BLACK STAINS AND FIRE

He fucked up. 

As the smaller Alpha caught his breath, panic slowly sank in—Cifer still hadn't released his knot. And while, yes, he'd heard that blowing a knot outside of someone and not putting pressure on it for a while after would induce pain, the longer the blond had his hand soaked in Matt's blackened seed, the more likely he was to get infected. 

"... Fuck, you gotta let go—"

"Shut up."

"No, I'm serious! You're gonna get sick. If you die, it's from my teeth in your throat, not you drowning without so much as touching water. Let go!"

"... You're real fuckin' high maintenance, you know that?"

But those warm, wet, silken fingers around the root of his cock eased up, regardless. Mattias felt his body go rigid as a choked hiss of pain shot through his teeth—all at once, Cifer stopped what he was doing and returned the pressure. 

"I'm fine, just—"

"I don't have any cuts on my hand. Besides, my insides are literally boiling. It'll be hard for me to get sick."

PAMF.

Matt's face met the mattress. Why the fuck were they even arguing about this right now? More importantly, why did Cifer even fucking care?? He'd been the one who damn near killed Matt when they were small. He could still remember what it felt like to have a blade impaling itself through his chest. 

This fucker didn't care about the pain he caused him back then. He wanted him to die. So why was he getting up in arms about… this, of all things? He didn't have time to think. If they weren't careful, they'd get caught. Didn't Lev say they were about forty minutes out from the ruins? 

Matt turned his cheek to breathe. 

"How long until we can move?"

"You're kidding, right? You—wait. Total bitch of a virgin. I forgot."

"Cifer!"

"Zakhar."

Matt squeezed Cifer's knot a little tighter. The blond stiffened up and, in Matt's mind, retaliated by making himself heavier. 

"What happens when Lev slams back in here, or the authorities come looking for our papers??"

Cifer's body eased up. "There's a shower in here."

"Okay. Then get the fuck off me and let's go use it." 

"It's gonna hurt like hell, and you're a pussy."

Matt was about to use his free hand to inflict some kind of damage to the larger alpha's face, but when he went to move, he realized Cifer's fingers were still entwined with his. It made his throat thick with confusion and loathing; what the fuck was happening right now? 

Nothing that made sense. This had to be some kind of sick strategy to give him Stockholm or something. That idea was stupid—it wasn't working. This changed nothing. If Cifer wanted Matt tripping over himself after him, he would get used to disappointment.

"Let go."

Matt wasn't a fool; he knew better than anyone that using his alpha voice on Cifer would just make things a hundred times worse than they already were. But that didn't stop him from getting damn close. At first, the brute grew tense above him, but after ages of non-compliance with Matt's request, the other alpha released him. 

Oh shit, that hurts! As soon as Cifer's warmth was missing from his knot, Matt had to swallow a cry. 

"... You gonna let go or what, Princess?" 

Smooth and abyssal, Mattias grew dizzy from his own scent mixing with Cifer's and the brush of his lips against the shell of his ear. Let go? Of what? 

Cifer's inflated knot throbbed under his hands in a fashion that suggested his member may be coming back to life. With a curse, Matt carefully let Cifer go, but as soon as he knew he wasn't fucking things up even more, he yanked his entire arm away. Once again, he found himself swimming in hot caramel campfire and something so distinctly Cifer that he suddenly felt intoxicated. 

Matt almost chased after his inhuman heat and solid frame as the man lifted off him, but he'd kept his body perfectly still. With a brisk sound between his teeth, Cifer awkwardly got himself off that tiny bunk and stood properly. Matt's eyes shot to the other man's hands instantly to see which one got contaminated. 

Thick, sticky black threads soaked Cifer's right hand, staining him with Matt's scent and that void black he associated with himself. For a moment, both he and Cifer stared, stunned into a twisted silence as the weight of their sin came crashing down on them all at once. The alpha in him was more than satisfied; it was like he finally got Cifer back for everything he'd done to dominate him since they arrived. 

But the logical side of Matt knew this was bad. Extremely, undeniably awful. Still, it was like he won an unspoken victory. Shoving himself up and off the mattress, Mattias hissed with pain and had to grab his own knot to keep it from jarring too harshly. However, he did so with his cum-soaked hand and only ended up making things even more muddled up. Cifer's scent slid like liquid velvet down his shaft—exactly where it aught not to be.

"... Fuck, you look cum drunk," there was a look of awe on Cifer's face. Matt shot him a dirty look and flipped him the bird with his free hand. 

