The Night Movers - Season 1 - Ep. 7 (Patreon)

Unbeta'd/Unedited

What? 

No. No. No. No. No. No. 

Not now. 

They’d said he wouldn’t have another heat for months after his presentation. They’d made a huge deal out of presenting him with his many pharmaceutical options, letting him know suppressants were borderline miraculous, allowing him to skip his heats until he was mated and ready to have babies. Except he didn’t have suppressants. He didn’t have birth control. The guards had taken him before he’d received any of that. Before they’d even checked if he was capable of having babies.

He was an unmated, unclaimed omega surrounded by six alphas. 

And he was in heat. 

“Maybe he’s just hungry? He hasn’t eaten in days,” Diesel said.

Ridley had never been so grateful to have another alpha in the room. Maybe Diesel was right. Couldn’t this be extreme hunger? He couldn’t remember his last meal, had barely had a drop to drink. Surely his body could just be rebelling? It certainly felt like his stomach was trying to eat itself. 

Titus clearly didn’t think so. He scoffed at Diesel’s suggestion.  “Can’t you smell it?” 

“I’ve been smelling him for the last six hours,” Diesel snapped. “And if you’re not planning on fucking him through his heat, then maybe we try feeding him to see if maybe we’re just overreacting. He is newly presented after all.” 

Titus snapped his mouth shut. Ridley watched as the two alphas glowered at each other, nostrils flaring, both posturing for no reason. 

Please let that be it. 

“Are you willing to take that risk? What do you think will happen to him if he is in heat and locked in here with us? All of us.” 

Another gush of slick, had him biting down hard on his lip. How could he be so horny while in so much pain? Both alpha’s looked at him hungrily, Diesel sticking his tongue out like he was tasting the air, then rolling his eyes at whatever he’d found. 

“See?” Titus snapped. 

Diesel gave him one last nasty look, then made his way off the bed, leaving Ridley curled in a ball with Titus lying beside him, staring down at him like he was a problem that needed to be solved. 

“I’m gonna go get him some soup,” Diesel said, sounding borderline pouty. “It should at least help with the cold and hunger, then we can see what symptoms stick around when he’s full.” 

Ridley’s omega bumped along his insides, desperate for Ridley to let him take over. He definitely wanted to be full. Fuck. This was a disaster. He was a disaster. 

“Mm,” Titus agreed, with almost no conviction. 

When Diesel left, Ridley made a beleaguered little sound, trying to crawl inside Titus’s body and stay there. “So cold, alpha.” 

Titus gently pushed him away, dragging himself up into a sitting up. Ridley looked up at him, miserable, tears clinging to his lashes. 

Titus sighed, like he couldn’t believe this was what his life had come to, then stroked his finger along Ridley’s jaw. “You only think you’re cold, but you have a fever, strawberry. Your skin is on fire.” 

“No,” he said, shaking his head, once more trying to get closer to the alpha. “Just cold…just hurting. Please, alpha,” he begged, in too much pain to even be embarrassed by his pleas.

The only light was the outline around the bathroom door, but Ridley’s eyes had adjusted enough to see the way Titus looked at him, the way his hands fisted at his sides as he inhaled Ridley’s scent. “You’ve soaked through the sheets. In more ways than one. You have to try to breathe through this, okay?” 

“Breathe through it?” Ridley repeated, a tiny glimmer of hope shining through the pain raging through his insides. “Does that help?”

Was that a thing? Did breathing help with pain? It sounded fake. Sounded like something big, dumb alphas said when they didn’t know what to do with omegas who needed them for something other than sex. But these alphas were different. They had to be. They saved omegas. They’d saved Ridley, sort of. For now. Didn’t he owe them a chance to prove they weren’t like others? Especially if he was going to be theirs one day? 

He took a deep breath and let it out, once, then again…and again waiting for the pain to subside. “Are you sure this helps?” 

Titus shrugged. “I have no fucking idea, but its all I’ve got.” 

This time it was Ridley who snarled, snapping his teeth at the alpha. Who was he kidding? They were all the same. Useless. Still, once he started breathing rhythmically he couldn’t stop. 

“Have you ever even been around an omega in heat?” Ridley gasped, his panic ratcheting higher as the pain only grew until it felt like a giant hand squeezed his insides in a death grip. 

Titus’s mouth tightened at the question, his face a storm cloud. Then suddenly the look was gone, his expression morphing into one of disbelief. “Of course, not. What kind of fucking monster would I be if I saved omegas but then assaulted them when they were unable to refuse me?” 

