, I would like to know,” Lucifer purred and took another step forward, noting that Alastor pointedly didn’t take a step back this time. Ah, there was that stubborn streak that drove him wild in all the right and wrong ways, “Who the stranger in my bedchambers happens to be. A little thief, perhaps?”
He kept his tone light, deliberately giving Alastor the wrong information just to goad his temperamental lover into giving him the right details.
After all, his head was full of facts about the false world in which they found themselves…facts that would be incredibly real to Alastor who had been temporarily wiped of anything else.
First and foremost? The gown Alastor was wearing. It was beautiful, but carried such deep symbolism for this world that had been built around them. Alastor’s tone didn’t tell him much about their circumstances though, and the Sinner often jested about being ‘shackled’ to him on a regular day. Lucifer needed more.
The fact that Alastor’s lip curled up in clear disdain to reveal gum wasn’t encouraging.
“You do not even know my name. Of course.”
He turned sharply on his heel and there was that pop-pop-pop of instinct in the back of Lucifer’s head telling him that he should be offended by the dismissal. The king wrestled it down even while his false memories reminded him that he was an Alpha and no Omega had the right to turn their back on him.
Instead he breathed out and kept calm, ears straining when he detected the faint clink of metal? Briefly, Lucifer’s eyes flicked down to the floor and his heart flip-flopped when he saw a slim golden chain trailing from beneath the hem of Alastor’s skirts. Alright. Not a voluntary relationship, then. Gut twisting, the Devil wracked his temporary memories and was relieved to note that he hadn’t ever seen Alastor before…hadn’t victimized him. This was their first meeting.
Alastor walked to the end of his chain and stopped short of the tall window, weak light filtering through the coloured glass to shine against the stark lines of his sharp features. Every time he moved, that cripplingly rich scent followed him and Lucifer had to fight not to chase at his heels like a horny dog. He made himself focus instead on the way Alastor’s steps were unsure, the way his brow furrowed the way it always did when he was confused about something and didn’t want to ust fucking say it.
Lucifer looked for the right words and stayed right where he was, “...I’d like it if you told me. Of course, I’d also like to know why there’s an Omega chained to my floor. I don’t recall being that bad of a lover.”
The Sinner shot him a dry look that sent the king’s heart twisting with how very familiar it was. Oh, how many poorly thought-out arguments had Alastor tried to end with that exact expression over their years together?
Then the stag raised a hand to gesture to the stained glass just out of his reach, “I believe your staff are uninterested in allowing me to ruin your windows. Or your courtyard.”
Only Alastor could make suicide by defenestration sound elegant, the diva.
“A bit of an extreme reaction, don’t you think?” Lucifer drawled, padding over to sit on the edge of the bed. He leaned down to tug gently on Alastor’s chain with a single claw, “Being Omega to the Emperor makes you want to decorate my courtyard with your innards badly enough that you had to be chained.”
“Correction, Your Magnificence. Being Omega to any Alpha makes self-murder seem appealing in comparison,” Alastor sneered.
He folded his hands tight behind his back and Lucifer knew it was to hide the steady shake in his fingers.
It was an odd detail that stuck like a splinter in the Devil’s mind. Alastor never trembled like that. The proud bastard barely even knew what fear was, let alone displaying perfectly normal fear responses. But then again…
Lucifer frowned.
The Alastor he knew had been rail-thin since the day they met, but that was part of his cannibal curse…punishment for his sins on Earth. This reality wasn’t hell and this Alastor was not a Sinner under the auspices of divine judgement. Should he have been that thin?
Keeping his spot on the bed, Lucifer asked, “When was the last time you were given food?”
Alastor paused and his face looked ever-so-slightly vague for a moment before he hummed in that faux-nonchalant way of his, “That depends. What day is it?”
The answer fell out of Lucifer without a second thought, “The third day of Harvest. The twentieth year of the Morning Star.”
The other man was silent for an uncomfortable moment.
