Archive of Our Own

“Children.” Lady de Pointe du Lac smiled around the morning room. “I have a surprise for you.”

A beat, in which no one spoke.

Louis glanced at his siblings, Grace next to him on the settee and Paul in the straight-backed armchair beside them. Grace shot him a clueless, slightly nervous look in return, while Paul stared fixedly down at his lap. They seemed to be feeling the same ill portent he was.

In spite of his mother’s cheerful manner, Louis couldn’t help but feel a pang of dread when she’d called an emergency family meeting. The last family meeting had been two years ago, when their mother had received news from the hospital that their father’s sudden bout of illness had come to an end. Lady du Lac had allowed a few short moments for the children to grieve and then set about assigning duties for the funeral arrangements. Louis had been sent off to obtain a suitable coffin, staggering numbly from the house with a sheet of parchment in his coat pocket bearing the measurements of his father’s still cooling body.

“‘Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,’” Paul intoned under his breath, fingers skirting over the debossing of the leatherbound book that was his constant companion. Louis had no doubt he was anxious to return to his Bible study.

“What is the surprise, mother?” Grace asked politely.

“I know you are all well acquainted with the unfortunate state the family’s coffers were left in after the tragic passing of your father.” Lady du Lac allowed a mournful pause before continuing. “And in spite of Louis’s…stirring effort to restore the family business, you are well aware that the estate has remained in considerable debt for the past two years.”

Louis bristled. “My stirring effort is the only thing that’s been keeping us afloat. Our debt began long before father’s passing, and I’ve shown you the documents to prove it.”

“The documents I’ve seen have proven your own lack of business aptitude.” His mother dismissed. “When your father was alive, we never had to struggle for money.”

“Father only kept us ignorant of our struggle.” Louis protested, though he knew it was futile. They’d had this same argument a thousand times, and his mother had always rebuked him, refusing to acknowledge any shortcoming of her late husband. “The meeting you just called me out of was meant to address a series of shipping fees going back nearly a decade that were never properly – ”

Lady du Lac held up a hand, a gesture Louis knew meant he was to fall silent. “Enough. I will not have your father’s name besmirched in his own house.”

Louis sat back against the settee, clenching his jaw, willing the tight pressure between his molars to stifle the indignation rising within him.

Two years of tireless work, sleepless nights poring over half-legible records, the endless tightrope of negotiating with men who would never pay Louis the same respect they gave his father – because they’d all known his father since Louis was small, and still saw him as little more than a child, despite the fact that next year he would be a man of twenty years – because his slight frame and delicate features made him a far cry from his father’s imposing figure – and, most of all, because his father had been an alpha, and Louis was an omega.

Louis had for two years endured the pitying looks, the vulgar comments made just out of earshot about the various activities an omega of his ‘caliber’ was better suited to, and sometimes outright disdain from his alpha colleagues for aspiring above the station nature had assigned for him. He had borne it all, for his family’s sake. And his mother had never once paid him a word of appreciation for it. If anything, she seemed to share the sentiments of the businessmen jeering behind Louis's back.

Grace laid a sympathetic hand on Louis’s arm, rousing him from his thoughts. He relaxed his jaw a fraction.

“In any case, all business matters cease to be your concern - effective immediately.” His mother went on, smiling again. “Our money troubles are at an end. I have found us a solution.”

“What solution?” Louis frowned, already fearing the answer. “Surely, you haven’t arranged to sell the company? As the chief executive officer, I must be consulted before – ”

Again, the hand for silence went up.

“No longer your concern.” His mother repeated. “You and your sister need only concern yourself with your impending wedding arrangements. You are both engaged to be married.”

“Married?” Louis echoed, a vague numbness settling over him - not unlike the strange detachment he'd felt in their family meeting two years prior.

The words from his mother’s mouth faded in and out of his awareness like horrible music swelling and falling in an adjacent room. Louis gathered that Grace was to wed a man named Levi, a well-to-do trader who would take over the du Lac family business – with the sharp mercantile instincts only an alpha could truly wield.

“Levi.” Paul pondered, looking up from the Bible in his lap. “Grace, is that not the same man you danced so close with at Mr. Anderson’s last spring ball? You dance that close you ought to be married.”

“Well, I suppose now we shall be.” Grace replied with a flutter of anxious laughter.

Even from a distance, Louis could tell she was pleased – for months after that ball, he’d catch Grace humming that same song she’d twirled around the ballroom in Levi’s arms to.

“And Louis’s match?” Grace inquired, her gentle hand on Louis’s arm no longer feeling like a simple show of support, but the only thing keeping Louis tethered in his body, in this room.

The Count Lestat de Lioncourt. Like Levi, he was an alpha in search of a mate, hoping to marry and father an heir as soon as could be arranged. Unlike Levi, he was a foreigner, a French nobleman, owner of a sprawling country estate with an array of lucrative business ventures to his name. He was obscenely wealthy, twice Louis’s age, said to be rather handsome – and that was all the information his mother had for him. Louis had never so much as heard of the man.

Between the two marriages, there would be more than enough money to pull the du Lac estate out of debt at last – with plenty left over to send Paul to the seminary school of his choice. Louis didn’t miss the rare brightness in Paul’s tone when he voiced his assent to this proposal, though he said he would miss his family dearly.

“No.” Louis’s voice came out as little more than a croak as he rose to his feet. “I refuse. I won’t be married to a man I’ve never even met – sold off to the highest alpha bidder like we’re living in the dark ages, after all the work I’ve – ”

“All the work you’ve done has gotten us nowhere.” His mother cut him off. “Business is no place for an omega, Louis, you’ve learned that well enough. You are young, you are reasonably attractive, and you are of child-bearing age. You will serve this family as an omega should – just as Grace will, and just as I did – as a bride, as your alpha’s wife, and the mother of his children.”

“‘Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.’” Paul offered, nodding sagely. “‘For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior’.”

“Would you spare us the sermon this once, Paul?” Louis snapped at him.

It was bad enough that Paul was a beta, and exempt from the marriage meat market Louis and Grace were now victims of – the archaic system that believed the only thing an omega was good for was making a pretty bride, a dutiful wife, a nurturing mother, regardless of gender. Louis couldn’t take his pious moralizing on top of it.

Paul blinked at him, his soft brown eyes the very picture of innocence.

“The word of God is a comfort to all troubled souls.”

“I don’t need comfort. I need our mother to let this – Count – person know that I have absolutely no interest in accepting his proposal.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that. The betrothal papers have already been signed.” Lady du Lac stood, smoothing her dress. “Now, if you’ll both come with me, we have shopping to do. You need to be presentable when you meet your alphas and nothing in your closets will suit the occasion.” She looked to Paul. “I assume you would prefer to return to your studies rather than come along?”

“Yes, Mother. Thank you.”

When Louis opened his mouth again, his mother stepped closer to stop him before he began, steel in her eyes.

“You have done nothing to benefit this family in your nineteen years, Louis de Pointe du Lac. Do not squander your one opportunity to correct this.”

When Grace touched Louis’s arm again, he shook her off. He stormed out of the room and refused to let a single tear fall until he was safely locked behind his bedroom door – it was all the dignity that was left to him.

--

One week later, Grace was set to join her betrothed’s family for dinner.

She dressed herself splendidly, all soft pinks and modest twinkling jewels – the perfect image of a maiden bride, a tender rose ripe for the plucking. She came to Louis for advice on her shoes, which he gave – “The silver ones; they better compliment your jewelry, sister” – but when she asked him to come with her, Louis firmly refused. He had no interest in getting to know Levi, a man who would see fit to purchase a mate like property, without a proper courtship, a backwards attitude only the coarsest of alphas still subscribed to.

“And what of your count?” Grace inquired. “Will you hold him in as much disdain when you are sitting in his French castle, dining on caviar and champagne?”

“Yes.” Louis replied shortly, turning his attention back to the novel he’d been reading, nestled against a few cushions in his bay window nook.

“Oh, Louis.”

“He deserves much worse. At least you and Levi are acquainted; you’ve danced with him at many a ball. This Frenchman couldn’t even be bothered to meet me in person before arranging for my capture and imprisonment.”

“Louis, you are to be wed to one of the wealthiest men on the European continent. You’re hardly being tossed into an ogre’s dungeon.”

“You don’t know that. You’ve never met him. Mother’s never met him. I doubt she took the time to check whether the man was human before signing me away.”

Grace sighed and settled down into the chair at Louis’s desk, careful not to crumple her pink gown. “You know, once the shock of it all wore off, I thought you might be happy about this.”

Louis’s mouth fell open as he looked up from his book. “Happy? How could I possibly be happy that this is happening to me? That I’m being torn away from my life, that everything I’ve been working on is to be squandered? All that effort…all that time…”

Grace looked at him with a gentle sympathy in her eyes, eyes that were so like their mother’s, but filled with all the kindness and understanding their mother lacked.

“You never wanted to take over father’s business, Louis.”

Louis inhaled sharply, opened his mouth…and then closed it. He’d never been able to lie to his sister’s face.

“That isn’t true,” Louis said into the pages of his book.

“You hated that job from the moment you started! I remember when you first started accompanying Father to his office – you would always come back exhausted, and in a foul mood for the rest of the day.”

She tilted her head to peer at him sideways, as if searching for his honesty. “You never wanted to be a businessman. I always thought you might like being married, having a child.” She grinned. “Remember how I used to catch you playing with my baby dolls when we were little?”

Louis’s mouth hardened into a line. He hardly remembered the dolls – but he remembered the scornful look from his father that made him drop the dolls where he stood, like he’d been caught committing a crime. Or a sin.

From an early age, Louis was taught to value filial piety above all else. Honoring his father was second only to honoring the Holy Father. As it was, Louis’s father had pinned all his hopes for the family’s future upon Louis, his eldest son. He would make it known passionately and often that Louis was to be his alpha heir, and the one to take over the family business once he was gone.

That Louis might turn out to be an omega was unthinkable – or at least unspeakable, even as his nature leaked out of him in little fits and starts; his gentleness, his sensitivity, his preference for reading or playing house or with dolls over joining his father on hunting trips with the other alphas and their alpha sons.

Louis was a uniquely late bloomer, hadn’t presented until well into his teens. He didn’t know if it was medically possible, but he felt as though his fear and shame at being ‘found out’ had created a physical suppression within him, as though through sheer strength of will he could fight off his biology and keep himself from ever being revealed as the failure he was. Louis had staved it off as long as he could, but in the end, the family doctor confirmed him as an omega a few short months before his father’s death. Louis wondered to this day whether it had been the shame that killed him, withered his father from within.

“I was a child,” Louis muttered. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Well, you looked like you enjoyed it. And perhaps you will, if you’ll just give this count a chance. Who knows? You two might be a perfect match.”

Louis settled back against his cushions and stubbornly turned a page in his book, even though he hadn’t finished the last passage yet.

“Yes; me, the ogre, and the demon spawn he implants me with. What a lovely family we’ll make.”

Grace groaned, exasperated. “Are you not even the slightest bit curious about him? If a man wanted my hand in marriage sight unseen, I would want to meet him just to learn what he was on about.”

“I know all I need to know of him. He’s an alpha pig and I loathe him like I loathe all his kind.”

“Well. If that’s the case…” Grace slyly pulled a sealed envelope out of her dress. “I suppose you wouldn’t be interested to read the letter he’s sent you.”

The envelope gleamed in her hand, a thick fold of heavy-looking ivory parchment that shone as though threaded with gold. Louis could see his own name written in looping, exquisitely graceful script, glossy, jet-black letters curling over the back of the envelope like a finger beckoning him. Grace tilted her wrist and Louis saw the wax seal on the other side, the scarlet crest of a roaring lion, wreathed in amaranth flowers.

Louis’s nose twitched. A mistake – a thin coil of scent from the letter wafted his way, a warm, amber-y richness that carried with it the faintest bite of spice, the subtlest hint of smoke, like the trace of his father’s pipe tobacco left behind when he’d recently been in the room. There was something elegantly rough about it, a quiet promise of danger that intrigued Louis, as a curious child seeing fire for the first time will stretch a hand out to be burned by a beautiful flame.