"I'm an alpha. That's not a thing."

"Whatever you say."

Deliberately ignoring the blond's shitty comment, Mattias slowly stood himself up. His body, ginger to the touch, barely felt like cooperating with him. Feet hitting the ground, Matt shifted into a full body cringe. That bed was totalled. Completely ruined. A massive spot of black stained through the blankets—all the way down to the sheets—and likely permeated through the mattress itself. 

But he didn't have time to be upset about that. Matt reached his clean hand out and shoved at Cifer's shoulder without looking at him. "Shower."

"This place smells so—"

"Shower!"

They'd figure out how to get the scent of sex and alpha off everything after Matt made sure Cifer wasn't catching the rotting blight. Said blond grumbled something, his shoulders falling just enough to perk up Matt's senses in his peripherals before the bastard wandered over to the bathroom. He opened the sliding door, and the pair of them stepped inside. 

… § … 

Matt spent almost the entirety of the remaining trip scrubbing the stains off Cifer's arm. The alpha said nothing, nor did anything, either. He stood there, watching Matt work like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Fucking prick. Even the antiseptic scrub was just barely enough to soak them both in the sickly scent of a too-clean hospital. Good thing, too. 

Because if they both walked out of there smelling the way they did, Matt wasn't sure this mystical 'Bogdanov' name would protect them from the consequences. That said, everything went just fine until Cifer decided how he was going to deal with the mattress and the smell in the room.

Cifer's solution to the fact that the room smelled like sex and cum was to set it on fire. Because of course it was. 

Matt couldn't argue—the fire spread quickly with the help of Cifer's momentum. They kept the window shut for as long as they could until the haze started making him choke. The smell of uncontrolled burning fabric and thick, black smoke fried the scent of absolutely everything in the room; the two alphas included. But it was better to be safe than sorry, he supposed.

Familiar faces of the men guarding them appeared to save the day once a fire alarm went off. Nobody seemed surprised. Then again, this was Cifer they were talking about. He probably did this all the time. 

Wait, got off with other alphas all the time, or started fires to cover things up? Physically shaking the thought from his mind, Mattias followed in a fresh outfit—they also had to burn the one he'd blown all over, and Cifer's fur coat—as he headed through the cars towards the exit. It was identical to the last one he wore. Lazy, if you asked him.

"Where's this 'Cradle' at, anyway?" Matt asked. 

He hadn't meant to. Maybe he was just overly confident after he'd spread himself all down Cifer's arm. Hang on, don't think about that—WHAP!

"Shut up, Pig. No one gave you permission to speak. Don't say that word so casually. Do you want to die?"

With a vice grip on his self control, Matt strangled his multiplying, insulting retorts in a pool of water before they could slip out of his mind and into reality. 

"No," he said. Easier to pretend he's sorry than to actually feel it. As they exited the train, Matt walked with an obvious limp—considering his fucked up knee, nobody questioned it. But Cifer had sent him an upturned, holier-than-thou smirk down the bridge of his nose. Knowing as it was, it almost had Matt planting his boot in the other man's ass.

Bastard. Matt's knot was inflated because of him, and he just—ugh! Now that he had a few shameful moments to think, Mattias was awash with confusion. Not even the sight of a barely constructed train station was enough to pull him out of his own thoughts on the matter. 

For a supposedly abandoned set of ruins, there sure were a fuckton of people. But they were as blobs, shifting through his peripherals. His actions—they had to have been the withdrawals from his hormone blockers. And his scent blockers. It was just… a physical response. Needed to be. Totally natural heat of the moment. If an omega had been there, he might have done the same. 

… Might? 

Matt's face collided with a powerful brick wall and he found himself eating fur for the millionth time. Men laughed like hyenas around him and Matt shirked away, brushing the fuzzy sensation from his cheeks. 

"What are you, his pet?"

"Alphas follow at the side, not the back. You walk like a bitch."

Okay, yeah. That was undoubtedly a blatant challenge to Matt's alpha authority. He may have been following at Cifer's heels, but that was just a subconscious habit he was falling back into. He used to do that all the time when they were kids.

But this? Wholly unacceptable. Matt's body flared with a blinding rage, vision tunneling as his now somewhat recognizable scent spiked with something ugly and burned. 

Cifer caught on before anyone else did. "Oh, fuck—"

CRACK!

Blood splattered from under his knuckles as his fist collided with the man who'd challenged him. Matt had enough. No more. He wasn't an omega, and his entire body screamed for retribution. None of the other guards stepped in; not even Cifer. This was a biological thing. They'd all seen and heard the man challenge Matt's alpha status to his face, and it was within Matt's legal rights to beat the shit outta him. 

