Work Text:
Everything hurt.
Lambert whirled away from the sword coming at his side, unbalancing for a moment before he could get his feet set. He raised his dull practice sword barely in time to block the sword coming for his exposed back and shoved it back.
Someone shouted, but Lambert had long lost the ability to understand words. His world had narrowed to three things: staying on his feet, keeping his opponent’s sword in sight, and maintaining the stranglehold on his scent.
He could smell himself, of course. Even the oldest and most disciplined Wolves couldn’t lock down their heat scent entirely, but it was barely a whiff, even with the sweat soaking through his layers.
On the Path, a Wolf omega in heat was expected to minimize their scent, win the fight, and get somewhere safe to ride out the rest of their heat. To prepare, a Wolf omega in heat in Kaer Morhen had to give their all for half a training session before the trainers would give them leave.
By the shortness of the shadow from his sword, Lambert was pretty sure this session had gone longer than usual.
It should’ve been no surprise his all wasn’t good enough for them.
The sword swung toward his arm, and he twisted out of the way, slipping again. Either the courtyard pavers weren’t fully clear of ice or, more likely, his legs were giving up. They’d been shaking since he’d run the hardest obstacle course three times in a row, or maybe four, a little after sunrise. He cast Quen as he caught himself on his other fingertips, pressing back to his feet. His pelvis clenched in agony at the sudden movements, but he dropped the sign and raised his sword. His signs had been weakening with the rest of him.
He took the offensive, slashing and stabbing toward the sword trying to hurt him. It felt like he was moving through syrup, but he drove it back, swords clanging as they met again and again. Maybe the vibrations down his arm and aching shoulder would be painful another time, but Lambert’s definition of agony had changed over the hours of his gut churning like it was trying to destroy itself.
The sword moved back two paces and hovered, waiting for an opening, waiting for him to make a mistake. His chest heaved with each breath, far too fast, and his face was slick, but he couldn’t focus on all of that too.
Three things: feet, sword, scent.
Someone shouted.
Lambert managed another breath before the sword moved right, then twirled through a feint and caught him on the opposite arm. Pain flared, and his scent bloomed for a moment before he locked it down again and moved back on the attack. Twisting and lunging, he flew through steps that had been drilled into him from the moment he stepped foot in this gods-forsaken Keep. The sword knew all of the counters, knew them far better than Lambert could with only one year on the Path to his name, but it didn’t matter.
He just had to keep moving.
If he hadn’t earned his reprieve already, it wouldn’t be coming. His movements were getting sloppier with every bout, and if he could tell, it was a fucking miracle he hadn’t been knocked to the ground a dozen more times, but what were bruises when his body boiled from the inside out.
He shook his sweat-drenched hair from his eyes and pressed his advantage, slashing, stabbing, meeting blade against blade again and again.
It didn’t matter if he managed to win this bout.
Another would follow.
Then another.
He’d lost the moment he’d woken up, burning with his first true heat in an otherwise empty room.
Shit, he’d lost when he’d survived his first year on the Path. When he’d been the one of their cohort to survive the last Trial. When the shitstains calling themselves trainers had decided his anger was worth punishing, as if that didn’t feed his anger in turn.
Voltehre and sheer spite had kept him going for as long as they could, but now—
His sword drooped, too heavy for his trembling muscles. His opponent’s sword kept its trajectory, an overhead swing he had dodged countless times only this morning, but his legs refused to move. Desperate, he reached deep.
Something tore up his abdomen, wrenching up his chest, stealing his breath, as he threw everything he had into one last Quen.
The shield flickered, barely visible, but there was no time to panic. The sword smashed into it, slamming Lambert to his knees with the force, and the shield—
The shield exploded.
The sword and the opponent wielding it flew backwards into the stone wall. The blast shoved the closest witchers in their own sparring bouts away, leaving Lambert in the center of a gap in the crowd.
He swayed on his knees. He’d forgotten there were others in the courtyard. How could he have forgotten?
He opened his mouth, then crumpled sideways. Someone might have shouted, but he blacked out before his head could hit the ground.
—
Everything still hurt.
The bed was a nice change, though.
He kept up the short, even breaths of sleep and tried to isolate his pains. He was thirsty as fuck, though maybe not as bad as he’d expected. His muscles were weak but not yet sore, though his head ached like a blacksmith had taken a hammer to it. Someone had gone through the effort of wiping his face, and he’d been stripped down to his inner-most layers. It was still too much with the heat still burning through him, but waking up naked would’ve been worse.
