Author's note:This story was supposed to be a self-contained one-shot but thanks to a few lovely commenters in my Cherry Blossoms collection, I've started a new multi-chapter story based on the Omegaverse. Thank you so much to everyone who read it and left love!

For new readers, here's a quick warning for Chapter 1: there are certain themes in this piece that are quite full-on. In fact, there's a specific, controversial, semi-political angst in this story that goes beyond canon Saezuru angst, because of the new Omegaverse element (and because it's where my imagination went). And I've turned up the dial to 11 on all emotions and all melodrama. So please read at your discretion. But if you're like me and you revel in all that's messed-up in Omegaverse and Saezuru and fiction in general, hope you read on and enjoy! Xx

One last thing: I've done a sketch of one of the scenes in this story - Omega Yashiro and Alpha Doumeki having in-heat sex. If anyone wants to have a look, head for my Ao3, same page, same place!

Yashiro had known he was infertile for almost as long as he had known that he was an Omega.

In fact, because his stepfather first stole into his room long before he reached puberty, he always idly hypothesised that infertility was his body's way of protecting itself; building up barriers against unwanted pregnancies and against the relentlessness of the outside world. A world in which he had been born weak.

Years later, he wore his infertility as a badge of pride. He would scoff at condoms whenever his Alphas drew them out with shaking hands – if they were in the right state of mind to do so in the first place.

'No need,' he would say with a smile that made quick work of what remained of an Alpha's senses. 'I can't get pregnant. You can come inside me as much as you want.' He would lick his lips and pull the Alpha closer by his tie. 'Dream come true, isn't it?'

But he was always cautious about one thing – his collar. Whether he could get pregnant or not, an unwanted bond was something he went to great lengths to avoid throughout both his teenage and adult life. The closest he had come to slipping up on this count was when one of his subordinates – an Alpha – grew obsessed with him. Out of desperation, the subordinate hid Yashiro's collar and suppressants on the first day of Yashiro's heat cycle, waited, and then pinned him down on his desk. Yashiro didn't like to think what might have happened if Nanahara hadn't burst in at that moment.

The last thing he wanted was to be beholden to one person – any one person – who could so easily discard him after something as simple as a bite. He would lose all his power. He would be nothing more than a child being held down in a room with his mother asleep only metres away.

The subordinate was fired – it was pity that moved Yashiro to spare his life – and from then on, Yashiro told Nanahara that all future hirees were to be Betas, with no exceptions.

He still kept his favourite Alphas on speed-dial; the cop from the OCD, Ryuuzaki, even Misumi (not that Misumi ever took the bait these days – Yashiro noticed he always made himself scarce when Yashiro was due for his heat). But his subordinates, those who were always near him, even on the rare occasion that an unscheduled heat came about or when his suppressants simply didn't work, were all to be passive Betas.

Passive only some respects though, Yashiro thought. He would smile as he watched Nanahara squirm in a combination of discomfort and arousal each time he was privy to one of Yashiro's conquests. He knew Betas could sometimes be a fun ride.

But he much preferred the mindlessness of an Alpha when he responded to an Omega in heat. He preferred to see the way he lost all humanity in his eyes and became nothing more than an animal. Having that kind of power over Alphas made Yashiro's toes curl.

And he could see that there was something of an Alpha in Doumeki's eyes the moment Yashiro saw him. Everything about him reeked of an Alpha.

Except for the fact that they had met in the middle of Yashiro's heat. Doumeki had pulled the cop off Yashiro, both the cop and Yashiro dripping in sweat and arousal, the specific smell of an Alpha and Omega's sex filled the room, Yashiro's heat especially permeating through all the hallways, enough that even some of the Betas struggled to concentrate on their work.

And Doumeki hadn't responded to it at all.

'Are you okay, sir?'

An immensely deep voice. Words delivered in a steady monotone; as expressionless as his eyes.

Yashiro had panted, his body aflame with a need that had quickly turned into frustration when his Alpha was pulled off him.

'Of course I'm fine, you moron.'

Doumeki Chikara was tall and broad and silent and fiercely handsome in that way that said he had no idea of his own self-worth. Yashiro took to him immediately. And then Nanahara sold him on the rest.

'We're short on people at the moment. And he's not good at talking so I thought we could use him as a bodyguard. You wanted one, right Boss? Oh, plus he's a Beta,' Nanahara added. 'So, you know, no problems there.'

They had stared at each other properly for the first time in Yashiro's office. Doumeki's gaze was impassive, hiding his nerves, hiding his strange sense of overwhelmment. And Yashiro's gaze was benign but scrutinising. Everything about Doumeki, Yashiro thought again, reeked of an Alpha, no matter what he claimed to be. The way Yashiro's pulse crept up was a sign.

But nothing could have proved that Doumeki was a Beta more emphatically than the fact that he refused to get hard, even in Yashiro's mouth.

