of ordinary things

by complicit-roting (cassandragf)

Summary:

Pyotr Fradkov was a politician. The slave was an omega, with no legal rights. They certainly didn’t vote, had no say in Pyotr’s future career, and no one would fault him for hurting one of the bitches. It didn’t mean he had to be any more cruel to that tortured little thing. It didn’t mean he could force himself not to help them, once he learned they were pregnant.

Notes:

title from the patience of ordinary things by pat schneider.

It had been a long time since someone had thrown an omega bitch at Pyotr’s feet. 

People back home would never dare so, not under Dima’s carefully crafted and delicately maintained household, and back in his university, his refusal to have sex was seen as a type of dignified, ancient stoicism, a terrible cut he was making as to have more time to study, and work, and learn. With as many classes as he had to attend, of course he didn’t have time for slaves.

They all did think of him as scarily cold in his best days; this one facet of Pyotr was no different and no less gossiped about, but they were too afraid to try and see if they could change him.

That little merchant didn’t have enough sense, it appeared.

Pyotr was higher ranked. Was as high as you could get, really. He shouldn’t bother talking to betas, but Pyotr was, every inch of him, his father’s son. A politician. 

He'd learned his first year that the trick when your face was too naturally apathetic for you to just claim kindness and your body too scholarly to use intimidation (that which was a poor method of manipulation anyway), was to be patient with the lower class. It endeared him to them, an alpha who stopped to argue and hear and create solutions, and one day being endearing was going to be the one thing to make him win.

So when he kept pressing, kept offering his bitch despite it having been refused plenty already, Pyotr didn’t slap the man like it was his right. Like any other alpha would have done, if any other alpha would have refused the bitch in the first place. (They wouldn’t.) And, during drinks before supper, when the merchant put the bitch at his feet as some sort of showing, Pyotr set back and watched, if only to make the merchant smile. That was the one thing he always gave them in the end: he made them feel victorious. It put him onto their memories, the only alpha to ever do so, to ever cave, ever mitigate a situation.

Wasn’t really a way you could mitigate your way out watching a little slave suck their master, of course. Even less so when the purpose of it was making you want to be sucked by them too.

Technically, there wasn’t a reason why he shouldn’t accept the offer and let himself be as rough and violent as his darkest dreams. The slave was an omega and omegas had no rights. They certainly didn’t vote, had no say in Pyotr’s future career, and no one would fault him for hurting one of the bitches. The only reason one would care if he killed it was because it would be considered rude to Helmut and even then, being rude to a beta was no career ending scandal. But Pyotr was cold, not cruel, no matter what his colleagues thought, and though he kept it more hidden than anything else, he always had had a tender spot when it came to the lowest of their people. Dima had made sure of it.

So, he observed.

The bitch went so deep it seemed impossible they hadn’t hit the absolute end of their throat and then deeper still, until the beta had to put one hand in that dirty hair to make them go slower, sending little anxious glances Pyotr’s way that, pathetic as they were, seemed to wonder is he even liking this?

Not quite.

It was a ridiculous thing to look at: their face had turned beet red, the ends of their lips pulling open as if they were going to split apart, spit dripping from the corners of their mouth. And still, the omega continued taking the master in, the sloppy, loud noises of their slurping filling the room and the alpha’s ears. The two other betas shuffled around, shifting their own trousers. It only made Pyotr lock his jaw, unreasonably annoyed by that silly, stupid thing trying to choke themselves on the beta’s cock. From the omega’s part, the bitch simply sucked like they’d done it since birth. It was not unlikely that they had.

Under the soft light of the candles, sitting on a soft sofa while the omega kneeled on the hard wooden floor across from him, Pyotr couldn't see much of the little bitch’s face. That, too, annoyed him.

He knew they called him apathetic. 

To them Pyotr was the perfect alpha but for this one thing: he had never felt desire the way others felt. For him, there was a practiced understanding of what others would think of as sensual, and physical responses that were alright, really, but didn’t seem to quite reach to his brain, much less make him search for pleasure wildly. Quite frankly, he didn’t much mind sex, positively or negatively. He could somehow see the appeal of the current situation, if only he thought about it, but he never looked for someone to fuck. If he was busy and someone made an offer, while other alphas dropped everything, Pyotr could only feel annoyance at the person offering.

He was more than just annoyed at Helmut’s pressing and his theatrical shows. But Helmut’s slave, he knew, had no fault for their master’s lack of sense.

There were lone tears on their eyes when the bitch took him deep enough that their nose touched the beta’s navel, their breath irregular, worryingly sparse against Helmut’s skin. The omega did not hesitate, but Pyotr couldn’t do it anymore, watching those tears, all but seeing the way their consciousness was slipping.

That was quite enough of that.

When it came time to move to the dining hall for supper, Pyotr called for them to come kneel by his seat and watched as Helmut seemed incredibly pleased an alpha had wished to use his slave. Once sitting at the head of a table that was not his, Pyotr laid his hand on the bitch’s hair, fingers tangled between the dull, matted mess that were their curls in a way Pyotr expected wasn’t too hurtful, although he didn’t know, really. Had never been maneuvered like that. The bitch, whatever they were feeling, took it silently. Their breath was the only sound he could hear even as the other betas around him tried to keep the conversation alive without hinting at how much they truly wished to watch.

It was wet and desperate now, trying to inhale any amount of air they could as quickly as possible. Fat droplets of spit dripped down their chin, their cheeks a furious red. They’d kept their hands on the floor the whole time, palms open—bony arse up, on their fours like an animal, and like most omega bitches’ were always made to crawl

And then, just as a servant tremblingly filled his cup, there was a soft, soft whisper against his clothed thigh, so small it was hard to hear over Helmut’s voice, “May this hole serve you in any way, Master?”

Oh. And there it was. Their voice was a horrifyingly hoarse thing, like they were never asked to talk, only to suck and suck and suck until the deep of their throat was torn apart. Pyotr put a thumb in their bottom lip, red and throbbing. He tapped it lightly, feeling how warm their skin seemed to be even there, but retreated when the bitch somehow saw that move as a demand for them to start sucking Pyotr’s fingers. It wasn’t supposed to be.

“It may serve me like this,” Pyotr said back, very quietly, and laid their head against his thigh. The omega trembled, but they laid their cheek there on him.

In that angle, he was sure none of the guests would quite catch that he wasn’t having his cock warmed. Pyotr kept his fingers right there on those dirty locks, feeling the heavy breathing of the omega against his leg. 

He was sure Helmut had invited his business partners as some kind of power play against the other betas. He was sure having his cock sucked in the middle of conversation, and the more persistent insistence on having his omega also service Pyotr in front of them, was part of it too. To show off that his son knew an alpha such as Pyotr well enough to offer him to stay in his home, and to show that his house and his bitch and his food were all good enough for an alpha to indulge. 

Pyotr’s thumb caressed the slave’s head.

There was little need for him to talk. He’d kept his manners, made light, formal conversation with the older men around him as they drank, but he knew in truth, it was just a play between them. Helmut impressing the other betas. The other betas talking business to see if they could impress Pyotr as much as they’d deluded themselves into thinking Helmut’s son had. His presence, still and cold at the head, was more intimidating the quieter he stayed and more appreciated by Helmut the more intimidating he was.

He looked down once more. 

That was in no way the kind of bitch slave bred for alphas, that much was clear with a single glance. They were emaciated, with small tits and swollen, pierced nipples that had taken some strange, purple-ish color, and hair that was such a disgusting, seemingly never washed mess he couldn’t tell if its color was a light brown or dark blond, clunked up with dried cum and blood and other better not thought of substances. It made him queasy to touch them, but the contact wasn’t bare, at least—he had his gloves. Never would have reached out to them if he didn’t.

The other alphas of Pyotr’s standing had a way to describe that type of bitch, he knew: a hole to use, instead of a slut to fuck. The type who wasn’t even made to be looked at, only thrown around and dirtied more. The type they didn’t even seem as deserving of the title slut, because that was just too human. 

Sluts were fucked, they said. Holes got themselves raped over and over again.

Omega sluts, as it supposedly went, liked everything that was done to them. Being fucked, punched, chocked, kicked, cut open and cut apart limb from limb, they lived for it, liked it, were sluts for it. Holes didn’t like it, because holes couldn’t like anything, the same way they couldn’t dislike anything—because stupid sluts only had wanton desire, but holes didn’t have any feeling at all.

Pyotr wasn’t too sure there was much of a difference when it came to the omegas’ perspectives, when they certainly never got to agree to what happened to them either way. The ones they called holes were simply hit in the face a lot. Were hit, and punched in the face, and kicked plenty there too, and had it smashed against the floor just as much—he had seen it all in college, the plentiful ugly omegas with their broken noses and lost teeth and damaged brains.

Neurotic, Dima would always call Pyotr. Methodical, technical to a fault, unnerving since he was five and Dima nine, and even then Dima couldn’t bear his stare.

Truth was, Pyotr liked feeling superior. He was like most alphas in that way. Was selfish and egocentric and liked knowing people the cold, studied way he knew the laws of that country; to unflinchingly read their actions, to clinically analyze their reactions, to take his notes and to make his conclusions and to walk away knowing he had the ability to manipulate them for whatever means he felt would be necessary. Dima and Pasha were his exceptions, but they were pack, the only real one Pyotr had ever had. Of course they were his exception.

Now, Pyotr studied that one wrecked slave under the table with the same cold, intense gaze he studied every other matter under the sun.

It was the thing to make them squirm; unused to be gazed at, then. The bitch’s breath sped up, but Pyotr did not let go. 

There was a lot he had seen that night. A lot more he had studied and concluded. He moved his feet, a little tap of his boot closer to the omega, and glanced under the table just to see their flinch. He caught the flickering of anxious hands the way they had been since the second Helmut first called for them, more desperate than truly defensive. It was, perhaps, an aim at protection, only they were too starved and abused to hit anything but pure, wretched, hopeless franticness. They trembled, curling around their middle, but it was that nervous flickering that truly made Pyotr look up with a terrible frown, all the notes he needed already written down in his head.

Has to be.

The food was fine enough for what it was, bland roasted duck and an assortment of vegetables to try and make the meal look more plentiful. Pyotr took a small piece of the meat and reached under the table, offering it to the bitch. He could feel them tensing. Could feel them hesitating, before accepting being fed like a dog. There was a very slight tremble, the bitch turning their head away from his leg, and Pyotr had to look down to see they were crying, tears falling so quietly, not a single noise was made.

He ate. He gave them another little piece of duck, a small bite of roasted carrots, all too aware they were likely starving, that giving them even a tiny bit too much would end with them throwing up on the floor and having to bear the punishment for it. That was a mistake Pyotr had made once before.

“It shall stay the night with me,” he told Helmut after, eyes in the omega’s face.

He managed to endure the walk back to where he was staying despite every practical bone of his body loathing to let the omega crawl by his side when it wasted so much time. Inside the room, he was not so patient. He took them.

Carrying the bitch to bed was even more horrifying than hearing them for the first time, easy as it was, weightless as they were even for Pyotr’s academic frame. His size came naturally from being an alpha, true enough, but he never trained to keep any musculature that wasn’t just an empty show, and yet, at that one second he felt like the strongest man in the world.

The bitch let their body be manipulated without a sound or the smallest show of surprise. When put down, they didn’t even look for a more comfortable position. The exact way they were put in bed they stayed. Gods. Going over the mattress, over that pliant, immobile body, Pyotr looked down at them.

“This soaping hole–”

“Yes,” said Pyotr, not unkind, though not kind either. He was, in truth, a not very patient person who coldly tried to make others think he was patient. “It wants to serve me, I understand as much. But I don’t think I want to be served the way it is thinking of.”

The omega flinched.

“Master,” they said roughly, forcing the words out of their hurt throat. “This disgusting hole does not pretend to understand its betters' wishes. Whatever its Master wants, this hole will do without question.”

They hadn’t moved yet. The position they were in was awkward, put there by another who thought that, by then, they would have already tried to fix themselves, even if secretly. Pyotr sent them an empty look. He felt that emptiness a lot, when he was around omegas. If needed he could always gather up enough social and contextual clues he could act like he got the appeal of sex—he’d never been able to see how that total, broken submission of omega slaves was so attractive to his peers.

He could see scars and bruises along the bitch's inner thighs, deeper and blacker than any bruises or scars Pyotr had ever seem, him coming from a class were being hit would mean painful, lawful torture and death to the other person. Their knees bore the worst of it, so deep Pyotr wondered if they were permanently black now. Their cunt too looked well-raped, pierced, gaping and puffy, bloody purple and raw and close to bleeding. It looked like they’d been bleeding not too long ago.

His eyes lingered despite himself. Most omegas had their cocks and other chosen limbs chopped off, nothing but three little holes stuck to their master’s beds or, most commonly, bedroom floors, unable to even think of moving on their own. Dima hadn’t had his cock since before Pyotr knew him and it was a surprise he’d kept all his legs and arms throughout the years. This one, Pyotr had seen before, had some missing fingers, but Helmut had said their little cock was intact, when he was trying to entice Pyotr: proudly announced that they were the most sensible to slaps and punishments there, and that they cried the most pathetically when Helmut whipped them there. He had been quite eager to show Pyotr so, before, and Pyotr could see the welts such eagerness had left the omega with.

This one was pierced there too, crude and painful barbed metal unlike the golden jewels richer alphas kept to show off their objects. All their piercings looked heavy, pulling and weighting irritated skin. He pursed his lips.

By now, by the way the bitch was completely incapable of controlling their trembling, it was clear what they thought Pyotr was wanting to do. Their gaze was terrified and it kept coming back to Pyotr’s trousers. To his belt, the likes made of hard leather that could break wood, expensive as it was, and with an at the moment ominous metal buckle, edges as sharp as Pyotr’s rare smiles.

“Relax,” said Pyotr. At once, the bitch did, their body falling boneless into the mattress, eyes shuttering as they accepted whatever Pyotr wanted to do with them. “You cradled your belly before.”

The bitch shuddered, tearing up once more. “Master, please, this hole—”

“Shush,” he cut them. “You did, did you not? You were touching it, while you sucked your master. When he went to kick you, you rolled so he would kick your face, not your stomach.”

And, just like that, the bitch’s dull eyes were wide open and horrified, looking at Pyotr like Pyotr had actually started to torture them. “Master, this gaping hole can’t– it– that’s–”

“That is no proper answer, hole,” he told them, firm and admonishing, and they flinched violently.

Just after, the omega went so stiff it seemed to hurt, making Pyotr frown. It took one second for them to manage to sit down and then they were on the floor in less time than it took for Pyotr to move his head, all bent, all a trembling mass of sobs and begging.

“Master, master, please, punish this gaping hole—”

“Now, that is no answer either, is it?” snapped Pyotr, pursing his lips. He got out of bed so he could put the bitch back in there. They didn’t fight, only looked at Pyotr with wide, horrified eyes. “Breathe slowly, omega.”

They did. It should have been calming for Pyotr, because it was calming for the omega themselves, but it only left a bad taste in his mouth, that blind obedience even as they panicked so badly. The omega hiccuped quietly, not even daring to wipe their wet eyes. It dawned on Pyotr there was still spit on their chin from when they sucked Helmut and he frowned with barely held back disgust.

When they seemed somehow settled, Pyotr asked: “What is this hole’s name, tell me?”

They didn’t expect it. Weren’t ever asked, it was clear. They lowered their eyes to his lips respectfully and, when they spoke, it was so quietly and so timidly Pyotr almost didn’t hear.

“They call it Slick, but Master can name it however he wants.”

“Slick,” acknowledged Pyotr, trying not to sound as harsh as he knew he tended to sound when not meaning to.

