Chapter 105: 16.3.1 x
gabriel genuinely thought koen was a beta so when koen’s heat starts gabriel is caught very off guard. koen’s heat isn’t that bad at the start, he’s just very hot, a bit dizzy, words slurring a little.
The smell of wet pine and old stone from the afternoon’s hunt still clung to Koen’s clothes. He’d tracked a wyvern-kin poacher through the Blackwood marshes for three days, and the ache in his muscles was a deep, satisfying thrum. Home. He shouldered open the heavy oak door of their townhouse, the familiar creak of the hinge a welcome sound. The downstairs was dim, quiet except for the crackle of a low fire in the hearth. Gabriel was probably buried in some celestial ledger upstairs, the glow of his scribing crystal casting blue shadows on the wall.
“Gabe?” Koen called out, toeing off his mud-caked boots. His voice felt a little rough in his throat.
“Kitchen,” Gabriel’s reply floated back, smooth and distracted. “Don’t track that filth past the rug. I just had the imps polish the floor.”
Koen grinned, padding in his socks across the cool stone of the hallway. He found Gabriel at the long trestle table, a spread of shimmering, parchment-thin scrolls hovering in the air before him. He was in his human guise, blonde hair perfectly in place, a faint frown of concentration on his face as his fingers danced, sorting missives. He didn’t look up.
“Successful hunt?” Gabriel asked absently.
“Got ‘im,” Koen said, leaning against the doorframe. A wave of warmth washed over him, sudden and intense. He blinked. It couldn’t be that, it was too early “Bounty’s collected. Got paid extra ‘cause the jaws were intact. Good for alchemy, apparently.”
“Lovely.” Gabriel finally glanced over, his light blue eyes scanning Koen quickly. “You look like you wrestled the thing instead of shooting it. Go bathe. You smell like a bog drowned a dog.”
“Charming.” Koen pushed off the frame, heading for the pump at the sink. He needed a drink. The warmth was settling into his bones, a heavy, lethargic heat. He worked the handle, splashing his face and drinking deeply from the copper cup. The water was cool, but it did little to douse the inner fire. His head gave a peculiar, light spin. “Long day for you too?”
“The usual. A debate over seraphim migration patterns, a complaint about harp tuning in the third choir, a request for intervention in a border dispute between two lesser deities of harvest.” Gabriel waved a hand, and the scrolls collapsed into a neat stack. “Paperwork. Eternal, mind-numbing paperwork. Why anyone thinks Heaven is glorious has never processed triplicate forms.”
Koen nodded, but the words seemed to slide around his ears, not quite sticking. He felt… fuzzy. Distant. He turned, leaning his hips against the counter. “S’boring.”
Gabriel’s head tilted. “What?”
“Said it’s boring. Your job. S’boring.” Koen’s tongue felt thick. He tried to focus on Gabriel’s face, but his features seemed softly blurred at the edges.
A slow smile spread across Gabriel’s lips. He stood, his chair scraping softly. “Well, someone’s feeling contrary. Tired, darling?” He closed the distance, reaching out to brush a streak of dried mud from Koen’s cheek. His fingers were cool.
The touch sent a jolt through Koen, sharp and electric. A shiver that wasn’t from cold raced down his spine, followed immediately by another surge of heat so potent it stole his breath. He leaned into the touch instinctively, a low, rough noise escaping his throat before he could catch it.
Gabriel’s hand stilled. His playful smirk faltered, replaced by a flicker of confusion. “Koen?”
“‘M hot,” Koen mumbled. He was. It was here and it was burning him up from the inside. The room tipped slightly. He put a hand out to steady himself on the counter.
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t looking at Koen’s face anymore. He was studying him. The slight flush that had bloomed across Koen’s tan cheeks and down his neck, darkening his freckles. The dilation of his orange eyes, the pupils wide and black. The way his breath was coming a little quicker, shallow pants that misted in the cool air of the kitchen.
Then Gabriel took a deliberate, slow breath through his nose.
His entire body went rigid. The arrogant, casual grace he always carried shattered in an instant. His flawless skin paled, his blue eyes widening with a shock so profound it looked like physical pain.
“No,” he breathed. The word was barely audible.
Koen swayed. “Huh?”
“You…” Gabriel took a step back, his hand dropping from Koen’s face as if burned. The color that had drained from his face rushed back in a tide of furious, bewildered crimson. “You are an omega.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation, laced with utter disbelief.
Koen blinked, his sluggish mind trying to parse the words. The heat was a drumbeat in his veins now, a throbbing, distracting pulse. Thinking was like wading through syrup. “Yeah? ‘Course.”