The usual kind, Ridley thought meanly. Titus acted like there was some code of conduct alphas followed when it came to omegas. He acted like Ridley hadn’t spent nineteen years in the real world praying that he would be a beta and not an omega, even though he knew just based on his build, it wasn’t so. Now, here was this alpha, this pack of alphas telling him everything he knew was wrong. That good alphas existed, that not all alphas wanted to hurt omegas. It pissed Ridley off. Not because Titus said it, but because Ridley desperately wished it were true. Nobody wanted it to be true more than him. 

“You’re not going to say it's just biology?” Ridley asked, through clenched teeth, curling back up into the fetal position. 

Titus snorted. “Look, I’m not going to pretend I’m a good guy. I’ve done a lot of evil shit in my life. I’ve stolen things, cheated people, maimed more than one alpha, killed a dozen more…whatever it took to complete the mission. I did it and I never felt a shred of remorse.” 

“Okay?” Ridley grunted, tears squeezing from his eyes as he tried to breathe through the next cramp. 

Titus glared down at him. “But I’m not a fucking rapist and I won’t let any of my guys become one either just because we had the misfortune of meeting you.” 

Ridley felt his words like a punch to his chest. “Ouch.” 

Titus shrugged, looking away as he muttered, “I told you, I’m not a good guy.” 

Another cramp seized Ridley, tearing a scream from him as he tried to dig his fingers into his abdomen, hoping the pressure would be enough to quell whatever was tying his intestines in knots. He bit down on his lip to keep from screaming again, but couldn’t stop the pathetic whimpers that escaped, making him sound like a wounded animal. 

Titus’s jaw clenched and unclenched, the muscle there ticking as he stared down at Ridley with an enigmatic expression. In that moment, it felt like he hated Ridley, but his pain was coloring everything red. 

Titus made a low rumble deep in his chest, then smacked at Ridley’s hands away. “Move.” 

Ridley stared at him, mouth gaping, somehow still shocked by his rudeness. Titus replaced Ridley’s small hands with his own, just resting them there. Ridley squeezed his eyes shut. The alpha’s hands felt hot even through the thin cotton of his t-shirt. At first, nothing happened, but then, Titus grunted, his face contorting. Before Ridley could ask if he was okay, the pain began to subside, not completely but enough for him to breathe normally, enough for him to look at Titus without tears in his eyes. 

“What did you do?” Ridley whispered. 

“Just took some of the pain away. But that’s all I can do,” he said, begrudgingly, like Ridley had asked him for anything. When he put his hand over Titus’s where it still rested on his belly, the alpha snatched his hand away, grimacing like he was in pain. Was he? Had taking Ridley’s pain hurt him? He hadn’t even known that was something an alpha could do. 

Guilt sliced through him, but quickly dissipated when Titus stuck a finger in his face. “I can’t take it all or I’ll be too drained to help the others with our real jobs tomorrow.” 

Who fucking asked you to? Ridley thought, fighting the urge to stick his tongue out at the grumpy alpha. Instead, he gave a stilted nod, rubbing absently over his stomach, feeling Titus’s eyes on him like a physical touch. 

“Are you going to throw me out if I’m in heat?” Ridley finally asked, bile rising in his throat even as he thought. 

Titus gave him a disgusted look. “I’m not that fucking guy either. Jesus. We both know what would happen to you out there. I have no idea what the fuck we’re going to do with you but you’re safer with us than out there.” 

Relief flooded Ridley so quickly he felt dizzy. He nodded, eyes wide. “That’s what I’ve been saying,” he said, gesturing wildly. “Even if you’re not good guys, you are the lesser of two evils.” 

Titus scoffed. “The lesser of two evils is still evil, strawberry,” Titus said. “I won’t become the thing I fight against. Not even for you.” 

Not even for you.

“Don’t I have any say in this?” Ridley asked, blinking sweat from his eyes. “It’s my body.” 

“Omegas in heat can’t consent,” Titus muttered. 

Ridley made a noise of frustration. They didn’t even know if he was in heat. “I consented the moment I showed you that I belonged to your pack. That’s what a pack omega is. They’re there to be…used, well and often,” Ridley managed. 

“You have to hear how fucked up that sounds,” Titus said, shaking his head at him. 

“Fucked up or not,” Ridley said, needing him to understand his situation. “It’s just the way the world works.” 

Titus looked horrified even in the shadows. “You’re too young to be this jaded.” 

“And you’re too old to be this naive,” Ridley snapped. 

“Do you know what it would do to them if they lost control and hurt you?” Titus asked, gesturing towards the door. “Do you have any clue what they’ve sacrificed to be here? To do what we fucking do? Do you know how dangerous it is? What the government would do to us if we were discovered?”

Ridley’s nostrils flared. Where the fuck did he get off lecturing Ridley like he was the wounded party? The New Guard would line the alphas up and put a bullet in their heads. Maybe they’d beat the shit out of them first. If Ridley was thrown out, he would be beaten, tortured, raped, bred. He would be at best a whore and at worst livestock. No alpha would ever understand what it was like to never feel safe, even in your own home. 

