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“Do you remember that I was hired to kill you? Do you want me to go back to that mission?”
Aodh broke out into resounding laughter when Cathal grumbled the threat into his mug and, undaunted, slapped his broad hand down on Cathal’s back one more time, where it covered the entire space between his shoulders. When he wasn’t next to Aodh, Cathal never felt small, and he wasn’t – for a human. Aodh, however, had to have a big oak-wood chair set aside specifically for him at the The Crossed Swords because he didn’t properly fit on the regular ones.
“You’ve been saying that for eleven years now, Cathal. You’re going to ruin your fearsome reputation with all those empty threats.”
Cathal grunted and took another swig of his ale. “Those bandits I slit open should help,” he said viciously.
While it was sometimes part of his jobs, he did not usually hunt criminals, more at home with missions that led him to confront demons or monsters – like he’d believed Aodh to be at one time –, or fishing forgotten treasure out of magic ruins. These bandits, however, had brought such death and destruction to the villages they had descended upon that Cathal had plunged his blade into their necks without regret.
“I was glad when I heard the old lord hired you to chase them. I knew you’d get it done quick,” Aodh said. “They hadn’t made it over here yet, but the peasants were getting nervous, since the bandits seemed absolutely fearless. I spent so much time in the air keeping a look out, I feel like a bird now.”
Cathal nodded his head. He knew that Aodh took his role as town guard seriously. It was an odd fit for a man who had once been thought to be one of the monsters that sometimes tumbled out of the nearby woods. However, when Cathal had been hired to flush him out and kill him, he’d realised quickly that the damages to cattle and property he saw did not look like the ones you’d expect to be caused by a half-dragon, and that the strange man he’d found was too lamb-like to have committed them, anyway. He’d felt a smidgen of pity for the creature who had been cast out by the dragons that thought him a feeble runt, not possessed of their earth-shattering might, and who so obviously longed to be among humans, but was chased away there, too, because he could crack their bones like twigs and had a mouth full of fangs, fingers ending in claws, and skin covered in dark red scales. In the end, Cathal had made the half-dragon come along to help so he could clear his reputation before the townsfolk.
Lady Sorcha, on whose grounds the town of Ruan was built, was a quick one. When Cathal had brought the helpful creature before her and proven to her that her problem had actually been an infestation of tainted wolves, she’d understood at a glance the value of a friendly half-dragon, and his easy-going nature that allowed him to forget about the stones and pitchforks that the townsfolk had greeted him with. She gifted him a hut at the edge of town, let the half-dragon pick himself a name that human throats and tongues could produce (Cathal had been trying and failing to imitate his dragon name for over a decade, to Aodh’s great amusement), and gave him some gold each month. Now the town that crowded at the foot of her little castle had a man-dragon perching protectively on its rooftops each night, with fire-glowing eyes and wings spanning as wide as palace doors. While monsters still ended up at their perimeter sometimes, most enemies who could think usually gave Ruan a wide berth now. The bandits had seemed just foolhardy enough to try anyway, though.
“That’s why you’re not on patrol now and bothering me instead?” Cathal asked, setting the old memories aside.
Aodh grinned broadly. “Precisely,” he said, squeezing Cathal’s shoulder. “Though I’ll check around in a bit. The old magic in the forest gets active this time of year, when the butterfly fae swarm. Did you run into any on your way here?”
“Yes, and I didn’t slap them like flies, like you told me,” Cathal said sourly. “So they crawled on me all day.”
“It’s bad luck!” Aodh answered. “Are you staying the night or are you going directly to Nenagh to collect your reward from the old lord in the morning?”
“I’ll go tomorrow. I don’t have to arrive by sunrise.” Cathal sat down his empty mug and stretched. “Next week, I have a job lined up checking on an ancient dwarva cave they found while mining ore. I should catch a few long nights of sleep before that.”
“In Clonmel? I heard about that.” Aodh cocked his head, his long black hair falling free over his face as he grinned. “What are you going to bring me?”
“A rock,” Cathal retorted. “Why do you get anything? Are you paying me to go down there?”