It wasn’t the worst, as far as omega’s name could be. Crude, but omega’s only had “names” insofar as alpha masters tended to instinctively decide on an adjective they used the most to call a particular omega, so their servants knew which one they wanted when they called for “Tight” or “Slit”. Dima had been called something of the sort, before Pyotr’s father died and Dima renamed himself.

Pyotr looked over to Slick. 

He could not see it. The omega smelled sweet, too sweet, but without knowing them, he couldn’t tell if that was a pregnant scent or simply their usual one. As a scent change was the first and most certain tell when an omega got pregnant (or lost a baby), he was left out of luck.

Perhaps there was some belly, but they were so skinny it was hard to tell—even pregnant full term Pyotr thought they would look emaciated and it just as well could be he was only thinking he was seeing it because he knew it should have some there. Pyotr doubted he wouldn’t lose the baby to starvation and stress soon enough, much less have any of the strength necessary to even one of them survive childbirth, if it came down to it.

Yet, it had to be a baby, he felt. Pyotr had been watching the slave that entire time. They had been thrown around, fucked and slapped and kicked, and only thought of reacting when the blow would have fallen to their stomach. Continuing to inquire about it clearly would only make them panic and, despite all one might think, Pyotr had little of value to find in an omega’s suffering panic. To that, he relented. He was quite adept to relenting, as long as he remembered himself of the long run.

“You will stay here in my room for the rest of the night.”

Slick had noticed the continued use of the pronoun you. Of course they did, when omegas so rarely were referred to as anything but bitches and holes and its. They looked at Pyotr’s shoulder, the lost, lost look of someone who didn’t dare look him in the eyes.

“Does this Master wish for anything of this hole?” they asked, trembling.

Pyotr shook his head.

“This Master wishes to sleep,” he said, “and for your master Helmut to fuck himself, stupid shit that he is. You will sleep here with me. Truly sleep. I imagine when you stay in bed with Helmut you are expected to warm his cock. I do not want that, you understand? Do not touch me without me telling you to.”

Slick blinked.

“Master,” they said, “this dirty hole would never dare.”

“I will not touch you during your sleep either,” he warned them, although he supposed he had already left his disinterest clear and, if Slick hadn’t yet believed, they wouldn’t now. Either way, Dima would say he should always make promises, if he could. Say it out loud, even if it seemed unbelievable to them.

And, by Slick’s look, they truly didn’t seem to know how they should react. Didn’t seem to know even what they should feel in the privacy of their own mind, or what they should or shouldn’t believe in. Pyotr decided to make matters easier by letting them do so in the quiet and dark, and he said: “Lay over the covers and relax. I have some last matters to attend to and then we can retire.”

This matter was to let Helmut know he would be using his bitch the whole night, though in reality Pyotr only did that so he could ask one of the man’s servants to bring clean covers for the bed and some tea for himself. He always drank tea before bed, restless as he was in his sleep patterns, and he could not sleep in that bed without knowing the last time some fresh bedding had been changed.

Pyotr waited before the door, letting Slick with their privacy, with their ten minutes to think and, hopefully, wipe their face clean in the covers that would be taken away.

When the servant did come back, a small little beta that couldn’t be more than eleven, he seemed terrified of having to be around an alpha, and flabbergasted when Pyotr took the trail from his hands.

“I will hold it so you can change the covers,” he explained, knowing the boy would remember that, flustered and red as he got, dipping his head.

“Thank ya’, Alpha. Ya’re very kind.”

His face seemed to change to complete disgust when he saw Slick inside. Pyotr put the trail over the one table there and said: “Hole. Get up so the boy may put clean sheets in the bed.”

The beta seemed plenty nervous changing the bedding. He scurried away as fast as he could, closing the door with a last “ thank you, alpha ”. Pyotr turned the keys again, checking to see if it was truly locked (that, too, was one of Dima’s quirks that had stuck), before turning to the table.

There was only one teacup.

He frowned. Pyotr was never surprised with the way omegas were treated, but he supposed muscle memory had taken over for a second: back home, if he called for something, they always knew he would want it for himself and Dima equally. But, back home, Dima could call for as many things as he wanted to, could run the household better than Pyotr with how Pyotr was usually too busy with dull work. He should have remembered it was different. His servants were carefully picked, otherwise damned betas that thought of Dima as a fair, generous boss no matter what. This beta had looked at Slick like their mere presence made him sick.

Pyotr looked at the omega. He sighed: the bitch had been kneeling beside the bed, head down, unseeing and unmoving since the servant had started to change the sheets.

“Sit with me, Slick,” Pyotr called.

Slick did, but not on the other chair. Instead, they crawled to Pyotr’s side, eyes focused on Pyotr's lips. Pyotr thought about asking them to sit on the chair, but he remembered the first time he asked Dima that and the panic attack that had followed. And Dima had always been so rebellious. Slick might simply break, after such a day and such weird requests from Pyotr’s part.

So, Pyotr drank his tea, painfully aware of the silent figure close to his feet. When he finished, he filled the cup again. He asked: “Do you like tea, Slick?”

The omega blinked, face open with confusion.

“Master?” they blurted out, dumbly, and Pyotr waited for two seconds before he understood Slick truly wasn’t going to say anything else. Hadn’t any other word.

“Have you ever had it before?” asked Pyotr.

Slick swallowed. “This hole hasn’t, Master.”

“Have you ever had any sugar at all?”

“This hole hasn’t, Master.”

Pyotr had to stop and think for a second, before deciding to put as much sugar in it as he usually had for himself, a good middle ground between the nothing Dima preferred and the disgusting amount Pasha liked. Finally, he passed the teacup to Slick. The omega’s hands were weak, shaking, and they looked at Pyotr like they hadn’t ever been offered anything in a cup. Perhaps they hadn’t. Likely, their only memories of being given something to drink were when they had a dick on their throat and a bunch of cum making them choke.

“Come on,” said Pyotr. “You can taste it.”

They did, but they kept looking at Pyotr as if they weren’t sure they truly had permission to do so, and like Pyotr was going to take it away any time now. They gulped the tea quite obediently, before passing it to him. “Immense gratitude for the gift, Master.”

Luck-warm tea in a used cup, prepared with other man’s preferences in mind. That’s what that gift was, but Pyotr didn’t say a word, simply got up and touched Slick’s shoulders, urging them to stand too, and go to bed.

When they did lay, they stayed over the covers. Pyotr remembered his words before. Better than any other alpha, he understood what was going on in Slick’s head.

“You can lay under it,” he said. “Now that they are clean, you can.”

And so they did.

 

-

 

When he was younger and Dima was pregnant, he used to sleep in an armchair in the man’s room, curled around himself in the cold. Dima, for all his soft comments about Pyotr’s general neuroses and unnerving eyes, had always been the only person truly capable of dealing with the younger version of him, who had yet to learn to mask even some of his oddness with coldness: the unblinking eye contact, the screaming fits when overwhelmed, the often unnecessary comments, the sudden appearances behind people.

Dima tried to stop Pyotr from sleeping uncomfortably in his room, uncovered in a chair, but he still kept his door unlocked so Pyotr could sneak in, because if he did not, the alpha would simply sleep in the hallway and Dima wanted that even less. And when Dima woke up to a twelve year old kid sitting next to his bed, staring at the slow rise and fall of Dima’s chest with intent, intense fear, he had always taken it with sleepy fondness instead of fear or annoyance, urging him to slip under the sheets so he could feel the baby kicking.

When Slick woke up in the middle of the night to Pyotr’s staring, they took the surprise with quiet, numb despondency. Sitting close to the window, Pyotr sighed. He had been thinking too much of it—how it had been, cradling Dima’s belly, feeling the squirming, fragile baby inside. It plagued him like the worst of visions, every time he so much as thought of closing his eyes. 

He got up and settled into the bed, taking Slick’s wrist in a tight grip before they could get into position. Pyotr squeezed it once, a bruising warning, before letting go of them.

“I will put my fingers in your mouth,” he told them carefully. “Just keep it open and for the love of the gods, do not suck.”

Slick, of course, obeyed, and just like that Pyotr had his thumbs inside the omega’s mouth, examining their teeth the way he’d done  when choosing horses to buy, before. Slick’s face remained blank: no surprise there in those empty eyes, much less humiliation or anger. Being treated like an animal probably was the best kind of treatment the omega could hope for most of the time.

Pyotr retreated, cleaning his fingers in his handkerchief. He looked at the bitch. “I see you have lost two teeth. Helmut’s work, I gather.” Slick hesitated, fearful unsureness in their eyes. He guessed he was wrong, and the omega was horrified by not being able to simply, honestly agree. He guessed: “Olev’s?”, the son and classmate that had urged Pyotr to stay the night in his father’s house to start all that.

Something there relaxed, impossibly relieved.

“Yes, Master.”

“He has a good kick, then?”

“This hole takes them well, Master.”

“Some others are a bit loose too. Those, I imagine, are because of malnutrition.” Nothing to be done on whether they fall out or not, then. Thight lipped, Pyotr said, “Now, Slick. Do not take me for dumb. You were protecting your belly, but I am sure Helmut kicked your stomach too, before. You did not bleed?”

“Sometimes when it was fucked. This hole is worthless and stupid, Master, but it is very good at being fucked. It knows the difference between tearing and losing a pregnancy.”

They were already old for omegas, who, once allowed to survive childhood, tended to die in the good age of eleven to sixteen anyway. There was no way this was their first pregnancy, but Pyotr felt confident guessing they had no children. There had been a reason, after all, that Dima had been pregnant for the first time at twelve, and had only had a baby at seventeen, after Pyotr’s father died. 

Omegas got pregnant all the time, because they got fucked so much there was no reasonable way of stopping it, and there were too many people who liked fucking them heavy with seed, at any rate. More than half of the time, they just fucked the baby out of the womb, and the other half they fucked the omega to death during childbirth. On rare occasions, they let the baby be born and the omega survive, and then decided if they had space to keep both. Most couldn’t bother, so they just decided which one seemed more fuckable. Killed the other. 

The babies, of course, were always omegas, as babies always took after the parent who birthed them. Most, if not all, said omegas were only capable of having other omegas (sluts only made sluts, and holes more holes), but that was because they thought omegas could only be bred—Pyotr doubted anyone had tried to see if they could be bred by an omega. 

Knowing himself, he was glad he biologically couldn’t try. There would be a temptation there, if only for the scientific discovery it could give. Pyotr would do some terribly odd things in the name of scientific discoveries.

Pyotr hummed. In the dark, Slick blinked their teary eyes and asked, voice empty, “Does the Master wish to kick the seed out? The hole can present for it.”

“It is not wished,” he replied curtly and took their shoulder tightly as they tried to get out of bed to position themselves for a taking, or a beating, or whichever torture Pyotr saw to bestow upon them. “Go back to sleep now, hole. Matters will be settled later.”

Slick obeyed, as it was the only thing they had been beaten into being able to do. Something inside Pyotr tightened, as he closed his eyes and thought of Dima’s belly, and Dima’s pup, and the pup in Slick’s belly, who was never going to survive Helmut.

 

-

 

Pyotr always slept late and rose early, when his house was quiet and still, before even the servants had started their work day. Helmut’s household wasn’t that different and, when he opened up the window a bit, the morning breeze wasn’t freezing, but it was a bit colder, enough for him to look over his shoulder and check if Slick was still covered. They were, their naked body tangled within the sheets, for once hidden, and so Pyotr left it open.

He always thought the sunrise was the best time for him to work through papers.

Dima said that was because he was a silly little Master that’d never been forced to wake up that early. Dima, who had had to get up at four in the morning to be ready to be pumped with cocks since he was seven, slept like the dead until well after ten. 

At home, Pyotr usually got some good two hours of working before Pasha woke up and went to his room, sleepy and clingy and whining until Pyotr let him draw on the table next to Pyotr, so he could pretend to be busy and “grown up” too. It was harder to stay focused when Pasha giggled every time he saw Pyotr’s focused face, when the scratching of his many colored, incredibly expensive pencils kept catching Pyotr’s ears, his giddy little voice calling for “Uncle Petya” to look at his drawings.

Here, he got one hour committed to the translation of an old political document, a personal project he’d been relentlessly trying to finish for the last two days, before he heard Slick moving in bed. Two seconds, then, before the loud thump of Slick’s knees hitting the ground found his ears. 

Pyotr looked over his shoulder.

"Master, please, please, this terrible hole–”

“Do not,” snapped Pyotr. He turned back to his papers, distracted. “Stay in bed if you want to, Slick.”

He heard the low, soft rustling of the sheets being moved around a bit. Pyotr wasn’t completely sure if Slick had crawled back to the mattress, but in the least they sounded like they had moved to a more comfortable position slumping against the bed. Pyotr hoped they had dared to do the latter: there was no use for the bitch’s discomfort.

Pyotr had read but three words before Slick started shifting their weight. When they spoke, their voice was so low Pyotr almost thought he might have imagined it.

“This disgusting hole should go back to its master.”

But Pyotr didn’t hear them move. Whether they should or not, they clearly didn’t want to.

His mouth twitched, the trembling ghost of a half smile dancing in his lips before he pressed them together tighter than before and let his eyes fall back to his papers. He’d made a translation mistake in one of the previous paragraphs—Pyotr was scratching it and trying to think of a more accurate word when he did hear more shuffling from Slick. Not towards the door, but towards Pyotr.

“This hole—”

“Should rest, I gather.”

Slick did not relax at what Pyotr thought was a clear permission to do so. They didn’t move a muscle. Pyotr sighed, putting his pen down with the defeated knowledge he wouldn’t be able to finish his work that morning.

“I do not wish to fuck you at the moment, hole,” Pyotr told them. His voice was calm, almost indifferent, but his voice always sounded that way. Pyotr always felt calm and indifferent, besides when he felt annoyance towards his peers, and sadness around omegas, and that quiet, suffocating affection Dima and Pasha always caused in him.

Slick’s knees still seemed so terribly dark and hurt against the hard floor. They looked at Pyotr, small and lost.

“What would you like of this hole, Master?”

Pyotr looked at them. What he would like was to be alone, in utter silence, but he couldn’t in good conscience send Slick back to Helmut. He should eventually, he knew. Was only a guest and one that would leave later that same day. Still, if he could keep the bitch in his room for now, he would, annoying as it was, if only to give them a bit of a reprieve.

That would be it. One day there would be more, so much more, but for now—

“Go back to the bed,” Pyotr told him, a clear alpha order. “Sleep, if you want to. It will be your only chance.”

Pyotr had come there because he had business in town, some betas who weren’t being paid for their work at the docks for almost a year now and who were very, very shocked when an alpha had offered to deal with it. By the time lunchtime was around, he had done enough work that he felt satisfied going to talk to them, although he hesitated a second. Pyotr decided to lock the door—the omega had all they needed inside and he thought it very possible Helmut would go and try to get his slave back as soon as the alpha was away.

It was a good exchange.

The betas were shaking with fear of him and sick with gratitude as Pyotr made a deal with the alpha in charge of the docks. The alpha himself was grateful too, charmed by Pyotr’s talk of business, the honest and straightforward way he listened to his problems and offered to help both sides of the issue with money, making an offer who would bring himself just enough long-term advantages, no one would have any questions about why he went there in the first place.

He had stayed in Helmut’s house as the man was the father of a distant colleague, his son having offered Pyotr a roof as he heard from another colleague he planned to travel to his hometown. It was more convenient than having to find an inn once he was there, and a good opportunity to make a connection with a beta of good standing, so Pyotr had accepted.

He had not, clearly, been prepared for a pregnant slave. It was always worse when they were pregnant. He could never control his staring, then. He could never control himself.