“‘Course’?” Gabriel’s voice cracked, rising in pitch. He ran a hand through his perfect hair, utterly ruining it. “What in the Nine Burning Hells do you mean, ‘course’? You never said! You never—your scent! It’s always been just… you! Musk and gunpowder and leather! Neutral! Beta!”
Koen frowned, struggling to keep up. Gabriel was upset. Why was Gabriel upset? “Didn’t hide it,” he slurred, pushing himself upright. A fresh wave of dizziness made him grab the counter again, his knuckles white. “S’just me. You never asked.”
“I shouldn’t have to ask!” Gabriel exploded, a burst of celestial energy making the hanging pots rattle. He stared at Koen as if seeing a completely different person. The reality of the situation was crashing down on him, wave after terrible wave. The shared living space. The easy proximity. The casual touches. All of it built on a foundational misunderstanding he hadn’t even considered possible.
And now Koen was going into heat. In his house. Right in front of him.
The first, mild wave of scent hit Gabriel then, properly—past the initial shock. It wasn’t the full, compelling torrent of a peak heat, not yet. It was the precursor. Like the scent of air before a storm. Koen’s natural musk, deepened, sweetened with something wild and desperate. It was faint, but to an alpha’s senses, especially an archangel’s, it was a klaxon.
Koen whined, low in his throat. The sound was utterly unconscious, driven by discomfort and a building, confusing need he knew too well. “Gabe… m’head is… spinny. Think… I need t’sit.”
All the anger bled out of Gabriel in a rush, replaced by a cold, sharp panic. He saw it now—the glassiness in Koen’s eyes, the slight tremor in his limbs, the confusion that was less his usual charming denseness and more a biological fog descending. This wasn’t Koen being obtuse. This was his body betraying him, and he was helpless in its tide.
“Oh, hells,” Gabriel whispered, the curse a prayer. His mind, usually orchestrating cosmic correspondence, scrambled for a plan. Shelter. Security. He had to get Koen upstairs, contained, before the heat proper rolled in and turned their home into a trap for both of them. Before Koen’s scent deepened and called to every alpha within a league. Before Gabriel’s own instincts, so long and carefully restrained, decided to participate.
“Okay,” Gabriel said, his voice forcibly calm, the one he used when placating furious cherubim. He approached Koen slowly, hands up as if approaching a skittish animal. “Okay, Koen. Listen to me. We need to go upstairs. To your room. Can you walk?”
Koen looked at him, eyes wide and lost. “Why’re you… shoutin’?”
“I’m not shouting,” Gabriel said, his jaw tight. He gently took Koen’s arm, guiding him away from the counter. The contact made Koen shudder, another one of those low, needy sounds escaping him as he leaned heavily into Gabriel’s side. The scent was stronger now, clinging to his skin, his hair.
Gabriel swallowed hard, every angelic part of him screaming at the violation of protocol, the sheer impossibility of the situation. He believed he’d fallen for a beta bounty hunter. A fierce, loyal, beautifully simple man who smelled of the earth and steel. He’d built a life around that assumption.
And now that man was an omega in pre-heat, clinging to him, trusting him completely while his world dissolved into fever and want.
“Just one step at a time,” Gabriel murmured, half-carrying Koen toward the staircase, his own heart hammering against his ribs. The game had just changed. The board was overturned. And he had no idea what the rules were anymore.
gabriel gets koen to his room. koen immediately gathers all the blankets and pillows together before burrowing into them, gabriel never realized just how many pillows and blankets and soft plush things koen had. gabriel asks if koen has an suppressants, koen doesn’t he ran out a couple weeks ago and didn’t have it in the budget to get more
The climb up the narrow staircase was a slow, torturous ordeal. Koen’s coordination kept failing, his boots catching on the edges of the steps until Gabriel, muttering a strained invocation, simply lifted him. He carried Koen the rest of the way, the hunter’s head lolling against his shoulder, hot breath gusting against his neck. Each exhale was a soft puff of that deepening, devastating scent.
“Almost there,” Gabriel said, the words feeling absurd.
He shouldered open the door to Koen’s room. It was sparser than his own, dominated by a large, sturdy bed and a workbench cluttered with gun parts, cleaning rods, and small, intricate tools. The walls were bare stone. It smelled of oiled metal, cordite, and, underneath it all now, that gathering storm.
Gabriel set him down on the edge of the bed. “Sit. Just for a second.”
Koen didn’t sit. The moment his feet touched the floorboards, a change came over him. His glassy eyes sharpened with a sudden, single-minded purpose. The confusion burned away by a drive more ancient than thought. He stumbled forward, away from Gabriel, toward the oak chest at the foot of the bed and the deep closet beside it.