It was the scent of an alpha, unmistakably, but not like any Louis had come across at work; those loud, abrasive smells the men he worked with sent out in business meetings to assert dominance, ones that made him wrinkle his nose and recoil. It was singularly alluring, inescapably seductive – because it was the scent of his alpha, some animal part of Louis’s brain chimed sweetly before he could stop it. His mouth watered. Louis shook his head to clear the disturbing impulse to draw closer, to inhale that scent, let it lay claim to his body and mind.

“No.” Louis prayed Grace couldn’t sense the faint tremble in his voice. “I’m not interested at all.”

Grace slowly retracted the envelope, told Louis that she would be happy to dispose of it for him – if he was sure he wasn’t tempted to read it.

Louis thanked her, and said that would be just fine.

The moment Grace’s carriage was out of sight of his room’s bay windows, Louis flung down his book, ran to her room and retrieved the envelope from her wastebin, to the chagrin of the servant who’d been in the process of collecting the trash. Louis locked his bedroom door securely before he allowed himself to bring his nose to the parchment for a tentative sniff.

It was, unfortunately, still the best thing Louis had ever smelled. Rich, smooth, dark – and addictive. Each inhale was a breath shy of satisfying, only spurring on another – another – another deep drag of the scent.

Is this intoxication? Louis thought, a giddy, pleasurable sensation buzzing at the back of his brain as he nuzzled into a corner of the envelope, where he was sure its sender must have accidentally brushed the scented gland at his inner wrist against it, marking it with that delicious aroma. Is it possible to get drunk off an alpha’s scent? Louis had always had a distaste for alphas besides his father, but he was beginning to see why they held such a dangerous pull for so many.

It was a real effort for Louis to pull his face from the envelope long enough to huddle over his writing desk and finally break the letter’s seal with trembling fingers, assuring himself he would be repulsed by its contents and thus find the strength to throw the thing into the fireplace. One quick read, and he would banish all thoughts of this mysterious alpha from his mind.

My dearest Louis,

         I can hardly put into words the immeasurable happiness your acceptance of my proposal has given me. I know we have yet to meet, but in truth, ever since I first saw your face, I felt that we were meant to be. It’s as though a long, winding cord joins our bodies, our very hearts, and only now fortune has seen fit to draw that cord taut enough to bring us together, at last, as man and wife.

Louis scoffed to himself at the flowery language - ill-suited to a man who'd selected his 'wife' without even bothering to meet him. Louis’s mother must have sent this man a portrait of him, and Louis’s face was all the count needed to see to choose him for his bride. Louis hardly felt flattered.

         I understand the suddenness of our engagement may be of some shock to you. I admit, I would have preferred to court you properly, as you deserve, but as an ocean lies between us and my duties keep me all but confined to France, even my best efforts could not bridge that gap. For that, I apologize.

Louis gave the page a sour look, mentally refusing to accept the apology.

         I must remain here in Auvergne as I make the estate ready for your arrival and for our impending nuptials, but I hope to keep a correspondence in the meantime, so that we may become better acquainted. Despite my feeling that we have known each other for a lifetime already, there is still much I have to learn about you. Which flowers do you favor, and which would you like for the wedding? I envision us taking our vows beneath a cascading bough of blood red Amaranthus, as it symbolizes everlasting love. The crimson hue would serve as a striking complement to the warm hues of your lovely skin and the dazzling rich brown of your eyes.

Louis rolled his dazzling eyes.

         Any desire of yours, any request, great or small, you need only voice to me and I shall make it so. I anticipate the day of our wedding as I have never anticipated anything before. Long have I searched this world for my companion heart, and you have bestowed upon me the greatest pleasure I have ever known by bringing my search to its end.

         As I await the day you finally come to me, know that I am counting down the moments until I can have you in my arms.

         All my love, Lestat de Lioncourt

Louis sat back in his chair, fuming. The utter gall of this man to write about their ‘relationship’ like something out of a romantic novel, when Louis had no say in the matter, and this alpha had selected his ‘bride’ to be sent to him like an item in a mail-order catalog!

Louis snatched up his ink quill and a clean sheet of paper, his mind drafting a withering response to the count’s letter, ready to give this presumptuous alpha a piece of his mind –

But then he stopped.

No, he decided instead, setting his quill down. This man didn’t deserve Louis’s energy or time. A response was what the man wanted – and why should Louis give him that?

Let the count sit in his French castle and suffer Louis’s silence. Let all his purple, overwrought ramblings fall on deaf ears, and see how that enthused him to meet the cold, bitter bride he’d chosen.

Louis would keep the letter, though. Just in case he ever needed to revisit it and stoke the fires of his hatred.

--

One week later, Louis was elbow-deep in his late father’s leger, transcribing the infuriating shorthand no one but himself could decipher. If Grace’s soon to be husband was to stand a chance at comprehending the family’s business records, Louis would have to translate every scrawled passage. His hand was beginning to cramp when a servant knocked at the door to the study and entered.

Louis didn’t even spare her a glance. “I’m busy at the moment, can it wait?”

“A letter for Your Lordship. From the count.”

Louis’s quill stalled. He took a breath, and the alpha’s rich, heady scent fluttered to him across the room from the letter in his servant’s hand. Louis’s mind went blank for a moment, tracing the bend of the aroma in the air, the warmth of it wrapping around him like long, powerful fingers.

“Sir?”

Louis cleared his throat. “Leave it on the desk, here, Regina. Thank you.”

Louis tried and failed to get any work done for fifteen minutes before he succumbed and broke the letter’s seal.

The scent came from within the letter this time, as though the count had deliberately pressed his inner wrist at the place he’d signed his name. Louis allowed himself one long, slow inhale before reading the gracefully penned script.

My silent bride,

         How I had longed for a reply from you! Yet, as I have received thorough reassurance that no misadventure has waylaid a letter bearing your signature, I must come to the unfortunate conclusion that you have chosen to dash my hopes, and let my missive go unanswered.

         Another man would be insulted, even angered, by such a slight.

         I, however, will not presume ill-intent on your part. I comprehend the delicacies of our foundling relationship. I am a stranger to you, and you are very young. Perhaps it is merely shyness that keeps you from answering my call. Do you tremble as you read these words?

         There is, I’ve noticed, a mesmeric fragility hidden in the contours of your beautiful face. The soft hollow between the eye and cheekbone, the sleepless shadow there that I long to stroke with my thumb. The sweet little frown disturbing the line of your eyebrows that calls out to me, siren-like, to soothe away with a kiss. The slight pursing of your mouth, the delicate tension dwelling within the soft curve of those lovely lips…lips that remain closed to me.

         If you would only speak to me, share with me the cause of your sleepless nights, tell me what strife has creased your pretty brow, what pain has brought your darling lips to purse so, I would do all in my power to relieve your suffering.

         There is no need to be shy with me, my tender one. I assure you, your fragile heart is safe within my hands.

         I am, as before, awaiting your response.

         With ardent expectation,

         Lestat de Lioncourt

Well, enjoy your waiting, Louis thought haughtily, taking one last whiff of the letter before placing it back in the envelope and setting it to the side. The count would have no pity from him.

However, Louis couldn’t seem to banish the man’s words from his mind, even long after the sun had set. Louis lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, the elegant handwriting from the letter scrolling across his mind as though written in the air above his head.

         Share with me the cause of your sleepless nights, tell me what strife has creased your pretty brow, what pain has brought your darling lips to purse so…

Louis was surprised the count had managed to glean all that from a portrait; but then again, maybe he shouldn’t be.

Louis was in pain. He had been for as long as he could remember.

It waxed and waned from day to day, never fading completely, a constant hum of dread inside his heart. Sometimes the pain was so great he would stagger back from his late father’s office and barely make it up to his room, feeling like an impossible weight was crushing the breath from his chest.

He would curl up in his window nook and wait for it to pass – sometimes minutes, sometimes hours – staring with unseeing eyes at the grounds below, the little people going about their little lives, all so much freer than he. Granted, they were stable hands feeding the horses, or gardeners tending the lawns, or pages trotting off with their messages, humble people with humble jobs, and Louis was the big man in the big house looking down on them – but their movements were easy, unrestrained. Their faces had an openness Louis could never find in himself when he looked in the mirror. None of them were pretending. They acted exactly as they were.

Louis had to pretend every time he stepped outside. The forced confidence he displayed in front of the men he worked with, the rigid posture he wore in the hopes of earning his mother’s respect, the harder edge he had to put in his voice to get people to listen to him. The daily performance of the man he was supposed to be – his father’s son, his father’s heir, the businessman, the failed alpha – drained him, until there was so little left, Louis thought he might dry up completely and dissolve into ash, whisk away with the next stiff breeze.

         I would do all in my power to relieve your suffering.

The count had seen in Louis the sorrow he tried so hard to hide, and vowed to take it away. Louis hated the man on principle, but would he really hate being his bride? His wife? Louis had spent so much time and energy being what his father wanted him to be, he’d hardly even considered the kind of life he’d like to live.

He never thought he’d have another option.

Louis closed his eyes and imagined himself in the drawing room of a French castle. It would be cold this time of year – much colder than New Orleans. There would be a roaring fire in the fireplace. He’d have drawn a chair up close to the hearth. His…husband would be seated nearby. Or maybe he’d be off, attending to the ‘duties’ he’d referred to in his letter. Maybe Louis would find himself alone with a book for the evening…but as Louis envisioned his imaginary self looking down, he instead saw a plump-faced child in his lap, reaching for him with chubby brown fists, gazing up at him with round, adoring eyes.

His mother had said the count was looking to father an heir.

Louis took a deep breath, a little twinge of emotion stinging the corners of his eyes, even closed. A child. Louis had long given up on raising a child. Even if he had turned out to be an alpha, and fathered one himself, he knew he’d be too busy with his father’s business to spend much time with his offspring. Once he finally presented, Louis didn’t think he would ever marry, as all his father’s property, titles, and what little money they had would be legally forfeit to his non-omega spouse.

Louis didn’t have to worry about any of that anymore. Grace’s husband was going to take charge of the family business and the estate…and Louis was to wed a man who wanted to give him a child.

Louis saw his imaginary self shush the fussing infant, cradle it to his chest, bounce the warm bundle gently in his arms, murmuring soothing words. He saw the child’s sweet, tiny face begin to calm, trusting him, relying upon him, loving him. Louis imagined pressing his nose to a white lacy bonnet, inhaling that softly sweet baby scent, the way he used to sniff at the top of Paul’s head when he was a baby, bewitched by the strange tenderness the presence of an infant brought him even though Louis was a child himself, the odd sense of protectiveness and peace.

Louis’s eyes opened, and there were tears on his cheeks.

He brushed them away.

I’m being foolish, Louis thought to himself. That picture is only a happy one because that man isn’t in it.

Would he be able to relish the joy of a child, if it shackled him to that alpha forever? Did it matter, if Louis didn’t have a choice?

But he did have some choice, didn’t he?

Louis could choose to give himself to this count willingly, act the happy bride, send the man a response to his letter saying how grateful he was, how he, too, longed for their wedding day, how sorry he was for not responding sooner.

Or, Louis could go to France with spite in his heart, cursing the count with his every breath, starve the man of any warmth or tenderness from his bride until he finally decided to call the whole thing off.

It would be just what the count deserved, being made miserable by his mail-order bride. Now that Louis thought of it, it wouldn’t be spiteful at all. It would be justice, a lesson sorely needed by arrogant, thoughtless alphas like him; don’t treat your future wife as some mindless thing to be plucked off a shelf.

Besides, Grace was getting married regardless. Louis would be stepping down from the family business whether or not he married this count.

After all, I am an omega, Louis thought, and for the very first time the notion brought him some degree of satisfaction, instead of a torrent of shame. I can have a baby with anyone.

--

One week later, Louis stopped by the church to walk Paul home after his bible study.