When Pyotr came back, there were tears glinting as they fell through the bitch’s cheeks, their shoulders soundless shaking as they stared at the door.

Pyotr felt himself frowning, although he knew that would make the omega panic, although he disliked the pure fear in that face as they threw himself out of the bed and onto the floor, crawling towards Pyotr. The slave kissed their boots, dirty as they were, as they welcomed him.

Pyotr took them by the arms. Their wrists were so light and small Pyotr knew he could break them without much effort, but he was more focused on the rest of the bitch’s body, his eyes studying them even more closely than the day before. He thought of Pasha. He was hunted by it: Pasha’s smile. Pasha’s eyes, and his giggles, and his light voice. Pasha squirming and kicking as a baby inside his parent, Pasha squirming and kicking in Pyotr’s arms the first time he held him, Pasha squirming and kicking when Pyotr tickled him as an overly energized infant.

“Master, please, let this hole–”

“Hush.” His eyes were cold as he stared at Slick and so was his voice as he spoke to them. His hands were still gripping those little wrists. “Come, hole.”

Lord Helmut was in his living room—by the time they got there, Slick was crying even more, big silent tears falling through their cheeks as they trembled in Pyotr’s grip. Lord Helmut was surprised up until the point where fury seemed to win out, eyes falling into his omega as if he was already thinking of a punishment. He seemed so angry, Pyotr thought he could very well kill Slick after having some final fun with the little bitch.

“Alpha Fradkov,” he said, tense, “has my slave displeased you?”

“On the contrary. Your slave is a fine one.”

Slick had been frozen in his hold since the second they had been held, pliant throughout the panic thanks to what was, by the looks of them, close to two decades of training and conditioning. Somehow, they seemed to go even stiffer, their eyes wild and terrified with confusion. Lord Helmut frowned, a flash of an expression, before sending him a stiff smile. “Well, thank you, Alpha.”

It came out spontaneously from the mouth of a man that was used to being everything but spontaneous. “Might I buy it?”

“Alpha—”

Pyotr was not looking to Helmut, but to Slick’s wide eyes. They made a pitiful figure, but those eyes were the worst part: so dull, and so terrified, and so absolutely plain, they would have been left alone and forgotten in any other life, other land. An unremarkable, ugly omega would have been abandoned to their own devices, perhaps—but better that than what they had done. Every feature of theirs seemed to be built upon a picture of abuse and suffering and an almost exhausted, clearly terrified expectation of more.

They sucked cock like they were born doing it. They looked like they were born to be beaten and humiliated, and were well aware of such.

Pyotr said, coldly, “Your son might have mentioned, Helmut, but I do not have any slave at the moment. I have not had one since my father’s unfortunate death. I have been too busy with my studies and the Fradkov state to look out for one, and never found one which took well enough to be worth training it for my tastes. Yours was quite impressive.”

“Was it?” the man exclaimed, clearly surprised.

Pyotr thought Slick might flinch at their master’s voice, but they continued frozen in place, staring at him in a way that was much improper, eyes flickering from his eyes to his mouth frantically. He pretended not to notice that—turned to the beta and put all his focus in Helmut. 

He smiled. It felt, and he knew it also looked, way too sharp, like one of the wolves their kind came from.

“Its face pleases me,” he lied. Helmut’s shock grew, as he must be aware of the plainness of his property, and how dirty and ugly Slick seemed when compared to the omegas alphas chose to keep, “and when I hit it, it screamed just as you described. I would like to see more and it would please me to get a good little hole out of this trip.”

Helmut stared, flabbergasted. “Alpha Fradkov—”

“We can discuss prices,” said Pyotr. “A slave like yours, let us see.“

And he said, then, a price he knew was way too expensive for an omega like Slick, seeing the way Helmut’s eyes lit up with wicked interest. He hesitated once more, a hint of apprehension as he explained: “Alpha, I could not rip you off, nor sell it to you without telling you first. The omega is pregnant.”

“I thank you for the warning, but that is no issue to me. I have the means to take care of two omegas.” There was no mistaking the terrified hope in Slick’s eyes at what was a clear admission he intended to let them keep both the baby and their own life. Pyotr let go of their wrists, eyeing their flat belly. “I am sure it will behave.”

Helmut chuckled nervously, saying: “It wouldn’t dare not to!”, although that hardly mattered when Pyotr was busy watching Slick’s urgent, desperate nod.

It had to be this.

 

-

 

He had taken two betas with him on his trip: Sasha, his first and most trusted hire, Dima’s closest friend and the closest Pyotr would go as to have friendships, and Vytia, a boy of only eleven who had just started working in his estate and desperately needed some more training, although Dima had won Pyotr with his arguments that traveling and seeing more of Pyotr would perhaps make the boy stop flinching and having panic attacks every time he had to go as far as staying in the same room as the alpha.

Pyotr took Sasha aside.

“Run ahead,” he ordered him. “Go fast enough, and you can get to the manor a good day or two before us. Let Dmitri know I got a new slave.” He could see the confusion in Sasha being replaced by a dawning realization as he explained: “A pregnant one.”

“How bad?”

“Better not to mention any pup where Pasha can hear. I do not know if they will still be pregnant by the time we get to the manor.”

Sasha looked at him, one arched eyebrow. “So?” he prompted. Pyotr thought of him as a good man, a better one than Pyotr himself, and as such, he seemed more worried than anything else. He was still only a man and the eagerness there in his eyes was undeniable, even if it was smaller.

“Shift,” allowed Pyotr, stepping aside so Sasha could do just that. 

It was the one thing that allowed Pyotr’s kind to be as cruel as they so wished with no fear of retaliation or uprising: as it so went, for the wicked humor that ruled their gods, grown alphas could shift into their wolves whenever they so wished, while any other kind needed an alpha’s order.

It was a big part of why Pyotr’s betas were so loyal to him, despite him holding none of Dima’s charm or kindness. Said kindness dealt with making them happy in their position, but the truth was, they would have endured a lot of abuse for a master as flippant as Pyotr. Whenever asked, he gave the order and as long as they kept the interaction as brief as possible, he did not care much for being interrupted during his day. His fellow countrymen seemed to find pleasure in a beta’s begging and delight in their denial, but he favored a simple, “Sir, may I?” he could distractedly answer and promptly forget.

Vytia hadn’t asked him for it, yet. He would take a guess the boy had never been allowed to shift before—it would take quite some time for him to be ready to do it.

Despite Dima’s best attempts, it would clearly take quite some time for him to be ready to even speak to Pyotr. He watched Sasha running off with terrified eyes and when Pyotr told him to go prepare the horses with what he believed was a perfectly controlled voice, he flinched as if he had been slapped and darted off to obey as quickly as possible. The shaking omega Pyotr was holding by the wrist—because attempting to let go of Slick had only allowed them to try to get on all fours to crawl behind him—would clearly not help in making Pyotr seem any more trustworthy.

“Sit, Slick,” he told the omega, pushing them inside the carriage when it was clear they would not go alone. It was comfortable enough for them to not look so terribly out of place kneeling on the floor, but Pyotr still pulled them up into the seat, huffing. “Stay,” and so they did, perched uncomfortably as if they had never done so.

Little Vytia did not, in fact, know how to actually lead the horses, as that had been Sasha’s job. Pyotr did not trust him to stay alone with an omega and as such, they stayed together in complete discomfort on the driver’s seat, as Pyotr himself held the reins. He never brought a coachman with himself when he took the road to university, or any beta at all, and he was used to driving alone. Vytia’s anxious presence was the biggest annoyance of it all, with the nagging thought of the omega there inside, probably crying again, probably completely unmoving exactly where Pyotr had put them.

They stopped for the night in some quaint inn. Pyotr helped the bitch out of the carriage, instinctively worried over their bare feet by recollection of one little accident involving one small Pasha playing outside without shoes and one small, especially sharp rock, the year before. Vytia stared, small, somewhere between terrified and fascinated by his new master, although Pyotr unfortunately did not have the time to analyze his reaction as much as he would have liked.

He settled Slick on the ground and scowled.

“You are still naked,” he commented, sounding irritated as if the omega would have found some clothes to put somewhere in the last hours.

Slick recoiled violently. “This hole is sorry, Master. Please, this disgusting—”

“Stop,” he told them again. “I will deal with it.”

Pyotr allowed Vytia a room of his own, if a small, cheap one, for he thought the boy would vastly prefer taking more meager accommodations if it meant he would not stay with Pyotr for a second longer. Slick, on the other hand, he did not trust to stay out of his sight, not in some strange inn. As soon as he was shown the best room they had, he called for a warm bath and urged the omega to get in, terrible as their stink was when mixed with all the omega sweetness.

He had traveled three days and two nights to get to Helmut’s house, and had stayed there for only one night and one day. That, as someone who always over prepared according to Sasha—Pyotr believed he was prepared just enough—, left him with enough luggage he was able to easily find a clean linen shirt and clean pants for the bitch. Would be too big, surely, but that was better than naked at least.

He waited, watching the omega wash themselves to make sure they did it right. After, they stood in the tub, shivering and cold and dripping, until Pyotr gave them a towel, quite certain they had never used one just from the wide eyed emptiness in their face as they took it.

Their hair, even cleaned up, was still of such a dull color he couldn’t name it, couldn’t recognize it as either light brown or dark blond. 

A shame. Their skin was of a pretty honey color, the only thing that could be described as pretty in them, if a tad too pale just then, and if their hair was a bit lighter and more golden, they perhaps could have stood out enough their previous master would have been a little more forgiving. As it was, they only had their face, and that had clearly done them no good. It clearly did not look any sweeter or prettier once they were clean and dry.

Pyotr ended up having to help the omega, either way. 

Slick struggled with the buttons like a little child, like they had never dressed themselves—never, Pyotr guessed easily, dressed anything at all their entire life, if not for a too tight collar—and Pyotr watched it for as little time as he could take it before going to do it himself. Helped them put a belt to keep the pants from falling, as Slick seemed to appear sick and far away just from looking at the sharp buckle. 

They probably could have learned how to do both things, but the omega was so hurt. Even if omegas lived most of their lives just as hurt as that, if not worse, and never got any reprieve, there was an unpleasant tightness in Pyotr’s chest every time he looked at that flat belly. He knew it was dumb, but the gods themselves knew how overprotective he had been as a kid, when Dima was the one hurt and pregnant. Couldn’t help those feelings from returning, as if after all the kicks and rapes, nervously fastening their belt a little too much would be what made them lose the child.

Pyotr let his hand touch Slick’s collar, hooking a finger under the leather, but he ended up letting go of it. No good taking that off while around others. Slick blinked at Pyotr’s hand on their arm as he guided them to sit on the bed.

“Master.” They traced their shoulder with a hesitant, trembling thumb. “Would you prefer this useless hole without this, Master? It is yours now to change.”

Pyotr narrowed his eyes. “Do I seem like the type of dumb alpha that would want such impractical alterations?” He took the omega’s hand. Even that was scarred and he turned it, eyes squinting at the deep twisting scars that went from their missing little finger to their palm. Both their middle and index fingers were crooked. Broken, Pyotr guessed, and healed wrong. He let go of it with a scoff. “Do not fret, Slick, you will keep your limbs for as long as you are with me. I have no use for a tortured, mutilated bitch. To keep someone in such a state, that is… it is simply not sensible.”

“Not someone,” whispered Slick, voice trembling, eyes flickering close as if expecting a slap.

“Close enough in this situation,” retorted Pyotr, simple, because the truth wouldn’t be something that could just be said out loud and be believed. Just that close enough made Slick stare at him as if they had never heard such an outlandish thing. Pyotr shook his head. “Are you feeling any pain?”

“No, Master.”

“Good. I am a practical man, Slick. Would gain nothing causing you hurt and, as such, have no reason for it.”

He startled when Slick dropped to the floor, uncaring for how much Pyotr could tell it hurt and how it would bruise their already damaged knees. They kissed Pyotr’s boots, trying to lick the leather as they thanked him desperately. Pyotr stopped them with cold gloved hands, disgust clear on his features.

“Dear gods, omega!” he snapped, and Slick flinched as he held them by the shoulders, straightening them up. “I just told you I do not want you hurt, didn’t I? What about this for my first proper order: you will not hurt yourself, not even if it is what your training says you should do. You will definitely not throw yourself into the floor like that while pregnant.”

Slick’s eyes were huge and terrified since the first snap, but the moment they heard that, there was no mistaking the horrified panic there.

“Does Master think this stupid hole could hurt it?” they said and it was quite clear who they meant by it, even before Pyotr let go of them and they immediately touched their belly.

“It would certainly not help the baby.” To that, they stayed on the mattress, wide eyed and too afraid to move a finger. Pyotr pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing in to control himself. He was no good at it. If only Dima was there. “Let us do it like this, yes? I am sure you were taught well by Helmut. Before you do anything he would have liked you to do, I want you to think about the pregnancy and ask yourself if this would help the baby. If the answer is not, then do not do it. That is what I would like of you.”

“This soaking fuckmeat—”

“By the gods!” snapped Pyotr, for once completely unable to control his reaction even if he had wanted to. That one was, in fact, worse than gaping hole. “Who taught you to say that?”

Slick flinched violently, entire body shaking as their eyes swelled up with terrified tears.

“It’s Master Olev’s favorite, Master.”

“Then he is more of a dull brute than even his performance in university would make one think. What else did he like?” It wasn’t really a question whose answer he particularly wished to receive, but that was Pyotr’s hubris. He needed to know, even when that knowledge would ruin him. Felt the words letting his lips, even when he knew the answer would make him sick and hunt his mind for months.

Slick, of course, answered earnestly and nervously: “Master Olev’s liked when this hole called its cunt its gash,” observing Pyotr’s face with trepidation. Pyotr could only do so much to hold his disgust.

“So if Olev was here, you would tell him?”

“Please, Master, rape this soaking fuckmeat’s gash.”

“And he would get hard with that. What a nasty little child.”

Pyotr huffed, and Slick looked, and looked, and looked. It was the strangest expression Pyotr had ever seen in anyone. They asked warily, “Will Master rape this fuckmeat’s gash now?”

“I will not.”

They did not look reassured. Slick clung to their belly, curling around themselves as they said, even smaller, “This hole is dumb, Master. It would never be capable of understanding the desires of a Master so superior to it. Will Master wait to fuck this hole’s pup first?”

“That will not be done either.” Pyotr scowled, walking away from them as he ran a hand through his hair. “You might be dumb,” he admitted, for he did not know the omega and could only say that they did appear to be a bit dull, as all omegas seemed to be when they were not allowed to be anything more, “but I am certain you will understand once you see my estate. Until then, worry only about keeping the baby alive.”

Once the words left him, he noticed he did make it sound like he had bought them with plans to give them to his betas and that saying they would understand it once they saw the estate just made it sound like there was something about his estate that would be so terrifyingly explanatory there would be no question about it. Technically, there was, but it was nothing Slick would imagine. 

No solving it then—when they saw Dima, they could see what he had meant. Until then, the fear would have to be enough, as long as it kept them quiet and obedient enough.

He called for some luckwarm, thin broth that was no food for an alpha, but clearly settled much better into Slick’s stomach, even if they seemed just as terrified by it as they had been by the little piece of meat from the night before, and when it came time to sleep, he sent the omega to bed as he settled to do some work. He knew the omega did not truly fall asleep as early as they pretended they had, but they were good at pretending and, when Pyotr did actually lay by their side, they were sleeping and that was as good as he would get, he imagined.

