Chapter 5: Claiming While Nursing
The pup’s cries had softened into the wet, rhythmic sounds of suckling. Eli leaned back against the piled furs, exhausted to the point of euphoria, every muscle liquid. The tiny, fierce mouth on his nipple was a shock of sensation—sharp, then deeply satisfying, a pull that echoed through his emptied center. Zayn hovered, a monumental shadow cut by firelight, his gaze shifting between the newborn’s face and Eli’s exhausted eyes. The afterbirth had been dealt with, the bloody pelts swapped for clean ones. A fragile peace settled.
Then Eli tried to shift his hips, to ease a deep, peculiar ache.
A white-hot lightning bolt of pain sheared through his pelvis. It was wrong, a skeletal wrongness, a grinding shift where no movement should be. A guttural, helpless sound was torn from him, a wet scream that startled the pup, who released the nipple with a mewling protest.
Zayn was on his knees beside them in an instant. His hands, still stained, went to Eli’s hips, his fingers pressing, probing with a knowing brutality. Eli flinched, tears springing fresh.
“Don’t move,” Zayn commanded, his voice low. His fingers found the front of Eli’s pelvis, the soft area just above where the leg joined the body. He pressed.
Eli shrieked. The sound was animal, pure agony.
Zayn’s face hardened into a mask of grim understanding. He remembered the healer’s clinical words in the smoky hut weeks ago, her eyes on Eli’s swollen form. “His tribe is known for not surviving birthings. Their omegas are… delicately made. The pups, though. The pups are always strong. They create beautiful pups.” She’d shrugged, a pragmatic lift of her shoulders. “The pelvis sometimes cracks. Like a nut. If it does, and if he lives, you must set it back. Quickly.”
Zayn’s boy was strong. He had cracked Eli’s pelvic bone on the way out.
“Hold the pup,” Zayn growled, his voice leaving no room for argument. He waited only for Eli’s trembling arms to secure the infant against his chest. Then he placed his broad hands on Eli’s hips, his thumbs finding the specific, misaligned crest of bone at the front.
“Zayn, no, please—” Eli begged, panic flooding his veins.
Zayn didn’t hesitate. He leaned his weight into it, a sharp, precise, and merciless shove.
There was a sickening, internal pop-click, a sensation that echoed up Eli’s spine into his teeth. The pain was transcendent, a white void that swallowed sound and sight. Eli’s cry was a silent, open-mouthed gasp, his body arching then collapsing like a gutted fish. The pup, jostled, began to wail in earnest.
Zayn held the position for a long count, applying pressure, feeling the bone settle into its proper alignment. He knew they healed. Omegas were miracles of fragile, rapid resilience. It would knit, stronger at the break, in a week or so. Knowing this didn’t ease the fury in his gut, the helpless rage at Eli’s suffering, at the body that betrayed him with its delicacy.
He released the pressure. Eli sobbed, shallow, hiccupping breaths, his face ashen and slick with sweat. The pup’s cries began to subside as Eli instinctively brought him back to his breast, the act of nursing releasing a flood of dulling, soothing hormones.
Zayn watched. He watched the tiny jaw work. He watched Eli’s eyes glaze over with a mix of shock, pain, and drugged devotion. The possessive fire in Zayn’s gut, banked by the terror of the birth, now roared back with singular, blinding purpose. Eli was hurt. Eli was his. The scent of blood, milk, and raw Omega pain was an aphrodisiac to the most primal part of him. It screamed for reaffirmation, for proof of ownership, for the act that would salve his own terror by re-establishing the only order he understood: his claim.
He gave Eli time. Time for the pup to finish, to fall into a milk-drunk sleep, his tiny lips parting. Gently, Zayn lifted the infant, swaddled him in a rabbit-fur wrap, and placed him in the hollow of a nearby basket lined with moss. The baby sighed, a minuscule sound of perfect contentment.
Eli watched, his eyes heavy. The sharpest edge of the pain had receded into a deep, throbbing ache, a background hum to his exhaustion. He didn’t protest when Zayn’s hands returned to him, not to hurt, but to maneuver. He was pliant, boneless with spent effort.
“On your hands and knees,” Zayn murmured, his voice a thick rumble that vibrated in the air between them.
Eli blinked, slow. “Zayn… I can’t. It’s… everything hurts.”
“I know.” There was no sympathy in the words, only a dark, driven certainty. “Do it.”
The command, familiar and absolute, threaded through Eli’s fatigue. His Omega nature responded, submitting to the Alpha’s will even as his body screamed in protest. He whimpered, biting his lip, and slowly pushed himself up. The movement sent fresh flares of pain through his pelvis, but he managed, trembling, to get onto all fours. The position made him feel gutted, open, the empty, sore space between his legs exposed to the cool cave air.