“It should be a pretty rock,” Aodh said, undaunted.
Cathal rolled his eyes. “Do you even still have room?”
“Of course! I could also add more treasure chests in the cellar to expand my hoard. I just bought a new one, too.” He waved his hand. “That’s just what dragons do.”
“So you keep saying,” Cathal answered doubtfully. “I don’t think most dragons’ hoards are as neatly organised as yours.”
“They only have random gold and jewels strewn about. You always bring back special things.”
Cathal snorted, but could not deny it. Aodh was a fool for collecting like a squirrel before winter, but wasn’t he the greater fool for always bringing him something when he went anywhere special, spending time racking his brain to find a piece Aodh would like?
“I’ll sleep at your place,” Cathal said brusquely, to reassert himself against the soft warmth in his chest. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much of a scandalous demand, considering that he’d always done so on his many visits to Ruan.
“Well, come on then,” Aodh said.
As they left the tavern, people waved and called to Aodh. Cathal liked to mock Aodh for having become such a man-about-town, but never too badly. Even after all these years, he could still see Aodh basically brimming with excitement that so many were happy to see him. Gods knew why Aodh still bothered with Cathal, since a lot of others, much nicer folk had warmed up to him now. Possibly it was just gratitude.
Against his will, Cathal was glad for it. He’d always been fine on his own, never one to look for friends, his closest acquaintances fellow adventurers he was on working terms with; but it would have bothered him to lose Aodh. He'd heard people speculate that because he was an omega and a warrior, he was showing his claws so often to avoid others underestimating him. Maybe that was true, but Cathal couldn’t remember ever not being this way. Even running the streets as a little orphan brat, way before he’d known he was an omega, and when he didn’t have the skills and weapons to back up his big mouth yet, he’d had a bad temper, picking fights with kids and adults alike. He must have lost half his milk teeth by getting them knocked out. In hindsight, that probably hadn’t helped, but Cathal knew he hadn’t been sweet before, either.
But Aodh didn’t care about that. Even now he was smiling, his arm resting around Cathal’s shoulders.
The Crossed Swords sat at the outsides of the town, right at the major road that lead away into the countryside, which was painted green by a new spring. To the west, towards the forest, wooden houses with thatched roofs stood scattered around farmland, rectangle shadows in the rapidly falling night, illuminated by dots of light where hearth fires were still burning behind windows. Spring was coming fast, but still chased by a sharp, fresh wind this early in the year. The new leaves on the woods in the distance were a shadowy black mass, moving in the gusts like something alive.
With so little light left, the sudden blue flame flashing between two hills was like lightning rising out of the ground.
Cathal looked up at Aodh’s firelight eyes just as Aodh glanced down at him.
“Want to come with me?” Aodh asked.
“Since I’m already here...”
“Alright, but we’re going the fast way.”
Cathal grimaced, but he did understand that Aodh wouldn’t want anything magic to come closer to the town than it already seemed to have, so it was probably a good idea to intercept it right away. While flashing him a grin, Aodh wrapped his arm around Cathal’s waist.
“I could just-”
hold on to your hand Cathal had wanted to finish, but that was when his feet lost ground. Instinctively, he clung to Aodh’s middle, fingers digging into his leather breastplate. Since Aodh didn’t wear sleeves, Cathal could feel the unnatural warmth of Aodh’s scale skin even through the fabric of his own clothes. That heat seemed to creep into his body and up to his cheeks as the world fell away under them.
“Thanks for the warning!” he drawled.
“You’re cheeky for someone who can’t fly if I drop him!” Aodh answered, laughing, and laughing harder when Cathal raised his chin in a gesture of defiance, even with the wind beating into his face.
They sat down softly in the grass near the blue light. In the dark, Cathal could just make out a creature about the size of a bear. Blue fire lit its body from inside, easy to see since said body was made up out of leaves and twigs, stones and clumps of earth. Two sharp, uneven pieces of flint were positioned like tusks.
“Is that thing even alive?” Cathal asked quietly. With the violets and snowdrops sticking out all over, it was almost beautiful.