So long as the offended party and the alpha that did the offending used no abilities, it was fair game. 

Matt flew into a Krav Maga stance and made himself light on his feet as a flurry of tight, rage-fueled blows met their mark. For the first few moments, he had the element of surprise. However, when the guard got kicked back and fell against his colleagues, they clapped his cheek and shouted for him to get his head out of his ass and back in the game. 

When the prick returned to the fight, the circle had grown massive, and a crowd was jeering at them. Surprise no longer registered in the other man's eyes. He came running at Matt so quickly, Mattias barely had the chance to roll out of the way. This guy probably wanted to tackle him. A common tactic of ending dominance fights was to get a man pinned on his stomach. 

Mattias wasn't gonna let that shit happen a second time today. Something painful and altogether wrong curled in his guts, and under his clothes, his abs flexed without him having done so.

The next few minutes went by in a blur of cracking fists, splitting blood vessels and alpha pheromones making the crowd increasingly aggressive. Matt threw as many punches as he took and spat as much blood as his offender bled. However, Matt had something this guy didn't—weeks of pent up alpha fury. For a few fleeting moments, Mattias swore he saw red as he brutally slammed his knee into the man's gut—cock shots were against the rules. So the belly it was.

After he'd doubled over, Matt grabbed him by either side of his head and forced his face to become one with his good knee. Teeth shattered, slicing Matt open in the process, but he didn't care if this one got infected. It was time to establish the pecking order, and Mattias Kohler wasn't going to be on the bottom. 

The bastard folded like a house of cards, collapsing to the floor in a bloody heap. Unable to stop himself, Matt got down onto his knees and began feeding him his fists—more and more iron-scented crimson painted him and his surroundings, and eventually, a pair of alphas had to drag Matt off. Elsewhere, they would have arrested him for the excessive violence of his dominance brawl. 

And yet, these people, the ones loitering about this ruined city; they cheered him on. Deafeningly so. Matt couldn't hear anything but the roar of his own blood pumping through his veins and the cries of overly excited, riled up spectators. Holy fuck, was that ever a rush. Something new planted itself deep inside him; something just as rotten as his core. 

Matt wanted to do that again. He didn't get any kick out of nearly killing a man just for offending him, but the desire to establish himself as an alpha was taking over every inch of his senses. Maybe his meds were leaving his system faster than he initially thought.

… § … 

They'd needed to take a rest at the station. Matt calmed himself enough to not need an alpha tank. It was like a drunk tank, but meant for enraged alphas who had to be isolated so they could cool off. A lingering stiffness to his shoulders and clench to his teeth told Matt he was still slightly strung up, so he waiting until he held little less tightness to his shoulders. It got easier as he sat in his corner and let his fingers drag through his—now clean for the second time in less than an hour— dark, damp locks. 

He'd bled again. Part of him wished his infection would just kill him already, because then at least he would be free of the constant humiliation of needing to be sanitized everywhere he went. And the threat of becoming ground zero for another outbreak. Authorities had dragged the man off, though no one from Lev's people seemed distraught about it. Local security knew of his likely contamination before they took him. 

"You done?" an English voice said. 

Matt looked up and caught Cifer's enchanting blue eyes. "Yeah."

"Feel better?"

"Yeah." Matt pushed himself up off the bench he'd been waiting at. "Lev isn't gonna make this a problem for me, is he?"

Cifer snorted. "Fuck no. You won the brawl, fair and square. Surprised it took you this long to snap. The others should treat you a little better now, too. You know. For an American, prisoner Pig.~."

"... You realize how dumb you sound when you say that?"

Cifer's jaw jutted as though he wanted to say something, but all his Adam's apple did was bob in his throat. 

"Whatever. Let's go. It's getting late and I don't feel like spending the night at a station."

"Youll sleep where I fucking tell you to sleep."

Ah. There it was. That abyssal snarl that sent hot shivers clawing up Matt's spine in ways that both pissed him off and made his heart beat faster in his chest. 

"Then where am I sleeping tonight?"

Cifer's eyes widened as he opened his mouth, then subsequently snapped it shut. "Fuck, you walk right into that gay shit, don't you? Can you start considering what comes outta your mouth before you say it?"

"Can you?"

"Shut your face. We're leaving." 

