CHANGE OF PLANS

'Doing whatever he wanted' equated to the bastard jerking them off together. It was all muscled, tangled alphas, cursing and performing a secret, foul ritual under the guise of getting warm.

It did what it needed to; their hearts got pumping and the two alphas warmed up. After it was over—quick as it had to be for lack of wanting their cocks to freeze off—they snuck a few breathless, guilty minutes just to come down from the high. Zakhar's actions with Matt increased Matt's inner turmoil each time. 

Said man gingerly vaulted over a rock, keenly aware of the sound of helicopter blades in the distance. "How come you're not sick?"

Cifer stiffened; however, the man kept moving without saying so much as a word all the same. 

Mattias made a face.

"... Why's that part of the shit you can't talk about?"

"Stop wasting your breath. I'm not made of momentum, Princess. Keep up."

Snap.

His painful jaw came together even tighter as they trudged through the deepening snow. Cifer was right; they needed to find the other man's blade, and Matt needed to conserve his heat. Monster of a supe though Calaway is, he's not some freak of nature. Making plasma to cut through metal probably knocked the other man down and out for the count, but knowing the blond, he was pretending to be fine. 

For both their sake. If Cifer ran out of momentum, they'd likely freeze to death out here.

"I can feel her. She's close."

"That's what she said," Matt partially tripped on a rock, grunting as he twisted to catch himself. 

Cifer's warm—not hot—hand reached out through his comically thick layers of random outfits to grip his forearm. "If you fall off the side of this cliff, I swear to fuck Matty!"

Okay, he laughed. The freezing air stripped his lungs raw. "I won't, I promise. Just… hell, why's it this cold, this early?"

"S'probably spreading." Cifer replied, releasing Matt before he returned to taking the lead through the jagged rocks. They'd climbed a few dozen feet up the side of the cliff, as per Cifer's mojo, telling him where to go.

"What is?"

"What else? The nuclear winter."

"… Damn that war."

Simple, to the point, and not at all anything he wanted to think about. Mattias had been struggling to keep himself together since that PTSD flashback—made worse and into a brand new kind of mental hell by the rot—tossed him around on the train. 

"It got us what we needed. Besides, I—" 

Cifer froze, and Mattias instinctively followed suit. 

"—can feel her." Cifer extended out his arm.

The dark-haired man knew better than to hang around, so he backed up and hid his chilled fingers under his arm. "You sure calling her is a good idea? What if she causes a landslide?"

Too late. The sound of rocks and snow cracking from somewhere further away and just above them echoed dangerously off the cliffs. Irritated and alarmed by Cifer's constant recklessness, Matt reached out and gripped the man's shoulder, but to no avail. 

The sound of land crumbling and crashing in on itself was something akin to the twisted, ugly explosion of a train careening off the side of a mountain he'd heard last night. Matt wedged himself as close to the cliff as he could, just as a flaming hunk of metal exploded through a few more boulders and slammed into Cifer's palm so hard, the man almost lost his footing entirely. 

Matt shoved himself off the rocks he'd been using for support and entwined his arm around Cifer's. Yanking the man back onto stable ground, a section of rock under Cifer's feet came crumbling out from under him just as Matt did. 

Staying here was a stupid idea. The pair took one look at each other before they leapt from the side of the cliff. Cifer tossed his blade toward the ground as they fell, keeping his grip on Matt's arm. Cifer's jaw jutted out as a bead of rare sweat fell over his brow, and after some delay, his blade turned back and flew back up to meet them. 

It landed under Zak's feet, the surrounding air exploding with steam when heated momentum met displaced snow. It's not as though the blond could fly on his blade; not really, but it was enough to get them out of range of the slide and break their fall into something less deadly and far more manageable. 

The men rolled as they landed, Matt's dizziness making his descent far less graceful of a landing. After a moment or two, a burst of frozen, snow-filled air smacked into the men and reduced their visibility down to zero. However, after some agonizing heartbeats, the snow settled around them, as did the thunderous cry of the mountain caving in on itself. 

Weakened arms pushed his body up and out of the snow; that deep, unpleasant cold made its home inside his belly again. A coughing fit overtook every other function of his body, and for a while, he remained unable to speak. 