Three days and two nights were stretched into four days and three nights when Pyotr had to make constant stops to feed Slick, who clearly would not even drink a sip of water without Pyotr prompting them. Vytia was looking over one of the horses as Pyotr watched the cloudy sky when he noticed Slick was staring. It was a strange thing, small terrified glances someone else might not have noticed. Because Pyotr was Pyotr, he stared back, scrutinizing, and frowned even more when Slick flinched.

“Omega,” he called, serious, “what is it?”

“Master, this hole knows it doesn’t matter—”

“I will want to know. So, tell me. Now.”

Slick stumbled their way to him, trembling as they gingerly showed him their hands. Pyotr peered at their open palms, making a face at the single tooth Slick was holding. The omega blinked, big boring eyes shimmering with tears. “This hole is sorry, Master.”

“It was nothing you did.” Pyotr shook his head. “Helmut did not feed you enough, did he? It would fall out or it would not, but hopefully if we give you enough food from now on the others will firm up. I do not know. I am not an actual doctor, omega.” He sized Slick up. “I will have to get a real one for you, I imagine.”

“For a hole, Master?”

“Pregnant like that? Tiny and bleeding like that? Yes, for you.”

He had a doctor in his estate already, besides, who had always helped with Dima and Pasha since the boy’s birth, and never gave them any trouble for what they were. Hennish was a much older beta, born in a generation where betas couldn’t be doctors, so an offer from an alpha like Pyotr, even when he’d been so young at the time, had made the man accept just about any patient he got. Dima’s respectful calm and Pasha’s innocent kindness had taken care of the rest. 

Pyotr sighed. “You should also drink more water,” he remembered them as he gave his flask to the omega. He watched as they drank obediently, watching Pyotr back, waiting for a nod before stopping and giving it back to him. The alpha was, in fact, just as neurotic as Dima always complained he was, and used his handkerchief to clean where their mouth had touched. Slick flinched. Pyotr, as kind as he knew to be, ignored it. He told them, “You are sure your scent did not change again?” They shook their head vehemently. “Well, show me if any other of your teeth falls and tell me if there is any change.”

He was quite surprised the omega was so sure they hadn’t lost the baby already, but he supposed omegas were quite good at keeping their pregnancies even during the worst of situations. Another joke their gods liked to play: anyone else, it would have been a lost cause already.

For all that, traveling home was a tedious trip, with no more lost teeth and no bleeding. Home was a big mansion in the mountains, hours away from any of the closest towns, which had served as the Fradkov’s winter home for generations before Pyotr decided to move his pack there for good. He would guess Sasha had managed to get there before them fine enough, for he was helping Slick out of the carriage, Vytia giving the horses to the stable hand, when Dima entered the stables, expression pleasantly empty in the way that meant he was dealing with many conflicting emotions he had had enough time to suppress.

Slick stared at him. They had not properly stared at Pyotr since he had announced he wanted to buy them—even in their confused and horrified looking, they had not dared to catch his eyes. They did catch Dima’s and they did appear sick. Pyotr looked too. He knew what Slick was seeing: Dima, tall and strong and confident like no omega got to be, and Pasha following him, a small, chubby boy with bright eyes peering from behind his parent, nothing like the starved, raped omega children who were so plentiful throughout those lands. Pyotr huffed.

“I trust you can deal with them from now on,” he told Dima. His voice sounded cold, but Dima knew him well enough to catch the awkward nervousness under it, for his face softened considerably as he nodded and allowed Pyotr the perfect opportunity to simply walk away from the terrible situation he had created.

 

-

 

His second night back home, Dima entered his office, shining eyes and calm smiles as he stood next to Pyotr and went over what had happened with the betas while he was gone. Pyotr didn’t pretend to care: he always told Dima the household was his job, his position, his care. For all that, Dima still liked to keep him sharp and up-to-date.

Pyotr asked, after he finished, “What of the omega?”

“Helping Vytia.”

Pyotr sent him a look. “Really, Dmitri?”

Dima shrugged. He said, “You know little Vytia is still skittish even with the other betas. Most of his work he can do alone and quietly.” Mostly sewing, and mending the betas’ clothes, and shining shoes, and doing the laundry, Pyotr had been told once. Sometimes cleaning and putting out the fancier glassware when Dima felt like having a proper dinner down with the betas in the kitchen, instead of the usual casual affair he went there to have. “I thought that might do some good for Slick too. Vytia’s been teaching them how to do the laundry and from what I have been overseeing, they have taken the task as something quite calming.”

“They could just rest for now. We hardly need one more servant.”

Pyotr had, in fact, filled their house with so many betas the last thing they needed was more servants. He would still take more in.

“It would do them no good. Would get them even more anxious and afraid, left alone doing nothing. Better to show them we expect them to do work like this, honest and with no sex involved.”

“I suppose you know best. I am, after all, only a silly lord.”

Dima touched his face, fingers caressing his hair, thumb tracing a brown cheek. “My sweet alpha,” he said, shaking his head in such a way, Pyotr could hear the silly even without him saying it. “You have done the right thing.”

He swallowed dry.

“I panicked,” he admitted, ashamed. Pyotr wasn’t one for panic. “When I noticed they were pregnant—”

Sometimes it all felt like playing a god, choosing betas to work for him and letting others in prison, letting others to the rot and the beatings and the rope. Pyotr did what was best for the household and although he knew he was no honest, kind man, he tried to do some good while doing so. He helped the betas he could, but he knew he couldn’t start taking just anyone in, for what if one of his hires did something to Dima or Pasha, or spoke outside of what was done by omegas inside those halls?

He wasn’t brave either, not particularly. If he had been, he would have talked to Slick during their journey or would have at least stayed to make sure Dima would be able to explain things to them. Instead, he thought cowardice could come in hand just as much as daring. Instead, he took the chance to run.

Though he often had thought about taking omegas in as servants, he always hesitated. His celibate reputation ended up his damning—if he started buying omegas left and right, none of his colleagues would be able to believe he wanted them for sex and nothing more. If other alphas started suspecting of his soft spot, that tender weakness he felt towards Dima and his kind, there was no way he would be taken seriously enough to get to any position of power, and if he never took a position, he would never change anything, not in any way that truly mattered.

“You did the right thing,” repeated Dima, firm, and stood up.

Pyotr squeezed his fingers before Dima let go of him. “I love you,” he told him, because Pyotr wasn’t emotional, until it came down to Dima and Pasha and he ended up being the silliest alpha to have ever lived.

Dima laughed softly. Pyotr had been told he sounded very silly indeed when he said such things—voice so firm and matter of fact, so cold and unmoved in the eyes, it was so him. It was a wonder both Dima and Pasha liked what that meant.

“I love you too, my Petya. Please, go to sleep soon.”

He did not.

The truth was, Pyotr knew nothing of Vytia’s family or past. Some sob story, he was sure, for the boy had been some petty thief before being acquired by his household, a street child caught pick-pocketing an alpha that would have been, otherwise, hanged for the offense. Certainly was beaten enough he had been at death’s door by the time one of the guards under Pyotr’s payroll intervened, knowing he was Pyotr’s type.

All his servants were like that. The ones from his father’s time, the properly trained men and women which had participated in the horrors of Dima’s childhood, were all long gone. In their place, he’d filled the house with beta criminals, destined to die because of the smallest offenses made out of hunger and desperation. 

Most guards from nearby towns to the manor knew to send a letter to him before any execution, and he had the uncanny ability to sniff out the betas that would not cause any problems to Dima if hired. None were particularly respectful at the start, but Dima was a natural leader, good and patient. While there were terrible betas like Helmut, who got rich enough they now strived to act like even worse alphas, many of the poorest ones could be won over just by being given good jobs, shown respect, being fed warm food and clothed well and not beaten or humiliated, and allowed to shift whenever they were not working. By the end of their first month, most of them looked up to Dima much more than they ever did to Pyotr.

Like Vytia, many of them kept fearing him for a long, long time, and hardly any were as comfortable in his presence as they were in Dima’s. 

Perhaps only Sasha was—but Sasha was the first one, five years older than Dima, who was already four years older than Pyotr. When they had met, Pyotr was thirteen and he was twenty-two, and he helped them clean up his father’s death, with all the blood and cum and Pyotr’s vomit that entailed. Not much one could fear after seeing such a thing, doing such a thing side by side with someone.

As it was, Dima seemed to think Slick being so terrified all the time helped making Vytia a little less nervous. Dima seemed to believe letting Vytia teach Slick some menial housework made Vytia more confident and allowed Slick some time to heal, as none of it put a lot of strain on their body. Pyotr spent the better part of his days reading and sending letters, but whenever he could, Dima would appear with some sort of news about the bitch, when it was not Pasha babbling on his ear about how strange they were.

Dima told him, five days later, “They refuse to believe you would want them to take off their collar.”

“They refuse something?”

“Not with words, but they cry so much when I try telling them they don’t need to wear it, I cannot make myself take it from them. I need you to take it.”

And because it was an order from Dima, Pyotr went after them, despite the fact the only thing he truly wanted from the omega was to not need interact with them ever again. He found Slick with Vytia, cleaning the floors of the servant’s hallway, and called for them to leave the beta and follow him. They did so, a trembling mess.

“Hennish saw you, I heard,” he said more than asked, once they were inside Slick’s little room. Pyotr pressed his lips and, fearfully, Slick nodded. Pyotr sighed. “Come here,” and when he put his hands on Slick’s neck, he could not help but think it was clear the omega did not know what he was going to do to them, even as they allowed it without a hint of fight. He simply unclasped their collar, saying in a futile attempt to distract them from the gesture, “He has shown me his notes. He believes the baby is fine, for now.”

Slick’s pulse could be felt, wild, even through Pyotr’s gloves. They took a series of sharp breaths before being able to let out a, “Yes, Master,” that was barely audible and half on their way to wheezing as they struggled to breathe.

Pyotr studied the old leather on his hands with disgust, before throwing it away. He told them, simple in his bluntness, “I expect you to follow the doctor’s instructions,” a glance towards the discarded collar, “and to not use such dirty things in my house. Dmitri’s orders are as good as if they were mine, you understand? Obey him, keep your health, and do your work, hole. This is your new purpose.”

 

-

 

He watched. Pyotr had never been good at the interactions that came of it, but he had always been great at the looking, since he was nothing more than a toddler being called a changeling and being slapped around to see if it would make him stop. 

He watched from his study’s window as the slave hung clean clothes outside in the gardens with Vytia, their hands anxious and clumsy from the missing fingers, doing in half an hour what Vytia did in little more than ten minutes. Watched from the top of the stairs as they helped Vytia and some older beta scrub the hall’s floors, settled on their scarred, bruised knees more naturally than they ever seemed when standing on two feet, despite the fact Hennish had written that they were in pain when they did that. Even watched, frowning from his seat, as Pasha entered the dining room holding their hand, likely the first beta to find him after Dima had asked the servants to help, the kid always finding some place to hide when it came time to stop playing. Slick took Dima’s soft smile and careful gratitude with a horrified look Pyotr’s way, and needed to be gently reminded they could go back to their duties if they wanted. They quite clearly did more than anything else.

“They have trouble doing their work properly,” commented Pyotr later.

“Of course they do,” replied Dima, curt. “Did you see their hand? Their legs? Little one’s probably always going to have trouble doing almost anything. Not to say, well.” Dima tapped his left cheek. “I don’t think their hearing is all there on this side, but I have not said anything to them yet. I think it’s best not to cause any further panic and stress in them by pointing it out when they seem to be managing it alright. Never did not answer something people say to them, as long as they don’t say it from far away and behind their back. I have warned the betas to be mindful of that.”

So be mindful too, he clearly meant. Pyotr huffed, but he nodded anyway.

Things, Pyotr thought, were supposed to have a place in his house. People, too, had to have some reason to be around. You were supposed to be born and find some purpose, whether it was cleaning other’s shit or creating laws in the Senate, and stick to it properly so you could earn yourself a life. It was terribly wrong what they did to omegas, keeping them from earning it. Nothing big was even needed: as long as Slick put up the clean laundry slowly and painfully to dry, the world made a little more sense in Pyotr’s eyes. That was all.

He was walking to the stables the next time he saw the little omega up close. They seemed cleaner, bruises fading, but only marginally healthier and hardly bigger. Someone had cut holes on their wool gloves for their seven remaining fingers, as if that would offer all that much help when their dexterity was already so terrible, holding a basket hardly all that filled with the carefully folded, fresh laundry they had just picked as if it was the heaviest thing they had ever touched. They had their back to him, but Pyotr could see the little tilt to their head, their face angled just the slightest to feel the weak warm of the winter sun against their pale skin.

Slick did not notice him by themselves, but they did notice when Vytia gasped, “Alpha! Do you need anything? Are you going to the city? I can call for the stable hand for—”

Slick almost let go of the basket in their haste to turn towards Pyotr, plain hair tucked into a braid that swinged around violently, almost hitting a stunned Vytia. Pyotr simply scowled.

“I can do it myself,” he told both and went to do so.

He met Senator Popov for lunch. He had first met him through his own father, an old friend of the family who had seen Pyotr grow and been the first one to clasp his shoulder at the funeral and offer a hug, the only one to keep sending letters when Pyotr retired himself into the privacy of the proper three years of quiet morning he was expected and glad to take. Popov was a rough one, who seemed to love Pyotr solemnly for being one of the few young alphas who actually took the time of day to hear him complain, more so than he liked him for their shared history. 

Pyotr, in response, hated him quite ardently, hearing his useless complaining and watching the small little omega shaking by his feet, licking his boots the entire meal, not afforded even the smallest of scraps. It was good that Pyotr hated every alpha he met just as ardently and had gotten quite good at schooling his features into their usual nothingness. Popov came in loving him and got out loving him, with a good deal of Senate gossip left behind in Pyotr’s hands.

“You will make someone soil themselves one day,” Dima told him when he came back, certainly meaning Pyotr’s mere presence had terrified Vytia and Slick enough that it had gotten back to him somehow.

“It has happened before,” he told him. “Mostly it has been other alphas.”

Dima snorted.

 

-

 

Only a little after Slick’s first month there passed, Dima told him, “They have started calling themselves this omega, instead of this hole. It’s quite some progress already. Fast progress, everything considered.”

Pyotr paused his writing.

“Have they? Since when?”

“Not to you.” Dima snorted, amused. “They have done it when talking to me and Pasha, mostly. I think they could see how sad and uncomfortable Pasha got when they called themselves such horrible things. Vytia told me they have done it with him too, and I hope they might start doing it on the rare occasions they talk to the other betas too. Sasha, at least, I know they don’t fear quite so much anymore. Either way, I think it will be a long time before they do it anywhere you can hear.”

“They are getting bigger.”

They were. From what Hennish had managed to coax out of them, their scent had changed some four months before Pyotr found them. Slick still didn’t look as far in the pregnancy as they should, smaller than he remembered Dima getting, but now they at least had a small little bump, so Pyotr could rest knowing they likely hadn’t lost the baby already, with Helmut’s treatment.

It was Pasha who came to his study and asked him, “They don’t know how to read. Dad told me so. Can I teach them?”

Pyotr sent him a look.

“You can ask that to your father.”

“But you think it’s a good idea, no, Uncle Petya? Dad’ll be easier to convince if I can say you think it is.”

“I do not believe this is the kind of thing your father could be convinced to allow, if he did not think it was a good idea all by himself.” Pasha stared. Pyotr sighed. “It could be good. They are less afraid of you than they are of anyone besides Vytia. Any time you manage to spend together could offer some rest to their nerves.”

Pasha beamed before running off to find his father.