“It’s a fae creature,” Aodh whispered. “We should get rid of it. It’s not supposed to be on this side of the veil. If we destroy the body, the wisp inside should look for its way home.”
“I should have squashed those fairy things after all,” Cathal muttered.
However, despite his own extensive experience with magic, Aodh still knew better about the fae, having grown up among dragons until they had deemed him too weak, who were much more closely connected to all things from the otherworld than humans ever would be. Cathal drew his bastard sword as Aodh unlatched the steel war hammer from his belt. The weapon with its bronze ornaments and rune writing on the hilt was part of Aodh’s hoard, too. Cathal had brought it from a trip overseas after watching Aodh fight with a smith’s hammer one too many times.
Over the last decade, they had fought together more times than Cathal could count. He would often tarry on his way in Ruan for a couple of days, helping Aodh patrol the borders of the farmlands or the busy town streets. Aodh had plainly never been taught to fight by anyone human; there was no recognisable technique to the way he wielded his weapon. However, the way he crouched over, smelled the air, seemed to feel the vibration of an oncoming attack, he really didn’t need it, either.
Thanks to his size and ability to take a hit or three, Aodh made an excellent distraction. His scale-covered skin was tougher than that of humans and he could fearlessly dare the kind of stunts which had earned Cathal a sizeable amount of his many scars. Now Catahl was the one sneaking around the enemy’s back as Aodh shouted at the beast and swung his hammer, though, moving in with his sword raised and hacking apart the branch that made up the beast’s backbone.
The beast didn’t wince or scream in pain, just staggered, unsure how to keep its body together anymore. It whipped around, but Aodh’s hammer slammed against the side of its face, and Cathal drove his sword down two more times until the whole construct fell apart.
“That should do it!” Aodh announced.
“Thank the gods for some easy work,” Cathal answered, leaning on his sword as he watched an orb of blue light escape from the strange skeleton, which crumbled immediately.
He followed the wisp with his eyes as it whisked off into the night with the energy of a confused bumblebee, then turned back to the shell it had left behind. The resin that bled from the remains had an odd, dark colour and smelled sickly sweet. He lifted his head to tell Aodh that they shouldn’t touch it so they wouldn’t bring that smell home, but Aodh wasn’t looking at him, instead staring at the ground.
“Oh,” he said faintly, “I think this was a Spring Bringer.”
“What does that mean?” Cathal answered because Aodh sounded too shocked for someone making a casual statement.
“They spread fertility to nature... plants and beasts.”
“And?” Cathal prompted, straightening. More and more, he didn’t like the tone of Aodh’s voice.
“Dragons are beasts.” He tried to cover his mouth and nose with his hand, stumbling a few steps backwards. “I think I’m going into rut.”
Cathal’s tension eased somewhat, though a treacherous, quiet instinct in him reared at the thought. He just snorted. “So? It can’t be your first. Let’s get you home, then, so you can have some privacy to put a hand down your breeches. I’ll just-”
“No, you don’t understand,” Aodh interrupted, with a voice that was so unusually sharp that Cathal actually did snap his mouth shut. “Usually, the ruts of dragons are tethered to the movement of the morning stars. They’re predictable. I drink a potion beforehand, I was taught a couple of rituals by my mother, so they’re not a problem, but this...” Wild-eyed, he suddenly rushed towards Cathal and grabbed the hand that was wrapped around the pommel of his bastard sword. “You have to help me! You have to stop me!”
“Stop you from what? You think you’re going to go on a rampage?” He’d meant to sound sarcastic, but the look of desperation in Aodh’s eyes stifled that instinct.
“I will hurt someone. It’s not a question of self-control – I’m not human the way you are, I really can’t... promise that if I can’t control myself, you’ll kill me.”
“What? No, I’m not going to kill you! You’re my friend!”
The true panic in Aodh’s voice was making him nervous as well, spilling words from his mouth he’d never said before, though long thought. Cathal ripped his hand away from him so his sword was out of Aodh’s reach.
