Chapter Text
Taehyung loved being an omega.
Scratch that.
He loved being an omega when he wasn’t surrounded by asshole alphas. And therein lay the problem.
Tae wasn’t sure what had gone wrong with alpha wiring, but he was so done with it. Since when did being protective warrant being controlling? Since when did providing a safe space become bullying and hoarding an omega away from all others?
Since when did love become poison?
Taehyung wasn’t ashamed of being an omega, like many of his friends in the pack, who latched onto the first alpha to treat them halfway decent and realized a few years later they were attached at the hip for life to an asshole.
Taehyung wasn’t ashamed to admit he enjoyed being taken care of. He liked being looked after, praised. He liked the idea of having someone be there for him over anyone else. But no alpha in his pack were worthy of his attention.
Which led to Taehyung turning twenty, still unmated and suffering through his heats with just his omegan best friend Jimin helping him, while most alphas and omegas in the pack were mated by eighteen.
Taehyung sighed bitterly and kicked his feet in the cold water of the stream, perched on his favorite boulder that caught the late afternoon autumn sunlight just right, warming his cheeks and shoulders. His hair was a unique silvery grey that glinted in the sun, his skin darker than his packmates due to his penchant for wandering through the territory during long, lonely days. His leather vest and breeches, worn and comfortable, fit his leanly muscled frame well.
“Knew I’d find you out here,” came a voice from over his shoulder.
Taehyung didn’t bother to look around, bringing his knees to his chest and hugging them. “Go away, Jiminie.”
A snort was the only reply.
A warm body settled beside his, pressed shoulder to shoulder. Despite himself, Taehyung leaned into the contact with a halfhearted sigh, resting his cheek on his knee to look at his best friend.
“What are you doing out here? Yoongi will be looking for you.”
“No, he won’t, because Yoongi doesn’t keep me on a leash,” replied Jimin dryly, stroking a soothing hand through Taehyung’s hair. Tae’s best friend looked as pretty as ever, his light pink hair groomed neatly back from his forehead. Endearingly chubby cheeks, short muscled frame. His mating bite was a beautiful scar on the left side of his neck. “I’m proud of you, you know.”
Taehyung laughed, but there was no amusement in the sound. “For disobeying and not servicing that nasty forty-year-old alpha during his rut? The head alpha’s going to kick my ass. Or exile me.”
“No, he won’t,” shot back Jimin, raising his chin stubbornly. “Yoongi won’t let that happen.” As chief hunter, Yoongi held quite a bit of sway in the alpha’s council. “Besides, everyone loves you. Head alpha would be facing a rebellion if he punished you.”
“I just couldn’t do it.” Taehyung’s voice was soft, so soft, and trembled at the edges. “I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to help with his rut, I don’t like him—”
“Shh,” murmured Jimin, bundling his best friend close. Taehyung buried his face in his shoulder and sniffed back tears, refusing to cry.
Taehyung loved being an omega.
Just not all the time.
-
When the pair of omegas returned to the heart of their territory, to the huts lining the village square, Taehyung stumbled a little.
“Taehyung?” Jimin caught him, concerned. Then he felt Tae’s forehead in a motherly way. “You’re burning up. Shit, your heat.”
“It’s not due for another two weeks,” whined Taehyung, but he felt the burning warmth start coiling low in his belly.
“It’s okay, you’ll be okay.” Jimin bundled him close, wrapped a comforting arm around Tae’s waist as he turned them north. “Let’s get you to a heat hut. I can break out the new toys I made?”
Despite the heat crawling in his bones, his cock stirring in his breeches, Taehyung managed to laugh breathlessly. “You always treat me so well.”
“Ride or die.” They locked pinkies together and took turns kissing them, renewing the promise they had made as pups.
A distant voice hailed them. They looked around, Tae struggling to focus. The head alpha approached at the head of half a dozen others, Yoongi trailing them. Jimin’s mate looked angry, his mouth a thin line, face tense beneath his blonde hair as he scowled.