"... Zak?"

Lord, he hated calling him that. But he hated the fact that it was getting easier to do so even more. 

"Here," the man said. 

Warm fingers gripped under his arm, hauling him to his feet. "... You don't think the Kremlin heard that, do you?"

Cifer laughed, clinging to that all-too familiar blade like it was some kind of lifeline. Now that Matt was up close, it was almost terrifying how little that thing had changed. 

Except the handle. As the larger alpha flipped his blade over in both his hands to assess any damage, Matt caught sight of a strange, circular indentation he didn't recall. 

"We need to get moving."

"What, now? Their air support will be all over this place in the next ten minutes, and you're a fucking beacon of light out here with how hot you are on infrared."

"Yeah, now."

Dread weighed him down enough to give him pause. 

"You aren't trying to get us caught on purpose, are you?"

"Pick your poison, Princess. I'm picking mine."

"What the fuck does that even mean?"

"... Some things are worse than the Kremlin."

Okay, fuck no. Matt got up in Cifer's face with the left side of his mouth twisted up in a snarl. "You did it on purpose!"

"Yeah. I did. Fuck, it's like you forgot you're a war prisoner. We're not going back to the ruins. I have my orders. You have yours. We're meeting up with Kremlin, and that's fina—"

CRACK! 

Matt hit him without thinking. To be fair, all of this felt like a kind of gas lighting whiplash he just couldn't tolerate. But he knew damn well he was starting a fight he couldn't win; he was just venting. 

The pommel of a blade sinking into his belly so hard he dry heaved was sign enough of that. 

"Hrk–"

"Shut the fuck up and listen to me!"

That abyssal, haunting, baritone sound again. Paired with being stunned and winded, Matt stumbled slightly as Cifer grabbed his wrist and tugged him in close. The man bent over at what looked to be an uncomfortable angle, just to get in Matt's face. 

"Listen this time. I said there are some things worse than the Kremlin."

Gears turned. Slowly, but they did. His shoulders fell, anger dissipating around him, devoured by the icy air that did nothing but make him miss Guise even more. 

"... Lev wasn't following orders when he tried to take us to the palace, was he?" Matt replied in Russian.

Cifer's body language relaxed considerably—the bastard's grip on his wrist went lax swiftly after. 

"No."

"He betrayed you?"

"Yes."

Matt dragged a gloved hand across his slightly hidden face, behind several hoods. "... So, what, meeting up with the Kremlin is our safer option?"

Cifer looked like he swallowed a bird.

The smaller alpha spat off to the side, shaking himself free of Cifer's grip. "This thing keeping you from talking pissing me off."

Laughter. But it wasn't at all a pleasant sound. It sent an unfamiliar stab of fear coursing through his veins. Dark eyes searched Cifer's slightly dull expression for a hint of what fucked up rancor could have made him sound like that, but he found nothing. 

"You could just let me walk away. Tell them I died and burned up in the crash."

"That's not an option."

"Yes, it is!"

"It isn't!" that hand came darting back out again, balling itself up in Matt's clothes. 

He got dragged away at the whims of an overgrown man child like a fucking rag-doll. 

"Let me go, you prick!" 

Struggling did nothing but make his feet drag through the slurry of snow and rock.

Zak made no move to stop. "You're a prisoner. You're here to do a goddamn job, and you're gonna do it. We're going to Izhevsk."

With the way Cifer kept flopping from thought to thought like a fish, Matt briefly wondered if the man was already sick with the rot. Crazy as the traitor was acting; if the man didn't know any better, it was some kind of obvious cry for help. 

But nah, Cifer Calaway never needs help. According to him, anyway. Matt severely doubted how accurate that statement was as he practically gave up trying to regain his dignity and let the other man just drag him around like a toddler. 

One more drop in the bucket of things that are pissing off his inner alpha. It was getting full again. He would probably have another outburst soon; a man can only take so much before his need to be dominant takes over. 

And the faint, constant, feverish sensation leaving him in a constant state of low arousal told him he probably had about a week left before his rut hit full force.