“No worse than what they do to omegas just for existing,” Ridley countered. 

“Which is why we’re helping,” Titus said like he was pleading with Ridley to understand. 

“We didn’t ask for any of this,” Ridley reminded him. “The world wasn’t always like this. I don’t want to be hurt anymore than you want to hurt me, but facts are facts and the fact is, I belong to you…all of you. You have a responsibility to at least keep me safe.” 

Titus snarled. “We have no interest in ‘owning’ an omega. It goes against everything we stand for.” 

Tears welled in Ridley’s eyes again, but they were tears of anger this time. He blinked them away rapidly. Letting these men own him went against everything Ridley stood for too. How fucked up was the world they lived in where he was forced to beg a pack of alphas to turn him into their sex slave for his own protection? 

Titus and his crew were out there smuggling omegas out of the city to these sanctuary towns, but nobody was trying to change the system itself. Nobody was trying to wrestle power away from those who abused it for their own gain. Ridley believed deep down in his soul that these men–these alphas–meant well. But for every omega they saved, there were thousands they didn’t. And it hadn’t even occurred to them that there was another way–a better way–to save omegas. 

If Ridley had an army of alphas at his beck and call, he wouldn’t just be using them to shield the local omegas, he’d use them to free them for good. To give them back the rights they’d had torn away from them by a corrupt superpower. 

“Why do you do it?” Ridley heard himself ask. 

“What?” Titus asked, startled.

“Why do you do it?” he repeated slowly. 

Titus hesitated, then stumbled over his words. “I-I have my reasons. We all do.” 

His tone of voice told Ridley he didn’t want the conversation to continue, but Ridley wasn’t letting him get away with that copout answer. He blew a breath out through his nose. “What I mean is. why do you do it the way you do?” 

“I don’t follow?” Titus said, his eyes shiny in the tiny crack of light from the bathroom.

Ridley sighed. “You and your pack are out there, night after night, rescuing fish from the net, one at a time.” 

“Yeah?” 

“You must lose more than you win?” Ridley said. 

Titus’s jaw tensed. “Better some fish are free than all of them ending up on someone’s plate or in their tank.” 

Ridley sucked his teeth. “Did you ever even consider just sinking the fucking boat?” 

Titus’s eyes went wide, opening and closing his mouth several times before he said, “It’s not that simple.” 

Ridley studied him for a long moment. “I never said it was simple.” 

Titus just blinked at him in the shadows, scanning Ridley’s face like he’d never seen him before. 

Ridley sat up, propping himself up on one arm. “Maybe I’m wrong.” When Titus’s expression soured, he clarified, “About my vision, I mean.” 

Titus looked like he was two seconds away from chucking Ridley down that grand staircase just outside his room. “Just like that? Now suddenly your vision was wrong?” 

Ridley rolled his eyes. “Not my vision, necessarily. But my interpretation.” 

Ridley chewed on his bottom lip as he watched Titus watch him. Maybe he should keep this to himself? It was unlikely any alpha would want to hear what he was about to say. Was it better to manipulate a pack of alphas for the greater good? One look at the man in front of him and Ridley knew his answer. 

Titus’s frown deepened. “I don’t follow.” 

Ridley lifted his hand, letting his fingers gently trace the alpha’s scar. “Maybe I don’t belong to you…” He met Titus’s gaze head on. “Maybe you belong to me.” 

Titus’s lids fluttered. When Ridley cupped his cheek, he nuzzled up against it. When he realized what he’d done, he jerked away from him. “What?” 

Ridley let his hand fall away from him. “You have a code. You don’t want to collar any omega. You don’t want to force them to bend to your will. So don’t.” 

“Meaning what?” 

Ridley shrugged. “I’ll call the shots. I’ll be the one to tell you how I want it. When I want it. Where I want it. If I want it at all.” 

“You call the…what?” 

Ridley continued on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Unfortunately, biology doesn’t allow me to claim you guys, you’d still have to claim me, but we both know the connection goes both ways. Alphas force omegas into submission, but there was a time when they were equals. If you truly believe that’s true, then put your money where your mouth is.” 

Titus ran his fingers through his hair. “That’s…I don’t…You want us to answer to you?” 

Ridley rolled his eyes. “I’m not asking to run your operation, genius. I’m asking you to treat me like an equal, even if the world thinks I’m only your pack omega.” 

Titus shook his head. “I can’t just…agree to that. The others will never go along with it. And I can’t have some omega coming in here and rocking the boat.” 

Ridley had no idea where his boldness came from, but he leaned up enough to press a lingering kiss on Titus’s lips, before pulling back enough to look into his eyes. “I already told you, alpha. I’m not here to rock the boat. I’m here to fucking sink it.”