As Pyotr so expected, Dima was as weak in the face of his wide eyed hope as Pyotr himself had been, allowing it with only some hint of apprehension. He told Pyotr, privately, that he did believe it could be good for Slick—besides the fact Dima himself had trived when offered the chance to learn, Slick was still unable to take any rest day unless Hennish himself told them the baby needed it. They could use some mornings just sitting with Pasha in the library.

Only, Dima was wary, sometimes, of letting Slick so close to Pasha when they reflected such terrible truths that, selfishly, Dima did not wish to see so close to his son. Worried him, a little bit too, because even if Pasha seemed to be a soothing presence to them, he did not think Pasha would be able to handle any panic attack with any amount of grace. As it was, Dima took great care of overseeing any time Pasha set them aside. Pyotr, for he was much interested in academic matters over emotional hurts, took his time seeing what it was that Pasha saw to teach them and how they were taking to it.

Not that well, it seemed.

He could tell from the reports he read later, from what Dima said and what Pasha did not say: the omega wasn’t bright, not really.

Not a fast learner, not naturally clever, not born with a genius mind they’d kept sharp despite their circumstances. They were, quite honestly, a dull one. Dima was kind about it, but Pyotr had been able to tell they were often flabbergasted by the most basic concepts, struggling with things even Pasha could easily get at first try. Displayed both a lack of the day to day knowledge normal people had and a lack of the quickness it’d take to understand it based only in context, like Dima had as a sheltered, abused youth. There was this strange slowness to them, oftentimes, little pauses as if they took what happened around them one beat after normal people. Pyotr had noticed that before too.

They also were a curious little thing, Dima had insisted, one which had never had the permission to be curious. He had hit Pyotr’s arm, when he voiced his thoughts, and argued they were clever in their own way, which only made Pyotr snort in derision. 

As it was told to him, they were so fascinated by everything they now could learn that they tried a dozen times harder than any of Pyotr’s brilliant classmates back at university. If that was to be believed, that was something Pyotr could respect perhaps even more than if they’d been the brightest omega to have ever lived.

He caught them in the library, one afternoon, alone in a way that meant they had finally accepted to take a rest day. Curled up in the seat with a book on the table in front of them, they even looked better. 

Pyotr spared it only a quick glance—the long scarred legs they were hugging with one arm, chin resting in marked knees; the other hand, sweetly cradling their still not big enough belly; the dull hair pulled back into a braid Pasha must have helped them with, face clean and for once not at all hidden with soft shame; a look of concentrated struggle in their eyes making them squint at the pages. Finding the reading hard, yes. But trying so hard to get it, there seemed to be no space for fear in them, if only for the time being.

There would be, of course, fear if they saw Pyotr. So he went to the other side of the library. There was no need to disrupt Slick’s peaceful study, when peaceful study was one of the things Pyotr respected the most.

When he went to get out with what he needed, Slick had seen him, sometime along the way, despite Pyotr making sure to be silent. They were looking at Pyotr’s lips, hands grabbing the book in front of them way too tightly. He paused, only briefly, and asked them, “Are you understanding any of it?”

Slick hesitated, before shaking their head.

“This hole is dumb. It cannot read most of it, Master.”

“But it still understands some. Already better than Olev, then.” It was quite a silly endeavor of course, being all alone in a library staring at words they could not read or learn alone, but if they found it soothing or interesting, it was at least an attempt. He watched them, getting closer. “I heard Hennish contacted an old friend to help with your mouth. Show me your teeth,” ordered Pyotr and Slick obeyed, of course. “Ivory?” he guessed and Slick nodded slowly. That was no surprise. He knew alphas who used real teeth for their dentures, but knowing from who said teeth came from, it was best not to give Slick any of that. He nodded. “It looks better. Has it been easier to eat?”

“Lots, Master.” They lowered their head, shivering. “This disgusting hole cannot show its gratitude enough. Whatever it could ever be ordered to do or be, it would do with all the eagerness in the world, Master.”

“You have not given Dmitri any unexpected trouble. That was what it was ordered.” He sent them a look. “I told you you would understand when you got here. You saw him. Has it started to make sense, hole?”

They paused, their hands shaking so much they had to abruptly set the book aside, although they had been holding it close to their chest with the clear fear of someone who was not ready to let go. Pyotr didn’t need them to answer to know they did not get it yet, nor did he think they would be able to answer it without spiraling, the same way they couldn’t not answer without doing the same.

“Has Dmitri told you how he came to his position in this house?” Slick shook their head, a tiny movement which could have easily been mistaken for the way they usually shook with fear around Pyotr. Resting his own books on the table, Pyotr told them, “He is my brother.”

Slick let out a loud exhale, and then startled, and then cringed, all in quick succession, and all that time staring at Pyotr with wide, shocked eyes. The reaction, in all its dramatics, was likely less because of the relation itself and more from the shock of Pyotr acknowledging it as such.

They looked alike. Dima was pale as the marble statues Pyotr was often compared to, while the alpha himself had his foreign mother’s darker skin. But besides that, they had the same tall built, broad shoulders Pyotr naturally had and Dima had grown into after their father’s death and Pasha’s birth, from working and training with Sasha and eating well. Pyotr seemed stronger, again by nature, but Dima’s own muscles, lithe and compact, were much more practical and well earned. They also had the same high-cheekbones, the sharp jaw, the dimples Pyotr hardly ever showed; even their deep blue eyes, which Pasha too had inherited, uncommon in those lands and a trait peculiar to the Fradkov lineage.

Not that their father had ever cared about that. 

The fact Dima was his son and looked like it, looked so much like Pyotr and even so much like the patriarch himself, hadn’t mattered as much as the fact he was an omega with pretty tits, and a tight pussy, and a sweet crying face. He’d fucked him, and he’d bred the boy dozens of times. Pasha was simply the only baby which had survived.

Pyotr gestured to the general vicinity they were in.

“This house is Dmitri’s,” he stated. He had never said that particular belief of his out loud. It felt good, better still with the look of complete wide-eyed shock in Slick’s face, which Pyotr couldn’t help but be quietly amused by. “I do not care what any other alpha would say, or what the law thinks it can assign as the truth. He is older. It is only fair for him to be the serious lord, and me the silly second son going after a career somewhere else.”

How much he would have loved such a life. Being the spare would be no bad fate, if only it meant he would be alive in some strange world where Dima could be the heir.

Dima was so much better at that than him, too. Pyotr had a mind for books and writings, sharp and clever, but it was Dima the one who could remember the name of every single beta they hired. It was Dima the one who could tell him what everyone did for the house without even having to stop to think, what they needed, how to make them comfortable and happy in their positions. 

There was a sense of brotherhood between the betas, he’d been told, and Sasha had once even admitted that the job often felt as much as a second family as it did a second chance. Most of them didn’t even like Pyotr beyond him allowing them to shift—the tie that bound that little family of criminals together was, then, Dima of course, with his calm demeanor, his soft confident control of all, his firm paternal leadership. Younger than most, and still more respected than anyone inside or outside those walls.

“Master—”

“You are in an omega’s house,” he interrupted them. “I believe it is time you stop acting like I am the Master here and start dealing with the fact Dmitri is. If he gives you books, you are allowed books. It is nothing you ought to repay me. He was the one that decided it.”

There were tears in their eyes, by the time Pyotr left them. That was nothing new.

 

-

 

As a baby and a toddler, Dima hadn’t been allowed inside the house, kept in the shed with the dogs, given only enough by the beta servants he could barely cling to survival. He had been seven when the betas started using him, and nine when father decided he was pretty enough he could work to earn some hours inside the house. It was then, while he earned such privilege, that little five year-old Pyotr had seen him for the first time, learned about the omega he had no idea they had in their estate. 

For the next eight years, they didn’t exchange a single word. 

Their entire brotherhood was built upon the glances they could steal between—oftentimes during—Dima’s rapes, the small moments their paths so briefly crossed and blue found blue. Unnerving focus would stare at terrified pain, and Pyotr was seven when he first saw something so unmistakably human there, half of the time he felt like he was going insane as he looked around and watched everyone treat Dima like everything but human.

Once Pyotr had sneaked Dima some bread behind their father’s back, and Dima had licked his shoes as a thank you. Once, so young still, he had faked an unforgettably violent tantrum to make suddenly terrified betas forget about the omega they had been terrorizing. Other time, ten and running away after a fight with his father that had ended with him with a throbbing cheek, he had hid behind the shed and fallen asleep shaking with fury. Had woken up disgusted with some patch of oily cloth around his shoulders, which had taken an entire day for him to recognize as the closest thing Dima had probably ever got to a blanket, and longer still to understand how it had ended up with him. Had sneaked out that night once again, to let a real blanket by the shed. 

Even then, there had been no words spoken.

He remembered that night. He had seen their father raping Dima more times than he could count, but that night—that night Dima was sixteen, belly just barely starting to grow with a child that was never meant to survive, and their father was being so rough, so violent, so cruel, Pyotr had been certain of one thing and one thing only: he meant to kill Dima.

He thought only: this hole is human, and it is my brother, and then, he did it.

His first words to Dima had been him begging for forgiveness. Forgiveness for committing patricide and forgiveness for not committing it long before, forgiveness for thinking of how much he wanted to burn every beta in that house and for being too small and cowardly to actually do so. Dima had touched his face, scarred and bruised hands, hesitant hands which had never been granted kindness and never given the chance to grant it, and had called him brother as he dried Pyotr’s tears. His voice sounded so rough and pained. Like that was the first time he had spoken his entire life.

And then there had been Sasha, not a proper servant of them, but a temporary hire from the closest town who'd been cleaning the latrines just seconds before, who’d helped them hide what had been done. Pyotr had inherited everything, and their father’s death was ruled out as natural and Dima’s existence carefully erased from any document or letter with a lot of help from said inheritance.

For the first months, the three of them called Dima a slut, and an it, and called after him with that terrible name his father had given him. It was not malicious—they hadn’t even been able to think about calling an omega something else, not until Dima told him he wanted his son to have a real name and Pyotr told him, just coming to the shocking realization himself, he should have one too.

He chose Dmitri. A proper and respectful family name, one their ancestors had loved to use with their heirs. It had delighted young Pyotr, made Sasha laugh and laugh and laugh when it was explained to him. Dima had been proud of himself, then, watching their little pack happy because of something he did. Sometimes it seemed like that had been the first time any omega had ever felt pride.

Pavel Fradkov, their sweet little Pasha, had been born that next winter. 

He knew Dima was his dad, and Pyotr his Uncle Petya, and somewhere along the line, Dima and Sasha had started saying Sasha was his father. An easy lie the boy had never questioned too much—for all he had been told of the horrors of that world and the true awfulness of how omegas were treated, he had been raised as the big exception. Knew well he should be careful and never go outside, but never would’ve been able to imagine any of those horrors happening inside his home and family, with his dad.

There laid their issue, of course. Their story was bloody, but it was a dream compared to the life of any other omega. Afterwards, he thought it was unfair of his part to ask Slick to “start dealing” with something he knew they couldn’t handle yet. He knew it was almost cruel of him, although he always tried not to be and sometimes fell short in his attempts.

 

-

 

It was some weeks after, only a little before he had to go back to university, that he was forced to go looking for Slick again. This time, he did knock on their door and waited, patiently, until they opened and then tried to fall to their knees when they saw it was him. As Pyotr had grown to expect, he held their shoulders tightly to stop them. They shook.

“Master—”

“Let us sit,” he ordered, “and talk.”

Their mattress was thin and likely the best thing Slick had ever touched, and while Pyotr took the only chair inside, they sat in the bed with the strangeness of someone who had never done so before, eyeing the floor in front of him as if feeling the uncontrollable urge to throw themselves there. Pyotr pursed his lips.

“I shall be quick with it,” he said and their eyes found his mouth immediately. “Dmitri thinks you want to ask me if I would pretend to be the pup’s father once it is born. I think Dmitri only thinks that because it’s what he would have done. What he did do. But you are not him, are you, Slick?” He looked at their now noticeable belly. “You want the child to be all yours.”

There were tears in their eyes, but the relief there was palpable.

“Yes, yes,” they cried. “Thank you, Alpha, thank you.”

Slick took being an omega a lot deeper in their mind than Dima ever had, Pyotr thought. For all the terrible first months, Dima had shredded his position as a “slut” the moment the choice had been given to him: had wanted a real name, had chosen one for himself and his son, had asked to be taught how to read and write, how to make equations and inventories and take care of a big household, and had taken giving orders to Sasha as soon as Sasha made clear he would listen and obey without retaliation.

Slick seemed adamant they didn’t need any name besides Slick. They couldn’t bear to talk about themselves in first person, would shake and cry at the mere implication of them being a person at all, had taken all that abuse and grooming so deep in their flesh it seemed to just be them now. But, somehow, they still had that—the hidden fire in their eyes that said the child is mine.

“Dmitri is headstrong,” said Pyotr. “I love my brother dearly for it,” for, despite everything about himself and his personality, that was an easy confession to make, “but he can be as intense as he accuses me of being and while I am sure he understands you better than myself, it is true he and his son are the only omegas he has ever met. I do believe my brother might have some problems seeing you do not really react and think about your experiences the same way he does his, even though they might parallel each other. Do not fret. I will certainly help with the baby, as he is being born under my household and thus is my responsibility as much as you or any of the betas. I know my place. I am no one’s father. You are the one that decides everything about how the kid is raised.” 

Pyotr was not one for touches, but Slick clearly had been well trained not to do anything for themself. As tears fell from their sticky eyelashes down their red cheeks, they made no move to stop them, only hugged themselves tightly, looking at Pyotr wordless and voiceless, eyes huge.

Pyotr got up and took his handkerchief, lightly taking it to their cheeks, drying the tears as he lifted their chin. He expected, quite honestly, for Slick to startle and flinch, and to then take a very long time pathetically begging for unneeded forgiveness. But they didn’t move, just stared. They breathed in, unsteady.

They whispered, voice a shaky, honest thing: “This omega’s very grateful, Alpha.”

They were more grateful for it then they had been for the books. Pyotr didn’t hide his smile. He felt the urge to, had already started to suppress it, but he could tell it had been hard for Slick to say those words and when Slick saw the telling pleased curl in the corners of his lips, there was a release of tension on their shoulders.

“That is good,” he told them, and took his hand away. It was true—it was good, because Pyotr was exhausted from hearing the words this hole.

Slick watched him putting his handkerchief back in his pocket.

“You will continue your studies while I am away.”

Slick seemed surprised, and then to be carefully trying to hold down the soft hope on their face, looking down and nervously shifting with their fingers, saying: “This useless omega isn’t very good at it still. It isn’t clever at all.”

“It isn’t,” agreed Pyotr, because they were not. “But you are hardworking. That is a lot rarer, as my time in university has shown me well. It is something that you should be proud of, Slick. Half the betas and alphas I’ve met would not know how to put on the work even if their life depended on it.”

And if Slick did some flinching almost smile, so so tiny and embarrassed and pleased, Pyotr could simply pretend not to see it.

 

-

 

University was as it always was—the dreamlike evenings at stone quiet libraries, the steady pleasure of writing until it felt like his wrist would fall, the wicked gratification of winning at classroom discussions and debates, the fourty consecutive hours without sleep because he did not have Dmitri to worry and force him to go to bed. Reading until it felt like his vision was swimming with too many shaky letters no man had any hope of understanding, and talking still and commanding to plenty of alphas and betas who were desperate to look clever and cool in front of him. Seeing the omegas everywhere, beaten and raped and killed, just too many years away from his plans.

He sent Dima weekly lessons he expected Slick to do. Dima sent them back for him to give feedback on, together with his usual updates about the estate, the betas and mostly a lot of Pasha, although there was a good deal of Slick now, too. 