He still tested Doumeki to be sure. He didn't relax fully until he was sure that Doumeki was a bull without any horns. He forced Doumeki to watch other Alphas fuck him. He neglected his suppressants during one heat cycle and kept Doumeki close (and kept Nanahara and Sugimoto close, unsure if he could handle an unleashed Alpha the size of Doumeki). He sucked Doumeki's limp cock more times than he could count. And still nothing. And so, when the proof seemed overwhelming, he allowed himself to settle into the thrill of having a new Beta plaything.

After all, who had ever heard of an impotent Alpha?

'I'm going to take a bath.'

'Okay, Boss.'

Yashiro closed the door behind him, turned on the faucets and stripped, unaware that in a few short weeks when he lost the use of his right arm, even such simple acts would become obstacles. Steam slowly filled the room.

Then he glanced at the door. He imagined Doumeki in the kitchen, drawing out plates and cutlery.

When Yashiro had learned of the awful reasons behind Doumeki's impotence, his suspicions came to the fore again. Here, suddenly, was a valid reason why even an Alpha might lose all sex drive. Perhaps Doumeki was an Alpha after all. In the end though, Yashiro reasoned, impotent Alpha and impotent Beta both amounted to the same thing, as far as Yashiro was concerned. A bull without the horns.

And yet, he opened one of the drawers beneath the sink and drew out his spare collar. He fastened it around his neck, casting another wary glance at the door, before he stepped into the bathtub.

Doumeki felt himself slipping. And what was worse, he knew that Yashiro could tell. There wasn't much that escaped that sly, shrewd, perfect gaze.

He reasoned to himself in the same way Yashiro did. True, he had lied about being a Beta. But there was no Alpha left in him anymore. Not after seeing the look in his sister's eyes as their father rutted into her from above.

He had heard in passing that the beautiful Young Leader of Shinseikai only hired Betas. And so when Nanahara approached him for the first time about the position of bodyguard and then asked him about his status, he had lied instinctively. He had enough connections to forge his documents in kind.

As much as he disliked watching Yashiro open himself up to every Alpha who wanted him, it didn't take much for Doumeki to rein himself in over the first month. If Yashiro wore his infertility as a badge of pride, Doumeki did the same with his impotence. His impotence and his white lie about being a Beta were his ticket to a new life. His ticket to staying by Yashiro's side.

But he began slipping. Slowly. Something stirred the day he watched Yashiro touching himself, oozing fluids from his hole, sending out pheromones by the droves – pheromones that hadn't affected Doumeki until that moment. He didn't know what it was; perhaps a combination of the fact that his own words were turning Yashiro on like that, the alluring way Yashiro's long, bare legs were crossed, the look on face, the fact that his head was in Doumeki's lap.

He had escaped that situation by grace of yet another lie ('I... can't remember the rest') and by leaving the room, his mind spinning.

From then on, his dislike of watching Yashiro with other men became something far stronger.

And Yashiro had noticed. Doumeki was sure of it. Yashiro always noticed. In fact, he was confused about why Yashiro hadn't yet fired him. He didn't know that Yashiro was confused about it himself.

Years ago, when Misumi and Yashiro slowly eased out of their sexual relationship, Misumi did what he always did – he leaned into his feelings of possessiveness, hoping it would shield his possessiveness.

'Have you ever thought about... fated pairs?' he asked once, gruffly, amazed he had even managed to make the words come out of his mouth.

That was the day Yashiro had been made second-in-command of Shinseikai and Misumi had taken him out to celebrate. Yashiro wore his collar, like he always did when he was due to start his heat cycle. Misumi noted the looks Yashiro gathered as he walked, ranging from lust to disgust to resentment – resentment that an Omega had the audacity to give off such an aura of self-assuredness and even superiority. Resentment that he wore a collar as though it was something to be proud of, rather than ashamed of. It was a kind of resentment that had twined itself around Hirata's heart in particular. And Misumi walked beside him, glaring at anyone whose eye he met.

Paternal thoughts, he told himself. Think only paternal thoughts.

It was almost easy to do when Yashiro laughed a short, childish laugh. He leaned back in his chair at the restaurant.

'Fated pairs? You're joking, right?' Then his look changed and he cocked his head to the side. 'Or is it that you're offering, Oyaji?'

Misumi was thoroughly annoyed to feel a flush claim his cheeks.

'If we were a fated pair we'd know by now,' he muttered under his breath, nodding awkwardly at the waiter who topped up their wine glasses. He didn't have to look at Yashiro to know they were thinking of heated fucks on office floors, desks, walls. Binds and gags. A heat that had claimed them both for a long time.

Far too long, Misumi thought.

'I can't believe you believe in that kind of crap,' Yashiro teased.

'I don't.'

Misumi didn't, really. But sometimes, in the past, when he watched Yashiro sleeping beside him, during the odd occasion they were both too exhausted to move afterwards, he had wondered. Sometimes even hoped.

Paternal thoughts, he told himself now, a little wearily.