The head alpha was a towering male, enormous muscles bulging beneath his leathers, scarred from years of fights and territorial disputes. Long flowing grey hair framed his grizzled face.
“Omega Taehyung,” he barked. “Hold.”
Tae and Jimin froze, terrified to disobey.
“You disobeyed my orders and refused to serve Alpha Ankor during his rut,” their leader growled, pausing within a foot of the frozen omegas. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Sir, he’s in preheat, he’s not able—” Jimin whined.
“Silence,” he hissed, half-raising a hand. Jimin and Taehyung both flinched and Yoongi released a rumbling growl.
“You will not raise a hand to my mate,” growled Yoongi, stepping forward. The other alphas stared at him in astonishment as he went toe to toe with their leader. Challenging the head alpha simply wasn’t done.
The head alpha stared Yoongi down. Then he snarled, his outburst silencing the camp. Yoongi bore the full brunt of his alpha voice, sending him to his knees with a grimace of pain as his instincts forced him to obey.
“Yoongi!” cried Jimin, terrified. He had never seen his mate forced to submit.
The head alpha strode for the omegas and bared his teeth at Jimin, who immediately backed away so furiously he fell to the grass. Then he grabbed Taehyung by the neck. “I will not have disobedient omegas in my pack,” he hissed, gripping Tae so hard he choked, hands scrabbling and scratching at his wrists.
Taehyung was dragged into a heat hut by the neck, struggling to breathe, struggling to think through the haze of his heat. He felt completely helpless as he was stripped bare, as he was thrown down to the cold dirt, no blankets put beneath him for comfort.
As the alphas tied his wrists to posts in the wall.
“No,” cried Taehyung, tears streaming down his face. Slick had just started to flow from him, and he felt empty, so empty. So lost. “No, no, no, please.”
“You will endure your heat alone,” the head alpha commanded, as the others streamed out of the hut. “Alone, without help. This is punishment for your disobedience. The next time I order you to help one of my alphas with his rut, you will obey, you pathetic excuse for an omega.”
The wood door slammed shut behind him.
Taehyung cried, writhing on the floor. His wrists were tied higher to the wall than was comfortable, his arms stretched to their breaking point, but he couldn’t stand up and alleviate the stretch, his legs wouldn’t support him. His slick flowed onto the floor as he sobbed desperately to be filled, unable to use even his own fingers to soothe the pain. His cock lay erect against his stomach, aching in the air, throbbing and painful.
Taehyung had never felt so alone. Taehyung had never felt such pain.
-
Three days.
For three days Taehyung lay chained to the wall, deprived of any touch to soothe his pain, deprived of food and water, deprived of all company. In his more lucid moments he worried desperately for Yoongi and Jimin.
The rest of the pack could go to hell for all he cared.
His uncontrollable writhing on that floor had made the bindings around his wrist cut deep into his skin, blood flowing down his arms. As his heat broke just before dawn on the third day, his sanity returned, and his eyes dried of tears. A hard look came over his face as he looked up at his tied wrists, and began to yank and twist them. The pain was unbearable but practically nothing in the wake of the agony he had suffered. The blood made his hands slippery, just enough that he was able to slip one hand loose. It throbbed as blood flow returned when he yanked and struggled with the other knots.
Soon he was free.
He scrambled to his feet, falling more than once before his weakened, starved body would support his weight. He slid out of the hut, noting the pair of alphas sitting nearby with their backs to the hut as if guarding him. Or preventing his escape, preventing Jimin and Yoongi from getting to him.
Pathetic excuses for alphas, the both of them. To leave an omega tied up and alone in that condition…
Taehyung cut off that train of thought and slipped away towards the trees, his scent obscured by the thick musk of his heat in the air. He slipped through the trees just on the edge of the forest like a wraith, dodging pockets of dying moonlight, listening to the birds beginning their morning songs.
Emerging from the trees behind Yoongi and Jimin’s cabin, set a ways away from the village square as Yoongi hated the rest of the pack with a fervor that rivaled the pair of omega’s, Tae scented the air. Both Yoongi and Jimin were inside, with no others around.