Aodh stared at him for a moment, almost surprised, but a shiver gripped his body and he shook his head. “I’d rather die than end up becoming the monster everyone thought I was. Please, Cathal.”
Cathal took a deep breath and grabbed Aodh’s shoulder with one hand, even though he was pretty sure he’d go into contact heat from just looking for too long at the intense gaze Aodh had on him. He didn’t like to see Aodh begging, especially not for death, and he had no better idea but what he was about to suggest. The fact that he’d thought about it before, under other, friendlier circumstances than this, made him feel guilty.
“Look, I’m an omega. You think I can’t find a way to help you? I know I’m probably not what you like, but if it’s just animal instinct, I should do as well as any other omega.”
After all, he wasn’t to many people’s taste: scarred, wiry muscle twisting under weather-beaten skin, with chipped teeth and one half of an ear bitten off like he was an ill-tempered tomcat who had gotten in a fight for his territory. Not that it mattered. He’d gotten what he wanted from willing people before, and of course he would offer himself to Aodh if that would keep him from dying an honourable death (though if he was honest with himself, which he tried not to be, Aodh could have always had him).
Then Aodh’s hand cupped his face. Cathal almost jumped. It would have shocked him less if Aodh had punched him in the mouth right now.
“You’re not what I like... ? That’s not... Cathal, you don’t know what you’re offering,” Aodh muttered. “I don’t know what I’ll do to you. I’ll hurt you. You’re in more danger than anyone else.”
Cathal decided that he did not have time to think about what these words could mean, since he had a problem at hand to solve.
“Who will hurt me, you arrogant prick? I’d like to see you try. If you get to be too much, I can still run you through with my sword,” Cathal spat, not knowing where to look, then snapping his gaze up to stare right into Aodh’s fiery eyes, his instinct still to never back down.
Aodh gave a small smile. “Thank you. You really have to, though, if...”
“Yes, yes. Don’t be so dramatic. You think I’m not smart enough to knock you out without killing you if I have to? It will be fine.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Aodh muttered, dropping his forehead against Cathal’s shoulder. “You can knock me out right now if you prefer, I’d understand-”
“I’m not beating a rock over your head if I don’t have to, either. That’s bad even for an empty skull like yours.”
Aodh chuckled quietly. Cathal wouldn’t tell Aodh that he already felt slick gathering at his entrance. Omegas weren’t supposed to have contact heats around random alphas, after all, and, well, Cathal didn’t. Aodh didn’t need to know that if Cathal had ever considered a mate, if briefly, it was him.
But then, Aodh didn’t insist that he beat him unconscious, either...
Not the time to think about it. Perhaps better never to think about it, since it was probably just his own hope making up tales. Since Cathal thought he must be blushing so hard it was obvious now, he grabbed Aodh and pulled him roughly into a kiss.
The shift in Aodh was immediate, as soon as their lips connected. As Cathal was grabbed and roughly jostled onto his back into the grass, Cathal thought that Aodh must have been clinging on to the last threads of restraint while they spoke.
Even the first night he had met him, when Aodh sat under a tree drenched from the rain like a wet dog and in rags that barely deserved the name of clothes, eyes shining like hot coals between his wild hair, looking more like a monster than a human, Cathal had never been able to think of Aodh as intimidating. As he looked up at Aodh now from out of the high grass like some rabbit that had been slapped on the ground by a predator’s paw, Aodh baring his sharp teeth at him, he finally understood how people could have gotten the idea.
Yet, it was still Aodh, and he’d promised he’d help him. Also, he could feel his own body begin to burn under Aodh’s hands. Was Aodh’s skin growing even hotter? Cathal’s certainly was.
“I’m taking off my clothes,” Cathal told him. He had a feeling he’d be visiting the old lord in strips of fabric otherwise.
Aodh seemed to still understand a little bit, since he didn’t stop him, though he only let up after he’d pressed his tongue into Cathal’s mouth. With the quick handiwork of someone who’d changed clothes in monster-infested caves before, Cathal struggled out of pieces of armour, boots, breeches, and his shirt, pushing them in an untidy heap next to him, but making sure his sword laid on top where he could reach it – not to kill Aodh, because he already knew he wouldn’t, but to defend them against anyone who might think to attack.