Mattias grunted out a sound of semi-acknowledgment as he stuffed his hands into his third change of pants and made his way to Cifer's side. He wasn't lost enough to repeat the same mistake. However, it was far more difficult to hide the pain in his groin whilst he moved. He'd also messed up his other knee, so Matt limped worse than before. As they wound their way through the station, he kept track of where they were going, what the people looked like around them, and how they looked at them as they moved. 

Cifer said this was villain org territory. That meant the rules, and the laws around here, were different. It wasn't just a lack of respect and senseless killing of innocent people—villain organizations were in direct defiance of the new supe world order. They actively spit on the Accords, and from what he understood about the way Guise explained it, they had their own culture, their own society, and their own way of governing it. 

Without knowing what to expect, Mattias was stepping into a whole other world, and he's about as blind and vulnerable as a newborn kitten. 

It didn't take them long to reach the exit of the train station. Not the one leading to the train platforms themselves, but the one that led to what looked like should have been a reclamation site access point. However, the security at the doors didn't bother looking at them, let alone checking their IDs. Lawless was right—Russia was nothing if not strict about bureaucracy, so this was a massive red flag

As they stepped outside and back into the increasingly bitter cold, snow crunched under Matt's feet. He said nothing while they hopped over all the caution tape and crossed a somewhat cleared section of the ruins—there, just across the way, looked to be the destroyed remnants of an old highway tunnel. 

Without a word, the men walked toward it. Mattias followed, glued to Cifer's side. It took some careful navigation to get through the debris, but once they reached the tunnel and went inside, it was obvious this wasn't just some old ruined passageway. Men in mechanized, nitranium super suits with anti-supe weapons and built in artillery lined the walls. Some stood at the ready with their weapons in their hands, others milled about as though they were on patrol. 

From a distance, it looked empty. But over here, there were dozens of people coming and going down what seemed to be some kind of underground access tunnel. Which felt impossible, but Matt's brain settled on the involvement of some kind of stealth tech. Either that, or an ability in use.

"What is—"

"Shh." Cifer reached into the pocket of his fur coat and started shuffling around with something. 

Fine. He could be quiet. When their party drew near to the tunnel entrance, the security around the place moved as though they meant to stop them. You know, until a couple noticed Cifer heading their way and they stiffened.

Whenever these men spoke, it was through a built-in speaker through their black, sleek and futuristic-looking helmets. "Master Bogdanov! We weren't expecting you."

"We're going down."

"Of course. Take the priority tunnel. Right this way," replied a security officer. 

Mattias said nothing. A strangely uneasy-feeling tunnel whisked them down to what essentially looked like a massive cart for tourists to leisurely explore a carnival ride. Only this one had a roof, walls, and a full-sized door. Someone opened it for them, and one by one, they stepped in. It was a bit of an agonizing struggle for him, but he hid it to the best of his abilities. 

Matt tried to take a seat beside anyone but Cifer, but the bastard grabbed his arm and subtly wrenched him into the seat next to him instead. He cringed as his knot was jotsled in the process. Fuck, he was lucky he had a coat to hide the fact that he'd popped a knot, or this would be seriously embarassing. Cifer was hiding his with another long, fur coat. The other man was wearing a new set of pants—gray sweat pants, now—and a black fur coat that reached almost to his ankles.

"Turbulence and anomalies have been getting worse lately," said a man who looked as though he might be an operator of some sort. He wasn't wearing a nitranium suit, just some sort of formal outfit that looked akin to a curious uniform. 

Fuck, it was dark down here. Faint, sputtering lights attracted bugs not wanting to die from the early snows. They buzzed with that fluorescent sound and it threatened to give Matt more of a headache than he already had. Spreading his legs a little wider with a wince, Matt attempted to get comfortable as the door shut and another strange tension filled the air. 

Upon further inspection, everyone directed their tension solely at him. With a couple hands moving to their weapons, Matt bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted rot and iron again. 

"You have got to be kidding me."

"No," Cifer said. The man brought a suspiciously wet rag out of his pocket and clamped it over Matt's mouth and nose before he could do anything. His hands attached themselves to Cifer's wrist, and without adequate warning, Mattias breathed in a sharp chemical smell. 

"Don't look at me like that. I already told you. We are not doing this shit again."

Matt's vision faded, but not before he could send Cifer, the mother of all nasty looks. 

"Relax. You won't be out for long. I promise."

Fuck Cifer Calaway and all his broken promises. Matt's arms fell limp, eyelids drooped, and he slumped forward. The last thing he saw was Cifer's arm coming out to catch him and his own ugly boots.