“Mother says Grace is to have a Christmas wedding,” Paul informed him, “Near the end of the year. Father Matthias is to officiate.”

Louis smiled at the sunniness in Paul’s voice, a spark of warmth in the autumn chill. His brother loved to see the good father ‘in action’, especially in a rare circumstance like a wedding.

“You won’t be here to see it.” Paul added, his brightness fading.

Louis nodded, the fact sinking in for the first time. He would be in France. He wouldn’t get to see his sister marry.

“I suppose I won’t. You’ll have to tell me all about it.” Louis attempted to keep his tone light. Paul was always in a good mood after a visit to the church; Louis would hate to spoil it. “Grace has already promised to flood me with letters; I hope you’ll find time to add a few to the pile.”

“I will try. My aim is to devote most of my time to my studies, once I enter seminary school. I want my life to be spent in service of the Lord, our Father, to the best of my ability. It is my greatest honor and duty to do so. ‘For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’.”

“Of course.”

Paul paused a beat before reassuring him with a smile. “But I will try.”

Louis smiled back, touching Paul’s arm affectionately. “Thank you, brother.”

“It’s because of you that I’m able to pursue the priesthood.” Paul told him with an earnest solemnity. “I am deeply grateful for your marriage, and for the count you are to marry. I hope you will convey my gratitude to him.”

Louis smile faltered. He’d been so focused on himself, he hadn’t properly considered how sabotaging his engagement would affect Paul. Paul had wanted to be a priest since he attended his first sermon, staring open-mouthed and starry-eyed up at the pulpit from their nanny’s lap in a happy daze. Other babies had to be shushed or carried out to keep from spoiling the service, but Paul had never once cried within the walls of the church.

If Louis were to go through with his plan of making himself intolerable to the count, he would be taking away his brother’s dream – and, potentially, his only happiness. Paul wasn’t like other men. He was a delicate instrument, in need of careful handling, unsuited to any but his preferred environments and routines. Louis knew Paul would thrive in the priesthood, and would wither anywhere else. Could he really be so selfish as to put his own life before his brother’s?

“I’ll let him know.” Louis said for the time being, even as guilt squirmed inside him.

“I know you were initially reluctant to go through with the marriage. But it is a blessing.” Paul told him gently. “I hope you will come to see it as such. Do not close your heart to the love being offered you. As the scripture says, ‘be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves’."

“He doesn’t know me, Paul.” Louis replied, some of his frustration seeping through. “How can he love me if he doesn’t know me?”

Paul looked on him with saintly quietude.

“It is a godly act, to love a stranger. Our God loves us before we come to know Him, before we come to know ourselves. Knowledge is not the arbiter of love. Love is a force unto itself.”

Louis bit back the bitter response that rose to his tongue.  Paul’s intentions were always good, even if his moralizing sometimes got on Louis’s nerves.

Mere yards from the de Pointe du Lac estate, Paul stopped short. Louis looked over his shoulder to see his brother standing very still, staring into the middle distance, a grave expression settling over his gentle features.

“Paul?” Louis hurried to his side with some alarm, fearing one of the emotional torrents his brother was occasionally overtaken with. Once or twice a month, the voices inside his head would chirp news of some imminent doom that could only be forestalled by an eight-hour prayer session, or an impromptu sermon for the neighbors to be given from the closest roof - the higher the better, nearest as Paul could get to the heavens.

Paul blinked a few times. When he turned his face to Louis, his eyes were full of tears.

“I don’t want you to go, Louis.” Paul confessed, his voice hushed, as though it shamed him. “And I don’t want Grace to go.”

Louis’s heart twisted in his chest. Despite the burdens he bore, the exasperation they often caused him, he loved his family. He loved his brother Paul more than any soul on earth. It would pain him to leave them behind.

“Grace isn’t going anywhere.” Louis managed, giving Paul’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “She’ll stay here, on the estate, with her husband and his family. All of you, together.”

“It won’t be the same. And you won’t be here.”

“I’ll visit.” Louis decided. That at least, he could promise; no matter who he married, he would always come back to see Paul. “Or you will come and visit me. We’ll take a tour of the French cathedrals. They’re said to be some of the most beautiful in the world. You’d like to see Notre-Dame, wouldn’t you, Paul?”

Paul calmed a little, his agitated breathing slowing, his tears stilling before they fell. Louis’s shoulders relaxed. He hated calling for the doctor, much preferred to calm Paul himself.

“Is your count a man of God?” Paul asked suddenly. “Will your child be baptized in the Catholic church?”

Louis blinked, caught off-guard by the presumption of offspring. Apparently, his whole family had known how badly Louis wanted a baby before he had.

“Of course,” Louis assured, despite knowing nothing of his betrothed’s faith. Perhaps he would know, if he had bothered to respond to the man’s letters. “I’ll make sure any child of mine is baptized.” He gave Paul a little tentative smile. “Perhaps you’ll lead the ceremony for us.”

Paul cracked a bashful smile, but shook his head.

“I won’t be through seminary school in time. I won’t be ordained for another seven years.”

Louis shrugged, guiding Paul back towards the paved walkway leading onto the estate grounds.

“Who’s to say? It may take us that long. Some people try for years before a baby comes to them.”

Paul looked at Louis. There was a knowing, almost prescient tenderness in his gaze, the kind that made Louis wonder if his brother really was touched by Christ the way he believed himself to be.

“Not you,” he told Louis. “This time next year, you’ll have a child. I can feel it.” He paused. “You’re going to be an incredible mother, Louis.”

Louis swallowed, his throat suddenly thick with emotion. He cleared it as subtly as he could manage.

“Too early for all that,” Louis tried to affect nonchalance, but he could tell his brother saw right through him by the way he grinned.

“I would be honored to attend the child’s baptism, even if I am unable to officiate.” Paul accepted with a playfully formal affectation and a gracious bend at the waist, like he was bowing to the Queen of England.

Louis couldn’t fight back a little affectionate laugh, shaking his head. There was no one else like Paul, and Louis wouldn’t change him for the world.

“You’re at the top of my guest list.”

When Louis made his way upstairs to his private study, one of the servants informed him there was a letter waiting for him on the desk. A letter from the count.

Louis was loathe to admit it, but he found the count’s resilience impressive. He wasn’t sure there were many alphas who would submit themselves to the indignity of offering themselves up to be snubbed a third time.

Louis was already sitting at his desk, gliding his pearl-handled letter opener through the red wax seal before he registered one small, but notable change.

The absence of his alpha’s scent.

The alpha, Louis mentally corrected himself. He could not let himself consider the man his alpha, not when they had yet to meet, and Louis was still only half sure he was going to go through with the wedding at all.

Even so, a stab of anxiety ran through him at the lack of the familiar aroma. Without realizing it, Louis had come to look forward to his weekly dose of the count’s fragrance. The scent on the previous two letters had faded. Having to go another week without it felt like a punishment – and made Louis feel faintly ill.

Sickness! Louis chided himself. It surely was a sickness, an omega disease to crave an alpha’s scent like this; an alpha that, as yet, was not bonded to him, was not truly his! Louis shook himself and turned his eyes to the letter’s contents, a sense of foreboding churning in his gut.

My maddening betrothed,

         I’m not sure you can fathom the depths of my displeasure when I succumbed to the miserable fact that you had, yet again, declined to dignify the letter I wrote to you with a response.

         Have I offended you? Have my proclamations of love and tenderness made me an unworthy husband in your eyes?

         I feel as though I have made every effort to ingratiate myself to you – far beyond what many alphas in my position would deem necessary, I might add – and though you have deigned to humble yourself in accepting my hand in marriage, you have, confoundingly, determined that I am unfit to communicate with.

         Must I expect this to continue after your arrival in France? Shall I suffer in this fashion all the way to the altar? Will you maintain this bitter silence even on our wedding night?

         I confess, the longer you deprive me, the more my mind works to conjure ways by which I might entice you to part those stubborn lips of yours. If you will not surrender your pretty mouth to speech, perhaps there are other things you would rather submit it to. Perhaps you feel it’s better suited to more intimate endeavors. In that regard, I am more than willing to indulge you, and, I assure you, more than capable of satisfying.

Louis bristled, his cheeks warming. He could hardly believe what he was reading! Such vulgar language from a man of the count’s stature…it was thoroughly shocking. To say nothing of the images summoned by his words.

Louis couldn’t stop it – he saw himself on his knees before the count, his ‘pretty mouth’ forced open by a large, powerful hand, maybe shoving in a few rough fingers to make Louis suckle as practice for when the man drew his hard, thick length out of his trousers, the heady rush of decadent alpha scent rolling over Louis in waves, flooding his senses, conquering his mind, leaving him a drooling, mindless wreck before he’d even pressed his way past Louis’s ‘stubborn lips’…

Louis gasped at a sudden sensation in his body, a faint trickle of liquid warmth. He’d gone slightly slick in his undergarments.

Dear god. The letter had aroused him.

Louis’s desk chair scraped nosily across the hardwood floor as he rose to his feet, his heart pounding, his skin prickling all over with unbearable, shameful heat.

This was disgusting. This alpha was speaking to Louis in such a foul, indecent manner…and Louis’s body was reacting as though he enjoyed it.

Sickness, Louis’s mind echoed uselessly, as he shoved the letter back into the envelope without finishing it, and quickly made the journey from his study to his private quarters before anyone saw him and noticed the state he was in.

--

That night, Louis lay awake once again, staring at the ceiling.

He’d been a late bloomer, and not just in his presentation. By the time Louis realized what his preferences were, he was already studying at his father’s side, already primed to devote himself to a life spent putting his filial duties above all else, to spend all his energy on the family business. He’d had no time for courtship, or even flirtation. He had never so much as kissed a man.

It wasn’t that he’d never had desires – but they were shameful ones.

Men his father worked with. Awful men who treated Louis like a speck of dirt beneath their shoe, but nonetheless made Louis shiver when they passed by too close, the obnoxious assertion of their alpha stink stinging in his nostrils. Louis had had to train himself to sit very still as they peered over his shoulder at a contract so they would take no notice of the jump in his pulse when they leaned closer, the twitchy sensitivity that would settle into his skin, warm and reactive to every low word rumbled in his ear, every hot, brandy-scented breath on the back of his neck.

Louis didn’t know why they made him feel that way. He hated most of these men, hardly found them attractive. He could only assume it was this omega sickness, that he was perverse by nature, that for all his posturing and rational thought, he was in the end, just the foolish, lustful animal they all treated him like, only pretending to be smart and capable and all the while wishing someone bigger and stronger would force him to his knees and make him take it.

Louis wasn’t sure if he actually hated alphas, or if he just hated how they made him feel, twisted up inside with shameful urges. Then again, that was enough call for hatred as far as he was concerned.

It didn’t matter. He’d had work to focus on. And so, Louis had shoved down every sexual feeling he’d ever had, so deep inside he’d never witnessed them in their entirety. The shape of his own lust was a mystery. On the painfully rare occasions that he touched himself, Louis tried so hard to think of nothing and no one – not one of the men his father worked with, or a well-dressed man he’d crossed in the street, or the new, handsome gardener with the big hands and the hard look in his eye – that he could almost never make himself come.

The times he had come – which could be counted on one hand – he’d felt so disgusting afterwards, his ragged breathing had progressed into broken sobs.

One of Louis’s hands was resting on his stomach, above the blanket. He bit his lip and slowly, achingly, inched the hand underneath the covers, sliding down to rub cautiously at his crotch.

Louis closed his eyes and tried to imagine what the count looked like…what he would look like standing over him. He imagined him with broad shoulders and a square jaw, soft lips giving way to a deep, resonant voice – but he had no idea, and that was just the alpha stereotype. For all Louis knew, the man was a scrawny imp with a massive filthy beard hiding a weak nub of chin. His mother said the count was ‘said to be attractive’ but she didn’t know firsthand. He could be utterly repulsive. Maybe that’s why he’d had to purchase his mate abroad. Louis wished he hadn’t been too proud to write him back. He could’ve asked for a portrait, since the count already had one of his.