'I'm just saying maybe it's time you stopped being so loose,' he said, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. 'As second-in-command of Shinseikai, there's a certain moral standard you need to uphold –'

'Moral standard,' Yashiro laughed, as though it was a game that children had made up. 'I'll keep my collar and my suppressants handy. They're the only promises I can make.'

'Yashiro –'

'Did you really think you'd be able to make an honest man out of me like that? Enticing me with the bullshit idea that my fated pair was wandering around out there?' He gestured vaguely towards the restaurant windows with his wine glass.

'Worth a try.'

'You know what I think? I think you believe it.' Yashiro leaned forwards on his elbows. 'You believe in fated pairs and soul bonds and all that, don't you, Oyaji? The big, tough Alpha Yakuza leader, secretly hoping to be swept off his feet by his fated Omega.'

'For God's sake, I was just –'

'Hey, maybe Amou's your fated pair. You guys could make history as the only ever fated Alpha and Beta pair. He's probably praying to the gods for it every night.'

Misumi sighed, drained his wine glass and beckoned to the waiter for more. Meanwhile, Yashiro's smirk never left his face.

Doumeki's desire to stay by Boss' side at all costs was being increasingly hampered by his growing desire to have Boss. To defile him and taste his sweet nectar and smell his need and plunge into his heat and bite that tender place in his neck that would make him his, Doumeki's, forever. Irrevocably and unquestioningly.

Those two things – his desire to stay and his desire to have – were pulling in such complete opposite directions that Doumeki often forgot who he was and what he was doing. He had taken Yashiro's hot, hard cock into his mouth several times, and somehow managed to stop himself there. Luckily, Yashiro had only been horny during those times, never in heat. Doumeki had always finished himself off in the bathroom, unbenownst to Yashiro.

The two of them kept deluding themselves and each other, like it was a dangerous game. They kept up the facade that Doumeki was nothing more than a Beta. That there wasn't something between them, pulsing and unignorable and real. Something that made Yashiro angrily recall his conversation with Misumi.

Doumeki's dreams were filled with gold hair and an enigmatic smile. Images of a twisted, marked body writhing beneath him, calling his name.

Dislike became resentment became out-and-out jealousy. Protectiveness became possessiveness became obsession became… something yet stronger. And he finally lost control, almost completely, when Yashiro leaned in to lick the fresh knife wound on his face and pulled him into the backseat of the car.

Yashiro hadn't even gone into heat. But he was hard. And wet. And his scent overpowering.

'Ah… Doumeki, you… you don't have to lick it. Just suck it and I'll finish quickly.'

And then I can ignore that Alpha glint in your eye. And I can stop leaking from that place. I can stop pulsing and craving more. Just finish me off, please.

And Doumeki felt something else take control of his hands. He lifted Yashiro's hips up, right up, so he could finally delve into that place that had invaded his wet dreams. He lapped at Yashiro's nectar, thrusting his tongue as far in as it could go, hearing Yashiro gasp in shock, hearing his moans spiral out of his control.

This is bad. Any more than this… and I won't be able to stop.

But somehow he stopped. He waited outside the car until his erection subsided, thanking all the gods that Yashiro hadn't gone into heat. At least they had been spared from that disaster. Doumeki would simply… simply be more careful from now on. He could do that.

He opened the car door to see Yashiro sleeping soundly.

Yashiro awoke feeling worse than he had felt in a long time. His arm was throbbing; sharp spikes of pain superimposing the constant dull ache. He felt around with his other arm blindly. His painkillers. His suppressants. Neither of them within reach.

He came to terms with where he was – the tiny, bare apartment that made him feel like he had travelled backwards in time. He realised he needed to find his medication, and soon. The suppressants weren't overly important – he was weeks away from his scheduled heat. But he needed the pain in his arm to stop.

Then came Doumeki fresh out of the shower, naked, and Yashiro's heart leaped to his throat. Seeing him again made it all flood back. That pull he didn't understand. Something drawing him to Doumeki in a way that he knew was dangerous.

And yet he played with it, like playing with fire. He pushed Doumeki back until he was lying on the futon. He gyrated his hips, moving them back and forth, torturing him, torturing them both, keeping that monster beneath him alive, pressing hard against his ass. He had lost control of his words. And his mind, in a way. He didn't know what had come over him.

He understood even less when Doumeki kissed him for the first time in the shower. When he was towelled off gently on the futon, in a way no one had ever done for him before. He felt like a child.

And then, suddenly, he felt like anything but a child.

It started deep in his chest – a sudden fire he had experienced countless times before. It spread over his whole body, concentrating there, where it started, as well as in his cock, his ass, and his head. It was a real, enveloping heat. His heat. Weeks early, in front of Doumeki.

Doumeki, whose eyes were no longer familiar.

Doumeki, who finally lost all control.

He stared at the way Yashiro crouched before him, the sweat that had broken out and mingled with the dampness from the shower, his hair lying flat, falling into eyes that were suddenly lost behind a haze of lust, moans erupting like small puffs as he doubled over, a hand grasping his chest.