The omega had asked for help from one of the betas without crying. The omega managed to stay for one of Dima’s loud and festive dinners downstairs with all the betas, although they stayed glued to Pasha and Vytia. The omega smiled at one of Sasha’s jokes, and they chose a shirt for themselves, and they called themselves this omega more often than this hole those days. Their pregnancy was cleared out as reasonably less risky by the doctor and they were not, Dima noticed, skin and bones anymore.

Pasha, too, sent letters to Pyotr, long and full of animated tangents. In one of those, at the end of it and a bit far from the rest of the paragraphs, there read:

Deer Master,

Thank our very much for the lessons. Mister Dmitri and Pavel help me a load with them.

Pyotr was alone in his apartment, so he allowed himself a small smile at the omega’s terrible calligraphy, a second of exasperated softness before taking his pen to write down some new training for Slick, something to help them with their letters and grammar.

The fact they didn’t quite write things wrong, and instead mixed up words and their meanings, was unreasonably endearing to Pyotr, who didn’t find many things endearing.

It took a good couple of months until he had another longer free week, some religious festivities that called for twelve days of fasting and praying and alpha worship he only cared about for the opportunity it gave him to go home. He saw Slick before even seeing Dima, travel weary and just getting out of the stables when he caught the omega also walking to the house.

“No,” he snapped when they made to kneel and, that time, they stopped easily, as if expecting it already, and instead lowered their head to show respect. Pyotr squinted at them. “I have heard more about you than I have ever expected to, these last months. Your Olev never shuts up, does he? Senseless beta bothered me endlessly talking about you, always asking if I was having fun, if you were being a good fuck, why I had not taken you to the university with me.”

The omega stopped. They blinked slow, dull eyes.

“You could, Alpha. Take this omega, it means.”

Pyotr snorted. “Why would I ever do that?”

“Alpha said his colleagues thought he was cold. This stupid, stupid omega only thought it’d help if they saw Alpha fucking it.”

“Slick,” he said, voice stern. “That would be two days traveling to the capital, then entire months in an university filled with very hostile alphas and betas, then giving birth there without Hennish or any doctor to supervise.” He eyed their belly, which was, in fact, somehow noticeable, if not as big as Dima had been. “Does that sound like something that would be good for the baby at this stage?”

“No, Alpha.”

“No, it would not. So it will not happen.”

He could imagine it perfectly: Slick crawling by his side as he went about his classes, naked and pregnant and trembling. Could see the surprised looks, and hear the degrading jokes and cruel comments about the omega’s face. Slick already looked small enough now, curled up shoulders and eyes shining with fear and tears and something else, something more complicated. Pyotr huffed.

“You really are teary.” Slick stared at him, frozen. Pyotr shook his head. “It is no criticism. But you could at least dry your own tears, omega.”

Slick looked down to their feet. It was in a small voice they admitted: “Master Helmut liked when this omega didn’t,” playing with their own hands. By the way they shifted, awkwardly, with the crooked fingers Pyotr had noticed before as previously broken, it could be assumed the way Helmut showed his displeasure at the omega daring to not show him their tears.

He frowned.

“There is no need for your pain,” he remembered Slick. “No need for your discomfort. I would not waste time caring for such things, much less punishing you for them.”

Slick stared at Pyotr’s mouth, cheeks on fire.

“This omega understands, Alpha.”

“Do you? I think I have been quite clear, Slick, but I sometimes wonder if you truly understand me. It is not your fault that you do not, of course. You would have to be painfully stupid to expect anything but the worst from me. But the fact is, I simply wish for you to be comfortable.”

“Why?” They looked up, briefly, and then seemed horrified by their own daring. Slick flinched, averting their gaze, an apology already letting their lips: “Alpha—”

Pyotr, not unkind and neither kind, simply ignored it.

“Why should I not?” he answered the question, blunt with it. “It is a question of pragmatism. Alphas have no reason to hurt omegas besides liking it, and they waste a lot of precious time making sure the pain sticks. Just letting you be is a lot less wasteful for me, truly.”

There’s a second, then, where Slick simply stared at Pyotr’s gloved hands with furrowed eyebrows, hands holding their belly and eyes sparkling with a million of emotions Pyotr had no hope of truly understanding. That didn’t stop him from staring back at the omega, scrutinizing gaze studying every crease and line and snap in Slick’s face, drawing together his own eyebrows as he tried to pierce together what it was that was crossing that troubled little mind.

Finally, Slick said, voice small: “This omega understands now, Alpha. You are kind.” Pyotr, of course, reacted as one should: he frowned even more. Slick’s eyes darted up, before drooping away with a cower at what Pyotr supposed was the bemused disbelief in his face. “You are, Alpha.”

“Should I thank you for the compliment?”

“No compliment,” denied Slick, surprisingly firm despite the shaking hands they tried to hide. “Only the truth, Alpha.”

“I do not—” The words evaded him. It was not common Pyotr didn’t know how to word something, but he felt clumsy and unsure, looking at the conviction in those brown eyes with a tight chest. He cleaned his throat and tried again, “I am not a naturally empathetic man, Slick. I cannot put myself in others shoes, cannot share feelings with them. It is hard, for me, to share much of anything. To show things and to accept being shown. Hard to be truly open or gentle with anyone who is not Dmitri or Pavel.”

“Perhaps, Alpha. But this omega thinks… it thinks you have a lot of sympathy, Alpha. That’s just as kind.”

And Pyotr couldn’t help it. He sent Slick a surprised look. “And did this omega read about the difference between empathy and sympathy in one of my books?” They blushed, terribly ugly, and nodded. Pyotr smiled, dry. “Of course. I will have to be more careful with my words, I see. This omega is getting sharper.”

Slick eyes widened with worry.

“Alpha—”

“That,” cut Pyotr, waving off the fear, “is a compliment, Slick.”

“Oh.” They paused. “Should—should this omega thank you for it?”

Sharp indeed, throwing Pyotr’s words back at him.

Did they know how they sounded, just then? Likely they didn’t and that rang sad and bitter, that flickering ghost of what they might have been in another life. Could’ve been playful. Could’ve been sarcastic, and might have liked bantering, had they not been a little sex slave before even knowing what it meant. Pyotr sent them a look.

“Tell me what Pavel has been reading with you,” he told the omega. They hesitated. Pyotr could read that apprehension well enough. “I have been told it already, yes. I want to hear from your own mouth what you understood of the story. Reading comprehension is as important as knowing how to spell, you know. It is what men like Olev lack.”

Slick stuttered a lot, as both of them walked back to the house and they told Pyotr of the last book they had read. But they did speak. He was not so sure they would have managed to, last time he saw them.

 

-

 

Slick hummed while they hung the clothes to dry. Pyotr found it to be the strangest thing in the world for reasons even he was not so sure about, watching as the little omega took a shirt from the basket by their foot, shook it, and pinned it to the clothesline, just—just humming. 

They did as slowly as they did everything: a pause before they grabbed one of the garments, a breath before they remembered to shake it, a second before they took one of the clothespins on their pockets, and an entire struggle to use it with their stiff fingers. But they did it calmly, which was not their usual way. They did in quiet, slow peace, stopping their humming and their work to sometimes just rub their belly or hold it a bit.

Pyotr had been quite good at keeping himself by Slick’s right side every time he talked to the omega. He had been great at not starting to speak from far away, only he had, shamefully, forgotten about that little problem while away and so, after watching the omega for a bit, he did call for them and ask if his blue coat was there with the laundry Slick had just done.

He could not tell when Slick noticed him. Perhaps by the time Pyotr was already by his left side, repeating himself pointedly. Slick, in response, was silent. Slick held themselves completely still, staring wordless at the sheets they grasped too tightly.

Pyotr watched them for one second before remembering.

“I see,” he said. “Come on, omega, let us change sides,” and he was certain their hearing was not so bad they didn’t hear those words at all, but he was not so sure how hard they were straining to understand him, so he pulled them so he was by their right side, maneuvering the pliant omega. “Better?”

“Oh,” they said dumbly. Slick blushed, an ugly and splotchy thing. “Mister Dmitri knows?”

“Of course. Dmitri watches just as much as me, he is only more charming and better at hiding it.”

“This omega is sorry, Alpha.”

“Uhm,” he said. “I hardly think you were the one to hit yourself so hard in your own head you lost some of your hearing.”

They looked down. “This omega certainly did something to deserve it.”

He squinted at them.

“Did you now?”

“This omega cannot remember.” Their face burned with humiliation. “It was very young and—and its memories are not the best, Alpha. It is dumb and slow and useless and worthless, of course. It’s been a hole since birth, but it knows its Masters were right to crack its head open. It is so sorry that it’s an inconvenient to Alpha now.”

”Uhm,” he repeated, thoughtful. “How bad is it?”

“It can hear enough when you’re on this side, but it knows it’s not enough. It should never ignore its betters no matter where they’re talking from.”

“You never look me on the eyes.” Pyotr thought of it. “That is Helmut’s training, I imagine. It is proper enough. Sometimes you stare at my lips. You read them, don’t you?” They flushed even more, cringing. Pyotr let out a startled, “Ah! So you do have some cleverness in you since before, omega.” That made him quite pleased. Pyotr liked when people were clever, especially an omega like Slick, especially when they were otherwise so—so Slick. “Those are some good survival instincts, at least. Continue.”

They blinked.

“Continue?”

Pyotr paused. He didn’t know if that had been something odd to say, only that he was not so pleased to be questioned when he said odd things. He told them, “That’s what I said.”

“Oh. Alright, Alpha.” They paused. “Do you need something of this omega, Alpha?”

“Only my coat, if you know where it is.”

Of course, Slick immediately forgot all their work so they could help him find it.

 

-

 

Vytia was the first to notice when Pyotr stepped into the kitchen. His eyes, which were either naturally very big on his face and always gave him a look of terrified surprise or always went huge like that every time he saw Pyotr, seemed as shocked as they ever did, but he didn’t flinch, which Dima would have called a win. 

Pasha, sitting comfortably next to Vytia, was the next one, opening a wide smile that always went straight to Pyotr’s chest. He straightened his posture, and Dima looked, and soon so had the betas—and the happy banter, soft laughter and clacking of dishes died so suddenly, Pyotr would’ve ran was he a lesser man. Instead, he came closer. He nodded to Dima. Dima smiled, softly. Bigger, when he sat by Vytia’s side. 

Right next to Slick, he did.

The omega seemed to be making themselves as small as they could, but those eyes peeked at him, soft, a curling on the corner of them. They tried to give Pyotr their food, to which Dima quickly stood up and announced, “Let me get you a plate.”

Pyotr knew that Dima often ate downstairs with the betas, but it had been a long time since he tried to get Pyotr to eat with them when he knew he did not like the mere idea of doing that. Pyotr did not even like eating with other alphas, not at home or in a professional setting or even in his university’s hall, and in his worst days, he was glad Dima chose to eat with the betas, for even his presence was a bit much. That one was not a particularly bad day. It had been quite good, in fact, and somehow, it meant he had ended up downstairs.

They ate honeyed meat and roasted potatoes. They drank bitter beer Pyotr didn’t bother touching, sipping sweet wine with the younger ones and Slick, and Slick finished less than two sips, and two glasses of water, and an entire plate of food—that, from what Dima had told him, was a big victory. 

No casual banter across the whole table was able to pick up again, not with Pyotr there, but the conversation found a softer rhythm, once Dima, Pasha and Sasha were able to engage enough of the betas and cross some of the terror they felt towards him. Slick was quiet, but paying attention: following the words spoken around them, nodding their head along Vytia, hiding smiles once or twice. Pyotr watched them when he wasn’t busy paying attention to Pasha, although Pasha did call for his focus most of the time.

He had sometimes wondered how it felt like when the betas were all just together, eating and talking and joking. Clearly, he would not learn, even if watching them from the outside. When Slick took their plate and Vytia’s and went to wash them, Pyotr followed with his own to do the same by their side. The sink was big enough.

They stared, flabbergasted.

“This is—Alpha shouldn’t.”

He should not. Wasn’t proper for someone of his standing to do something as low as washing his own dishes, but he dipped his head towards Slick and whispered, as if they were sharing a secret: “I live alone when I am studying, omega. You would be surprised at how used I am to housework.”

“At the dorms?”

There was curiosity there. Heartbreaking curiosity, open and interested in a life that could never be his. 

“At a building close by. Could not take having to share the dorms with other students.”

“Because of Olev, Alpha?”

“Because they are all like him,” he said, which was much the same. Slick tilted their head. “Dmitri told me you have been helping in the kitchen.”

“Just this way, Alpha,” they said, meaning Dima had made them responsible for washing part of the laundry and cleaning most of the dishes, which seemed easy enough for their hands and, for some reason, quite soothing to them in general. They lowered their eyes. “This omega is very grateful for Mister Dmitri,” and Pyotr only hummed, because he felt it was much more fair for Dima to be thanked than him, when he had mostly just ran from Slick until Dima had dealt with settling them through the worst.

He put his plate aside to dry and took Vytia’s, because he could do the task faster than Slick, the way most of them could. Slick’s hands trembled where they were holding the plate, but they steadied themselves.

“Thank you, Alpha.”

He nodded, simply.

 

-

 

Pyotr was back at school for quite some time when he received the letter that Slick was close to giving birth. As a matter of fact, he was doing a presentation that had turned into a full blown lecture and crowd-creating speech when the letter, marked as urgent, was given to him.

As he was the kind of firm, terrifying alpha that could just tell people he needed to go back home for private matters and have that been taken as if he had just told them the prime-minister herself had called him, Pyotr so went. He was told by the stable hand that he managed to get there just in time, as the trip was much shorter than that to get to Helmut’s—especially if one took the train to the closest town possible, which he tried not to do, but had done so for such an occasion.

He marched to Slick’s room immediately.

Pasha had been a big and fat baby, as per Fradkov genetics. Pyotr hadn’t been prepared for how tiny Slick’s baby looked all bundled up in his dad’s arms, too busy being fed to even cry. Even tiny didn’t seem like the right word, didn’t truly encompass how terrifyingly small and fragile the little omega seemed to be, a painful lump forming in Pyotr’s throat as he entered the room and got closer to the bed.

Slick stared as he did so, tear tracks in their flushed cheeks, an once fine enough braid now a mess of frizzed, wild hair sticking out and sticking to their sweaty forehead. Seemed on the verge of falling asleep and, yet, with eyes more alight and alive than Pyotr had ever seem when it came to them. The alpha raised a brow.

“Alpha,” they exhaled. Their voice was as painfully hoarse as the first day they met. They clearly had not been expecting to see him. “This omega can’t welcome you properly.”

Pyotr sent them a serious look. “I hope this omega does not even try,” he replied, standing by their side and peering down at the baby. The little omega was too focused on his task to care about the strange new man, and he looked back to the new parent. “How are you feeling? Hennish told me the birth went more smoothly than expected, but it was still harder on your body than he would have liked.”

“This omega was well taken care of. It knows you are the one who should be thanked for that, Alpha.”

“No matter.”

Slick bit their swollen lips. “It does,” they whispered, voice quiet and careful. “This omega is grateful. It—it can go back to their work soon, Alpha. It only needs some hours of rest. It is very thankful it got so much.”

Pyotr was sure the their was accidental. Between all those its, Slick seemed so exhausted it was no wonder they would let it slip at least once, but Pyotr did not call it out as the victory it truly was, once it would only be sure to make them panic.

Instead, he shook his head.

“You will be given at least a month off,” he told them, already knowing Dmitri would insist on a lot more than just that, and Pyotr would back him up. “Of course, your body has to recover, but even after that…” He couldn’t help but snort. “I remember when Pavel was a newborn. It is nasty, lousy business. Takes all of one’s time.”