Louis wondered if he hated him now. He’d sounded upset in his letter. That had been Louis’s aim, of course, but now that he’d succeeded, he found no joy in it. Could all the alpha’s previous affection be restored if Louis wrote him a letter now, or was it gone forever? Had Louis ruined everything?

How could he ruin something he didn’t even want?

Tears pricked Louis’s eyes as he blinked them open, his hand falling still. He wished his father was still alive. What would he say?

Sickness, Louis’s mind intoned.

-- 

One week later, it was time for Louis to bid his family farewell.

Louis wasn’t much for goodbyes. He gave brief, tight hugs to Grace and Paul, and an even briefer hug to his mother.

“I’ll write you every day.” Grace cried, clinging to Paul’s arm for support, waving her other hand frantically as Louis climbed into the carriage that would bear him to a first-class ocean liner, which would bear him to the western coast of France.

Paul remained stonily silent until Louis’s carriage was about to take the first bend in the road, at which point Paul dashed down the street in its wake, calling out that he loved Louis and would pray for him every night.

Louis called back that he loved Paul too, that he loved and would miss them all, but he couldn’t be sure he was heard over the thunder of hooves and the rattle of carriage wheels.

The journey to Auvergne was a rough one: three weeks on a ship and another several days’ travel by carriage. Louis didn’t mind the ship, but once he was back on dry land, a snowstorm hit, and the carriage was buffeted to and fro by icy blasts of wind, chilling Louis in his meager New Orleans coat to the bone. The snow slowed to gentle flurries as they climbed into the mountains, then abruptly shifted to frigid rain, slashing sideways at all angles into every crevice in the carriage.

Louis was soaked through by the time he arrived at the de Lioncourt estate, in the thick of night. He was hurried up a cobbled pathway to a massive Gothic manor by a team of servants struggling to welcome him in broken English as their lanterns flickered in the freezing downpour and they battled the wind with their umbrellas.

By the time he was inside, shivering violently, his dark curls plastered to his skull and dripping rivulets down the expensive, now sodden waistcoat his mother had insisted he wear when he met the count, Louis realized he had no idea what to expect.

He had never written a response to the count’s third letter. There had been no fourth. Louis could only imagine the count’s discontentment with him now, but as no retraction of the proposal had been received, his mother – of course – would not hear of stalling Louis’s voyage to the home of his betrothed, which – of course – had been arranged a month in advance, when the match was first made.

The servants told him a hot bath had been drawn for him upstairs, and that dinner would be served whenever he liked, or could be held off, if he preferred to rest from his journey and dine in the morning.

“Does the count expect to join me for dinner?” Louis managed in slightly compromised French. He fancied himself fluent, but he could only enunciate so well with his teeth chattering.

The servants exchanged doleful looks and made profuse apologies in French that was nearly too fast for Louis to follow.

The master was away tonight, attending to business in another town. As the weather was predicted to persist, he’d sent along a message that he would return no sooner than three days’ time.

“He’s not even here?” Louis expressed, incredulous.

A storm like this didn’t pop up out of nowhere. Surely, the count would have known taking a trip now would put him in danger of missing Louis’s arrival.

And yet, he’d done it anyway. What kind of a man proposed to someone he’d never met, plied them with overwrought letters, and then didn’t even bother to be there to greet them? Louis was as aggravated as he was perplexed.

The servants bowed their heads with another chorus of apologies.

And so, Louis found himself stranded in the French countryside, a million miles from home, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, in a sprawling mansion howling with rain and wind, near paralyzed with cold, feeling desperately frustrated and painfully alone.

Louis told the servants he’d dine in the morning, and trudged upstairs to take his hot bath.

Candles were lit in every hall he passed, but no portraits lined the walls. Louis found himself scanning everywhere for some sign of the count – his signature on a painting of the French countryside, red Amaranthus flowers in a vase, a whiff of his scent in the air - but the man seemed determined to elude him. There was nothing in this place that told him anything about his betrothed.

Maybe he does hate me after all, Louis thought, up to his chin in steaming bathwater, sensation finally returning to his numbed limbs. Maybe my ignoring that third letter was the final straw, and he moved out of his own home just to get away from me.

Despite his plans to sabotage the engagement, the thought that Louis could have come all this way only to be rejected made his heart sink to the tub’s bottom. He convinced himself it was because he wanted to be the one doing the rejecting, and not because some deep-down part of him had gotten caught up with all the talk of love and babies.

After Louis finished bathing, he was shown to a well-appointed bedroom draped in blue and green silks. Once more, he inspected the space for any sign of the man who ostensibly lived there, and once more he came up short.

“Is this where the count sleeps?” Louis couldn’t help but ask.

The servant blinked and said no. The master slept in the main house, of course.

“The main house?” Louis echoed, his frustration resurfacing. “And I’m to be kept here, in – what, the servant’s quarters, with all the count’s other hired hands?”

“Your Lordship will stay in the guest house only until the wedding. The master is superstitious. The bride is not to enter the main house before the wedding, and must be carried across the threshold on the wedding night. Otherwise, it is very bad luck.”

Bad luck. Louis wasn’t sure his fortune could get any worse.

Louis drew himself up straighter, affecting the imperious tone he used in business meetings.

“I am to be married to your master; soon I will lord over this estate and everything in it just as much as he. Am I not entitled to see my own home?”

The servant just bowed his balding head and repeated his apologies, deferential, but resolute in obeying the count’s orders.

“Will you tell me about the count?” Louis asked hesitantly, when the servant asked if he needed anything else before turning in for the night. “What kind of man is he?”

“A great man,” the servant offered immediately. “His lordship has been most generous to my family for many years. It is an honor, to serve him.”

“Has he no faults?” Louis persisted with some frustration. “I know nothing about him – I was engaged to the man without so much as laying eyes on him. I’d appreciate the opportunity to prepare myself.”

“His lordship is a great man,” the servant repeated. “I’m sure you will be most happy together.”

Louis sighed. The servants were loyal to him; either the count treated his staff well, or had at least trained them well – or perhaps they feared him so, they wouldn’t dare speak ill of him. Louis would get nothing useful out of them. And he’d squandered the chance to write the count a letter and ask him about himself.

Louis was to be married in a week’s time, to a man he knew nothing about.

--

In the morning, Louis opened the drapes and stared out the window.

Last night’s rain hadn’t let up, though it had calmed to a grey drizzle. The walkways were thick with mud, but Louis didn’t care about dirtying his shoes. He’d fixed his mind on it; he refused to remain in ignorance any longer. He had to learn more about the man he was to marry, and not from any of his loyal servants. Louis had to see for himself.

He had to find his way into the main house.

He could see it from here – the towering building looming over the estate’s center he hadn’t been able to make out in the dark night’s storm, but now stood out as the largest and most splendid structure for miles around. It wasn’t a castle, but it was just as impressive. The house Louis had grown up in was sizeable, even for a minor noble; the count’s manor house could have swallowed it whole and had room for two more.

It was close enough to reach on foot, though it would be a long walk, perhaps the span of an hour. The real challenge was getting there without being spotted by servants.

Louis made several attempts throughout the day – claiming he wanted some fresh air, pretending to be interested in the estate’s gardens, expressing concern over the horses that had brought him here – but he was redirected back to the guest house each time.

You’ll catch cold, the servants told him, your body is unaccustomed to the alps. It was brutally cold out, and Louis was afflicted with sniffling after the previous night – it was hard to say whether the servants were truly concerned, or simply contriving to keep their master’s orders.

Louis had no choice but to wait until nightfall, when the servants left him to himself and retired for the evening.

The shower swelled to a downpour just as he snuck out the guest house’s front door, but he refused to be deterred. Louis slipped and slid through the mud, hugging the high stone wall that surrounded the property to avoid the brunt of the wind, though he was still thoroughly soaked by the time he crept up the long, sloped drive to the main house’s entrance.

The front door was unlocked, but there were lights on inside. Servants must still be tidying up, Louis reasoned. A much larger building would call for more upkeep than the guest house. He watched through the door’s glass panes for movement, shivering on the porch as shadows passed before the yellow light within. When all had been still for long enough, Louis took his chances and stepped inside.

A dazzling foyer greeted him, gleaming with gold, red velvet, and wood floors of rich ebony, buffed to a mirror shine. A magnificent flight of stairs commandeered the center of the space, an ornate carpet the color of fresh blood flowing down the steps.

Louis’s breath caught. At the top of the main stairway, hovering over the first landing, was a portrait of a man. A beautiful man, with a cleanly shaven square jaw, and broad shoulders in a coat of deep crimson, beset with golden accents that matched the color of his long, softly curling hair. His blue eyes seemed to be gazing down the stairs, right at Louis.

The hair on the back of Louis’s neck prickled; he could swear the eyes in the painting lightened imperceptibly as they looked down on him – muddy and bedraggled from his trek, dripping wet in the foyer – as though the man had been expecting Louis to sneak in, inexorably drawn there by some powerful magnetism, and was pleased to have been proven right.

Louis knew his face, without ever having seen it before – this was the count, Lestat de Lioncourt. His alpha.

The alpha. Louis mentally corrected himself.

He had only a second to be displeased with himself – then a shuffle of clunky shoes and French banter in the adjacent room announced a pair of incoming maids. Louis scrambled up the stairway as quietly as he could, just making it around the bend of the branching hall and out of sight before he was seen.

Louis peeked into the various rooms he passed as he crept through the halls. They were all sumptuous, lavishly decorated with articles of the highest quality. It all spoke of a worldly man of particular tastes, who relished extravagant things and coveted beauty in all its forms – but there was something about each room that rang hollow. This was a lonely house, Louis sensed. A big yawning mouth full of glittering teeth, starved for affection.

Louis found a deserted corridor deeper inside the mansion, where the voices of the maids faded into the distance. A safe place to pause and collect himself. Louis leaned on an exquisitely carved mahogany table and took a deep, steadying breath.

There it is. Louis felt the tension in his body relax, a slight, unconscious smile forming on his lips as the familiar scent washed over him. Now that he’d stopped to notice it, Louis could smell the warm, rich fragrance from the count’s letters hanging in the air, sweeping in to comfort him like a blanket around his shoulders. He’d missed it. Its presence was a faint one, however, like this was a wing the count rarely visited.

The walls here were lined with portraits.

Louis smiled at one of a pale, fat-cheeked baby with big, clueless eyes and a sparse tuft of blonde hair. It amused him, the idea that his mysterious count had once been such a sweet, drooling infant. It reminded Louis of the portrait that hung in his home – former home – of his mother holding baby Paul, the expression of complete innocence on his little face.

The count’s mother wasn’t in his portrait. The child was alone, his little body sunken deep into a red velvet cushion as though he’d been abandoned there and forgotten. Louis’s smile faded as he wondered how long the baby had sat there alone while his portrait was painted, tiny hands pawing the air, reaching out for a mother that wasn’t there, wondering when he’d be held again. Paul’s portrait had taken half a day.

Louis found himself wishing he could scoop the lonely infant right out of the painting and hold him. He saw the fireside vision of himself again, a fussing baby in his arms, but now it was harder to imagine what the baby looked like. Would the child bear his own coloring, or would the already light brown shade of his skin be further diluted by the count’s pallor? Louis tried to envision the midway point between their physicalities – what shape of nose, what texture of hair? – then stopped himself.

What was he doing? Louis had come here for information, to learn what manner of man he would be dealing with, not to entertain more foolish fantasy. He needed to distance himself from all thoughts of babies if he didn’t want to lose his head.

Louis hastened to move further down the hall.

The other portraits weren’t as interesting – the count with two massive dogs at his side; the count mounted on a white steed; the count holding a hunting rifle, standing over a slain deer. Louis slowed at the first painting that had another human beside him – the count posed beside a sour-faced young man with a head of brown curls. The count had laid a hand possessively on the man’s shoulder and the positioning of their bodies implied a strained intimacy. When Louis looked closer, he saw a ring on the sour-faced man’s wedding finger.

Louis frowned. The count had been married before.