When he found his voice again, it was distant…as if Lucifer had punched the air clean out of him, “...A month. How have I lost an entire month…?”
“You’ve been here for a month?”
“No, you dense little fool,” Alastor snapped and raised a shaking hand to his temple, “I was stolen a month ago.”
He sounded so lost…
“Wait…you were taken?” Lucifer finally rose from his place on the bed, carefully ignoring his lover’s fit of temper.
“Sold,” the redhead spat, giving his ankle a yank as if that would do anything at all to free him, “Once I was alone, I was sold to be mated off. Like property.”
“Your mother…” Lucifer said without thinking about it. If Alastor was alone, it could only be because his mother’s death was carved so indelibly into his soul that it echoed into every reality the test constructed around him.
He only thought about his slip when Alastor’s head snapped to him, eyes narrowing dangerously, “...What?”
Shit.
He wasn’t supposed to know that.
It was just that smell in the air was making him stupid. It made him want to snap at Alastor in a way he never had before, made him want to humble him in a way that would normally sicken his soul outside of the occasional scenes they indulged in on the times his lover craved something a little rougher. It made his tongue slip and made him want to do so many unwise fucking things when all he needed to do was connect with Alastor…save his soul…
Thinking quickly, Lucifer shrugged one shoulder, “You were sold to my House, weren’t you? I was given some information. Not enough, but some.”
Alastor watched him warily but said nothing more on the subject. Instead he sniffed, “Did they tell you I killed the first Alpha who tried to claim me?”
“Sit,” Lucifer said instead of rising to the bait, putting authority into his tone as he vacated the bed entirely and ignored Alastor’s attempts to harangue him, “I’m sending for food. You look ready to fall down.”
“If you’re going to attempt to be solicitous, I would prefer you let some air into the room. I am roasting in this blasted, ugly gown,” Alastor grumbled though, surprisingly, he did perch at the very edge of the mattress opposite Lucifer as bidden.
Realization fed by false memories slammed into the Prince of the Pit with the speed of a freight train.
Complaints of stifling temperatures in a room that could be described as ‘not frigid’ at the most gracious, clammy at worst? That cloying smell that was driving Lucifer to aggression and stupidity? Damn his Father and damn this test, but Alastor was in heat. This reality had reduced him to some base, animalistic state as if in mockery of the aspects of himself he had come to loathe in Hell.
The most cruel part of all? Alastor didn’t even seem to know.
Well, his lover did hate being coddled so it was best to rip the band-aid off, “...There isn’t much I can do about that. You’re going into heat and it’s only going to get warmer. I’ll get you some food. I think you’re going to need it.”
But then Alastor was rocketing off of the bed like he’d been bitten, eyes wide with shocked fury and chain rattling wildly as it was moved.
Lucifer held up his hands, “You’re alright. Sit down.”
“Don’t you dare think to order me, you knot-headed streak of nothing!”
Instinct flared in Lucifer’s breast and he squared up to the snarling Omega, a bit of something entirely ‘other’ entering his voice with the weight of an anvil, “Omega. Sit down. Now.”
Alastor gasped as his knees went out from under him, ass thumping back down to the bed and violence in his stunning ruby eyes.
“...Apologies. But I need you to sit and be calm. You’re shaking like a leaf and you’re going into heat. You need food before you collapse,” Lucifer said, feeling genuine contrition for essentially forcing Alastor to obey him.
He had to get this right.
~*~
Heat.
Alastor was going into heat while trapped in the bedchambers of an Alpha with no way to escape the fate his mother had worked so hard to keep him from. How had this happened? He’d been on medicinal herbs for so long that surely a month wasn’t enough to flush them from his system. He’d been kept sleep-deprived and starved for so long that his body shouldn’t have been healthy enough for a successful reproductive cycle. He should have had at least two months to figure out a way to escape or end things before he reached this point.
Wait…
The pill.