“Koen?”
He didn’t answer. He yanked the chest open and began pulling things out, not looking, hands searching by feel alone. Wool blankets, thick and scratchy. A faded quilt. A surprisingly soft velvet throw pilfered from Goddess-knows-where. He dumped them all onto the center of the bed.
Then he went to the closet. More emerged. A feather-stuffed duvet. Two woven lap blankets. A plush, sapphire-blue bolster. Then came the pillows. Not just the two from the bed. He pulled them from the closet shelf, a seemingly endless supply—down pillows, firm bolster pillows, a small, lumpy one that looked handmade.
Gabriel could only stand and watch, his earlier shock mutating into a dazed kind of awe. The pile on the bed grew into a small mountain of softness. Where had he been storing all this? Did he raid a linen merchant twice a year? Koen, the brutal half-demon who could field-strip a repeater carbine in total darkness, who slept curled on his side like a hound, owned a hoard of textiles that would embarrass a royal court.
Finally, his arms full of a final, impossibly fluffy white comforter, Koen climbed onto the bed. He didn’t arrange the pile. He attacked it. He pushed and molded and shoved blankets into the corners, creating walls, a canyon. He buried the pillows deep within, patting them down, his movements frantic and precise.
Then, with a shuddering, relieved sigh, he crawled into the heart of the nest he’d built and simply… disappeared. He burrowed down, pulling layers over himself until only a tuft of ashen black hair was visible against the white linen of a pillowcase.
The mountain of fabric settled. A faint, trembling rustle came from within. Then silence.
Gabriel stared at the nestled form. The primal efficiency of it, the sheer unselfconscious need, left him winded. He found his voice, rough and too loud in the quiet room. “Do you have any suppressants? Pills? Tonics?”
A muffled sound came from the blankets. It took Gabriel a moment to parse it as words. “Ran out.”
“What do you mean, ran out?”
“Weeks ago.” Koen’s voice was thin, strained. “After the griffon job. The payment was short. Had to choose. Bullets or pills.” A shift in the nest. “Chose bullets.”
gabriel has no idea what to do to help koen through this. he only knows of the base way to help, sex, but he doesn’t want to do that because they’re not at that stage in their relationship yet. koen has gone through heat without suppressants before, it’s not new to him but it still sucks
The simplicity of the statement, muffled by down and wool, struck Gabriel like a physical blow. Of course he had. Koen’s world was one of tangible threats and immediate solutions. A bullet solved a problem. A pill just postponed one. Gabriel’s hands flexed at his sides, useless. He was an archangel who managed the logistics of paradise, and he was utterly unequipped for a fevered nest in a stone room.
He watched a tremor ripple through the blanket-mountain. A soft, pained sound followed. It wasn't a request. It was just a fact of existence, escaping.
“Right,” Gabriel said, the word flat in the thick air. The room was growing warmer, saturated with Koen’s scent—now less like impending storm and more like the storm itself, a dizzying mix of musk, sun-warmed stone, and something uniquely sweet that made the back of Gabriel’s throat ache. His alpha awareness, a sense he usually kept sheathed and ignored, was now a live wire in his chest, humming with every ragged breath Koen took.
He needed a plan. A procedure. Heaven operated on protocols. He had guidelines for grace-dispersement, scroll-archiving, inter-choir grievance mediation. There was no memorandum titled ‘When Your Presumed-Beta Half-Demon Partner Reveals He’s an Omega Mid-Heat In Your Shared Dwelling.’
Koen shifted, the nest rustling. A tan arm emerged, fingers scrabbling weakly at the empty air before falling back onto a pillow. "‘S hot," he mumbled, voice thick.
"I know," Gabriel answered, automatically. He took a step closer, then stopped, forcing his feet to root to the floorboards. He couldn't just stand here. He had to do something. Help. But how? His knowledge was academic, crude. He understood the mechanical, biological purpose of a heat. The base solution was seared into every primal part of him, a low, insistent thrum that made his skin feel too tight. But the thought of touching Koen that way, now, with his mind clouded by need—it felt like exploitation. It was a line they hadn't crossed, a conversation they’d never had, and to breach it now would be a violation he couldn't stomach.
"Have you... How do you normally get through it? Without the pills." Gabriel asked, straining to keep his tone clinical, neutral. He sounded like he was inquiring about a field dressing technique.
"Huh? Oh. Wait it out." Koen’s answer was punctuated by a sharp intake of breath. "Sucks. 'S just... time. Water. Sometimes, if I can think, cold cloth. On the neck. ‘Member that."