Zayn moved behind him. He didn’t bother undressing, just unlaced his trousers, freeing his cock. It was already fully hard, thick and impatient, the head glistening. The scent of Eli’s trauma, his milk, his utter vulnerability, was intoxicating. He ran the broad head through the damp that still slicked Eli’s thighs, not yet entering, just painting him with the evidence of his own need.
“You are mine,” Zayn stated, a growl building in his chest. “This broken body is mine. This cunt that birthed my son is mine. You feel that ache inside? That hollowness? I’m going to fill it. I’m going to seal you back up with my seed.”
Eli trembled, a fresh wash of slickness responding to the crude, possessive words. His head hung low, his breath fogging the fur beneath him. It was madness. It was agony. It was also a terrible, shameful relief. This, he understood. This claiming. This brutal anchor in the storm of pain and new, terrifying love.
Zayn aligned himself. He pressed the thick crown against Eli’s loosened, swollen entrance. It gave way with shocking ease, a stark contrast to the tight clutch he was used to. The sensation was different—hot, soft, incredibly deep. Eli gasped, a sound of pain and shocked pleasure.
“Fuck,” Zayn hissed, sinking deeper. “So open. So fucking soft. Like you’re made for taking me right after.” He pushed in to the hilt in one relentless slide, his pelvis meeting Eli’s tender flesh. He stilled, buried in the incredible, yielding heat, feeling the subtle, internal tremors of Eli’s injured body adjusting to his invasion.
Eli cried out, the fullness a shock to his ravaged system. It hurt, a deep, stretching burn that mingled with the bone-deep throb of his fracture. But beneath the hurt, a familiar, needy pulse awoke. His body, trained for an Alpha’s use, responded despite everything, fluttering weakly around the massive intrusion.
Zayn began to move. Slow, at first. Deep, grinding thrusts that sought not just pleasure but reaffirmation. Each drive brushed against sore, sensitive places inside, lighting sparks in the darkness of Eli’s pain. He leaned over Eli, blanketing his back, his teeth finding the mating mark on Eli’s neck. He didn’t bite down, just held the scarred flesh between his teeth as he fucked into him.
“My good Omega,” he snarled against Eli’s skin, his pace increasing. “Taking my cock while your milk leaks. Taking it while your bones are cracked for my pup. This is what you are. This is all you are.”
His words were harsh, obscene, but they carved a pattern in Eli’s chaos. He was this. He was Zayn’s. The pain of birth, the piercing agony of the bone setting, this deep, claiming fuck—they were all part of the same contract. He pushed back against Zayn, a weak, desperate motion.
“Yes,” Eli moaned, the word barely audible. “Yours. Alpha, please…”
That broken plea shattered Zayn’s control. His thrusts became harder, faster, a possessive pounding that rocked Eli’s body on his knees. The pain blurred, transformed into a sharp, blinding crest of sensation. Eli felt his own climax rip through him, unexpected and devastating, a silent convulsion that clamped his sore channel around Zayn’s driving cock.
Zayn roared, his knot swelling fast at the base, catching on Eli’s stretched rim before locking deep inside. He pulsed, jet after hot jet of seed flooding into the very core that had hours before held their child. It was a primal, biological imperative, a claiming as fundamental as the first.
They collapsed together onto their sides, Zayn’s knot still tying them, his arm a vice around Eli’s waist. Eli was crying, silent tears streaming through the sweat and dried salt on his face. Not from pain alone, but from the overwhelming, contradictory storm of it all—the devastation of his body, the piercing love for the sleeping pup, the brutal, grounding ownership of the Alpha knotted inside him.
Zayn nuzzled the tear-damp hair at his temple. His voice, when it came, had lost its growl, leaving only a raw, exhausted truth. “It will heal,” he said, his hand splaying over Eli’s hip, covering the site of the fracture. “You will heal.”
Outside, the wind had finally died. An absolute silence had fallen, the world hushed under a blanket of snow. Inside, the only sounds were the crackle of the fire, the soft, sleeping sighs of the newborn, and the ragged, synchronizing breaths of the two men bound together on the furs—broken, mended, and irrevocably claimed.
Inside, the only sounds were the crackle of the fire, the soft, sleeping sighs of the newborn, and the ragged, synchronizing breaths of the two men bound together on the furs—broken, mended, and irrevocably claimed. Zayn’s knot held them, a throbbing, intimate tether. Eli drifted in a haze, pain and pleasure and exhaustion blending into a numb static.
The sharp, grinding ache in his pelvis had subsided to a deep, manageable throb. The incredible soreness between his legs felt soothed, almost cooled, by the fluid pooling inside him. He understood nothing, felt everything.
Zayn’s arm was a lead weight across his waist, possessive even in sleep. Eli lay trapped within it, staring at the basket where their son slept. A strange clarity began to pierce the fog.