Doumeki's breathing was suddenly laboured.

Yashiro's scent. Dear God, his scent.

'Dou… Doumeki,' Yashiro gasped, eyes watering, imploring. 'My suppressants… in the car…'

He knew, though, that nothing he said would make any difference. He could smell his own arousal, and Doumeki's. And the look in Doumeki's eye confirmed the situation beyond doubt.

Yashiro was an Omega who had gone into heat before a primed and virile Alpha.

He was pulled into a kiss that was hard and fast and unrelenting. Doumeki's body was no longer his own, it was a white-hot electricity controlled by something else – whatever it was that had manipulated Yashiro's body in the car, now multiplied several times over. And before Yashiro had a chance to catch his breath, Doumeki had suddenly pushed him backwards onto the futon, hands holding him down, his weight crushing him.

And Yashiro realised how badly he wanted to be crushed. How much he needed Doumeki inside. Doumeki reared back and Yashiro saw it again in his eyes, that feral, animal look of wanton need that he had seen in a long line of Alphas before Doumeki, and none of whom had ever inspired the feeling that was now surging from the pit of Yashiro's stomach.

Doumeki pressed himself hard between Yashiro's legs, his erection straining against his pants, hands clawing at Yashiro's thighs, moving lower, pushing, probing, until his fingers breached Yashiro's body and made him whimper. Doumeki ran his tongue, flat, against the side of Yashiro's neck, tasting his sweat and scent.

Collar, Yashiro realised breathlessly. He didn't have it with him; he never bothered keeping it nearby if he was weeks ahead of his heat. Panic filled him in a cold rush.

'Doumeki, stop! We can't –!'

He heard his own words, but his heart and body cried out for more. More. More of Doumeki, more of him everywhere, in his deepest places.

And it was like Doumeki heard the words he didn't say. He pulled his cock out and rubbed it against Yashiro's dripping hole, panting and sweating. His weight was too much. Yashiro couldn't push him off.

'No, wait! Don't –!'

But Doumeki pushed in for the first time. Yashiro's body opened for him, pulled him in, grasped him sweetly and urgently, with a gasp – almost a sigh of relief – that both felt in their very cores. Yashiro's head fell back and his moan was absorbed by the small room. Doumeki's head fell forwards onto his chest, low, tortured groans emanating from his own throat.

And then he rocked backwards slightly before he started thrusting, hammering, with an ancient, primal need. And Yashiro clung to him and cried out, his body opening to receive his mate, his fingers and nails digging into what he could to hold Doumeki there – his back, his arms.

Each time Yashiro cried out, Doumeki clenched his teeth and plunged deeper, sometimes holding himself there for a beat or two, as though trying to feel for it, for a wall or some kind of sign that he had gone as far as he had possibly could.

'Boss,' he would sometimes hiss, his voice tight.

'Oh, Doumeki! Hah! Ahhn!'

Doumeki bent down and covered Yashiro's nipples in saliva until they glistened. He pulled at them gently with his teeth as his cock plunged. He felt Yashiro's hand in his hair.

'Mmmh, fuck! Yes! Ah!'

Despite being caught between his fear and desire, Yashiro occasionally lent words to his innermost feelings.

I want him to make my body cry out in pain. Just as it has so many times before. Treat me the way the way they've always treated me.

'Harder! Ugh! Make it… hurt more!'

Doumeki was too lost for words. If he could speak through his haze, he would have explained why he didn't want to. Why it was enough, surely it was enough, what was already happening. With every thrust, he felt his cock get immersed in Yashiro's overwhelming, overflowing natural lubrication.

With a shuddering breath, Doumeki pulled out and turned Yashiro over. When he was on his hands and knees, Doumeki pulled him up and back, wanting suddenly to feel Yashiro's entire weight in his arms, to manipulate every piece of him. Yashiro's head fell back again, this time on Doumeki's shoulder, before Doumeki's cock plunged all the way in again, far enough for Yashiro to feel its base and Doumeki's bristly pubic hair pressing against his flesh.

'Ah!' he gasped, eyes watering. 'So... deep!'

Doumeki hooked his hands beneath Yashiro's knees, held him upright and pounded, pushing new sounds and smells from Yashiro with every thrust, both lost in the other's pheromones.

And suddenly, a single, dangerous thought filled Doumeki's mind.

Mine.

He ran his tongue over the side of Yashiro's face and revelled in his moans. His pleas.

'Ah, Doumeki! Yes, don't stop! Oh, I'm going to come!'

Mine, Doumeki thought again, in a voice that didn't sound like his.

I'm going to make you mine. Mine and no one else's.

And then, finally, the urge became too great. Without warning, he pushed Yashiro face-down onto the bed. Yashiro gasped and his stomach lurched. Doumeki was still buried deep inside him and his weight was suffocating once more.

And then he felt Doumeki's broad, hot tongue on the back of his neck. Marking out a place.

Yashiro's breath caught in his throat. That same panic filled him again. His neck tingled.

'No!'

Do it!