Slick blinked.

“Thank you, Alpha.”

“Hard work,” he reiterated, and his hand found Slick’s shoulder, light and slightly awkward, “but you will miss the days he was this small. Even if they are more interesting after they start developing some personality.”

There was no mistaking the smile, then. It still wasn’t that big, only a delicate curving of lips, but it was a good look on them. Smiling to Pyotr, with tenderness instead of fear dancing on their eyes, softly tired and tiredly pleased—just like that, Pyotr could almost call them lovely, struck by the sincere way they looked up and answered: “This omega can’t wait.”

“For him to grow?”

“For him to… for him to everything. It can see Mister Pavel is very happy. This omega’s child is not as important, it knows, but—”

“He will be cared for just the same,” finished Pyotr, simple as that. “And I do hope he will be as happy as my nephew while living under my roof. There is no point for him not to be.” Slick’s cheeks went a pleased pink. “Did you think of a name? Dmitri told me he helped you go over some possibilities.”

Slick nodded, a small thing. They smiled as they looked down to the baby, and they said, shyly: “This omega thought of Motka, Alpha.”

Pyotr nodded. “A fine choice.” He looked down to the little omega, the little Motka, before looking back to Slick. “Has Dmitri bothered you too much about choosing a name for yourself?”

“A bit, Alpha. Do you—”

This time, they were the one that trailed off, clearly not able to voice the thought. Pyotr thought he knew what they would ask already, and decided to take pity on Slick. Did not want the omega to go back to cringing fear and crying anxiety now he had seen them so completely devoid of it.

“Do I think you should?” finished for them. “For all Slick means, it is the name you have had for what I guess has been more than a decade, and the only name you think of when you think of yourself. To force you to let go of it because it makes some uncomfortable would be a useless endeavor.”

“Dmitri said it would be the best for the kid.”

“Did he.” A low blow, but an important one. Pyotr had thought about it in depth before. “Little Motka will call you dad, I imagine, and the household will likely refer to you solemnly as his father when around him. It is a natural impulse even when one does not have an insult as a name. It is very likely he will think of you as dad and nothing more, and, even when he hears Slick, I doubt he will think about it for long enough to understand what it means. When he is old enough to question your name, it ought to be a teaching moment. You will know he is more than old enough to know how the world outside treats omegas.”

“You are very good at this, Alpha.”

“I have been an uncle for a long time. Dmitri and I have had many long conversations about the best way to raise Pavel.”

“You have done a beautiful job.”

“You came when we had most of it figured out already.” Pyotr watched them and frowned. They did not, he thought, looked very put together at all. “Now, look at this. Look at you. I am going to help you with your hair, you understand?”

Slick blinked, confused, but there was no surprise when they placidly agreed, an obedient: “Of course, Alpha.”

Pyotr pulled a chair from the side, sitting by Slick’s side. He touched their shoulders and Slick shyly sat up better, shifting until Pyotr felt it was fine enough and lightly tapped them so they stopped. Their locks were as sweaty and messy as Pyotr would’ve expected, but they had given birth just the day before. He was sure a lot had been taken care of and cleaned already, and that had been the least of Hennish and Dima’s priorities. No matter now. Pyotr undid their braid, carefully running their fingers through their hair and undoing as many tangles as he could. 

Slick gave a full body shiver.

“This is no task for a Master such as yourself,” they whispered.

“I have done it a thousand times for my pack,” replied Pyotr, voice apathetic as ever, but words reassuring enough, he hoped. “It is a task I like.”

True to that, he’d been the one to teach Pasha how to braid his hair, after being taught by Sasha only for that exact reason. His nephew’s hair was as straight as it could get, unlike Slick’s soft and undefined curls, but that wasn’t much different in practice and he had no issue restoring the braid to what he assumed it had looked like before. A bit better perhaps: Pasha’s braids always looked a bit crooked, and Pyotr was sure it had been him to make Slick’s hair. Poor omega didn’t have enough movement with those fingers of them to do it themselves.

His fingers touched Slick’s neck briefly, before going to the omega’s bare shoulder, the large shirt’s sleeve falling off of it. He hooked his thumb in it.

“I do think Dmitri ought to get you some properly fitted clothes, once you are more recovered.”

“Alpha,” breathed out Slick, though they looked more mortified by the idea than grateful for the offer, which Pyotr thought was quite honestly funny.

Funnier still when Pyotr said, “But you will let Dmitri get Motka as many clothes as he deems needed?” and the omega’s face answered it all even before they opened their mouth.

“Oh.” Slick blushed. “This omega would be eternally grateful, Alpha.”

“I see.” He took his hands away. “There you go, omega.”

Slick blinked, carefully shifting with the baby in their arms so they could touch the braid, fingers lingering in it. Looking at that quiet wonder, Pyotr couldn’t help but have the fleeting thought: they smell better now. 

Pyotr hated anything that seemed too sweet, be it in smell or in taste, and he found the tooth rotting pheromones of pregnant omegas close to unbearable. Dmitri, for all they loved each other, somedays was so intensely like sugar and roses it gave him headaches, but Slick’s scent, without the baby, was so mild he couldn’t even tell what it was supposed to bring to mind. A bit citrusy, perhaps. Only a tiny little bit. Considering he knew more than a few alphas who chose their slaves because they were pretty enough and smelled lovely when terrified, that was likely one more thing that was held against them to lower their value.

Pyotr preferred it. Light, fresh, clean—Pyotr knew he smelled like that too, undistinguished and understated. Perfectly bland, as it should be.

“Do not thank me again,” he told them.

“Of course, Alpha,” and of course, they said the words just like they meant they were thanking him.

Pyotr was sure Dima had been right when he said, so many months ago, that not being given any work would have terrified Slick. Now they had Motka on their arms, however, and they seemed to not mind the privilege of staying in their room all day, fulfilling their child’s needs being their only real task. 

He knew Vytia dropped by and helped them take care of Motka (and themselves) quite a lot. Vytia seemed to genuinely believe that was helping, and to be completely in love with little Motka on top of that, despite Pyotr’s initial suspicions the boy just wanted to avoid some of his work. Dima too had many times shushed Slick to just go rest and sleep while Dima took care of the baby himself. 

Motka still looked unbearably small. Pyotr could not stay around him for long—he thought of what would have been done to Motka had he stayed in Helmut’s household, in any household that wasn’t that one, and he felt so powerless it was like he was thirteen again, and the entire world was his father. When he did visit Slick, it was mostly with some book that Slick was quite happy to hear him reading out loud while they fed Motka, closing their eyes and relaxing back in bed.

“Does it hurt?” he asked once.

Slick looked down to their chest. “A little bit,” they admitted, which meant it hurt a lot for them to even say it, “but Mister Hennish says it’s because this omega’s piercings weren’t done right, Alpha.” They had left some scarring, Pyotr could tell, although all their piercings had been taken off the second Hennish first laid his eyes on them and saw how puffy and red it had been looking. “Mister says this omega is very lucky it didn’t get a worse infection.”

“Quite lucky,” agreed Pyotr with a snort.

Slick supported Motka’s neck carefully. “He said he’s surprised this useless omega even got so much milk to give. Some nerves were damaged. He said it should have been a lot worse.” They smiled down at their baby as he kicked one small little leg, their eyes impossibly fond following the movement. “This omega supposes at least this they can do right.”

“He has an appetite.”

“Yes, Alpha,” agreed Slick, quite incapable of hiding how happy they were about it and how happy it made them to be able to sate their son’s appetite, when they wouldn’t have had the milk for it some months before.

Pyotr was going to look to see if Pasha was with Slick, after not being able to find the boy anywhere else, when he found one of the servants standing just in front of the closed door.

His head-cook, recognized Pyotr. A large, round beta with a large, round face he’d never once shared a single conversation with which didn’t revolve around vegetables and meats, Osip had been a thief and a smuggler once, but Dima always said he took to the kitchen more than he’d ever taken to underground markets and dangerous dealings. Cooking for the estate certainly didn’t make him reliable to lose his remaining eye the way his former dealings had done to the other one, at the very least.

He looked nervous, just then. Looked so pale and shaken, it was like Pyotr would take his other eye.

His voice, a deep and rough thing, shook. “Sir Fradkov.”

“Beta,” acknowledged Pyotr, eyeing the man and his strange behavior. “What are you doing here?”

“Only came to see the kid and the pup, sir.”

The kid was Slick, he supposed, and the pup Motka.

It did come to mind that Slick worked awfully close to Osip when in dishwashing duty, and it was perhaps Osip one of the betas they were able to ask for instructions without crying, from what Dima had said. He hadn’t known they were close enough that Osip would want to meet the baby. He hadn’t known Slick was close to anyone, much less enough to make them look as anxious and hopeful as Osip did now, sending ridiculous little looks to the door.

”Gods,” he murmured, going around the older man to open the door.

Osip got to a stop. His voice was soft, softer than it seemed possible coming from such a big, rough man, a simple, shockingly delicate, “Oh. Hello there, lad.”

Slick was standing by the window, giving Motka delicate taps on his back. They stopped too.

“Sir,” they said, voice rough, but mysteriously watery. Their eyes found Pyotr’s briefly. “Alpha,” and went back to Osip fast. They seemed smaller, then. Tentative. “Did you come—would you like to see this omega’s child, Sir?”

“If I would be allowed.”

He turned his head towards Pyotr, but it was after one second too long and, even then, his eyes were still strained on the little bundle in Slick’s arms. It was quite clear, to Pyotr, whose agreement he cared to hear, despite it not being clear to the omega themselves. They looked at Pyotr, expecting.

“Go on,” he said.

Osip smiled when he saw little Motka. Pyotr privately thought good. Motka was so small. It seemed wrong to not smile at such a quiet little baby.

“The betas all like them,” said Dmitri, when Pyotr asked later. “They are such a quiet little thing, it is hard not to want to help them.”

Most of the betas had hurt omegas before. It was impossible not to, when every facet of their society was made to torture them and anyone who was a part of it did so without even thinking. You had to be the most eccentric alpha to explain away never touching one of them and even then, you would have seen an omega being hurt and have done nothing plenty of times. 

It was true most of them didn’t respect Dmitri when they first got there and were slowly gained over. Pyotr wondered if Dmitri understood how much of that “help” they extended to Slick was out of their own guilt, which was hard to direct towards an omega so sure of his position and not omega-like as Dmitri, but much easier with one like Slick.

Osip visited them, then, and almost cried when allowed to hold their son. Vytia was there almost every day helping. Even Yakov, the one beta who had almost killed an alpha after a bar fight, drunk and furious and exhausted, and who Pyotr had had to pay half a fortune bribing guards to keep alive, only bothering because Dima had been so delighted when he heard the story—even he, who was the only one who ever even dared staring at Pyotr with disgust when he went to him to ask to shift, took the time to personally carve Slick a small little wooden horse for them to give to Motka, the pup’s first toy. The first time the parent held one too, in all likelihood. The others cared to make them an entire crib as a surprise.

The kind gestures were all born of some terrible guilt. That much was clear as day. He would take a guess it would kill Slick a bit if they ever had to hear what most of them had done to some omega or other before. But none of the betas would brag about it in that household, not with that sweet life they were allowed to lead, and guilty kindness was still kindness, especially to someone who was as beaten as Slick. They took it as if they had never received anything of the sort, because they had not, and they cried overwhelmed with gratitude more than once, just in front of Pyotr.

“Does it make you nervous, omega?”

“This stupid omega is sorry, Alpha.” They sniffed, drying their cheeks with weak, shaking hands. “What should make it nervous?”

“Being alone with them.”

They hesitated. “For what?”

“For what they could do.”

“This omega is not pretty,” they told him, solemn. Not self pitying, not self conscious, not even particularly sad or ashamed, but like it was a simple truth they didn’t feel like could be hidden, so clear it was.

Pyotr sent them a confused look.

“So?”

It had still been used before. It was not about prettiness, what was done to omegas. It was not even about attraction. There was some certainty in them, however. Some deep understanding. “They’re all happy with the life they lead. None would give it up for a hole like this omega’s. It has never been worthy of any kind of life, for it or of any true person.”

“Perhaps not before. But what does that change in here? Your face and body hold no power over the way you are treated while in my house, I hope I have left that much clear. You are not a hole, nor a whore.”

“Because—this omega won’t be killed, if no one wants it.”

“No. Never.”

And privately, Pyotr thought that even if they weren’t the pretty fuck most alpha wanted, they had those deep, warm brown eyes, and the little shy smile they so rarely sent Pyotr, and that breathtaking hope in their face every time they looked at Motka. Had a little gap between their front teeth and every time Pyotr caught sight of that, he wanted to think something so sweet his mind recoiled in disgust and shock at himself.

There were more tears escaping from the corner of their eyes, but they wiped them themselves, sniffing. “Master Helmut hated this omega so much for being ugly. Its dad was such a pleasuring slut, Master said, and he killed it for this hole. This omega… Alpha, they think it will stop calling itself an—an it soon enough, but Alpha, how is this hole supposed to be a person? It was never a child. It never had to grow, never had to be. It doesn’t know how to.”

Please, their eyes seemed to beg them. Please, just tell me how.

He scowled at them.

“Listen here, Slick. Have you ever seen someone torture a chair? Remember a table of its place? Starve a fire for entertainment? The simple fact Helmut had to hurt you, the fact alphas have to do so much to omegas to prove you are only things, is in itself proof you are not. Now you are here. Now you will read books, and walk around the gardens, and raise your son. The rest will come.”

“Do you really think so, Alpha?”

“I know.”

“This omega—”

They sniffed again. Pyotr lifted one eyebrow, bemused.

“Tell me.”

“This omega doesn’t think it can be like Mister Dmitri. Even if it could be something, it doesn’t think it can be a lot.”

“Does not have to be. I am not a lot, am I?” Slick looked at him as if the mere thought of agreeing was the most horrifying thing to have ever been done to them. Pyotr smiled, a sardonic, twisted expression. “Do you truly think, Slick, that if I was not an alpha I would be much of anything? I am not as good of a leader as Dmitri, I am not as resilient or strong or charming. Everything I have is because of my class, and everything I bother doing is because I know I have to do it for my pack, but no one likes me much, and all I really want is to be quiet and alone. My ideal life is a boring one, and I would be happier with it than with the life of a Lord I am taking.”

“This omega never met anyone as clever as you, Alpha.”

“And I use that for politics. I am good at it. But I do not even like it. Believe me, if I could use my brain only for writing and reading books and essays for the rest of my living days, no one outside those walls would ever see me again. Not,” he scoffed, “the most interesting of men, see?”

“No, this omega doesn’t. But… it agrees Alpha seems he would have liked to not be interesting or much. It agrees it wouldn’t… wouldn’t be so bad, a boring life here.”

“Then it is good that is clearly what you are getting,” he snorted. Slick smiled, wobbly. Pyotr sat in their bed. “You should know. Sasha will inherit this place. It is unfortunate, but that is as close as it could be prepared for Dmitri to inherit.”

All Pyotr knew about the two was that they weren’t in love, despite being the best of friends and loving each other, and that whatever they did, they made sure Dima didn’t get pregnant. He trusted Sasha, and even more so, trusted Dima would take care of it if Sasha tried anything, so he’d never asked, not even that first time Dima had referred to Sasha as “your dad” in front of Pasha, not even when Sasha had a rest day and Dima asked him to keep Pasha busy before disappearing with the beta. 

Some things, Pyotr believed, a brother was better off not knowing.