Aodh allowed him to take off some of his own clothes, too, specifically his leather armour, but his patience ended when Cathal tugged down his breeches. Cathal had just one moment to stare at the massive size of the hard cock he’d freed from Aodh’s trousers before he was thrown back into the grass again.
“Alright, alright, we can leave it at that,” he grumbled, as Aodh pressed down on him with his full weight. Cathal’s cock twitched as it was pushed against Aodh’s hard, muscular stomach, Aodh’s shirt bunched up between them. He could not keep himself from rubbing up against Aodh and Aodh let out a pleased little rumble from somewhere deep in his chest.
Aodh’s mouth pressed hard against his neck and throat, kisses firm against his skin, teeth grazing his flesh, hands curling tightly around his wrists. It felt to Cathal like he was trying to nail him to the ground, make sure that Cathal could never slip his grasp again. Belatedly, he wondered if that wasn’t an odd instinct for an alpha in rut, especially one who barely seemed to have control over his senses anymore. Wouldn’t you expect him to ram his cock between Cathal’s legs immediately instead of looking so pleased with himself for capturing the omega, like he was going to drag him to his hoard, too?
But since the fog of the heat was starting to cloud Cathal’s own mind, he did not think about it, only clasping his arms around Aodh’s giant form over him, desperate for touch as he always was during the heats.
Cathal struggled to kick his legs out from under him, but Aodh blocked them with his thighs, letting out a warning growl. He groaned as Aodh drove his sharp dagger teeth into his shoulder, wondering if this would leave a permanent mark in his skin. Well, I carry scars from worse occasions... When Aodh came up again, there was blood on his lips and chin, ruby red against the dark wine colour of his scales, and he showed his teeth in a gleeful snarl. Cathal thought he might be the prettiest being he’d ever laid eyes on.
Again, Cathal writhed, but this made Aodh stop smiling and with a rumbling growl, he pressed his body down on Cathal again.
“If you ever want to get your cock inside of me, you’re going to have to let me spread my legs, you fool,” Cathal noted, and knocked his knee against Aodh’s leg, then immediately froze. This was how he usually was around Aodh, but Aodh was plainly different now and perhaps it was a bad idea to provoke him.
However, Aodh just twitched his nose, looking suspicious, as if he wondered if Cathal would try to escape if he let up for a moment – plainly he’d spiralled deeper into his rut than he had even minutes before, when he’d still backed off so Cathal could undress. Then he slowly let up a little pressure, his eyes never leaving Cathal.
“Good,” Cathal said with relief, finally allowed to wrap his legs around Aodh’s waist, getting closer, closer, like he’d wanted. He raised his hand to push Aodh’s hair behind his pointed ear. “It’s better this way, isn’t it?”
Aodh pressed forward to kiss him with his blood-stained mouth, forcing his tongue back between Cathal’s lips. He seemed to recognise the opportunities this position gave him, after all, as he rutted his cock between his thighs and against his ass, moaning without restraint. Finally, the head of his cock caught against Cathal’s wet hole and he pushed inside of him with one powerful motion.
Cathal threw back his head as he groaned. It stung to take something this big all at once, but the pain was dulled by the fire running through him as he felt Aodh drive himself further inside, as if he wanted to own all of Cathal, wanted to fill him out completely.
Aodh’s large hands came down on his chest, pawing it before sliding to his shoulders and holding him on the ground. When he started thrusting into him, he damn near folded Cathal in half. He had no chance at all to stand up to Aodh unleashing his full strength against him and all he could do was feel his body rock as Aodh fucked him with the force of his war hammer coming down. Cathal didn’t think he’d ever wanted an alpha this much.
Aodh pulled out fully only once, to grab Cathal and throw him around as if he was no heavier than a straw doll, leaving Cathal with his face in the grass. Aodh grabbed him by the hips and pulled him back onto his cock. Even Cathal did not have the presence of mind left now to complain about the undignified position, not when Aodh was pounding into him again, the noises he made growls that a human throat couldn’t produce. Cathal came hard, and whimpered as Aodh didn’t even slow a little when Cathal’s body spasmed around him, though the delighted noise he made against Cathal’s ear showed he’d noticed.