'Doumeki, don't! Please!'

Do it, Doumeki. Oh, God, do it. Make me yours. I'm yours.

Doumeki bared his teeth for a split second before sinking them into Yashiro's flesh. He felt the skin break. Blood seeped into his mouth and he came hard at the same time.

It was the only thing Doumeki did that hurt.

It made Yashiro come.

And then it made him faint.

By the time Yashiro awoke again, it was dark outside and he had no idea how much time had passed. The pain in his arm had returned with a vengeance.

And then he felt something far worse. A telling, awful numbness in the back of his neck.

He sat up and reached for it. He felt the outline of a bandage of some kind. Gauze, perhaps. He turned to Doumeki, who slept beside him, breathing gently and evenly.

He flushed as he remembered. He remembered every second of it, even through the heat-induced veil. He remembered every touch. Every plunge. The pain and ecstasy of the bite. The bite that bound him to Doumeki for the rest of his life.

He felt sick.

He sat there on the edge of the futon, his mind alternating between memories of his stepfather and the vindictive thrill he felt when other Alphas fucked him and mauled at his collar, desperate to bite him, leaving only dents in the thin metal. Doumeki was worse than all of them. He had taken Yashiro's power from him. Forever. And there was nothing Yashiro could do.

Nothing except slowly get to his feet, gingerly put his clothes back on, and leave the flat, just as his phone lit up and started buzzing.

Doumeki expected the call from Nanahara telling him that he had been fired. In fact, he half-expected Yashiro to have sent a few underlings over to beat him up, or worse.

'What the hell did you do this time?' Nanahara demanded. 'Boss sounds like he really friggin' hates you.'

Doumeki remained silent.

And Yashiro remained silent on that count as well. Some of his subordinates noticed the edge of gauze that poked above his collar. When it was less tender and Yashiro was able to remove it, it was less conspicuous. But anyone looking closely could see the mark.

No one dared ask him about it, of course.

He felt it inside him. That pull to Doumeki. He knew that he could fire him, send him away, he could run away himself, and none of it would matter. Something would connect him to Doumeki, his body would yearn for him, no matter what he tried. He could feel it like the proverbial red thread, only it felt more like a coursing, living channel linking him to wherever Doumeki was.

And the worst part was that he alone felt it. It was the Omega's curse. Alphas were free to do whatever they wanted. Mark as many as they wanted.

He thought that was the reason he began to be physically sick. It even happened once in the middle of a meeting. And so, when urged by Nanahara, who had been left behind to apologise for the fact that his boss had thrown up into a pot plant, Yashiro agreed to see Kageyama.

Only Kageyama suspected what it might be. He glimpsed the bite on Yashiro's neck when he came into the clinic. It looked around a week old. He listened as Yashiro described his symptoms in a voice that affected his usual carelessness but somehow fell short, as though the wind had been taken out of his sails.

He also wondered about the strange little emotion that crept up inside him when he saw the bite. He wondered whose it was. He tried to wrap his head around the fact that Yashiro was bonded. He wondered, more than a little uncomfortably, if he ought to bring it up.

The tests he ran confirmed his suspicions. And then he sat before Yashiro with the results.

It took Yashiro a few tries to understand what he was being told. He had expected to be given medication for something. Anything. Vertigo even.

Anything but this.

Kageyama waited. He had sat at that desk and delivered the same news to many patients over the years. And he had seen reactions that ranged from cries of elation to manic depression. And though he knew he couldn't expect any of the former from Yashiro, he didn't know exactly what to –

Yashiro got to his feet suddenly, so fast that blood rushed to his head and he felt dizzy. He threw out an arm to keep from falling and scattered a tray of scalpels and equipment.

Kageyama was alarmed. 'Yashiro!'

'Get rid of it,' Yashiro said, his voice quiet and thin.

Kageyama's stomach flipped over at the expression on Yashiro's face. It was fear. Fear and disgust.

'What?'

'Get it – get it out of me. Right now, Kage! I don't want it. Get it out!'

Yashiro took a step backwards. He didn't know where to go. How to escape himself. Kageyama held out his hands bracingly and stood up, suddenly scared too. Scared for Yashiro and everything he had been through. It was a side of Yashiro that Kageyama had never seen before.

'Listen,' he said, as soothingly as he could. 'I – my clinic doesn't have those kinds of facilities. But I can give you the number of a colleague of mine. His practice isn't far from here. I can get you in without an appointment. Okay?'

Yashiro stared, breathing heavily, his arm in a sling and his eyes utterly lost.

For the first time in his life, Kageyama felt the urge to put his arms around Yashiro and lie to him and tell him everything would be fine. For the first time, he felt as though he himself was to blame for all of it, even though he knew, rationally, there wasn't a single part of it he could have helped.

No one saw Yashiro for a few days after that. Misumi took over what he could and Nanahara scrambled to make up the rest. Misumi alone knew why, and even his knowledge was based on a quick, mumbled phone call in which Yashiro told him he had gotten pregnant and had taken care of it. He was fine, and would be ready to come back to work in a few days.