Taehyung hastened for the front door and opened it barely wide enough to slip inside. He tiptoed to the side of the enormous hay-stuffed pallet that served as the mated pair’s bed, and poked at Jimin’s shoulder.
“Jiminie,” he whispered.
Jimin rolled over from his position curled up against Yoongi, blinking up at Taehyung. Yoongi was already awake, eyes peering at Tae in the predawn darkness without the faintest hint of surprise.
There were tear tracks drying on Jiminie’s face. Tae’s heart clenched.
“Oh, Jiminie.”
“Taehyung? Oh my god.” Jimin scrambled up to hug him, seizing him desperately around the neck and stifling sobs in his neck. “I’m so sorry, we tried to stop them…”
“Shh, shh, I’m okay,” lied Taehyung through his teeth, hugging his friend hard. “I just came to say goodbye.”
Jimin drew back, eyes wide. “Taehyung—”
“I’m leaving,” he cut him off firmly, decision made. “I don’t care how dangerous it may be out there, anything’s better than here. I just wanted to tell you goodbye first.”
Jimin stared at him. Then suddenly rolled his eyes. “You idiot. First you get yourself out of there without letting us rescue us then you just announce you’re heading off on your own—”
Yoongi rolled to his feet while his mate was speaking, and snatched up two leather satchels from where they’d been stored in a hole beneath one of the stones ringing their fire pit. He drew on clean leathers then similarly dressed his mate, who was still berating an open-mouthed Taehyung.
Yoongi glanced at a stunned Taehyung. “We’re going with you, kid,” he announced gruffly, as he and Jimin both shouldered a pack.
Jimin stomped over and dumped a bucket of chilled water over Taehyung’s head without ceremony, ignoring Taehyung’s yelp as he began furiously scrubbing him down with clean cloths.
“You think you can just show up here in the middle of the night—”
“It’s almost dawn, actually,” drawled Yoongi, peering out the window.
“Semantics,” his mate shot back, toweling a cowed Taehyung down. “And think you can leave, just like that, head off on your own with no idea where to go, on your own with no protection?”
“Um.” Taehyung cowered under Jimin’s fierce glare. “Yes?”
“We’re going with you,” repeated Yoongi. He glanced at Taehyung and smirked. “We were going to come get you soon as dawn rose and your heat broke but, well. Looks like you beat us to it.”
Jimin continued muttering under his breath, but his hands were infinitely gentle as they bandaged Tae’s wounded wrists then dressed him in fresh leathers. Then Taehyung was pulled into a suffocating hug.
“Scared me,” muttered Jimin into his ear, shaking a little. “Seriously scared me.”
“I’m okay,” Tae murmured back, and this time, he meant it. “We’ll be okay.”
“Let’s go,” encouraged Yoongi, striding for the door. “We have to beat the morning patrol.”
“The night patrol will be coming back, though.” Taehyung followed his friends out into the cool morning air, body protesting weakly but he ignored it.
“That’s why we’re giving them a distraction.” Yoongi reached out and eased Jimin against him, murmuring something in his ear before kissing him, soft and sweet. Then the alpha withdrew a stone and flint and crouched at the corner of their hut, where a pile of kindling had been laid.
Jimin moved to curl into Taehyung’s side, sniffling as Yoongi struck the flint and sparked the match, the kindling catching quickly. As flames rose to lick against the wall, Taehyung shook his head.
“Jiminie, your home…”
Yoongi had built it for them, three years ago, when Jimin turned seventeen and accepted his proposal after two years of courting. They had been destined for each other, it seemed to Taehyung. Both Tae and Jimin were orphans, parents lost in a deadly vampire attack when they were still young pups. Yoongi, a little older, had taken them under his wing,
even as they grew older and it became clear that Tae and Jimin would present as lowly omegas. But even as a pup, Taehyung recognized the look in Yoongi’s eye when he looked at the pink-haired omega. And he recognized the importance when Jimin presented, and the omega began to look back.
And now they were watching their home burn.