His second year, Pyotr had worked with senator Kamenev: politically a ruthless, incorruptible genius, personally an odious little alpha who kept her thirteen year old omega slave limbless, eyeless and tongueless—politically and personally, famously protective of her beta bastard sons. It had been easy to make her think she had been the one to think of a law so alphas could pass their states to betas after death, and easier still to help her by writing more than half of the needed legal procedures.

Sasha, when told, had taken it and disappeared to talk to Dima for so long, even Pasha had started to worry asking where his father was. Mostly, that had helped Pyotr believe he had made the right choice trusting Sasha.

Slick only blinked, confused. “I’m sorry, Alpha,” which was to say they did not understand the point of what Pyotr had just stated.

“That would mean,” he explained, “that even if something happened to me, this house will continue working just as it does. I am quite healthy, but politics can be a dangerous business and I am not oblivious to it. There are many precautions that have been set to assure Dima’s safety, and many plans to keep that safety for as long as Pasha lives. Worst comes to worst, there are precautions to make sure Pasha can be taken out of the country to somewhere milder in their treatment of omegas. That would also happen to you and Motka.”

“I trust in you to truly think of everything, Alpha,” and they say it so seriously too, eyes brown and deep and warm staring at Pyotr with solemnity and awe. Pyotr scowled.

“I plan for everything I have to plan for,” he retorted.

As it was: they were talking in their room, because one would be hard pressed to find Slick anywhere else, unless perhaps he was in the gardens after Dima gently reminded them that the baby needed the sun, or very rarely in the kitchens when they were coaxed into showing Motka to the betas. Motka himself had been napping, until he decided it was time to make himself known by stinking up the place. Slick shot up, fear on their face as if they thought Pyotr might react badly to it, but Pyotr simply walked to the crib.

“Let me, omega.”

He was thirteen the first time he managed to convince Dima of letting him change Pasha’s diaper, Dima being so overwhelmed and terrified he had finally been pushed enough to accept some help. Slick watched him go through that old, unforgettable process with big eyes, frozen in place.

There was silence, as he did it, though not a comfortable one. They were tense. Painfully so. They have a tentative step closer. “No father.”

Pyotr looked at them.

“No,” he agreed, because he knew what that was about. “I have told you this before, have I not? I do not claim the kid as mine, but he is my responsibility, as someone born under my roof. I will help you as much as you need of me.”

Slick’s eyes flickered, bright and shiny, and they dried a new wave of unshed tears with a trembling hand. “This worthless omega thanks you.”

“No matter.”

“It does.”

He was shocked. How could he not? The way Slick said it, it was firm, and louder than usual for the omega, standing its ground with only the barest hint of a tremble on their voice, steadier still than how most free men talked to Pyotr. He looked over his shoulder, and he understood, so he nodded.

“So it does,” he agreed.

Because if it mattered, then so did Motka, Pyotr guessed.

Slick blinked as if surprised, as if they didn’t expect it to work at all. They smiled, relieved, grateful, lovely all over, and accepted being handed over their clean son with a quiet air of pleasure, as Pyotr went to dispose of the soiled cloth. They gently rocked Motka, whispering to him sweetly to try to make him stop his crying.

 

-

 

He’d been told by his classmates that siblings were supposed to fight. 

He and Dima did disagree, sometimes, but Pyotr was ever too aware of the power disparities between them both. While the others talked about screaming matches, and physical fights, and being unable to say they loved each other even if they in fact did—well, their positions were much more delicate and their brotherhood seeping with too much blood. Dima hadn’t once in his life raised his voice, would never do that even after so many years, and Pyotr feared too much one day he, Pyotr, would lose his temper and revive that same old fear and subservience his brother used to show to their father.

They didn’t get to have heated arguments. They didn’t get to be embarrassed of saying what they felt out loud, didn’t get to hold grudges, to be annoyed or bitter or petty. They got all the abuse. All the fucking beatings and rapes and careful, systematic dehumanization, and if they didn’t do some mature, delicate communication about everything all the time, this would be all they got to have with each other.

Pyotr believed he was the lucky one in the end, he truly did. But perhaps he got bitter about it, sometimes. Perhaps he would have liked to fight Dima—to know Dima would fight back.

It had to be understood how pleased he was when Dima walked into his study with a scowl. It had to justified how it pleased him, not insulted, when Dima told him in a serious, grave tone, “You have not done anything to them.”

“I do not believe I have.”

“They have talked to me,” he said, pressing. “They have asked certain things about you. Can I trust you do not know what that’s about?”

“I hope you know you can always trust me.” Pyotr let go of his pen, staring at his brother with a frown. “I have not touched them. I have not asked anything. What can they possibly have asked to warrant this reaction, huh?”

Dima paused.

“If you don’t know, I certainly cannot say.” He pressed his lips. “This is quite twisted, Petya.”

“How am I supposed to know? You don’t explain it to me.”

Dima’s eyes lingered on his face, before he shook his head. He pinched Pyotr’s cheek, to his squirming annoyance, and told him firmly, “You can be soft.”

Pyotr glowered.

“Can I now?”

“‘Course. Now,” he said and he snorted a bit, “being warm? That’s a bit beyond you, as you are so proud of. But soft you can do. So remember that, huh?”

“I do not know what you are talking about.”

Dima smiled. “Of course you do not. Let me shift, now. I need to run around some.”

He would have liked to ask more questions, but Pyotr tried to never argue when asked for that, something Dima knew quite well. He huffed, but he waved his hand. “ Shift,” and there Dima went.

One day, someone would cause some damage in his study that went beyond the already quite scarred floors, and Pyotr already loathed to think of the insufferable panic he would have to deal with when it happened. 

 

-

 

He found Slick in front of his room the night before Pyotr was supposed to go back to university, twisting their hands nervously as they waited. They sent him a look. Pyotr lifted one eyebrow.

“Let us get in before anything,” he decided, because it was the kind of look he had only ever seen on them right before being shown a fallen tooth, and he did not want to deal with anything of the sort right in the middle of the hallway.

He had hardly walked inside and closed the door when he heard that familiar thud behind him of Slick falling to their knees. That was no good. Instinctively, Pyotr snapped around and tried to grab them them, only they stared him right in the eye, so daring Pyotr had to stop himself. It felt wrong to let go, but wronger still to ignore the little braveries the omega so strangely displayed sometimes. They shook, their eyes finding his feet as they hugged themselves.

“You did not like it, when this omega sucked its former owner in front of you. It is sorry. It was so hungry it felt like it was going to pass out, then, but—but it’s no excuse. It was made to take it, and it wasn't as good as it was trained to be. It can do better now.”

Perhaps there was a better way of dealing with a kneeling, trembling former slave offering themselves to you—but Pyotr had already told them plenty they were not wanted for sex and it seemed to have been heard, perhaps even believed in Slick’s moments of logic. The promise of it did not overshadow the moments where pure fear and instinct took over.

Pyotr kneeled too. He touched Slick’s hands, careful, pulling the omega up as they stared at him with raw hope.

“I do not like sex,” Pyotr explained, logically. “Perhaps I am not that good of an alpha, perhaps there is something wrong with the wolf in me, I do not know, only that it bores me, and I never want it. Once an alpha tried sucking me and all I did was look at his ceiling and think about what a garish shade of green he decided to paint it. Do not think it personal. It would be a waste of your worries.”

He’d never talked about it, not truly.

Most of his peers could tell something was off just by seeing how he acted both when offered an omega and when flirted with by a proper alpha prospect. If they thought he had no desire at all, that he stoically denied himself, or that he had desires so violent he couldn’t even satisfy them with the slaves of others, it hardly mattered. 

Dima and Sasha, he had a feeling, thought he was too traumatized by everything he saw done to Dima, too afraid to want, too terrified of finding out he liked what his father had liked. Perhaps a part of Pyotr was ashamed to talk to them, to admit that for all his childhood haunted him, this one was just always there, internal and personal and confusing only when other people decided to make him think about it enough to be confusing. His lack of desire, it never felt much like a lack. It simply was.

Slick had to have noticed the fact he had no other omegas, but it was hard to say if they thought Pyotr fucked the betas. Most alphas did—most alphas fucked just about anything with a pulse, and without one when it came to omegas—and by the look they sent him, they clearly hadn’t thought Pyotr was truly that different.

“But—this one wished—”

They shut their mouth fast, because omegas were not allowed to wish, were they? Pyotr hesitated, lifting both eyebrows, and tried to keep his voice as low as possible, in the hopes that would at least hide some of his natural coldness: “What do you wish for, Slick?”

“To suck you,” whispered.

“Do you? Do you truly?” Slick took a long, steading breath, and looked up at him, nodding. Pyotr frowned. “Why?”

“Its—this one—it likes—” 

Another thing an omega was not allowed to, to like. They seemed unable to say anymore of it, seemed to not have the words despite all the reading Pyotr had been seeing them do, searching and searching for it in their mind and coming up with a stuttering nothing. Lost, their eyes fell to their linked hands. Somehow, the anguished longing in their face answered every one of Pyotr’s questions in ways no words had.

“I see,” he said and let go of the omega. Slick looked like they’d been slapped. Pyotr told them, helpful: “You do not wish to suck me, Slick. You wish to be touched.”

Pyotr took off his gloves. He hadn’t done that in—in a very long time, his fingers painfully naked as they found Slick’s cheek, his thumb wiping away a lonely tear as he’d done before, only then with the safety of no direct, true touch. The omega shuddered, and so did Pyotr. He swallowed and felt more than he should feel because of one little brush, felt Slick’s warmth setting deep on his skin, traveling as a twinkling sensation through his arm.

A long time indeed.

Pyotr had not kissed the alpha who had sucked his cock. He had never kissed anyone at all, unless one counted little kisses on Pasha’s cheeks or forehead, which he of course did not think would help at all in the moment, brushing his lips against Slick’s, cupping his cheeks.

He waited to feel something. Waited for the pleasure, the lust, the urge for more, only nothing came. He felt unmoved by the act, until he retreated and Slick sent him such a sweet look, Pyotr was horrified by the strength of the fondness that overtook him because of that little omega. They looked at him, and they seemed as peaceful as they got—there was the telltale sign of tears on their eyes, but they blinked it away, and smiled, shy, as Pyotr’s thumb awkwardly reached for one of their hands and caressed their scarred palm.

“You do not need to kiss a hole,” they whispered, gentle. Not quite sad. Not quite worried. Somehow deeply peaceful just to have gotten this one time.

“I am an alpha,” replied Pyotr coldly. “I do not need to do anything.”

Slick stared at him, and then they looked down, and they smiled. It was weak, it was tentative, but there was amusement there. As unused to it as Pyotr was making something that could be a joke. He gave their hand a squeeze and hoped it was reassuring, not painful. He had no idea of it worked.

“Is this what you came for?”

“Not at all, alpha.”

That was, perhaps, a good thing.

Dima had Motka for the night, they explained shyly, as Pyotr took their hand, unused and awkward with it, and tugged them to bed.

Pyotr watched as they undressed with ease—being naked, at least, was not something they saw as an act of intimacy, was not even something noticeable at all. Pyotr had seen every piece of skin before, and cared not for the omega’s tits and cunt either way, so he paid little attention to the body itself and more to what he could tell had changed: the bruises and cuts had long healed, giving them some new faint scars Pyotr could spot between the older, uglier untreated scars they already had had. Most importantly, they’d gained weight, a healthy pudge on their belly they hadn’t lost after the pregnancy. Now that he looked at it properly, their arms and legs and thighs had filled out, and they looked soft. It was a miraculous thing, to see them appearing soft.

They hesitated, when it came to Pyotr’s time to undress.

The Fradkov were famously known for their beauty, and so was Pyotr’s mother. So much so, despite holding no charm unless one was attracted to cold, charmless intelligence, Pyotr remained as one of the most popular, sought after alphas in their society. He knew that: he was perfectly handsome. It was a detached knowledge, numbed by how little attractiveness he himself felt toward others, mostly noteworthy because he knew someone who looked like him could get away with a lot more than someone who didn’t. 

He knew people stared, could tell when they got lost on his face and eyes and body, and knew Slick did not. When they did, it was not the good kind of loss.

They looked down at his cock, and closed their eyes. They breathed in, shaky, before opening their eyes and crawled into the mattress.

Pyotr knew about courtship, to a certain extent. His father hadn’t been a good partner the same way he hadn’t been a good parent, and his mother had been colder even than Pyotr, long before she went back to her home country after his father’s death, perhaps suspecting what had happened, either way too uncaring to both her kid and husband to do anything but clear out silently. 

Even so, Pyotr knew he was supposed to take an upstanding alpha wife one day, and was acknowledged on how he was supposed to treat them. His father, despite not having raised him to respect his future wife, did raise him to charm them into thinking they were respected, even if only at first.

Slick was not a wife. Slick did not expect to be respected, did not look for it. They shook, when laying in bed with him. But they stayed. He could respect it: they were generally slow and unpleasantly plain to most, but brightly curious and clearly capable of being brave, when pushed enough, when fed and warmed and cared for for long enough.

He stared at their feet. Their insides churned.

“Even there?” came out, too surprised to hold. That was the one part he had not remembered to check the first time he saw them naked.

Slick looked down. They wiggled their remaining toes, an almost playful gesture. “This omega is no good for running like this,” they commented.

Pyotr raised a brow.

“Did you ever run?”

Slick paused. “Never dreamed of it.”

“But they still took it.”

They shrugged weakly. Pyotr, neurotic and terrible and odd, told himself, do it softly. You know how to, and quite slowly took his eyes away.

“Why do you think,” he asked them, laying by their side, “that makes alphas so different?”

There was an intense steadiness as they stated “You are blessed, Alpha,” which was what everyone said all the time, about alphas.

“Because we can shift once we are grown.” Pyotr took their hand, running his fingers through the scars, following them as they shivered. He laughed. ”What do you think makes an alpha grown? What do you think makes a pack?“ He turned his head to them. In the dark, the truth came out, “I killed my father, omega.” Slick froze. “Killed him because he was going to rape my brother to death. I was too young to shift alone, then. I did it anyway. I stood behind him as he hurt Dmitri, with small fists and blunt teeth, and as soon as Dima’s eyes found me, my wolf came out. It was not supposed to be possible.”

Slick was shaking. Bravely, they held into Pyotr’s arm, their eyes intense. “This hole cannot say when an alpha is grown.”

“I believe that I can,” he replied. It was perhaps the biggest religious debate their people had, the reason behind hundreds of small wars throughout their history and why the church had some many separate branches despite them all following the same gods. Pyotr still felt surer of it than he felt of anything else, ever: “I know, deep inside myself, that an alpha grown means a pack leader—and I am sure, deep inside myself, that it was Dmitri who had made me capable of doing what I did that night.”

My impossible boy, Dima had called him once, when Pyotr was fourteen, when he was curled and shaking in Dima’s arms, hot and miserable the way his ruts always made him. Impossible.

Slick paused, before they dared locking their eyes with Pyotr’s.

“Omegas have no place in a pack.”

Pyotr laughed, a rough sound. “I think that is perhaps the worst lie you have been beaten into believing, Slick.”

They shivered against him. They whispered, “Alpha truly does not think—this omega never wanted to be this hole it was born as. Do you not think this soaking fuckmeat was made to be raped?”

“We have slept together before,” he remembered them. “Did I rape you, then? Nothing has changed about your place.” Pyotr paused. “This time, if you wish, we can touch. If you wish, you can hold my hand again or touch my cheek. You can kiss me. There will be no fucking. You were not born just for giving and I was not born for taking.”

Their fingers hesitantly found his cheek. “You think so?”

“I am an alpha,” he repeated. “I am quite sure of it.”

They let out the smallest of breaths, choked and pained and like, just then and there, they thought they might believe in it too, one day.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of the patience of things