'Yashiro –' Misumi had said in shock.

The line went dead. After that, Yashiro didn't answer his phone or his front door for anyone.

So Doumeki waited outside it.

Nanahara had caved to his instincts, rather than his voice of reason, and called Doumeki to tell him that Yashiro had been a no-show for a while and that even Misumi looked like he was worried about him. Nanahara's instincts kicked off Doumeki's own, which were a lot stronger where Yashiro was concerned, and Doumeki left for Yashiro's flat without needing any further incentive.

Yashiro knew who it was when he knocked, even before Doumeki hesitantly called, 'Boss?' He knew that, at some point, Doumeki would be in his life again. And although he was mildly surprised it was Doumeki who had come to him and not the other way round – although he was grateful he had at least been spared that humiliation – it didn't alleviate the grisliness he had been carrying inside him for days.

So he stayed in bed.

Every Omega had had the procedure at least once in their lives. It was quick and almost painless and no longer carried the stigma it once did. It was part and parcel of a world where passions took hold, paying little mind to reason.

Yashiro's infertility had protected him until then. Collars, suppressants, condoms. Infertility and impotence. Somehow, in spite of all that, life had happened. As though the powerful, pulsing connection that drew Yashiro and Doumeki to one another had found nowhere else to go and had concentrated in something like that.

It was dangerous. It was volatile. And now, thanks to the bite on his neck, it was inescapable. He couldn't even fathom the thought of sleeping with any other man.

His instincts continued to inform him that Doumeki was there, always there, sitting on the other side of the door. He knew that the sound of the door being unlocked was all it would take.

And so on the second day, a full day and night after Doumeki first knocked, Yashiro watched, as though from outside, as he went to the door and unlocked it. He turned and took a few steps back into his apartment, hearing the door quietly open and close behind him. He imagined Doumeki standing there, a few feet away, and he hated how the thought made his body flush with a heady cocktail of relief and anticipation.

Doumeki's eyes travelled up the length of Yashiro's body. He wore a loose navy robe and his hair was unkempt. He could tell, without seeing, that Yashiro's fringe fell into his eyes again, like it did the last time he saw him. He longed to touch him. But he had to hold his ground for as long as he possibly could.

'Boss –' he began.

'What?' Yashiro suddenly said. A single word that was quiet but delivered in a kind of snap; a kind of harshness that was enough to make Doumeki flinch. Yashiro turned. 'What could you possibly have to say? Have you spent a whole day thinking it up? It'd better be good.'

Doumeki stared, at a loss.

'Or maybe you didn't come to talk at all,' Yashiro said, hearing that he was losing control of his voice and his words again. He gestured openly with his left hand, his right hand remaining useless in its sling. 'Maybe you've just come to fuck me. To claim what's yours. Is that why you're here?'

'No, Boss,' Doumeki finally managed, feeling his self-loathing claim him again, though it had never really left him since the morning he awoke to find Yashiro was gone. He tried to fight the high, cruel inner voice that told him he was just like his father. 'I'm... sorry, Boss.'

'I'm sorry, Boss,' Yashiro mocked. 'That's all you do. Apologising is all you ever do. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Are you also sorry you got me pregnant?'

Doumeki felt like he had been punched in the gut.

Yashiro's eyes were manic again, like Doumeki had only seen on rare occasions. It made his insides feel cold.

'Are you sorry that I got rid of it?' An awful, twisted smile. Eyes that were still glassed-over with an emotion that neither of them could identify. And then his voice broke. 'Are you sorry because it was… because it was ours? Are you sorry because it could have been... anything.'

Heart pounding, still struggling to process the two bombs that had gone off in quick succession, Doumeki covered the distance between them and pulled Yashiro against him, eyes wide and fixed on the far wall. He was surprised that Yashiro didn't relent. As though his own words had winded him.

Yashiro himself didn't understand, at first, what he meant when he had said, it could have been anything. Then he realised.

What had happened to him had scared him more than anything else in his life. His stepfather had threatened to impregnate him time and time again, to make Yashiro bear his child and reveal his depravity to his mother and the whole world; a rough, constant slew of words that it took Yashiro years to figure out were nothing more than threats made to heighten his stepfather's sexual thrill. But it still frightened him when it finally became real, even thirty years later. And so he had expelled it. He had removed it from his disgusting, marred, filthy body because it didn't stand a chance with him. He didn't know if he was disgusted more at it or himself.

But over the past few days, he realised that the thing that had scared him so much could have been so much. It could have been so many things. Things that didn't have to frighten him. It could have been tall, like Doumeki, but with Yashiro's smile and wit. It could have been a girl, and she might have been brilliant and precocious and she might have doted on her strong, silent Alpha father.

Tears again. For some reason, it felt like he had cried in Doumeki's arms countless times, even though this was the very first.

'Are you… are you sorry for that?' he demanded, his words muffled in Doumeki's shoulder. 'Are you sorry for…?'