That bitter, awful pill that had been shoved into his mouth before he was left alone in his mating gown. It wasn’t something he recognized and why would it be? It must have triggered a big enough hormonal shift in his body to start the first heat he’d ever had in his life.
Gods above, he was going to be raped.
If he caught in his first heat, would they keep him chained up in this room to ensure the safety of the emperor’s heir? Or would they think him tamed enough to let him roam? If it was the latter, then there was still a chance for him to flee all of this one way or the other.
Alastor’s mind was racing while he sat obediently on the bed against his will, tuning out the scent of the small Alpha lingering at the room’s door waiting for food to be delivered.
Maybe if he refused the food, he wouldn’t catch?
He’d seen it plenty of times with the village Omegas. In times of famine, childbirth became a distant dream. A body without nutrients couldn’t hope to sustain a child, so all he had to do was refuse to eat and he could buy himself time.
On the other hand…if he didn’t catch the first time, would the sexual abuse just continue until he did? Maybe if he endured it once and found himself with child, the emperor would leave him alone until he found a way out of his predicament. He was hot and miserable and the place between his legs wasn’t yet aching for the touch of an Alpha he would much prefer to tear to pieces, but it would before long.
Alastor couldn’t figure out if he was more furious or frightened, but the mix was potent enough to keep him distracted until he found a delicately carved wooden tray gently settled in his lap.
He blinked up to find the Alpha standing in front of him, backing off as soon as the delivery was made.
For a moment, the deerfolk studied him, curious at the bizarre show of respect (well, he assumed it was respect since the smaller man didn’t look exactly afraid of him).
The Emperor was…he was Beast Folk, which was something Alastor hadn’t expected. He was pale as summer clouds with golden serpent’s eyes that glittered in the dim light of the bedchamber. The man offered a smile that seemed almost kind, flashing viper fangs as he did so. He looked boyish and deceptively young, a neat coif of golden hair atop his head and a certain roundness to his face that knocked whatever years he had right off of him. He was dressed in stiff royal regalia in shades of white, pink, and gold and Alastor couldn’t understand why he wasn’t being jumped.
He’d never known an Alpha to resist the scent of heat, even pre-heat, before.
His intended Alpha just inclined his head to the tray, “Seriously, eat. Then I’ll try and figure out something more comfortable for you to wear.”
Alastor snorted and looked down at his tray of food, surprised to find it laden with fresh fruit, crusty bread, fat-heavy cheese, and even some protein-rich meat. How long since he’d eaten meat? He and his mother could never afford such luxuries since their rare livestock animals served them better alive.
“You’re trying to get me killed.”
“Killed?” The Emperor asked with all the stupidity granted to the truly wealthy.
Delicately, Alastor picked up a morsel of meat and put it into his mouth as casually as he could while the juices melted out over his tongue, “Taking me out of my mating gown before you deflower me? I’ve seen Omegas executed for being unable to prove their purity after they failed to present their first bleed in the fabric.”
He watched The Emperor’s nose wrinkle as he declared, “...You’re not going to bleed.”
“Are you calling me a whore?” Alastor bit out, taking another piece of meat while maintaining his manners. He had no intention of remaining this fool’s Omega, but he would keep his dignity, damnit.
“No!” The little monarch protested with far less aplomb than Alastor had ever seen in the few nobles who had crossed his path, “No. I mean…why would you bleed? I’m not going to hurt you.”
Alastor rolled his eyes at the naivete and helped himself to another bite of food, “Virgins bleed, Your Magnificence.”
“If you’re a fucking moron, they do,” the blonde scoffed openly, “Alright. The gown stays. You still haven’t told me your name, though.”
“You’ve not told me yours,” Alastor countered after making the Alpha wait while he finished his mouthful.
“Lucifer,” the Alpha said easily, “Morningstar. Your turn.”