Zayn’s brutal taking, right after the bone-setting. The forced, painful coupling. It hadn’t felt like passion. It had felt like a punishment, or a branding. A fresh tear traced a path through the drying salt on his cheek. He wept silently, believing himself a vessel for a savage’s cruelty, even now.
Dawn bled pale light through the cave’s entrance. Zayn’s knot had softened, his seed leaking from Eli’s spent body. Without a word, Zayn withdrew and stood. He moved to the fire, building it anew. He fetched water, warmed a cloth.
He returned to Eli, his expression unreadable. With a gentleness that contradicted the night, he cleaned Eli between the legs, wiping away the evidence of birth and claim. He pressed a fresh, dry poultice of moss and herbs against him, holding it there with firm pressure.
“The healer comes today,” Zayn said, his voice rough from disuse. He did not meet Eli’s eyes. “She will check the pup. Check you.”
Eli only nodded, turning his face away. Let her come. Let her see the damage.
Mara arrived with the grey afternoon, Kael a silent shadow behind her with a basket of supplies. Her old eyes missed nothing—the tension in Eli’s jaw, the way Zayn stood guard like a sculpted sentinel, the serene baby in his basket.
She examined the pup first, pronouncing him voracious and healthy. “A strong Alpha, this one,” she said, a note of approval in her voice. “Cracked the world open to get here.”
Then she turned to Eli. Zayn helped him lie back, his hands impersonal as he arranged the furs. Mara’s fingers, cool and precise, probed his lower belly, the crests of his hips. She pressed where Zayn had pressed, and Eli flinched.
“Good,” Mara said, to Eli’s surprise. “The feeling is returning. The alignment is true.” Her eyes flicked to Zayn, then back to Eli’s tear-stained face. “He set it quick. Smart. Waiting causes lasting weakness.”
She cleaned the poultice away, her gaze assessing the swollen, used flesh beneath. Eli squeezed his eyes shut, humiliation burning his skin. She would see it all—the bruising, the stretching, the evidence of Zayn’s immediate, crude possession.
“Hmm,” Mara murmured. Her touch was clinical. “No tearing. Good elasticity. The fluids have eased the inflammation.” She sat back, wiping her hands on a cloth. She looked directly at Eli. “You think him cruel.”
Eli’s eyes flew open. He couldn’t speak.
“The taking after,” Mara stated, as if discussing the weather. “It is our way. The Dothraki way. An Alpha’s seed, given deep and soon after the birth, helps the Omega’s body heal. It knits the bones faster, soothes the ripped channels. Prevents fever. It is not for pleasure.” She glanced at Zayn, who stared at the wall, his jaw a hard line. “It is medicine. The hardest kind to give, and to receive.”
The words landed in the quiet cave like stones in a pond. They rippled through Eli, disrupting the story of cruelty he’d wrapped around himself in the dark. He remembered the cooling sensation, the dulling of the sharpest edges of pain after Zayn had finished. Medicine.
Zayn had known. He had done that, inflicted that intimate violation, for healing. Because the healer had told him to. Eli looked at the rigid line of Zayn’s back, at the scars that mapped a history of violence, and saw not a savage, but a man following a brutal scripture to keep him alive.
“Oh,” Eli breathed, the sound small and broken.
Mara packed her things. “Keep him warm. Feed him broths. Let the pup suckle; it will help your womb contract.” She paused at the entrance, her gaze sweeping over them. “The fluids will work for a day or two. He may need to administer more doses before you are walking right.”
Then she was gone, leaving the cave heavy with her words.
Silence stretched, taut and fragile. Zayn remained facing the wall. Eli watched the powerful slump of his shoulders, the tension in his neck. He had been waiting for this verdict, for Eli’s judgment.
“You didn’t tell me,” Eli whispered.
Zayn’s shoulders tensed further. “Would you have believed it?” He finally turned. His amber eye was fierce, wounded. “You think I wanted to hurt you more? After all that?” He gestured vaguely at the birthing furs, his voice dropping to a raw scrape. “I felt your bone give. I heard it. I set it. And then I had to fuck you while you looked at me like I was a monster. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
The confession hung in the air, more intimate than any knot. Eli’s vision blurred. He saw it from Zayn’s side then—the terror, the necessity, the revolting duty of causing more pain to prevent a lifetime of it.
“Come here,” Eli said, his voice trembling.
Zayn didn’t move.
“Please, Alpha. Come here.”
The title, spoken without fear, broke him. Zayn crossed the cave and sank to his knees beside the furs. He buried his face in Eli’s neck, his breath hot and unsteady. Eli wrapped his arms around the broad, scarred back, holding him as Zayn’s body shook with a single, silent shudder.
That night, the pup fed greedily. After, swaddled and asleep, he was returned to his basket. The fire painted the cave in shifting copper and black.