When Aodh came, his seed was so hot that Cathal could feel it distinctly inside of him. He thought he would come again right then.
Aodh rutted into him a few more times before he fell down against Cathal’s back. Cathal collapsed onto the meadow, breathing hard, while Aodh nosed against the crook of his neck. They laid there for a long moment and despite the odd situation, Aodh’s weight on top of him was comforting, even as his knot expanded and expanded. Eventually, Cathal made a quiet noise of discomfort and Aodh licked over his neck. Now he really was captured under Aodh, tied to him, completely at his mercy. Even though he felt full to bursting, Cathal wouldn’t have had it any other way.
The knot swelled down after some time, but Aodh did not move at all. Cathal looked over his shoulder.
“Are you not even going to take it out?” he huffed as he felt the fat length inside of him hardening again. “Greedy...”
Aodh laughed, which was a throatier and less soothing sound than it usually was, but still familiar enough that it put Cathal at ease.
Of course, even a human’s rut did not burn out after coming together just one time and a dragon’s was that much hotter and more enduring. They spent the entire night in that meadow and Aodh’s energy was truly unending. Had Cathal not gone into heat thanks to his rut scent, he didn’t know if he would have had the stamina to stay conscious throughout the onslaught – and it would have been such a shame to miss any of it.
As the morning light slowly crept in, Cathal thought he could see the lights behind Aodh’s eyes rising again, too. He managed to communicate in short words as they fucked this time, ‘good’ and ‘yes’, nothing too amazingly complex, but more than he’d produced all night. When they were done, he took Cathal into his arms in a way that felt deliberate. Cathal snuggled closer. After a night of being fucked and knotted by Aodh, the knot did not hurt like it had the first time. The thought that Aodh had trained Cathal’s body to his needs should not have been as arousing as it was. Cathal rubbed his forehead against Aodh’s neck and hugged him tighter.
“You’re... you really like snuggling,” Aodh said, with the voice of someone who had to try to find words scattered about his skull. “I know a lot of omegas do, but I didn’t expect that from you.”
“Shut up or I will never sleep with you again,” Cathal groused.
“You’ll sleep with me again?”
Cathal glowered at Aodh, but could not quite keep it up due to Aodh’s honest smile. He turned away to mumble an unconnected sentence bit about ‘stupid questions’ into Aodh’s chest. After all, Aodh must have smelled that Cathal had gone into heat. If he was coming back from wherever his mind had wandered off to, he should also be able to put two and two together and know that Cathal saw him as a potential mate.
Aodh laughed, though the noise quieted as he ran his claws gently over Cathal’s arm.
“You sure have a lot of bruises...”
He sounded guilty.
“That’s going to happen when you tangle with dragons,” Cathal said. “Better than the time one swiped his tail and threw me off a mountainside.”
Aodh smiled and squeezed him tighter. “Thank you,” he said. “You really saved my neck here.”
“Don’t pretend I didn’t get anything out of it. Anyway, don’t mention it.”
Even with Aodh’s cock still inside of him, and his arms around him, Cathal suddenly felt a bit cooler. The day had begun with grey clouds overhead, too, and everything was cast in a stark, muted white light. It was over, wasn’t it?
“What if I do want to mention it again?” Aodh asked, after a pause. “Not to thank you. Just... you know.” He tried to speak once, twice, didn’t seem to quite find the right way to continue. “Since you had to spend tonight in the grass, I still owe you a night’s sleep in my bed,” he added hopefully.
Cathal felt his heart jump and made sure to wait until he knew he wouldn’t say anything foolish, or sound just a little too besotted, which would have been embarrassing. “The old lord can wait another day, I think,” he answered, looking at Aodh.
Aodh smiled widely. Even though there was still a bit of dried blood on his face, he looked so sweet Cathal had to kiss him.