Men After Dark

I never meant to buy him.

The auction hall smelled of polished wood, expensive cologne, and the sharp, sweet scent of unclaimed omegas. Rows of high-backed chairs filled with pack leaders and their seconds stretched out in front of the raised platform. Female omegas stood under soft lights, heads bowed, wrists bound in silk that looked delicate and cost more than most wolves made in a year. Male alphas leaned forward in their seats, assessing hips and scent and the quiet promise of a future Luna.

I was supposed to be one of them.

Four years of carefully avoiding the subject. Four years of telling the council I was still mourning, still not ready, still searching for the right match. The truth was simpler and more dangerous: I had no interest in a female omega. I never had. The only person who had ever known that was buried under a white stone marker on the eastern ridge, a beta who had died with my name on his lips and my marks still fading on his throat.

I needed to be fucked. Needed it the way some men needed air. And I had spent four years pretending the ache did not exist.

Then they brought him out.

He was not on the main list. A late addition, the auctioneer said, voice carefully neutral. Male omega. Twenty-four. Unmated. High fertility markers. The room went still. Female alphas sat up straighter. Male alphas looked away or muttered under their breath. Male omegas were rare enough at these events. One this striking was almost unheard of.

He stood under the lights without bowing his head. Dark hair fell into his eyes. Broad shoulders. Lean muscle under the thin white shirt they had given him. And when his gaze swept the crowd and landed on me, something in my chest locked tight.

His scent hit a second later, warm, spiced, and so thick with pure omega heat that my cock twitched hard against my thigh. I gripped the arm of my chair and forced my face blank.

The bidding started low. A female alpha from the northern packs raised a hand. Another followed. The numbers climbed. I told myself I would stay silent. I told myself I would walk out and find another way to quiet the need that had been eating me alive since the war ended.

Then the omega looked at me again. Direct. Unflinching. And the corner of his mouth curved like he already knew.

I raised my hand.

The hall went dead quiet. Every head turned. My second, standing behind my chair, made a soft sound of pure shock. The auctioneer’s gavel hovered.

“Alpha Rhys of the Blackwood Pack bids fifty thousand,” the man said carefully.

A female alpha across the aisle laughed once, sharp and disbelieving. “He’s supposed to take a Luna, not a…”

I raised my hand again. Seventy-five. One hundred. The female alphas dropped out one by one until only silence remained. The gavel came down hard.

“Sold.”

They brought him to the private annex after the paperwork was signed. The room was small, all dark wood and low lighting, meant for final inspections and quiet negotiations. He stood in the center of it when I entered, wrists still bound in that ridiculous silk, and the door locked behind me with a soft click.

“You caused a scene,” he said. His voice was lower than I expected. Calm. Almost amused.

“You looked at me like you wanted to be bought.”

“I looked at you like I could smell exactly what you need.” He stepped closer. The silk bindings brushed my chest. “You’ve been hard since the moment they put me on that stage. And not in the way a man gets hard for a pretty omega he plans to knot and claim in front of his pack.”

My jaw tightened. “Watch your mouth.”

He smiled, slow and sharp. “Or what? You’ll send me back? Tell them it was a mistake? That the great Alpha Rhys didn’t mean to purchase a male omega in front of every pack leader on this side of the mountains?”

I should have shut him down. I should have ordered him to kneel and wait until I decided what to do with the scandal I had just created. Instead I reached for the silk at his wrists and pulled the knot free.

The second the bindings fell, he moved.

He shoved me back against the wall hard enough that my shoulders hit the wood with a dull thud. One hand fisted in the front of my shirt. The other dropped straight to the front of my trousers and cupped me through the fabric, squeezing once, deliberate and firm.

“There it is,” he murmured. “That’s the cock that’s been aching for four years. Your beta’s dead. You’ve been empty. And you bought me because you knew I would fill you.”

I could have thrown him off. I was an alpha. Stronger. Ranked higher. My hand closed around his wrist instead and held him there while he stroked me through my clothes.

“Name,” I managed.

“Elias.” His mouth brushed the side of my throat, just above the collar. “And you’re going to say it when I fuck you.”

He didn’t wait for permission. He spun me, shoved me face-first against the wall, and yanked my trousers down to mid-thigh in one rough motion. Cool air hit my bare ass. My cock slapped against the wood, already leaking. Elias’s hand slid between my cheeks, two fingers pressing dry against my hole like he already owned it.

“Lube’s in the side table,” he said against my ear. “I checked while they were drawing up the papers. Thoughtful of them.”

I heard the drawer open. The wet sound of him coating his fingers. Then those fingers were back, slick and insistent, pushing into me without preamble. One, then two, stretching me open while I braced my forearms against the wall and tried to remember how to breathe.

“Fuck,” I gritted out.

“That’s the idea.” He scissored his fingers, curling them until he found the spot that made my knees threaten to buckle. “You’ve done this before. You’re not as tight as a virgin. Your beta used to open you up just like this, didn’t he?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. My body answered for me, pushing back onto his hand, cock dripping steadily onto the floor, a low sound tearing out of my throat when he added a third finger.

Elias pulled his hand free. I heard the rustle of his own clothes, the wet slick of him stroking himself. Then the blunt, thick head of his cock pressed against me.

“Tell me to stop,” he said quietly. “Say it and I walk out. You can invent whatever story you want about why the new omega didn’t last the night.”

I shoved back against him instead.

He pushed in slow and relentless, inch by inch, until he was buried to the hilt and my forehead was pressed to the wall. The stretch burned. The fullness stole the air from my lungs. I had forgotten how complete it felt. How right.

Elias’s hands settled on my hips. He pulled almost all the way out and drove back in hard enough that the impact rattled through my bones.

“Say my name.”

“Elias…”

He fucked me like he had been waiting for the chance. Deep, steady strokes that dragged over my prostate on every thrust. The wet sound of it filled the small room. My cock slapped against the wall with each movement, untouched and aching. I reached down to stroke myself and he caught my wrist, pinning it above my head.

“No. You come from this or you don’t come at all.”

I came with a broken sound, painting the wall in thick stripes while he kept driving into me through it. The orgasm left my legs shaking. Elias’s rhythm stuttered a moment later. He buried himself deep, groaned against the back of my neck, and filled me in long, hot pulses that I felt in my stomach.

We stayed locked together for several breaths. His forehead rested between my shoulder blades. My heart tried to hammer its way out of my chest.

When he finally pulled out, slow and careful, I felt the warm slide of his release down the inside of my thigh. He turned me around with surprising gentleness and looked at my face like he was cataloguing every expression.

“You’re going to take me home,” he said. “You’re going to tell your pack whatever story you need to tell. And tonight, when the door is locked and no one can hear, you’re going to get on your knees and ask me to do that again.”

I should have put him in his place. I should have remembered that I was the alpha and he was the omega I had purchased under scandalous circumstances.

Instead I heard my own voice, rough and wrecked, say, “Yes.”