The painting beside that also held a pair: the count seated next to a young woman this time, a slender blonde in a garish frock with a loud, toothy grin, prominently displaying her large wedding ring with a hand laid on the count’s arm.

The count had been married twice.

Louis shouldn’t be shocked; the man was twice his age, titled, incredibly wealthy, and – he had to admit – uncommonly handsome. It would be much stranger if he had made it to forty without being married. All the same, Louis couldn’t help but feel dismayed. This man was going to take so many of Louis’s firsts – if Louis couldn’t convince him to call the marriage off, that is – and he had already experienced it all, twice. Louis was just the latest addition in a hall full of portraits.

Frustrated, Louis stalked off down the hall towards the nearest room to continue his investigation.

He listened at the door to make sure it was unoccupied, then stepped into a large library, cluttered with leatherbound books. Many of them were rare, first editions, and they were all in English. Perhaps this is why the count was so proficient in the language, Louis thought, a taste for English literature? But the books didn’t look as though they’d been opened in some time. In fact, they appeared to have sat dormant since being purchased. Louis sniffed at the air – the alpha’s scent was nowhere to be found.

The books appeared to be sorted by genre, rather than by author. Louis picked his way to the fiction section and selected one at random. His eyebrows rose – it was a romance, the kind of light, tawdry fare he used to spy in Grace’s room. From what he gathered from a few passages, the story was about a young woman who had married a prince.

The young maiden trembled as she was escorted to the marriage bed by her new husband. She was frightened, but her prince took her gently, murmuring sweet words into her ear all the while, and in his tender embrace she gradually came to understand for the very first time the pleasures of coupling.

Louis yawned and slid the book back into its place, aimlessly chose another on the same shelf.

This one began in much the same way, but instead of being carried away by a prince on a white horse, the young heroine was dragged from her home in her nightgown, as she screamed and clawed at the earth, by a powerful demon who had been stalking her for months. The demon brought her to his lair and threw her onto his bed of twisted bone, lashed her limbs to the bedposts and had his wicked way with her. The woman protested, but the demon’s dark pull began to warp her mind – she began to enjoy herself, despite her hatred and the demon’s cruelty, or perhaps because of it. There was a sinister freedom in being made to submit.

Louis’s breathing picked up as his eyes slid over the pages. He felt himself grow warm, despite the chill of his rain-dampened coat. He remembered the painting of the count standing over his kill, his large, skillful hands curled around the hilt of his hunting rifle. Hands with the power to take life. As he read about the demon’s pale hands laying claim to his maiden, Louis couldn’t help but envision the count’s hands sliding over his own quivering body, a possessive caress tightening into a hard, inescapable grip on his thighs, his waist, his throat. Holding him down, no matter how he might struggle, prey-like in his grasp. Forcing Louis to submit to his wicked desires.

Louis slammed the book shut, thrust it back onto the shelf, and quickly slunk out of the mansion, back into the cold of the rain outside which had slowed to a contemplative drizzle, desperately ignoring the fact that beneath his clothes, where he was untouched by rain, he still felt damp.

--

Louis returned to the main house the following night.

The servants said the weather looked as though it would let up soon, and the count might return earlier than expected – perhaps even as early as tomorrow morning. That meant Louis only had tonight to finish his investigation, learn what he could of the man before his arrival.

He paused in the entryway, ears straining for the sound of bustling servants nearby.

It was quiet. They must have finished here and moved deeper into the manor to finish their cleaning before the count’s arrival. Louis looked at the high shine polish of the ebony flooring and then down guiltily at his muddy shoes, soaking a puddle into the foyer carpeting. He’d tracked in a trail of filth last night, and had undoubtedly caused a scolding for some poor, undeserving maid. After some hesitation, he quietly removed his shoes and his sodden coat and left them hidden in a corner behind a large vase, proceeding up the stairway in socked feet.

Louis inhaled deeply, his heart thrilling at the trace of the count’s rich scent in the air. Despite the cold of the night still lingering in his bones, the aroma felt like a summer breeze, like relief on a muggy, oppressively hot New Orleans afternoon. Louis trailed after it almost mindlessly, hardly paying attention to where he stepped, shambling along the gleaming hallways like someone in a trance, thinking only of that heady fragrance getting stronger, filling his lungs, his mind, to the obliteration of all else. He knew he’d had a purpose in coming here, but he couldn’t quite remember it now; hadn’t he just been tired and lonely, craving the comfort of his alpha’s scent?

It seemed that Louis blinked and found himself in a beautifully-appointed room with a fine chandelier, a small seating area, and a gleaming grand piano, stretching out in one corner of the room like a great lustrous black cat. The scent was stronger here than anywhere else – Louis felt his very skin sigh as he let it wash over him, the tension in his muscles unravelling. He became aware of a faint crackling noise; there stood a fireplace behind him, eerily similar to the one in his fantasy, a roaring fire filling the room with warmth.

Unconsciously, Louis tugged at his cravat, the buttons on his waistcoat, his skin beginning to prickle with sweat. The heat of the room after the chill outside, along with the silky cloud of scent thickening the air was jarring his senses, making him feel fuzzy and confused. He could feel the pull of the scent urging him forward, piloting his body without any input from himself. He moved to the door on the far side of the room where, he knew, through some long-suppressed instinct, was the place he wanted to be.

Louis swung the door open. A massive, imposing beast of a four-poster bed, large enough to fit several men, loomed before him. Its heavy, black, elaborately-carved wooden frame was unlike anything Louis had ever seen – turned bedposts thicker than the width of both his arms beset with a corded design like thorny vines wrapping up and down their length, dotted here and there with lush floral accents; intricate moldings on the footboard and headboard so rich with detail Louis couldn’t make it all out, a mosaic of ancient statues and Grecian pillars and proscenium arches etched into every inch, including the roof-like ceiling crowning the bed from which the canopy was hung. Golden swathes of embroidered tapestry gathered at the four points of the bed, and the gauzy red-tinged inner curtain that enclosed the entire thing like a veil of blood. The whole affair looked more like a Gothic castle than any building on the estate.

Louis swallowed, his tongue laying thick in his mouth. The strongest, clearest presence of the scent was here – it was dizzying. Suddenly, it was closing in on Louis, smothering him. He felt short of breath.

Louis tore his eyes from the bed, turned away from that unbearable presence and worked to calm himself. He didn’t know what was happening to him. All he could think was that it was growing near that dreaded time – the time he would be going into heat, if he didn’t take the daily tonic his physician prescribed to prevent it. He’d been taking it since he first presented. Even though he had never suffered a heat at its full strength, his hormones would leak through at the time of their peak, making him act irrationally, more vulnerable to his emotional impulses – and his sensual ones.

Louis shook his head to clear it. He turned his focus to a different spot in the room – a writing desk tucked in the corner. The rational side of Louis’s brain fought back to the surface. What could tell you more about a man than his letters?

There was a stack of blank parchment, a pot of ink and an expensive feathered quill pen sitting on the desk. Louis lowered himself into the cushioned chair – a little shiver going through him imagining the man from the portrait seated here, a hastily suppressed image of Louis sitting on his lap – and took the pen in his hand. He twirled it between his fingers, admiring the long plume of scarlet red feather. Red must be the man’s favorite color, Louis mused, red pen, red coat, red canopy on the bed…Louis’s eyes skated back over to the bed, a flush of heat rising once more within him.

That was where the count slept. That was to be their marriage bed. That’s where they would…

Louis ripped his eyes away, scolding himself to focus, trying to take shallower breaths so he didn’t inhale quite so much of that intoxicating aroma.

The desk drawers held mostly letters received by the count concerning business, properties, money handling and the like. Louis haphazardly scattered them across the desktop as he searched deeper in the drawers, seeking out – the count’s handwriting. A letter he’d written, some time ago, judging by the faint yellow aging on the parchment, and the fading of the ink. Louis tried to focus on the words, but it was all in French, and he spoke it better than he read it, especially in such elaborate, looping script. That, and it was hard to process anything with the alpha’s scent worming its way deeper into the soft folds of his brain with every inhale.

From what Louis could tell, it was a love letter. Or a draft of one. Several words and phrases were crossed out with angry slashes of a pen, some of which left tears in the parchment. The words Louis could make out were sweet ones, mangled by hateful interludes.

There were more drafts like this, maybe all to one person or maybe to several – Louis couldn’t tell, they were all addressed to some amorous title: mon trésor, mon coeur, ma jolie chérie.

There was a stack of letters beneath these, also tinged with age, bearing unfamiliar handwriting. The folds in the parchment were creased deeply, like they had been opened, read, and neatly put away again and again over a period of years. Some were very short, only a few sentences long. They must have been very meaningful, for the count to have clung to such precious few words. The signatures, of course, didn’t mean anything to Louis. Letters from the count’s past wives? Past lovers? Family members, long estranged?

Louis irritably tossed the letters onto the desk. He didn’t like thinking about other people in the count’s life. He didn’t want there to be anyone before him, when Louis hadn’t had anyone before the count.

Louis shook his head and shoved away from the desk – what was he thinking? How could he be feeling possessive over this man…? – but the more agitated he became, the faster his breathing, and the more that scent filled him, until he was drunk with it.

Louis reached for the buttons of his waistcoat, only to find them gone – he was standing in his shirtsleeves now. With frantic hands, he stripped himself free until he was left with nothing but his undergarments to confine him. He couldn’t breathe, the alpha’s scent was too strong, it was overpowering him – but at the same time, he could only breathe the alpha’s scent, his lungs scrambling for it like precious oxygen in an airless void, like Louis had been starved of breath his whole life and only now could take his fill.

Louis stumbled back to the bed and parted the gauzy curtain to reveal the plush red interior, a thick, richly-patterned damask yielding to a silken underbelly. He finally succumbed to his urges and crawled inside, his chest tight, his body trembling, burrowing himself beneath the warmth of the heavy, down-stuffed comforter, pressing his face into the silky sheets and filling himself with his alpha’s dark, rich, perfect scent. He lay there as his breathing slowed, became deep and calm, his body relaxing completely, his heartbeat settling into a contented rhythm. This was where he was meant to be. He didn’t want to ever leave.

Louis lay there for some time, the blanket pulled up to his chin, his body sprawled lazily beneath the sheets. He basked in the silence of his perfect little world inside the bed’s canopy, save for the steady pounding of rain on the manor roof and the muffled crackling of the fire in the other room. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this relaxed. Probably not since his father was still alive. He missed his father.

Louis turned his head to one side, rested his cheek against the cool satin pillow. Without meaning to, he had settled himself on the right side of the bed, leaving the left side vacant. Did the count sleep on the left? Or did he sleep on the right, and Louis had been drawn to this side by a slightly heavier concentration of the man’s scent?

Louis flopped over to the left side, stretched himself out on his stomach as far as he could go – he could stretch forever and never reach the edges of the mattress, the bed was so huge. Louis pressed his face into one of several left-hand-side pillows and breathed in deep. It smelled the same as the right side. Perhaps the count really was an ogre in disguise, to have such a massive bed and fill every inch. Or maybe he tossed restlessly in his sleep.

Louis closed his eyes and imagined the man from the portraits stretched out in bed beside him. Then on top of him, the warmth of his heavy body pressing Louis deeper into the mattress – something Louis had long imagined in his shameful fantasies. He imagined warm breath on the back of his neck, a low rumble of a voice in his ear. Louis could practically hear it – something about the way the man wrote in his letters, or some rich, oaky note in his scent, made the inside of Louis’s head vibrate with sonorous sound. He imagined the count speaking lowly into his ear – part those stubborn lips of yours – and those large strong hands that wrapped so cleanly around the barrel of a gun wrapped around his body. Wrapped around his waist. His throat. Sliding up to grip his jaw, press fingers into the warm, wet cavern of Louis’s mouth.

Louis gasped – he’d ground his hips into the bed without meaning to, dragging his quickly stiffening cock against the sheets, a quiet pulse of arousal running through him. His underwear was slightly damp. He groaned softly in shame – but somehow the shame only amplified the pleasurable sensation. Look at you, some anonymous judging voice came from inside Louis’s head, doing this in a strange alpha’s bed, losing control, making a fool of yourself. Dirty. Shameful. Sick.

