TW: sexual assault (brief)
Dax was not used to feeling weak.
He was alpha-born. His entire life he'd been bigger and stronger than the other kids his age. He'd started training with the warriors when he was twelve, just after he lost his mother, and even then he'd stood toe to toe with fully grown men who'd been training for years, many of them beta-born.
He did not feel strong now. It hurt to breathe, and he could swear he could feel his blood moving in his veins, cutting burning paths just beneath his skin. He didn't sleep, even if the escape of it was tempting, because he feared if he gave in, he wouldn't wake again.
As hours passed, the pain started to abate, but his strength didn't return, leaving him slumped in the corner too tired to even open his eyes, let alone attempt movement. Still, he could see brightness through his closed eyelids and knew at the very least he had survived the night. He'd never thought something so simple could feel like an achievement, but after the night he'd had it certainly did.
"Dax?"
He forced his eyes open to see Mason curled up against the bars on his side, watching him. Even in the dim early morning light from the small window, Dax could see spots of color high on the omega's cheeks, and noticed the boy was panting slightly.
"Mason? Are you feeling alright?"
The omega's only response was a whimper, and something twisted in Dax's gut. Now was possibly the worst time for the kid to get sick. He doubted their hosts would bring them medicine—they were lucky Boone had taken pity on them the night before and brought an omega to clean and bandage Mason's wounds.
"Hot," Mason whimpered, pressing himself against the metal bars, which must have felt blissfully cold. "Too hot."
"Do you feel like you have a fever again?" Dax asked. It hadn't been that long since the boy had the flu, perhaps he wasn't as recovered as they'd thought he was.
Mason shook his head. "Too hot," he repeated, his voice barely audible. The words echoed through the alpha's mind, pushing him toward a very different conclusion, possibly the only thing worse than the omega being sick. Too hot. Like... Dax took a careful sniff, confirming his suspicions when he scented the pheromones coming from the boy.
"Fuck," he murmured, closing his eyes. The omega was in heat. He'd never witnessed an omega going into heat before, as usually his pheromones would have suppressed it. He'd seen omegas already in heat, but by then there was never any doubt whether they were sick or not, plus they usually knew what was happening.
Did Mason even know what his heat was? Had he been in heat before? He was more than old enough, but he'd also been more than old enough to have shifted and he hadn't done that either. Dax wouldn't have been surprised if the omega had never been in heat before, if he was completely unaware of what was happening at the worst possible moment.
A door creaked open and Dax sat up straighter, turning toward the stairs. For the first time he was hoping to see Mason's father as at least the man was beta-born and would be able to control himself around the omega's pheromones. His hopes were quickly squashed when he recognized the man coming down the stairs.
Alastor. Dax remembered him as a sniveling weakling, trying to convince his 'alpha' he wasn't an idiot who couldn't tell the difference between Mason and his beta-born brother. Perhaps they would have gotten some sympathy from Boone, who had convinced the false alpha not to kill them and brought an omega to help Mason the night before. Dax doubted they'd get any such sympathy from Alastor.
The alpha struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on the bars to hold himself upright but trying his hardest not to let his weakness be too obvious. "What do you want?" he demanded, hoping to draw the man's attention to himself and away from the omega still cowering on the floor, now pushing himself away from the bars and toward the corner of his tiny cell.
"It's time for another dose of wolfsbane." The man grinned at the alpha, holding up two syringes. He froze in place, the grin slowly falling from his face as he sniffed, his eyebrows drawing together as he slowly turned toward the omega.
"Fine," the alpha said, shoving his arm through the bars to show the inside of his elbow. It was bruised around the three tiny red circles where the previous doses had gone in, and ached more than the rest of him.
Alastor didn't even glance in his direction, pulling out a key and moving toward the door to the other cell.
"No," the alpha insisted, hitting the bars hard as he tried to grab the man before he could move out of range, but he was already too late.
"What's this I smell?" Alastor said, stepping through the doorway into Mason's cell. He took another deep breath in through his nose. "Smells like... a runt in heat."
"Stay away from him," Dax growled, all previous thoughts of weakness gone. He gripped the bars hard, his fingers finding the grooves he'd left there the day before, before he'd been pumped so full of wolfsbane he could hardly stand, before he'd been weakened to the point he couldn't stop what was about to happen.
"Hmmm, and why would I do that, alpha? It's for his own good, after all. Runts need to be bred, don't you know? And you're certainly in no condition to do the honors."
Dax snarled, throwing himself at the bars, but they didn't budge. "Don't touch him!"
Alastor paid him no mind, approaching the omega where he cowered in the corner of his cell, whining as the larger wolf approached.
"No!" the omega yelled. Dax didn't want to watch but couldn't look away, snarling and yanking at the bars. He wished he hadn't allowed himself to be filled with so much wolfsbane he could hardly move, knew he would have been able to pull the bars apart and gotten out to protect the boy.
"Dax! Dax!"
The alpha growled but could do little else but watch as Alastor fought with the omega, catching the boy by the wrists so he couldn't fight back and turning him over onto his stomach. All the while, Mason cried out for Dax, sobbing and struggling, though his efforts were futile.
The door at the top of the stairs banged open again, followed by footsteps pounding down the staircase. Mason's attacker paid this no mind, but Dax glanced over to see Boone had arrived.
