Heir Apparent

Bad Penny

TRIGGER WARNING. This chapter contains discussions of rape, which is not shown.

– — –

There was a language that all sex ed classes used about prothestrus – or at least all the sex ed classes Ander had taken – that made it seem like going into heat for the first time was less of a physiological process and more like a spiritual experience. Words like "miracle" and "flowering," phrases like "becoming a young adult," drew to Ander's young mind images of his future self, lying supine on a bed and awash in golden sunlight, as his body transitioned, cocooned in sheets like a chrysalis, into an adult form.

It left him woefully unprepared for when the day finally came, when in the middle of gym class he ducked behind some bleachers to catch his breath – he hadn't been doing anything different than usual, but still he felt faint – only to collapse onto his side as hot pulses of pressure shook his body, head to heel. He felt neither flowery nor miraculous as his body shook and drenched with sweat, as slick soaked through his MS 74 sweatpants, and as his body writhed and contorted in the dry, brittle grass, not knowing what it wanted, but knowing it was not getting it.

Thinking through the fog in his own mind was hard, coming to a solution that spared him humiliation impossible. No one had ever told him what to do in those first few seconds when your body goes into estrus. He couldn't just go the nurse's office, he couldn't even stand. His classmates were running laps almost three hundred yards away, would they even hear if he shouted? Could he even bear the shame of it, if they heard, if they came, if they saw? He'd heard the stories of the omegas who'd gone into heat for the first time in school the same as everyone else, heard the giggles and whispers that followed them for weeks and months, saw the way all the alpha students treated them so differently. He didn't want to be one of those omegas.

"Ander? What are—?"

He recognized the boy, of course. Percy Kingsley. He sat behind Ander in history. Tall, athletic, aggressively alpha in the way only a middle schooler can be. Lots of omegas had crushes on him. Lots of beta girls, too.

"Whoa."

Ander couldn't find his voice, and even if he could, he wouldn't be sure what to say. One of Ander's hands curled around the metal scaffolding holding up the bleachers and he tried, frantically, to pull himself away. His body was thrumming and hot in unfamiliar, uncomfortable ways, and he didn't know or care to learn what it meant.

He watched, legs trembling, as Percy pushed the palm of his hand across his sweatpants, over his crotch, where Ander could see, under the flimsy black material—

"Hnnnngh." It was all Ander could manage through the tightness in his throat. He was a mess of new sensations and feelings, but none stronger than fear. He was afraid. He was terrified. He kept trying to scrabble away, as best his weak legs could manage, as Percy kept pawing at himself. "Nnnn," Ander said, as close to the word 'no' as he could get.

Percy looked over his shoulder.

– — –

Ander woke drenched in sweat, shaking, hot slick soaked through the sheets underneath him. His whole body ached, his gut churned, his cock painfully hard against his stomach, his chest heaving. The first guest room of Havisham House came to him at first in vague, blurry shapes, and a weight near him on the bed shifted. Within moments, Watson was standing over him, licking at his face. As best he could, Ander waved him off and tried to roll over.

God, everything hurt. Everything throbbed. Every muscle and tendon and sinew in his body was electric, taut, ready for rut, but receiving none, only registered agony.