As if triggered by his thoughts, a sharp, stabbing cramp ripped through his core. He rolled onto his side, curling up and hissing through his teeth.
“Try pressing in and up below your naval.”
Lambert’s eyes flew open even as he obeyed. The pressure took the sharpest edge off the pain, making it easier to breathe through the cramp and to focus on Gweld. The beta sat on the floor with his back against the door to the corridor, his forearms draped over his knees, leaving his empty hands dangling. He still wore at least some of his armor, but he was also as far from Lambert’s bed as anyone could be.
“Good. Rippling your fingers might help too,” Gweld said, “and there’s water beside you when you’re ready.”
Lambert rolled his eyes up, and sure enough, someone— Gweld, it seemed— had filled his pitcher and goblet as well as an unfamiliar bowl with a damp cloth hanging from the lip. Once the cramp passed, he struggled upright, leaning heavily against the cool stone wall.
With one hand idly massaging his abdomen, he forced himself to take slow sips of the warm water. It soothed his throat and eased the worst of his headache, but it didn’t give him any answers.
He’d spoken to Gweld three, maybe four, times outside of sparring or lessons. He couldn’t remember the first time, but they’d spent one pleasant evening critiquing Geralt’s gwent strategy just on the edge of his hearing.
It’d been easy. Fun, even. And a little too much like it had been with Voltehre, back before, that he'd buried himself in a bottle for a week.
So Lambert didn’t exactly avoid him, but he didn’t not either.
He set down the nearly-empty goblet. “Wha’ happened?”
Gweld’s grin was broad and so fucking sharp. “You started a frenzy.”
Lambert stared dumbly, then shook his head. “Those’re a myth.”
Even if frenzies were real, the idea that he could stir up the alphas so much they’d fight over him was laughable.
“A couple dozen witchers will say otherwise now. When you dropped, every witcher in the yard got punched with mid-heat scent and intense omegan distress. Nearly all the alphas, some of the omegas, and even a few betas”—Gweld smirked at him—”lost their shit.”
Lambert refilled the goblet and stared at it. A polite person would ask who had gotten hurt, because surely someone would have, if the alphas had turned that rage on each other or, with any luck, on the trainers. He could ask how badly he’d hurt his last sparring partner—whoever that was behind the sword— but no one had ever accused him of being polite.
Gweld dropped his eyes and cocked his head, clearly listening to something on the other side of the door, then his mouth twitched with a small smile. When he looked at Lambert, he almost looked embarrassed. “Eskel’s getting ahead of himself, but he wants you to know there’s food out there when you’re ready.”
“Ahead of himself?” Lambert asked, rubbing his forehead. His heat symptoms had eased, being back in his own space, but his mind struggled to keep up.
“Your heat’s more than half over, I’d guess,” Gweld said gently, and Lambert nodded. He’d gone to bed early the previous night, not realizing why until he’d woken well before midnight already in heat. “I can leave you alone or stay right here, if you’d prefer, although I guess you’ve noticed true heats hit harder than juvenile ones.”
Lambert snorted and rubbed absently at the twinging pain in his abdomen.
His juvenile heats, every other winter from eleven or so onwards, had made him a little flushed and want to be held for a few hours. Comparing the two was like saying the lizards that snuck into the Keep didn’t hit as hard as a full-grown wyvern.
“But if you want some help, me…” Gweld reached up and knocked a knuckle against the door near his ear. “Eskel, Geralt— any or all. Your choice who and what, I swear it.”
Lambert’s mouth dropped open, and he quickly took a sip from the goblet to hide it. Had Geralt and Eskel posted themselves outside of his room to protect him?
More likely, they hadn’t wanted to leave Gweld alone with him. Maybe even now they were sitting on the other side of the door trying to catch snatches of Gweld’s scent through the cracks, trying to sooth the mess Lambert’s fucking frenzy had made of their instincts.
Everyone knew the three of them were nearly inseparable, the perfect alpha-beta-omega trio.
But Gweld had said—
“All?” Lambert asked.
Gweld raised his eyebrows. “Is that a question?”
Lambert set down the goblet and stretched the aches in his trembling legs.
He wanted someone to rub his lower back. He wanted to be held, hot hairy skin against even hotter skin, the sharp scent of familiar, maybe even trusted witchers pressed into him.
He wanted something to be fucking easy for once.
He nodded sharply. “All.”