Louis rutted harder against the mattress, a slow, steady grind. He buried his face into the pillow, let the alpha’s scent choke him. He felt dizzy, and numb, and on fire all at once. Why does it feel so good? Louis had never felt like this. He wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

He imagined his alpha on top of him, rutting in tandem with his rhythm, his hard length jutting insistently into Louis’s clothed backside. Louis could practically feel the man, hot and throbbing against him, through the thin fabric of his underwear, the man’s scent pressing down on Louis from all sides like a physical weight, stroking into the warm divot between Louis’s cheeks, where a damp patch was spreading as if to accommodate the slide of each slow thrust.

No, it wouldn’t be like that, would it? If they were going to make a baby…the count would have to press inside. He would have to knot Louis. Louis’s breath caught – the image was so vivid in his mind, painted in the colors of the fragrance clouding the enclosed space of the canopied bed - stunning, demanding colors that spoke of the man’s passion, crimson, gold, steel blue like the count’s cold hunter’s eyes. The oppressive weight of the count’s body, pinning Louis in place, holding him still even as Louis trembled, forcing himself inside his bride inch by agonizing inch.

Louis slid one hand back to palm at his backside. Hesitantly at first, then rougher, gripping the round flesh the brutish way he imagined the count would. He stroked at his entrance over his underwear – groaning miserably when his fingers came away wet. Sick. But his mind was still running, chasing the fantasy spurred on by the dizzying scent surrounding him – he slid his hand inside, past the band of his drawers, stroking down his soft, fever-warm skin to the place his alpha was going to breed him, sodden with slick now, pathetically desperate to be filled.

Louis let out a muffled whimper – just the gentlest stroke at his hole with the alpha’s face in his mind made his cock leak, surely soaking a stain into the lavish sheets. His face burned with humiliation against the cool silk of the pillow. To be brought to such a state, by a man who wasn’t even there with him! It was disgusting. Louis was disgusting, a filthy, pitiful omega slut just like all those alphas who worked with his father used to call him behind his back. What would the maids think, cleaning up this mess later? Would they deduce that it had been Louis, give him shrewd looks in the morning as they passed him in the halls? That little omega protests so, but just look what he did in the master’s bed…

Or, even worse, what if they didn’t notice in time? What if the count arrived home the next night to find the stain of Louis’s pathetic lust soaking his sheets?

Louis didn’t think he would survive that. He would surely die of shame. He wanted to run from this place, get back to the safety of the guest house lest he embarrass himself further – but his body wouldn’t obey him, still caught under the spell of the alpha’s scent. His hips rocked against the mattress, his back arching into the touch of his hand, a finger pressing delicately against the tight wet ring of muscle, his mouth falling open as his fingertip just began to breach his hole, the image of his alpha sighing with pleasure as he breached Louis with his –

A door slammed open. Louis’s body went rigid, his eyes staring sightlessly into the pillow. A commotion in the adjoining room – shuffling feet, the busy movement of bodies, and a chorus of French voices, one a deep, authoritative rumble that stood out amongst the crowd.

“How was your trip, milord?” A soft, obsequious voice asked breathlessly in between doling out orders to other maids.

“Tiresome.” The deeper voice said brusquely, heavy footsteps advancing across the hardwood floor. Louis’s stomach dropped; it was a near perfect echo of the voice that tormented him in his fantasies.

“I’ve quite reached my threshold for all manner of nonsense. After my bath is drawn, I’ll have no disturbances. Perfect peace and quiet. I don’t care if the king himself turns up bludgeoned and bleeding to death on my doorstep; I don’t want to hear of it until the morning.”

“Yes, sir – of course, milord!”

Louis heart rocketed through his chest – they were approaching the bedroom door. He scrambled up out of the bed, tore through the canopy and fled into the nearest hiding place, through a door that had been left slightly ajar which gave way to a generously-sized closet. Louis tucked himself out of sight in the corner behind the door, fearing to close it, lest attention be drawn to a subtle change in the room, and all but held his breath as the crowd came clamoring inside.

One group of maids tromped straight through; Louis heard the clack of shoes on tile and the sloshing of water as they headed into the connected bathroom to begin the process of preparing the master’s bath. Another group flitted around the bedroom, their steps politely harried as they simultaneously unpacked the master’s bags and straightened the room up, clearly not having anticipated the count’s arrival. The man’s steady step paused in the center of the room, a rustle of clothing as his attendants helped him to undress.

Louis swallowed hard. A faint bloom of the man’s tantalizing scent wafted towards him as his skin was bared, a scarf or cravat pulled free to expose the scent glands at his throat. Before he realized what he was doing, he’d crept to the edge of the closet door to peer through the sliver of gap he’d left.

For the second time, Louis's breath caught at the sight of the man’s face – in profile now, as he stared dully into space with his arms at his sides, waiting impatiently for his servants to finish undoing the fastens of his waistcoat and the laces of his boots. He was breathtaking. The portrait had been one thing, but seeing it come to life before Louis’s eyes, a living, breathing, warm-blooded creature, tall, broad of stature, with finely sculpted features like something crafted by an artist’s hand, the high cheekbones, the strong, proud jaw Louis had thought himself ridiculous for presuming, the subtly generous lips and the hard set of his mouth, at odds but somehow in perfect complement with each other, the alluring softness and viciousness there, equally likely to kiss or to bite.

Louis lowered his eyes as the maids divested the count of his shirt, left him standing in nothing but his trousers – but not before he caught a glimpse of firm chest, taut abdominal muscle, a faint blonde trail of hair leading temptingly down his lower stomach…

A fresh wave of shame crashed over Louis. He couldn’t believe what he was doing. Spying on a man in his own home! Even if that home was soon to be Louis’s. And the man in question was soon to be…Louis shook himself. He had to stop thinking of this alpha as his!

The count sighed, ran a hand through his hair when a maid loosed it from the black ribbon keeping it tied back, and muttered a string of unheard instructions to the nearest servant, presumably giving orders for the following morning.

Louis glanced up when the man’s voice stopped abruptly. The count was staring at the writing desk in the corner. Half the letters Louis had rifled through were still strewn across the desk’s surface. A few were on the floor. Louis hadn’t even realized he’d dropped them.

The count strode over to the desk, his noble face hardening with irritation. Louis watched, helpless, as he sifted through the scattered letters as though making sure they were all still there, then whirled on his servants and demanded to know which one of them was responsible.

The maids bowed their heads and swore they hadn’t done it – nor did they know who had.

The count’s dangerous mouth contorted into a sneer. “None of you? So, you would have me believe I did this myself, while I’ve been away suffering bureaucratic idiocy the better part of the past week? Or perhaps you’ll tell me the letters sprung to life and defiled themselves all over the desk in my absence?”

With a sharp flick of his wrist, he hurled a stack of opened letters at the closest maid, hitting her square in the chest. She flinched violently, her hands fluttering to catch the letters as they fell, parchment spilling out of their envelopes to flap noisily to the floor. The count spat some nasty French epithet Louis didn’t recognize as the other maids hurried to assist her.

“Clean up this mess and get out. All of you. Fortunate for you that I’m so tired. Whoever’s responsible will evade their punishment until the morning.”

The count stepped right over the maids scrambling around on the ground to pour himself a drink from a table by the window, sipping at a dark, amber beverage and gazing out at the storm outside. The rain had surged back into a frenzy, lashing at the windowpanes in icy ropes.

Louis shivered, watching the women on the floor with a pang of guilt. How could he admit to going through the letters without admitting that he’d snuck into the count’s room? How could he say nothing, and let one of these poor women be disciplined in his stead? Louis didn’t know what the count’s ‘punishment’ entailed. He knew some people had their servants beaten, though, of course, his family never had. The count might just be cruel enough to want to do the beating himself.

As the servants cleared out, the room fell silent; just the rain and Louis’s heart pounding in his ears and the clink of the count’s glass as he refilled his drink. Louis spied his shed clothes, only mostly concealed under the bed - he'd kicked them there so carelessly in his haste to climb into the man's bed. Was Louis going to have to wait for the count to go to sleep before he could gather his things and escape? He kept waiting for the man to go into the other room to have his bath, but the count was taking his time.

He was just staring out the window now, as though lost in thought, his glass held absently in one hand. Louis watched a sudden tensing of the muscles in his back, a tiny contraction between his pale shoulders. The count’s head turned slowly towards his bed. He sniffed at the air, his nostrils flaring. Louis stifled a gasp as he saw a flash of alpha red in the count’s eyes, a predatory widening of the black pupils. He stalked over to the bed, pulled the canopy aside, and felt along the rumpled silk sheets with his palm, pausing at what he found there. Louis’s entire body shuddered as the count fisted his hand in the sheet and brought it to his face to take a long, deep whiff of Louis’s fragrant slick.

A strange, dreadful heat crept back into Louis. The alpha had his face pressed into Louis’s slick, breathing in his scent, and it was like Louis’s body didn’t know that this was bad, that he didn’t want to be discovered. Some primitive part of his brain could only think about how sweet it must be, how the alpha kept going back for more like Louis had with the man's letters, the whole of his beautiful face buried in the wet patch of fabric like it was the best thing he’d ever smelled – was it better than his past omegas? Was it getting him hard? Would he want to breed Louis now?

Louis didn’t know how potent his scent was. He had been taking tonics to block his omega hormones ever since he first presented; one to keep his heat from coming, and one to dampen his scent overall, keeping him from drawing undue attention. But clearly his slick still held a noticeable fragrance. Could the alpha smell Louis from here, now that he’d caught his scent? The thought panicked him – and, terrifyingly, aroused him more. Louis bit his lip hard, clenching every part of him to keep from leaking any more traitorous scent.

“Would you like to come out now?” The count murmured into the quiet room, switching to heavily accented English. “Or would you like me to come find you?”

Louis went still as a statue, not daring to breathe.

“I know you’re here.”

The count turned from the bed and began pacing about the room, his movements easy and slow. Louis could tell by his posture that he wasn’t actually looking for him, just playing that he was – toying with Louis, like a cat with a mouse.

“You dampen your scent, I can tell, and you must think that conceals you, but the sheets are ripe with an omega’s sweetness.” He sighed, as though savoring the aftertaste of Louis’s scent on his tongue. “And I no longer employ omega maids; I always end up fucking them. That only leaves you, my fickle little bride.”

Louis didn’t know why his body had frozen – it wasn’t like he could hide here in this closet forever. He would surely be found. Maybe it was simple animal fear. Or maybe the wretched omega instinct was keeping him from fleeing, wanting his alpha to discover him.

“Will you keep quiet even now?” Louis could hear the count’s taunting smirk in his voice. “I can think of a few ways to coax some noise from that pretty mouth of yours. I was going to wait until our wedding night, but seeing as you’re so desperate for it…well, what kind of an alpha would I be, if I denied my needy darling what she desires?”

Louis bristled at the feminine pronoun – an outdated custom, to be expected from a crude, old-world alpha. It nearly had him reaching for the closet’s doorknob.

“If you come out now, I promise that you shall have your fill. And then some.” The count laughed to himself. “And then some more.”

After a few more beats of silence, the man’s mood shifted, his voice going hard and cold.

“Or perhaps you’re here to tease me. A bit of mockery to add to the insult of your endless silence. I’ll warn you, I don’t take kindly to teasing. And I’m in a particularly foul mood tonight.”

A surge of indignation broke the spell of Louis’s stillness at last. He wouldn’t be found quivering in the shadows like some prey animal – and he wouldn’t be spoken to the way the man spoke to his hired help. Louis was a lord, a titled man himself, and he wouldn’t brook such treatment!

Louis opened the closet door and stepped boldly out into the room. He fought not to quail under the count’s cold blue gaze, standing only a few feet away, still naked to the waist.

“Enough. I won’t be threatened.” Louis told him, tilting his chin up, imbuing his voice with the hard confidence he used when at work or speaking to his servants to command respect.