“Jimin,” Taehyung whispered, eyes round with emotion as he glanced from Jimin, to Yoongi. “Yoongi. You didn’t have to do this. This is your home.”
Yoongi put an arm around Jimin’s waist, then suddenly slung his other around Taehyung’s neck and pulled him close. He shook them both a bit. “No, this is my family. And no one lays hands on my family.” He let them go, hitched up the bag on his shoulder. “We’ll find a better home.”
-
It wasn’t as easy as that.
The September weather was perfect for traveling, not too hot during the day, brisk at night, but Taehyung’s body hadn’t recovered from his heat. He felt weak, muscles shaky, and though Jimin and Yoongi were supportive and traveled at his pace, he felt like he was holding them back. They couldn’t risk slowing down, not when the head alpha would be sending patrols after them. Omegas were too valuable to lose, even mated ones.
So Taehyung pushed, and pushed, and pushed, traveling miles each day through the forest towards the distant mountains. Things got easier when he recovered enough from his injuries and heat exhaustion and was able to shift. His silvery white wolf covered miles more easily, strength flowing through his four paws. He jogged in formation behind his friends, Jimin keeping his fluffy butterscotch coat constantly pressed to Yoongi’s grey and white fur, their satchels slung over their backs and resting between their shoulder blades.
One night seven days into their journey, Yoongi brought them to an exhausted halt at the foot of a monstrous oak tree, the dirt beneath it eroded away from the autumn rains, forming a decently sized burrow beneath the exposed roots. Jimin slid into it and collapsed on his side in the dirt, panting hard. Yoongi sat beside him and licked him between the ears, whining a little.
Taehyung took it upon himself to shift, every muscle in his body aching and throbbing as he straightened up on two legs with a wince. He snapped some loose bark off a nearby tree and went to the side of the tiny creek nearby. It was choked with leaves and branches but Taehyung was able to fill the makeshift bowl. He slaked his thirst before his body could collapse, panting gratefully, then refilled it and took it to his friends. Yoongi head-butted him in an affectionate thanks before pushing his exhausted mate towards it. Taehyung made the trip four times before his friends’ thirst was slaked, then shifted back, more comfortable in wolf form.
He curled up in a ball outside the makeshift den, allowing his friends some privacy, signaling to Yoongi with a low bark that he would take first watch. So far there had been no signs of them being followed but Yoongi wanted them to make it clear to the mountains, far away from their old pack, before they relaxed their vigilance.
Taehyung huffed out a long breath, allowing his muscles to relax, but kept his tired eyes open and scanning the trees around them as he listened to his friends sleep.
-
Another two weeks passed, two weeks of never-ending trees and bathing in streams and eating berries and the last of the dried meat Yoongi had packed. There was no time to hunt or lay traps, not at their pace. They lost weight, all three of them, Jimin more than the others. The pink-haired omega had been taken care of for the past five years by Yoongi, tucked safely in their beautiful hut by the tree line with constant food and water provided by his vigilant mate. Taehyung was a little more used to roughing it, living on the outskirts of the village, caring for himself.
Jimin’s paw pads began to crack and bleed late in that third week of their journey. The next day his fur began to thin, and the others could clearly see his rib cage. They were all gaunt and exhausted, and they couldn’t go on much longer. Yoongi was beside himself, never straying from Jimin’s side, constantly whining and nuzzling at him, urging him on as best he could.
And Taehyung felt like the worst person in the world, for allowing his friends to leave their home for him.
Wracked with guilt, Taehyung barely noticed when the ground beneath their feet began to climb, only realizing when they broke into a clearing in the woods and realized they had made it to the foothills of the mountain range.
Then Jimin collapsed.
Yoongi and Taehyung were at his side almost before he hit the ground, watching as Jimin shivered and panted, shivers wracking his malnourished frame. Yoongi whined and cried, mouthing at Jimin’s neck, distraught. Taehyung swiveled around, looking desperately for shelter, tree roots, a cave, anything to shelter his exhausted friend and allow them to recuperate.
But he caught a familiar scent upon the air.
And then all hell broke loose.