Doumeki was sorry for all of it. And Yashiro was too, but neither could express what it was they had lost, precisely.

All Doumeki knew was that it didn't matter. It didn't matter as long as Yashiro was his and as long as he could be there to nurse all of Yashiro's scars, just as Yashiro had unknowingly done for him. He couldn't think of how to say it.

But he had to try.

'We're bonded now,' he said, his voice low and somewhat unsteady. 'We're s–soul bonded.'

He hated the fact that his words were hesitant when the feelings behind them weren't hesitant at all. He was frustrated because he knew why the words were hesitant; he had heard them before and never once, in his wildest dreams, thought he could ever apply them to himself. He never had a reference point for all that they meant. How could he have known that such simple, alien words could capture a feeling as golden and heavy as this? This sense that he had finally come home.

'We're bonded now,' he repeated, more firmly. He gently drew his fingers along his mark. 'And I'm never leaving you again, Boss.'

Yashiro pulled back and looked at him. His eyes, in that moment, were unreadable again, but Doumeki felt them cut through him as though trying to seek out the lie.

'I'm never leaving you,' Doumeki repeated, wondering if he was saying the right thing or completely the wrong thing. 'I'm –'

I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to keep all other men away from you. I'm going to fuck you through every single one of your heats. I'm going to make you come countless times, and you'll cry out for me, and I'll hold you afterwards and touch your face and your hair for as long as I want. And you'll laugh in my arms and I'll be the luckiest man alive.

Yashiro couldn't think of a single thing to say. The emotion, whatever emotion it was, rolled from his gut through his chest and became caught in his throat. Soul bond. He wanted to laugh and cry.

Doumeki kissed him then and Yashiro frowned slightly as he felt the heat of Doumeki's tongue in his mouth. The warmth of his lips. A hint of stubble. He folded into him. He felt Doumeki's huge hands on his back, moving often to the mark on his neck. His mark. He shivered.

It happened slowly. Yashiro's hold around Doumeki's shoulders and back tightened. It was the same thing Doumeki had experienced long before they forged their physical bond. That sense of helplessness and hollowness was replaced by something whole, and real. Simply by feeling out the contours of his own body as it felt when pressed against Doumeki's, feeling his own breath on Doumeki's skin, Yashiro came into himself. He realised that his old demons, the ones that only showed up when he was weakest, suddenly didn't have as much room. And suddenly Doumeki had lifted him up, wrapped his legs around Doumeki's waist, and Yashiro found he had surrendered completely even before Doumeki took any steps towards the bedroom.

Doumeki knew Yashiro was in no state to do anything, either physically or mentally. All he wanted to do, all he did, was lay Yashiro down on the white sheets, like an artist putting colour on canvas just to see it there, just to know it was there by his own hand.

Meanwhile, Yashiro was realising, slowly, that he had been right before; it was still a kind of powerlessness. Being beholden to someone, having someone stare at him like Doumeki was staring at him, allowing nothing to remain hidden, even the simple fact of being half of a whole – all of it was terrifying. All of it weakened him, just as he knew it would.

But the power that he felt then, in his surrender, in his love for his Alpha, was still power. One that rushed to his head as strongly as any heat.

It always happened slowly, as Yashiro began to see. Some things did, anyway. The important things. He had wrapped his mouth around Doumeki's soft cock within minutes of meeting him, and yet they shared their first kiss only a week ago. And Yashiro had only slowly come to discover the parts of him that had been empty – the parts he had tried to ignore and would be filled with no warning by the traumas of his childhood – those parts had been filled completely, and cleanly, by Doumeki. By the large man of few words and many secrets.

After Yashiro unlocked his front door and Doumeki came in, a strange few days followed. Neither of them left the apartment. Calls from Misumi and Nanahara and Kageyama went ignored.

Long hours would pass in which neither of them would speak. Yashiro would prop his head on his arm and stare at Doumeki. At the precise structure of his cheekbones and jawline. Doumeki would feel caught in his gaze, pleased and nervous at the same time, wondering if it was a look of discontent or appraisal. Yashiro rarely smiled in those first few days. And Doumeki had no idea how he could bring it about again. He longed to see Yashiro smile. Hear him laugh. At night, Doumeki would guiltily stroke the back of Yashiro's neck and feel a strange desolation, wondering again if he had made a huge mistake.

But he learned, slowly, that Yashiro simply needed time. Things within Yashiro were being unstitched, and other things being stitched back together. He was reconciling memories of his own tiny, bound hands against a weathered tatami mat with the raw, silent power of a soul bond. He was struggling to understand how a man like his stepfather and a man like Doumeki could both be Alphas, and how they could both reside on the same small blue planet.

And eventually, piece by piece, Yashiro came back to him. A few days later, Yashiro's right hand stirred again, enough that Doumeki saw the index finger tremble very slightly. He lifted the hand to his mouth and kissed it. Yashiro's thumb twitched and stroked his lips. Doumeki held back tears and he glanced up to see Yashiro smiling gently.