A slow grin spread across the count’s face, so beautiful and cruel in the flickering candlelight of the room it made Louis want to fall to his knees.

“Oh, it wasn’t a threat, my love. It was a promise.”

The count prowled nearer with a predator’s cautious grace, like he thought Louis might flee, and wanted to be prepared to catch him if he did.

“Toy with me,” he enunciated carefully, eyes locked on Louis’s, “and you will be made to regret it.”

Louis swallowed; his mouth was watering. He averted his gaze.

“I-I wasn’t. I…went for a walk and got lost in the rain.” Louis scrambled for a lie. “I was only looking for somewhere to wait out the storm.”

The count’s smile turned softer, mocking. “And you thought you would warm yourself in my bed?”

His eyes travelled down Louis’s body, barely concealed by his smallclothes, his thin, sleeveless undershirt and cotton drawers. Louis squirmed as he felt the man’s gaze linger over his nether regions; Louis was too petrified to glance down and see if the wet spot at the front of his underwear had dried.

“You’re trembling, ma belle.” The count purred. “Are you cold? Shall we return to bed together?” He crept closer, leaned in to whisper. “Shall I keep you warm tonight?”

When the man stroked the bare skin of Louis’s upper arm with the backs of his knuckles, Louis flinched away from him, reflexively swatted his hand off. The corner of the count’s mouth quirked further upwards, as though amused by the resistance.

“Don’t.” Louis got out, hoping to feign that his bodily reaction was a deliberate act of defiance. “I’d no sooner be toyed with than you, my lord.” He summoned all his venom to spit the honorific as though it were an insult.

The count broke into laughter, his eyes crinkling charmingly at the edges. He gazed at Louis like he was a pleasant surprise, as though he could hardly believe this fiery omega who’d broken into his bedchamber to glare at him in his undergarments.

“Call me Lestat, please. I won’t have you crying out my lord as I bed you on our wedding night.”

Louis felt a flush of heat warm his cheeks. He lowered his eyes – the count’s bare, muscular chest hovered so close to his own – Louis looked instead to an empty spot in the room.

“We’ve only just met and already you speak of bedding me. I hardly expected such uncouth behavior from a man of your standing.”

“Oh, I cannot be held at fault. Such exquisite beauty as yours, standing before me, half bare…it beckons the mind to wander down pathways most uncouth.”

His gaze dragged over Louis’s trembling body again. Louis was very aware of the way his meager white undershirt clung to his chest, revealing the hardened peaks of his nipples, the way the snug cut of his drawers dug slightly into the flesh of his hips and thighs, accentuating the subtle, rounded curves of his body. The count’s scent sharpened with the smooth, smoky darkness of desire – a demanding note that Louis recognized as emanating from alphas that didn’t stifle their ruts, shortly before they took a few days off from his father’s office.

Louis felt his pulse leap in response. He hadn’t even processed the severity of the situation he was in. He was almost nude, and utterly defenseless, in front of an alpha in pre-rut, an alpha he was betrothed to. And Louis was provoking him, practically begging to be put in his place. No one would blame the man if he claimed Louis now in whatever way he saw fit, even if they had yet to wed.

A small, secret, sick part of Louis wished he would. All the same, when the count reached for Louis again, Louis shrank from his touch.

The count sighed.

“If you don’t wish to stay, then leave. Dress yourself and find your way back to the guest house.” The man’s disappointment shifted easily back into irritation. “You are never to go through my desk again. And you will stop taking whatever you use to dampen your scent. Do you understand?”

Louis looked at him sharply. What right had he to decide what Louis did with his own body?

“Perhaps you in the old world aren’t familiar with the progression of civilized society, but we are no longer in the dark ages.” Louis retorted fiercely. “Just because I am an omega doesn’t give you the right to order me around.”

The count’s eyes flashed with crimson and Louis gasped as the man abruptly surged forward. Louis instinctively backed away but there was no escape - his back slammed into the closet door. They were chest to chest now, their faces a breath from touching, the alpha towering over Louis, his scent so suffocating Louis barely had the space to breathe.

“I don’t care what you do in your free-thinking colonies.” The count hissed, his already deep voice taking a rougher edge. “Things may have grown lax there, but make no mistake. You don’t live there anymore. Here you are my omega, and it is my right to do as I please with you.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Louis whispered, though his heart was pounding.

Louis’s breath hitched as the count placed a hand to his throat, his large paw spanning all of it with ease. His thick fingers splayed on one side of Louis's neck to feel his hummingbird pulse, his thumb brushing at the sensitive edge of his scent gland on the other side.

“You’re shaking. And your heart races.” He murmured in French. “Like a fawn in the lion’s den.”

His fingers tightened, not painfully, but with just the barest hint of a threat, more of a firm caress than a squeeze. A faint whimper snuck from Louis’s throat as his breathing came faster, his body anticipating being cut off from air. Each shallow breath overwhelmed him with the alpha’s scent, Louis’s mind melting at the sensuous pull; suddenly, he wanted more than anything for the count – for Lestat – to kiss him.

He felt the warm, slick sensation dawn again in his undergarments, the muscles in his throat beginning to relax, body going pliant and receptive at Lestat’s touch, made desperate by the warmth of his hand. He liked this, Louis realized with distant terror, he liked Lestat pinning him in place, keeping him from running away. He wanted more – he wanted Lestat closer. He wanted Lestat’s grip even tighter.

As if he could read Louis’s mind, Lestat’s hand came up to grip Louis’s jaw hard, forcing him to look into the man’s strange pale eyes, so close to Louis’s now their eyelashes were near brushing.

“When I ask you if I am understood, you are to say yes. Unless you do not understand, in which case you will be made to understand.” Lestat stared into Louis’s eyes, unblinking, his deep voice slow and hypnotic. “I will ask you again. Am I understood?”

“Yes…my lord.” Louis forced out, the last of his self-respect refusing to let himself submit completely.

Lestat’s eyes glinted dangerously in the candlelight. Louis feared for a moment he’d gone too far – but then the count burst out laughing again, that odd, near manic cackle.

“Strong-minded, for an omega.” His hand lingeringly left Louis’s jaw. Louis’s back teeth ached at the release. “Not to worry. I’ll soon break you of that.”

The servants blinked at Louis in bewilderment when he came down the stairs, but quickly offered to prepare a carriage to take him back to the guest house.

Louis refused them. He preferred to walk. He needed the brace of cold rain and wind to regain his senses, wrest his rational mind back from the filthy omega urges that wanted to sprint back to the manor and join his alpha in the bath.

--

Louis awoke to a flurry of excitement in the guest house.

“The master has returned!” A servant informed him. Clearly, news of Louis’s blunder the previous night hadn’t reached the servants on this side of the estate. “His carriage arrived late last night. He fought his way through the storm to come to you, to spend as much time as possible together before the wedding.”

Louis just gave the man a strained smile.

As Louis had feared, the count was waiting for him when he came down to the dining hall for breakfast. He’d anticipated some kind of confrontation, but the count barely spared him a glance as he motioned to Louis to sit beside him, continuing his conversation with the servant standing at his elbow.

“I take it everything for today is in order?”

“Yes, my lord. After Lord du Lac’s fitting at the tailor’s, we are to go straight on to the patisserie for the cake tasting, and, if weather permits, we should make it for our tour of the cathedral before the sun sets.”

Lestat nodded, sipping at his tea from a fine bone china cup. “Have the flowers already arrived from Paris?”

“I’m afraid there was a delay due to the storm. I’ve sent a courier out to the florist’s, but it may be a full day still before we can expect to hear back. I will have you notified immediately once we hear word, my lord.”

“Very good. And what of the stragglers on the guest list; have we heard back from the duke and duchess?”

Louis stared at the count, waiting to be properly acknowledged. Lestat just went on conversing about wedding details, munching away at his tea and scones.

As far as anyone in this room knew – at least the serving staff lined up at the back of the room, waiting to be called upon – this was Louis and Lestat’s first official meeting. Louis was a lord, the eldest son of a respectable family – and he was being all but ignored in front of a roomful of his fiancé’s staff! How could these people be expected to obey Louis, to hold him in any esteem, if this was how his betrothed treated him – with less regard than even a servant!

“Ahem.” Louis cleared his throat.

Lestat swallowed his bite of scone and turned an inch in his direction, switching to English. “Yes?”

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Count de Lioncourt.” Louis said pointedly.

Lestat just stared at him for a beat – then burst into that ridiculous laughter again.

“Oh, and it’s such a pleasure to make your acquaintance at long last, Lord de Pointe du Lac.” The count swept Louis’s hand into his in a gesture of exaggerated gentility to press a kiss to his knuckles. “I hope you’ve slept well since your arrival. Is the bed to your liking?” He finished with a teasing smile.

Louis’s face burned with humiliation – and a sick pang of arousal at the reminder of last night. He’d fallen asleep thinking of silky glide of the count’s sheets beneath his skin, the dizzying grip of the count’s fingers around his jaw.

He snatched his hand back and busied himself with slathering jam on a scone, too afraid to even glance at the servants to see if they’d understood the count’s taunt.

“It’s fine.” Louis mumbled to the tablecloth.

Before Louis had the chance to recover his pride, they had set off to the tailor’s shop for his fitting.

Louis stood surrounded by his own reflection, attended to by mirror images of the nimble little tailor darting here and there with pins and measuring tape. Lestat sat on a velvet chaise nearby, watching.

“And the color?” The little man held up several gleaming fabric swatches in his wrinkled hands. “We have ivory, cream, off-white…”

“In English, if you can, for my American bride.” Lestat interrupted from his chair.

“Ah…we have these shades here.” The tailor struggled, his mouth working to shape the strange consonants. “This fabric, see?”

“I speak French.” Louis assured the man in his native tongue, satisfied at the way Lestat’s eyebrows rose in the mirror.

“Ah, bon. We have ivory, cream, off-white…”

The tailor took turns draping one color and then the next over Louis’s shoulders, allowing him to gauge how the shades looked with his skin tone. When he asked what Louis preferred, Louis shrugged.

“You don’t like these, monsieur?”

“I don’t care.” Louis said, meeting Lestat’s narrowed eyes in the mirror. Why should he? Nothing about this marriage had been Louis’s decision; he didn’t see what use there was in pretending otherwise. “It makes no difference to me.”

“Ah…and the accents for the suit? We have bronze, gold, pearl…”

Louis shrugged again. “I don’t have a preference.”

Lestat’s mouth twitched with annoyance.

“Ah…and we have a few options for collars here, different heights to choose from. And your groom expressed wanting a jewel here, at the throat. We have ruby, diamond, emerald…?”

“Why don’t you choose whatever you like best, monsieur, I’m sure it’ll be just fine.”

“Just fine.” Lestat repeated, staring Louis down in the mirror.

Louis stared back.

Lestat rose abruptly to his feet. “Leave us, kind monsieur. I need to speak to my bride alone.”

Louis fidgeted with the unfinished sleeves of his suit jacket, no longer able to meet Lestat’s eyes as the tailor and his assistant bowed and removed themselves from the room. He had been hoping to get the fitting over with, not to prolong it with – whatever this was to be.

A pleasurable shiver ran through Louis as his groom came to stand behind him, the warmth of his body, the sensuous embrace of his scent sliding over his mind like a silk sheet.

“First you refuse to speak, now you refuse to cooperate.” Lestat said tightly in English, taking up the swatches to survey them himself. “Is it some American tradition for brides to make things as difficult as possible for their poor grooms?”

“Only when they’re being married off against their will.” Louis returned under his breath, only half intending to speak the thought aloud.

He hadn’t made up his mind on whether to broach the topic – choosing not to hide his displeasure was one thing, but openly voicing dissent and decisively spoiling Paul’s future was another – but being this close to the man made him flustered, made him act without thinking. He immediately hoped he hadn’t been heard; but Lestat had gone quiet, an uneasy silence hanging over the room.

Louis messed with one of the buttons on his sleeve until he couldn’t take it anymore and glanced up at Lestat in the mirror. The count was watching him with a guarded caution in his eyes.