Gabriel latched onto it. A task. "Water. Cold cloth. Right." He moved, too quickly, nearly upending a chair as he pivoted toward the door. "Don't... go anywhere."
A weak, breathy noise that might have been a laugh came from the nest. "Not... planning... on it, genius."
The hallway outside Koen’s room felt ten degrees cooler. Gabriel leaned against the closed door, pressing his forehead to the weathered wood. He could still smell him. He could feel him, a distressed pulse of heat through the grain. He pushed off, striding to the linen cupboard for a clean cloth, then down to the kitchen pump. The water was well-cold, shocking against his fingers. He fumbled with the latch on the icebox, chipping a few slivers into a bowl with aggressive precision.
This he could manage. This was tangible. Carry the bowl, the dripping cloth. Don't think about the scent growing stronger with each step back up the stairs. Don't think about how vulnerable Koen was, buried in there. Don't think about the other, simpler, terrible way to make the pain stop.
He re-entered the room. The atmosphere had shifted again, grown denser, more intimate. Koen had managed to kick some of the blankets away. His shirt was rucked up, exposing the taut, sweat-sheened skin of his abdomen. He was panting, eyes screwed shut.
“Koen. I have the cloth.” Gabriel’s voice was too tight.
No coherent reply, just another whimper. Gabriel approached the bedside, every muscle tense. He could see the frantic flutter of Koen’s pulse in his throat. Carefully, slowly, he unfolded the cloth, letting the chilled water drip. He reached out, hesitating for a suspended moment, then laid the folded fabric across the back of Koen’s neck.
The effect was instantaneous. Koen arched off the bed with a gasp, a full-body shudder rolling through him. “Fuck! Yes~” he choked out, hands fisting in the sheets. Then he went boneless, sinking back into the pillows with a ragged sigh of pure relief. “Gabe… s’good. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Gabriel whispered, the formal response absurd. He watched the rise and fall of Koen’s chest, saw some of the terrible tension leave his jaw. A simple cloth. A minute’s respite. It felt like a triumph and a tragedy simultaneously. This was the help he could offer. Pathetic, incremental relief against a tidal force of biology.
He sank into the chair by the workbench, the one Koen used for cleaning his guns. He would stay. He would fetch more cold water. He would listen to every hitched breath and stifled cry. He would keep watch, and he would not cross the line his own body was screaming at him to break. The weight of that decision settled over him, heavier than any celestial mandate. He had no idea what to do, but he would stay anyway, anchored in the helpless dark beside the nest, waiting for the slow, suck of time to pass.
He stayed.
Time became measured in the soft, agonizing sounds from the nest and the gradual warming of the cloth in his hand. Gabriel would rise, his joints stiff, to refresh it at the basin he’d brought in. Each time he lifted the damp linen from Koen’s neck, the scent would burst upward, richer, more potent, a fucking physical thing that wrapped around his tongue and tightened his gut. Each time he replaced it, Koen would shudder, a broken sigh of thanks slipping from his lips, his consciousness flickering somewhere between pain and a desperate, fleeting comfort.
“Talk,” Koen rasped during one interval, his eyes slits of burning orange in the dim light. “Please. ‘S just the itch inside my head. Need… noise.”
So Gabriel talked. He narrated meaningless administrative dramas from the Seventh Heaven, his voice a low, steady monotone against the whispers of rustling fabric and hitched breathing. He described the tedious argument over fountain maintenance in the Silver Plaza. His words were a lifeline he threw into the fever, something for Koen to grasp that wasn’t biology.
“Gabe?”
“Hmm?”
“Your voice is pretty. ‘S calm.”
Gabriel’s recitation of proper scroll-inking protocols died in his throat. He simply sat, silence roaring in his ears, until Koen’s breathing deepened again into pained, rhythmic pants.
The cycle wound on. The tension in Koen’s body would coil, a spring tightened to its breaking point, his back arching, fingers clawing at the sheets, soft curses dissolving into needy, wordless cries. Then it would ebb, leaving him shivering and drenched, a hollowed-out wreck until the next wave gathered force. Gabriel witnessed it all from his chair, a statue of forced neutrality, his own skin crawling with sympathetic fire.
Near what he guessed was dawn, the final, vicious peak seemed to pass. Koen’s thrashing stilled, replaced by a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. The scent in the room softened from a command to a hazy, spent ache. His eyes, when they fluttered open, held a sliver of clarity amidst the fatigue.
“Fuck,” Koen breathed, the word shattered. He was lying on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes. Sweat plastered his black hair to his temples, darkened the hollow of his throat. “That one was... bad.”
