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fizzigigsimmer · 4 months ago

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The King Unbroken: Part II

I continue to be in a moody place. So sorry to all, you get more of this. For @adelacreations and @dragonflylady77

Steve left his heat den just after sunset, two days earlier than he should. His body feels as if it has been over stretched, the muscle achy and sore as if he’d been through battle even though the only fight he’d had recently is with himself. His jaw hurt the most he thinks, from all the clenching. The broken off section of tree bark that he used to stifle his cries during the worst of it, is riddled with teeth marks but unbroken, so it goes back into a pocket of his tactical pants. Fighting men and scavengers alike know a muffler often comes in handy.

Before the grey-dogs there were drugs and toys to replace alphas and help ease omega’s heats. Mild heats with minimal side effects had liberated omegas, and Steve’s youth as a twentieth century omega had been defined by independence. Of a degree. It was still expected that he should want to settle down with a nice alpha someday and have pups, but not even his alpha could legally forbid him from having a life and a job outside of that if he wanted it.

But that was before. Now without heat aids, the days of omegas being chained up and owned like animals are back. They depend more on the pack than anyone for balance, and on alphas in particular to keep from becoming a danger to themselves during their heat.

Steve’s loath to admit it, but when the need takes hold and his world narrows to pain and fear he actually is little better than an animal. He’s not silly or superstitious enough to believe all the folklore about people turning into wolves – because if they ever did, it’s been hundreds of years since anyone witnessed a true transformation. But the arrival of the grey-dogs has brought out the animal in all of them, changed Steve so much, that he can understand where all those old legends came from.

He doesn’t go belly down and back arched anymore, because there’s no more soft bed and no one he can trust not to take advantage in order to find relief, even if they offered it. Steve doesn’t purr for anyone who scratches his scalp, like he did for high school friends and girlfriends once upon a time. When the heat takes his mind, it leaves nothing but his ferocious need to keep safe, to survive, until he’s like a werewolf on the full moon, howling and scratching at the walls. He’d attack anyone who was stupid enough to try and offer him comfort at such a time. Outside of the compound they all make a habit of sleeping in their tactical gear, but Steve’s ruined too many good clothes during heat not to know better by now.

He’s claggy with sweat and unsteady on his feet like a newborn colt but he pushes through it, assessing the shredded state of his tank and cotton drawers before accepting the underwear is a lost cause. He thinks he can salvage half of the tank top.

He finished dressing quickly, not wanting to prolong his time bare and vulnerable for a second longer than necessity demands, fetching the big knife from his pack to make strips out of the drawers. It would be better if he could wash them first, but he wasn’t going to waste precious time or water out in the open on something trivial. Slipping the knife into the ready pocket on his combat trousers, Steve check that the velcro straps fastening his nail-bat to his pack weren’t coming undone before hoisting the pack carefully upon his shoulders and setting off.

He walked a few paces into the woods, away from the opening in the tree and left an old roadside flare glowing on the ground for the others to find, before turning and heading south west as planned. His team is patrolling the perimeter as close as Steve’s heat allowed them to comfortably get, laying low because this is foreign territory. Hargrove’s territory technically, although Steve doubted the alpha had very many people watching this area.

It’s too far north of his lair for one thing, and it’s too wooded for another which provides ample cover for grey-dogs. If their intel is correct, Hargroves's camp lies north of San Diego somewhere around Kelso, or what used to be. There’s a few hundred miles still between there and here and no good reason for Steve to be so on edge. Nothing besides the paranoia that smelling the sea on the air seems to cause him now.

The west had fared better than most during the first wave of the grey-dogs. Terrifyingly quick, with rows of curved teeth, tough skin and thick claws, their sole weakness seemed to be their aversion to extreme heat. The casualties in warmer climates had been fewer, and when people had realized that the grey-dogs wouldn’t follow them far into the desert, major colonies had formed there. The usual bullshit had divided them, people fighting over crucial water reserves and other resources, until eventually only a few major populations controlled everything.

There had been five colonies spread between southern California and the states formerly known as Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado of note. Just like everywhere else there were smaller scavenger populations of people scattered throughout the west, but it was those five who drew the territory lines and with whom Steve’s colony had traded essential medicines for citrus, stone, and the crucial mechanical parts that Hawkins needed to keep their facilities running.

No one had expected that things would change, and that the SoCal colony could fall to a band of raiders – the enemy finding their way somehow around the colony walls and wreaking havoc before the colony could pull itself together to mount a proper defense. The alpha and the pack’s strongest fighters had all been slaughtered before morning, and those people who had not already been killed or fled into the desert had knelt before a new king. Hargrove had declared himself alpha and no one who’d lived to tell about it had argued.

Taking over such a large compound had provided Hargrove with ample resources to control, but it required a firm hand to keep the conquered in line and prevent a mutiny. It was not surprising that Hargrove spent the majority of his time at SoCal Colony but their spies had reported rumors that not all of Hargrove’s pack had moved into the new compound, that some of them had stayed behind at their old camp in Kelso. Most likely it was to maintain it as an option for retreat if it ever became necessary, but there was talk that Hargrove was keeping something important there.

Whatever the truth, Kelso was Steve’s destination. Robin, Jonathan and the others had been brave enough to follow him on this suicide mission so he wasn’t about to lead them to certain death by trying to kill Hargrove when he had dozens of fighters at his disposal. They had to draw Billy out, and the obvious answer to that was whatever was so important in Kelso that Billy couldn’t leave behind unguarded.