Eli looked at Zayn across the flames. The deep, resonant ache in his pelvis was a constant presence, a reminder of fracture. Mara’s words echoed. The fluids will work for a day or two. He may need to administer more doses.
He understood the prescription now. The thought didn’t bring fear. It brought a strange, dark warmth.
“Zayn,” Eli said. His voice was quiet, but clear.
Zayn looked up from sharpening a knife, his eye reflecting the fire.
“It hurts,” Eli said, stating a plain fact. “The bone. It aches deep.”
Zayn’s gaze sharpened, understanding dawning. He set the knife and stone aside carefully. The silence was different now, charged with a grim, shared purpose.
“Show me where,” Zayn said, his voice low.
Eli guided his hand, placing Zayn’s rough palm low on his abdomen, over the pubic bone. Zayn’s touch was feather-light, waiting.
“The medicine,” Eli whispered, looking up at him. “I need another dose.”
A muscle feathered in Zayn’s jaw. He nodded, once. This time, there was no surprise attack, no taking. It was a grim collaboration. He helped Eli onto his back, settling a fur beneath his hips. He opened Eli’s legs with a slow, deliberate care that felt more vulnerable than any violent claiming.
Zayn freed himself, his cock already thick and heavy. He slicked himself with the oil Mara had left, his movements methodical. He positioned himself at Eli’s entrance, which was still soft and pliant from the morning. He met Eli’s gaze, a question in his own.
Eli nodded, reaching up to touch Zayn’s scarred cheek. “Do it.”
Zayn pressed in. The stretch was immense, a profound filling that pressed against the heart of the ache. Eli gasped, his head tipping back, his nails digging into Zayn’s forearms. It was not pleasure. It was a heavy, stretching fullness, a pressure that radiated into the damaged bone.
“Breathe,” Zayn gritted out, holding himself still, buried to the hilt. Sweat beaded on his temple from the effort of his control.
Eli panted, focusing on the sensation. The burning stretch began to morph, the deep-throbbing ache in his pelvis seeming to loosen its grip,稀释ing under the insistent pressure. Zayn began to move, not with the hard, driving pace of possession, but with a slow, deep, grinding rhythm. Each measured thrust pushed the healing seed deeper, massaging the sore tissues, the deliberate friction creating a warmth that seeped into the marrow.
“That’s it,” Zayn murmured, his voice a strained rasp. “Take your medicine. Let it in deep.” His thrusts remained agonizingly controlled, a precise, clinical fuck. His face was a mask of concentration, his eyes locked on Eli’s, watching for pain.
And Eli felt it. The pain transformed, softened at the edges by the relentless, soothing pressure. A different heat pooled in his belly, a low ember of response that had nothing to do with healing and everything to do with the man moving inside him. His body, ever-responsive to this Alpha, began to slick further, clenching weakly around the thick intrusion.
Zayn felt the change. A low groan escaped him. His rhythm stuttered, losing its clinical precision for a moment. He drove in harder, deeper. “Fuck. Eli. Your cunt is taking it so well. It’s swallowing the medicine like a good, needy hole.”
The filthy words, now framed in the context of care, ignited something desperate in Eli. He arched, a broken sound escaping his lips. “More. Please, Alpha, more. I need it all.”
That shattered Zayn’s control. His thrusts became powerful, claiming, the careful healer disappearing beneath the dominant mate. He slammed into Eli, the force jolting through the furs, his hips pistoning. Eli cried out, the sensations colliding—the profound, stretching fullness, the fading ache, the sharp spike of raw pleasure as Zayn’s cockhead battered a spot that made lights burst behind his eyes.
Zayn’s knot began to swell, a thick, promising pressure at his base. He fucked into Eli through the forming bulge, each thrust a battle. “Gonna give it to you,” he snarled. “Gonna pump this healing seed so deep into your broken pelvis it fucking knits around my cock.”
The image, vulgar and violently tender, pushed Eli over the edge. His climax was a deep, rolling quake that gripped Zayn’s cock, milking him. Zayn shouted, driving his knot home in one final, searing thrust as he came. Eli felt the hot pulses, deep and insistent, flooding him, a potent, claiming salve.
They were locked, breathing in shattered unison. Zayn collapsed forward, catching his weight on his elbows, his forehead resting against Eli’s. In the quiet, punctuated by their ragged breaths and the pop of the fire, the pup slept on, unaware. The fracture ached, but it was a distant, muted thing, buried under warmth and fullness and a dawning, complicated truth.
This was their covenant. Not just passion, but survival. A brutal, tender, essential alchemy of pain and relief, cruelty and care, all delivered through the intimate, filthy sacrament of their joined bodies. Zayn’s medicine was inside him, working. And for the first time, Eli understood the savage, profound love in the dose.