And Yashiro laughed that same day when Doumeki unknowingly placed an aluminium-lined container in the microwave and caused a small electric explosion.

'You're useless,' Yashiro observed as he carefully unplugged the microwave.

Doumeki had never been more grateful for his culinary failures.

Later that evening, Yashiro lay in his arms, again quiet and serious.

'I'm infertile and you're impotent,' he murmured. 'So of course I'd get pregnant.'

A small pause where Doumeki felt a lump rise to his throat. He tried to imagine all that Yashiro had gone through by himself. He wondered if there was anything he could do, anything either of them could do, to make up for what had happened.

Yashiro sighed and smiled faintly.

'Misumi and Amou aren't the only ones making history.'

Doumeki had no idea what he was talking about, but he was relieved to see Yashiro smiling again.

Yashiro's first heat was a nightmare for them both. He had taken enough suppressants to take down a stallion, but being near Doumeki had triggered his heat regardless. Doumeki clung to his back, unsure if he was holding Yashiro together or holding himself back, ignoring Yashiro's urgent demands for Doumeki to tear off his clothes and fuck him senseless. Teeth clenched, Doumeki reminded himself in a sort of mantra that Yashiro was still recovering from the operation. He rubbed himself against Yashiro's back and made Yashiro come many times using hand-jobs, but nothing was ever enough. Three days later, Yashiro's heat mercifully subsided.

To everyone else's relief, Yashiro returned to work not long after that. Doumeki went with him.

Yashiro's second heat the following month couldn't have been any different from the repression and agony of the first. Yashiro simply kicked everyone out of the office and Doumeki locked the door.

'I never thought I'd see the day,' Misumi declared wanly. 'The infamous Omega Young Leader and his bonded Alpha bodyguard. They're talking about you two even in headquarters, you know.' He reached for a cigarette with a huff. 'What the hell is the world coming to?'

'I asked myself that the day they invented suppressants,' Yashiro said, lighting up at the same time. 'Takes all the fun out of life, if you ask me.'

Nanahara and Sugimoto noticed the look he threw Doumeki, who was gathering the tea things on the bureau near the door. They made a face at one another. Taking suppressants was something they sorely wished Boss would do more often, especially now that his heats came on without any regularity, with a strength that disturbed an inordinately large percentage of Betas.

In fact, Nanahara was feeling both brave and exasperated enough to bring it up. He waited until Misumi finished up his business with Yashiro and left.

He took a deep breath.

'Boss?'

'Mm?'

'We think you should start going on your meds again.'

Yashiro was mildly surprised.

'What for?'

We're sick of how often we have to hear you getting ploughed by your fucking bodyguard.

'They've hired a few more Alphas downstairs,' Nanahara replied, somewhat stiffly. 'Last time, we ended up having to knock some guy out to stop him from breaking down the door.'

Yashiro sat at his desk and leaned back, looking unconcerned. In fact, his mind wandered down a different path.

'Such a pity that even the thought of fucking them makes me want to throw up.' He flicked another glance at Doumeki who was taking away the tea tray. 'No need to look so smug over there.'

Doumeki's expression was as deadpan as ever. But all those in the room knew him well, and they could tell that he was, indeed, very happy at the thought.

'Boss,' Nanahara tried again, realising the conversation had derailed before it had even started. 'Can we talk about –?'

Doumeki sensed it first without even having to turn. But Nanahara saw it too, and it cut him off mid-sentence. Sugimoto sensed it from near the door. He had a strategic advantage there; he bolted before anything could be asked of him.

Yashiro was suddenly sweating and gasping, heat filling his head, and his gaze fixed on Doumeki who was at his side in a heartbeat.

The eight Alphas elsewhere in the building suddenly dropped what they were doing. Many Betas, Nanahara included, felt a little hot under the collar. It was a particularly strong heat. It always was whenever the bodyguard was around.

Some of the more resistant Betas observed their peers in slight amusement. Team managers sighed in frustration when their best workers suddenly ran for stairwells.

'Nanahara,' Yashiro gasped, even as Doumeki heaved him out of the chair and onto the desk, lips already on Yashiro's neck and hands unbuttoning his vest. 'Nana… hara… door.'

Nanahara, who realised he had lingered just a few seconds too long, felt his heart sink. He spun around and saw that Sugimoto had abandoned him.

'Oh, for fuck's – you're going to make me guard the door again?'

Doumeki barely had time to feel sorry for Nanahara, and his face didn't register any shift in emotions anyway. And Yashiro, for his part, could only moan.

Slightly flushed, Nanahara grumbled and turned and left. He sat in front of the door and took out his gun, deciding he was in a bad enough mood to actually shoot any fucker who managed to make it past the barricaded stairwell doors.

For Christmas that year, Doumeki bought him a state-of-the-art pair of earplugs and Yashiro bought him a year's subscription to Juggs. So whenever he was stuck on door duty, Nanahara begrudgingly alternated between the two.