He tried to stay alert as he walked, having gotten good at keeping a constant awareness of his surroundings running somewhere in the background of his mind. The last time he’d been caught in a moment of inattention it had nearly cost him an ear, and had ended with dozens of stitches and weeks of painful recovery. The hair on that side of his head no longer grew as thick on account of the scars so he kept the sides around his ears shaved now. Robin said he let the rest of it grow twice as long because he was overcompensating. She was probably right, so sue him, the floof-hawk was one of the few joys Steve had left.

He wasn’t far from the road when he heard it – the familiar sound of low growls and feet rushing over the dry forest floor. He reached behind himself for the handle of his bat, pulling it free and swinging at the first grey blur that lunged at him from the shadows. Steve had a brief glimpse of tiny rows of glistening teeth as its face began to open up before the blow connected with a wet crunch, batting the squealing creature off to the side. There was no time to check if it was down for good before the next one was coming at him. Steve barely had time to get his bat up, this time only just catching the side of the grey-dog as he danced out of reach, backing up toward the road as his gaze frantically swept around the trees to try and count them all.

He counted three, including the one he’d already hit. Not so bad. Especially since one had gone straight to cannibalizing the injured. No honor amongst monsters. But that left one still standing, ghoulish grey skin oozing blood from where the nails had torn holes in its side. It reared back on its hind legs and let out an other worldly shriek of rage, enough to chill the blood – but Steve was unphased.

He tightened his grip on the bat and took a purposeful step forward, boot thudding down hard into the earth as he drew the air into his lungs – and roared.

“Arrrrrrrrrhhhh!”

The grey-dog lunged, but he was ready ducking low – they had a tendency to go for the chest and throat – and twisting his torso as he brought the bat up hard. He had only a split second to enjoy the thrill of victory before something struck his side, the last grey-dog colliding so hard against his side that it sent him toppling to the ground. The bat fell from his hand as he fell, and if Steve would have tried to reach for it the fight would have been over. Heart pounding in his chest as the grey face above him opened up into four sections of razor-sharp teeth, Steve reached for the knife in his pocket instead and brought it up into the creatures' throat as its mouth descended.

When Steve reached the edge of the road splitting the wood, he was grateful to hear the rare sound of a running engine. A dangerous sound, unless you happened to be expecting it.

The jeep was crawling down the middle of the road ahead of him when Steve stumbled out onto it, Jonathan at the wheel, front beams slicing through the semi-dark that had fallen.

“A-hoy!” Steve cupped hands over his mouth and called, grimacing as some of the sticky blood coating them smeared on his face. Gross. The jeep came to a stop and Robin’s slender white arm (he could tell by the striped sleeves) jutted out of one of the back windows and waved him forward with an urgency that spoke for itself. Noise and blood were all good ways to attract grey-dogs, and even with an armored jeep there was only so much they could do if a swarm was nearby.

Steve jogged to catch up, on high alert for more grey-dogs. He didn’t let down his guard even when Jonathan had reached across the seat to open the passenger side door. It wasn’t until he’d closed the heavy door and he heard it lock behind him that Steve finally let himself slump back into the seat with a shuddered breath, closing his eyes in relief.

“Steve! What happened?” Robin bellowed in his good ear, leaning forward to squeeze her torso between the two front seats.

“You look like shit, Dude!” Dustin chimed in from where he was squeezed in next to Robin in the prized middle seat. If something got through the window, he wouldn’t die first.

“Smell like it too.” Lucas grumbled from the window, pinching his nose. From the very back row Gabe, Eleven and Jonathan’s younger brother Will stared ahead with uncertain gazes.

“Got ambushed by a pack of grey-dogs,” Steve explained nudging Robin’s concerned face out of his with his elbow. “But I handled it. Relax, would you.” She rolled her eyes but sat back with a sigh as Jonathan started up the jeep again.

“Excuse me for worrying Your Highness, when you left the den two days earlier than scheduled. What gives?”

“We don’t know how much longer Hargrove will be in SoCal, that’s what gives.” Jonathan guessed, his eyes straying from the road just long enough to meet Steve’s.

Steve nodded in affirmation and Jonathan’s lips tightened in something close to disapproval but he said nothing. Regardless of what he thought of Steve’s choices – he got it. But after what had happened to his mom Steve had no doubt he would.

“We can’t afford to lose any more time than we already have.” he said, ignoring the worry clinging to all of their scents. The air was thick with it.

“And you’re sure the heat’s broken?” Robin pressed, “You’re not going to have a flare up an hour from now an get yourself killed?”

“You know what my heats are like. I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you if it hadn’t.” he reassured her, but even still she continued to glare at him for what felt like forever, until she finally relented with a small nod.

“Fine. But can we at least crack open a window? You really do reek.”

“Not till we’re out of the woods.” She groaned when Jonathan shot her down. The jeep was military grade and the windows bullet resistant, but that didn’t mean they were impenetrable and trees could hide more than just grey-dogs.

“This is the perfect spot for a raid.” Will mused from the back and Jonathan raised his head to catch his eye in the rearview.

“Says the raider.”

Steve’s mouth twitched into a smile, thinking that it took one to know one.

[Link to Part One]

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #omega Steve Harrington #Alpha Billy Hargrove #Steve is a feral omega #Billy's really into it though #I love the idea of domesticated werewolves #like they invented indoor plumbing and television and lost touch with their wolf spirits #how much you wanna bet Billy's found his?#That's how he's been able to take over so much territory #I'm “not” writing this story omg lol #but it seems a shame if they don't at least meet #The King Unbroken

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