“Is it over?” Gabriel asked, his voice rough from disuse and strain.
“For now. ‘Lull.’ Few hours.” Koen turned his head, looking at Gabriel properly for the first time in what felt like ages. He looked wrecked, beautiful in a raw, ruined way. “You stayed. Didn’t have to.”
“Yes, I did.” The answer was immediate, leaving no room for argument.
A faint, ghost of Koen’s usual grin touched his cracked lips. “Even though I’m... a complication.”
“You are an omega who spent his suppressant money on ammunition.” Gabriel corrected him, the absurdity of it finally hitting him with a force that wasn’t anger, but a staggering, fond disbelief. “Of course you’re a complication. You’re my complication. Now sleep, you idiot. While you can.”
Koen didn’t need telling twice. His eyes closed, the last of the frantic energy bleeding out of him. His breathing deepened, slowed, transitioning from the ragged gusts of heat to the steady, heavy pulls of utter depletion. The tight fist of his hand opened, palm up and vulnerable on the rumpled blanket.
Gabriel watched until he was certain, until the sleep was deep and dreamless. He stood, his body protesting, and quietly gathered the bowl and the cloths. He paused at the door, looking back at the nest, at the man buried within it, finally still. A protective urge, sharp and ferocious, cut through the lingering haze of aroused tension. He extinguished the lamp with a twitch of his fingers and slipped out, closing the door on the scent-drenched dark.
Heaven was quiet. Dawn was a grey suggestion at the hallway window. His own room, neat and airy, felt like a separate universe. He closed his door and locked it, the click echoing in the silence. He leaned back against the solid wood, and the careful scaffolding of his control crumbled.
A violent tremor took him. He slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands. The memory of Koen’s scent was in his pores. The vision of him—back arched, throat exposed, sweating and desperate—was scalded onto the back of his eyelids. He could still hear those broken, hungry sounds.
“Fuck,” he whispered into the empty room, the curse a desperate prayer.
His hands, usually so precise, were clumsy as they fumbled with the fastenings of his trousers. He got them open, shoving the fabric down over his hips. His cock sprang free, painfully hard, the veins thick and pronounced. Just the touch of his own hand made him gasp, the sensation unbearably acute, hyper-focused by hours of denial and raw, proximate want.
He didn’t think. He gave in.
He let the fantasy unfurl, vivid and explicit. Not a gentle, romantic lie. The truth of what he’d wanted in that room. His hand tightened, pumping his length in a rough, punishing rhythm.
In his mind, he wasn’t in the chair. He was on the bed, burying his face in Koen’s neck, licking the salt from his skin. He could almost feel the heat radiating from him, could smell the direct, unfiltered scent of his need. In the fantasy, Koen was begging, past words, just a stream of “please, please, please,” and Gabriel was answering, his own voice a guttural promise.
He imagined pushing Koen’s thighs apart, seeing him slick and ready not from a cloth but from his own body’s frantic preparation. He pictured the tight, clenching heat as he pushed inside, how Koen would scream, not in pain but in shattered relief. He’d be deep, so deep, fucking into that writhing heat with brutal, claiming strokes, the slap of skin on skin loud in the quiet room. He’d watch Koen’s face, his sharp canines digging into his lower lip, his orange eyes blind with pleasure.
“Take it, take it, you need it, I know you need it,” he’d growl, his hips hammering forward.
His hand moved faster, his breath coming in ragged pants. He imagined Koen coming first, untouched, his body seizing up around him, a wet, hot spill between their stomachs. He pictured holding him through it, then driving him through the oversensitivity until his cries were hoarse. Only then would he allow his own release, pumping his seed deep inside that willing, trembling body, claiming, marking, fulfilling the base, horrific purpose his entire being had been screaming for all night.
The orgasm ripped through him, violent and silent. He bit down on the meat of his own hand to stifle the shout, his body bowing forward on the floor. Thick stripes of cum spattered the boards between his feet, proof of his depravity.
As the shudders subsided, a cold, swift shame washed over him. He slumped against the door, sticky and spent, staring at the mess. The fantasy faded, leaving the sterile reality of his room and the silent house. Koen was asleep, vulnerable and trusting, in a nest of blankets one room over. And he was here, on the floor, having jerked off to the vivid, brutal image of taking advantage of him.
He didn’t feel cleansed. He felt hollow, and more alone than he ever had in the empty halls of Heaven. The need was sated, physically. The want, the guilt, the dizzying confusion, remained.
eventually koen falls asleep. gabriel goes to his room and ends up jerking off while fantasizing about taking koen