How very odd that this man…both an Emperor and an Alpha…had not only resisted the scent of a fertile Omega going into heat, but seemed perfectly content to resist his temper whenever Alastor talked back to him. Oh, he was annoyed, Alastor could tell. There was a little spike in the air whenever the Omega lipped off…a slight sour scent vaguely reminiscent of rotting leaves. But at the same time, this Lucifer was demonstrating more self control than he thought Alphas were technically capable of.
Taking a risk as he placed a strange piece of fruit in his mouth and bit down, loving the acidic brightness of the juice as it filled his mouth and hating it for the luxury it was, “...Alastor.”
“Alastor, then,” the Emperor purred and moved further into the room away from where Alastor sat on the bed, unclipping bits of useless frippery from his outfit and laying them out willy-nilly across a vanity-top, “Listen to me. I am a very private man. I get the feeling neither of us really wants to invade the other’s space, but here we both are. I’d prefer if this was civil, but heat is going to make it very hard for both of us. How would you feel about establishing some ground rules while you still can?”
Alastor paused eating, reaching up with a knuckle to push a curl from his forehead so he could stare at the slim place between the Emperor’s shoulders. Ground rules? Ahhhh, of course. Of course an Emperor wouldn’t be so base as to beat him into submission. An Emperor issued edicts. An Emperor kept their hands clean through draconian systems of rules and regulations…giving the common folk just enough rope to hang themselves through no fault of their own.
Bitterness welled up in his throat as he asked, “State your terms.”
Lucifer’s hands landed on the vanity-top and his fingers curled. What an odd reaction.
Then the man was speaking in calm tones that stood in sharp contradiction to the rigidity of his hands, “We are going to talk. Just talk. I’m going to stay on my side of the room and you are going to stay on yours. I’ll summon whatever you need…water, food, relief…but I won’t go to you until you ask for me by name. Not Alpha. Not just a knot…me. Understood?”
What new humiliation was this?
Alastor continued to stare at Lucifer’s back and he subconsciously ate another two pieces of fruit (his instincts trying to prepare him for what was to come), “...And if I don’t ask for you?”
“Then so be it.”
Absurd.
No Alpha, no matter how civilized, simply allowed an Omega to determine how any mating, let alone a first, was going to go. No Omega ever had a say in when they went to an Alpha’s bed, especially not when they were chained to their floor.
There was a trap here. There had to be.
“Fine then,” Alastor said arrogantly, poking at the edges of the Alpha’s patience to find where it ran out, “We shall simply both sit here if that’s how you want it.”
“Might be boring,” Lucifer said idly, “We could play a game to pass the time?”
This man was damaged. He had to be.
Alastor drummed his fingers on the tray and tried to ignore the way heat was rising along the back of his neck. He felt a drip of sweat trail through his hair behind one of his ears and had to distract himself from the itching tension he felt building up in the muscles of his thighs bit by bit, “What manner of game?”
“Two truths and a lie,” Lucifer said, finally relaxing his hands and turning back to face him, “We’ll take turns telling each other three facts. Two of them must be true and one of them is a lie. Then the other person has to guess which one is the lie and you have to tell them if they guess correctly.”
This man was so odd, Alastor thought, but really would it hurt so much to keep his mind off of heat?
“How do I know you won’t simply lie, Your Magnificence?”
A dark brow cocked up in his direction, “How do I know you won’t?”
“Fair enough,” Alastor granted him, resisting the absolutely disgusting urge to lick the plate once the food was finally gone to chase every last nutrient he could possibly get from the bloody leavings of the meat on his plate.
He set the tray aside to neutralize the urge entirely.
Really, he shouldn’t be doing this. If he were as clever as he used to fancy himself, he’d simply lie back in bed and get this entire horror show over with. He’d spread his legs and let the Emperor fuck him, hope for a child, play the long game with just enough good behaviour to have the chains and surveillance removed, and then throw himself bodily from the nearest parapet for all to see. Why was he bothering with drawing this entire debacle out?
Why did he part his lips past the growing cloud of what would soon be heat to murmur, “...Fine. You start.”