The alpha had just enough time to worry the man would only join his pack mate and make things so much worse before the man rushed into the cell to grab Alastor by the hair and yanked him up. The other man snarled and tried to push him away, reaching for Mason who had renewed his struggles and managed to slip away from the pair and into the opposite corner of his cell, but Boone caught his pack mate under the arms and pulled him out of the cell, leaving the door open as he dragged Mason's attacker up the stairs. The door slammed shut behind them, leaving the pair remaining in the basement in eerie silence.
"Mason?" the alpha called.
The omega's only response was a muffled sob. Dax could hardly see him where he was curled in the darkest corner of his cell, making himself as small as possible.
"Mason?" he tried again, giving the bars in front of him another rattle, but they, predictably, still held strong.
The door at the top of the stairs opened again, Dax tensed, shooting a glare in that direction that only slightly lessened when Boone appeared. There was a bit of blood dripping from a split on his lip, but otherwise no signs of his altercation with Alastor, and no sign the other man had returned with him.
Dax still watched him warily, as he was still a common wolf from a pack taught to treat omegas as inferior creatures, but the man barely glanced in the omega's direction before approaching the alpha, staying carefully just out of reach.
"I'm going to open this door," he said, looking the alpha directly in the eye. Dax was a little shocked to see it as not many common wolves could look an alpha-born in the eye, especially when he was this agitated. "When I do, you're going to go into the other cell with the runt, and I'm going to lock you in there. If you attack me or try to run, I can assure you, you will be caught, and the runt will be killed for your actions. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Dax answered without hesitation. He waited impatiently while the man unlocked his cell and swung the door open, pushing him out of the way so he could stumble across the hall into Mason's cell. He didn't look back, even when he heard the door shut, and ignored the footsteps leading away as Boone left them alone.
He didn't approach Mason either. He hesitated just inside the cell, watching the omega's shaking form in the far corner. "Mason?" he called, taking a careful step forward. "It's Dax. I'm here now. It's going to be okay, I promise." He took another step forward, only for the tiny omega to cringe further into his corner, sobbing quietly.
Dax's knees gave out, and he didn't try to catch himself, welcoming the sharp pain as they impacted the floor. He remembered the boy smiling and laughing, chirping the alpha's name as one of the first words he learned, curling in Dax's arms as sickness ravaged him and grumbling protest when the alpha tried to leave, forcing the man to stay. He remembered the snarling wolf he'd encountered the first time he met the boy, the one who made an attempt to stand up to the alpha to fight a rogue who'd wronged him, who fought alongside Dax against an entire pack of rogues without a hint of fear.
To see this sweet boy, his fiery omega, so terrified even of him... He felt like his chest was caving in, like someone had shoved something sharp into his gut and twisted it around.
For the first time in his life, he actively tried to make himself smaller, going onto his hands and knees and approaching the boy slowly, praying not to startle him any further. The omega didn't acknowledge his approach, but he didn't calm either, and the closer he got the more he could hear the boy's whimpers and sniffles, and the more he felt his heart ripping itself from his chest.
I'll protect him with my life. That was what Dax had told Chase when he'd convinced the hunter to let his baby brother fight rogues instead of hiding in a bunker. The alpha couldn't have done a worse job. He'd allowed the omega to be hurt, pumped full of wolfsbane, kidnapped, and now assaulted, all while Dax had done little more than stand by and watch. He'd never felt the sting of failure so strongly as he did in that moment, watching the omega cower away from him, knowing he'd failed the boy in every way.
"Mason?" His voice cracked on the word, a desperate plea, but the omega still flinched and tried to shift impossibly further away.
There was something warm on the alpha's face, and Dax realized he was crying. When was the last time he cried? He thought it must have been at least a decade, since he'd still woken from nightmares calling for his mother and found her gone forever, replaced with a brother just as broken as him, who gave him the strength to push away his own pain to be strong for someone else. He wiped the tears away hastily and fought to compose himself, but the stoic mask that had become a familiar companion over the years was failing him now.
Finally, finally, Mason shifted a little, opening his eyes to find the alpha on hands and knees a few feet away, afraid to approach but refusing to back away either. "Dax?" he whimpered, uncurling a bit and turning more fully toward the man.
Dax moved forward, watching the omega carefully for any signs of discomfort, but Mason reached for him, falling easily into the alpha's hold and pressing himself against Dax's chest, winding his arms around the man's waist and pressing his face against the hollow of his neck.
The alpha carefully lowered them both to their sides on the floor, Mason against the wall and Dax with his back to the rest of the room, almost entirely hiding the omega from view.
"It's going to be okay," he murmured, holding Mason securely against himself and pressing his face into the boy's hair, breathing in his scent and comforting himself with the knowledge that with every breath his own weak pheromones were weakening the omega's, knowing soon his heat would be abated. He could still smell the other man on his sweet omega, but he pushed the thought from his mind and did his best to ignore it. The last thing he wanted was to frighten the boy with his anger after the trauma he just experienced.
That didn't stop the thoughts from coming, didn't stop him from imagining all the things he would do when he got his hands on that good-for-nothing wolf. Whatever it took, he swore he was going to make sure that man died in agony, that he got everything he deserved. Dax may not have been able to prevent it from happening, but if it was the last thing he did, he was going to make it right.
Date Posted: 9/29/2021
Word Count: 2324
I'm sorry sweet baby Mason, I didn't want this for you :( This chapter was another reason I was on an abrupt 3.5 month hiatus, I was hesitant to post it because I wasn't happy about what happens. I tried to think through workarounds but they just didn't feel right. But like... Dax is kind of starting to admit to himself how he feels? Bright side? Just a little?
<3Koda