“I haven’t forced you here.” Lestat said at last. “I haven’t stolen you from your bed as you kicked and screamed. You came to me. You accepted my proposal and crossed an ocean to be with me.”

“I accepted your proposal as a duty to my family.” Louis amended quietly, observing the count’s face for any sign of guilt.

Surely, the man knew Louis had played no role in accepting the engagement? He’d never even spoken to Louis before proposing! Wasn’t Louis’s refusal to respond to his letters evidence enough of his unhappiness, his unwilling participation?

But the count didn’t look guilty. He looked taken aback. It was plain to see on his face – he had no idea Louis hadn’t chosen to be here.

This whole time, he’d been under the impression that Louis had voluntarily accepted his proposal, then ignored him for a month, then come all the way to France to regard him with nothing but disdain. Which was, no doubt, made even more confusing by Louis’s actions last night.

Now Louis was the one who felt guilty. He went back to fiddling with his sleeve button.

“And when you broke into my home, slunk away to my bedchamber to pleasure yourself on my sheets, was that out of a sense of familial duty?”

Louis stiffened, his face going hot. All uncertainty had left Lestat now, staring Louis down with a mean, self-satisfied glint in his eye. Smug bastard.

“Your home is to be mine.” Louis defended, refusing to acknowledge the latter half of the accusation. “I cannot break in to my own home.”

“You were told to commit yourself to the guest house until our wedding. You’ve been disobedient from the start.”

Lestat paused, eyes narrowing with suspicion – Louis inhaled sharply, shuddering as the man suddenly pressed his face into the scent gland in the crook of Louis’s throat, breathing him in. Louis instinctively tried to get away – it was such a sensitive area, the shock of being touched there unexpectedly made his mind go blank – but the count stopped him with two firm hands on his waist.

“And you’ve disobeyed me yet again.” Lestat sighed, a warm gust of breath against Louis’s neck. “I told you to stop dampening your scent.”

Louis opened his mouth to retort but all that escaped was a little panicked stutter of protest as Lestat started pawing at the fastenings of jacket, tugging it forcefully from his body.

“What are you doing?”

“Hard to gauge what color best suits your pretty skin with all these clothes in the way, don’t you think?” Lestat grunted, tossing the incomplete suit jacket carelessly to the floor, then giving Louis’s waistcoat the same treatment.

“Stop.”

Louis struggled against him but Lestat’s hands wouldn’t be deterred – and, unlike Louis, the count wasn’t concerned about not damaging the garments.

Louis gasped as the white shirt he’d had on beneath the waistcoat was ripped clean off him, buttons sent flying as Louis’s naked chest was exposed in three mirrored reflections, his pert, dark brown nipples instantly tightening at the chill of open air, goosebumps rising across his flesh.

“What’s wrong with you?” Louis managed, unable to tear his eyes away from his own image – half nude in a public shop, the soft swells of his chest rising and falling with rapid breath. His hands clutched weakly at the arms encircling his body as if to stop them, but he only succeeded in holding them in place, keeping Lestat’s large hands splayed across his skin, as the count loomed behind him, also gazing at Louis’s reflection over his shoulder as though transfixed.

“If you will not choose a suit to marry me in, I will do it for you.” Lestat rumbled into his ear. Louis shivered.

Lestat kept one hand on Louis’s waist to hold him still, using his other hand to select one of the swatches from the small table the tailor had spread his materials over – a stiff wool swatch of snowy white fabric. He brought it to rest low against Louis’s stomach. Louis jumped at the gentle contact of fabric on skin, which drew a smile out of Lestat.

“I’m not sure about this one.” The count mused, as he slowly, deliberately drew the fabric up Louis’s stomach, trailing a soft line over the dip at his navel, his ribs, stroking at his sternum. “A little stark, perhaps, this white? Too harsh against your soft skin.”

Louis made a little startled noise in the back of his throat when the fabric grazed over one of his hard nipples, the sharp twinge of pleasure it produced. His fingers gripped tighter at Lestat’s forearms.

“Stop,” Louis repeated, his voice going embarrassingly high and breathy when Lestat just rubbed at his nipple again, a little harder this time. “We could be seen.”

The tailor could return at any minute, and there were other people working in the shop, salespeople, seamstresses that would come to rummage through the racks of material set against this room’s back wall. Any one of them could have a good reason to come in and find le comte d’Auvergne fondling his young new bride.

“You’ve refused to respect my rules. Why should I not violate yours in return?”

 Louis’s cock stirred with a thrill of fear at the choice of word. Would the count violate him here, in this public room, where they could be discovered at any moment?

Lestat let the fabric fall to the floor. He let the palms of both large hands slide up the sides of Louis’s slim waist up to the slight fullness at his chest, relishing the soft expanse of bare skin. Louis’s breath hitched when Lestat strayed up to his nipples again, warm fingertips toying with the hard nubs. The whimper that escaped Louis when the count pinched and gave each a gentle tug was nothing short of humiliating.

“You can’t – ” Louis finally made real effort to squirm free again – in vain, the count only grasped more firmly at his chest to hold him easily in place, treating Louis to a rough squeeze for his trouble. “You can’t do this.”

“I think you’ll find that I can.” Louis felt the curve of Lestat’s smile against the back of his neck as the man nosed into his skin. “In fact, if I want to, I will bend you over right here, and take you while the tailor and all the shop’s staff listen at the door. Let everyone know what a desperate little omega slut you are.”

Louis took a shaky breath, painfully aware of how each inhale made his chest arch all the more into Lestat’s touch. He wished he could breathe less, but he was getting so dizzy, his head clouding over with the alpha’s rich scent.

“I’m not.”

“You are.” Lestat pressed a soft kiss to the nape of Louis’s neck, chuckling under his breath. “Leaking your sweetness all over your alpha’s sheets before you’ve even met him. You’ve been wanting this for some time, haven’t you? Your little cunt must be begging to be used.”

The count punctuated this with a subtle grind of his hips – he was hard within his pants, Louis could feel its considerable length jutting against his backside, just like in the fantasy he’d entertained in the alpha’s bed. Louis’s hips tilted back without his input, puppet strings drawn tight to his joints angling him towards his alpha, urging his clothed entrance back to line it up where it needed to be.

Lestat made a low, pleased noise that made Louis’s hole twitch.

“Oh, chéri.” The count continued to play with his chest as he trailed kisses over Louis’s neck, the nape, behind his ear, skirting dangerously close to the hypersensitive skin around his scent gland. “How wet must you be, if I can smell you from here?” 

Louis thought he might faint. It was true – he was achingly wet, his cotton drawers clinging to the dampness at his core, the void where Lestat should be screwing up tight inside him, tensing with need – his alpha was right, of course he was, Louis did need his cunt used, so badly, he’s been wanting it for so long, please…as Louis clung to Lestat’s arms and rocked subtly, mindlessly, back against him, his head falling back to rest on Lestat’s shoulder, the word was silently forming on his lips, please, please –

Louis’s eyes fluttered and he caught his reflection, his dark eyes heavy-lidded, the lewd stretch of his brown skin laid bare at the pleasure of the count’s broad pale hands, the needy arch of his spine seeking contact even as kisses were trailed down the line of his slender neck to his shoulder, his soft mouth begging without sound – and Lestat, watching him in the mirror, witnessing it all, heat in his gaze.

Lestat’s lips curled into a cruel, breathtaking smile that sparkled in Louis’s brain like stained glass.

Suddenly, he stepped away. Louis was left cold, standing alone.

“Hmm.” The count returned holding a selection of jeweled broaches that had been set aside for their perusal. He lifted one to Louis’s throat, scrutinizing it in the mirror like his focus had never once strayed from choosing Louis’s attire. “This one’s a bit large.” He tilted his head to one side. “Gaudy, I think, for a wedding.”

Louis’s chest heaved as he struggled to regain his breath, watching in helpless confusion as Lestat went on as though nothing had happened. He was so hard, and uncomfortably damp in his drawers, the tightness inside him a desperate ache – and the count looked utterly composed, completely unaffected.

Lestat had humiliated him, Louis realized. With nothing but the touch of his hands, the brush of his tender lips, he’d reduced Louis to a panting, needy wretch, pleading with his alpha for release. Sick. His face burned with embarrassment. Louis stared numbly at the floor, unable to face the sight of himself.

“Look up, mon cher.” Lestat repositioned Louis with a hand on his jaw; Louis hated the way his heart skipped a beat to have his alpha’s skin on his again, even for a moment. “Look straight ahead – keep your chin up for me.”

His touch was gentle but his voice was resolute – this was not a suggestion. Louis swallowed and forced himself to stare at his face in the mirror. He’d never seen himself look this vulnerable: stripped half naked, his eyes glassy with shame, his breathing unsteady, frustrated arousal casting the subtlest warm flush over his light brown skin. His lip quivered. He hated this – was repulsed by the pitiful omega staring back at him. He made himself keep looking anyway, kept his chin held high, even when Lestat’s hand fell away.

“Good.” Lestat murmured behind him. “That’s perfect, Louis.”

The praise made something new blossom inside Louis, tender and warm.

Louis was good. He’d been bad before, stubborn, disobedient, and he’d been punished – but now he was being good. Perfect. Louis had never been perfect before, to anyone. His alpha thought he was perfect.

Louis watched his eyes change in the mirror, his brown gaze soften, less distraught, calmer. Everything was okay now. He was good.

“Very nice.” Lestat said softly, warm fingers brushing Louis’s skin as he placed a mock shirt collar around his neck. Louis couldn’t tell if he was complimenting Louis or the cut of the garment. It pleased Louis to hear it all the same.

“You are very slender through here. Easily swallowed up.”

Lestat demonstrated by spanning his throat with one hand like he had last night – but no pressure now, only resting it there, showing how easily, how naturally, Louis’s throat fit in his grasp. Louis’s breath hitched anyway, his eyelashes fluttering – but there was no fear, only excitement at his alpha’s touch. Before, it had been a punishment, but this was a reward. It felt nice, Lestat holding him, the reassuring weight of his wonderful, strong hand.

“You see?”

It took Lestat’s thumb brushing gently over the sensitive ridge of Louis’s scent gland to get his attention – he was waiting for Louis to respond.

“Yes.” Louis managed faintly. Lestat was right. He was easily swallowed up.

“The smaller emerald, then.” Lestat decided. “With the lower collar on the shirt. We don’t want to overwhelm your little throat.”

His hand floated down to stroke the base of Louis’s throat, caressing the tender little hollow between his collarbones. An absent look came into Lestat’s eyes, as if his mind was elsewhere.

Louis let his mind follow. He wondered what else could overwhelm his little throat. If Lestat shoved his cock inside, would it reach all the way down, to the spot he was brushing with his thumb?

He hazily found Lestat’s eyes again in the mirror. For a moment, the count looked as dazed as Louis did.

But then Lestat straightened up, cleared his throat. He removed his hand from Louis’s neck. Louis missed it immediately.

“As for the suit, I like the cream on you. I’ll let the tailor know.”

The tailor was halfway back to the dressing area before Louis remembered to cover himself, hastily grabbing his ripped shirt from the floor.

--

When they arrived at the patisserie, Louis and Lestat were shown to a long table set with every kind of cake imaginable, all stunning works of confectionary art.

The overpowering smell of sugar made Louis feel ill.

On the carriage ride over, his head had cleared from whatever dizzy spell Lestat had cast on him. Louis was ashamed of how easily he had let himself be conquered by this brute of an alpha. He couldn’t let the man keep getting his way! Louis’s bruised pride wouldn’t let him.

So, Louis had ignored Lestat’s hand when he offered to help him out of the carriage, and spared him not a single glance as they strode into the bakery and took their seats.

“We’ve prepared a fine selection for you gentlemen today,” the rosy-cheeked chef informed them. “All of our most popular wedding flavors.”

“The almond sponge is quite good.” The count remarked, dabbing his mouth with a cloth napkin after a bite. “What do you think, my love?”

Louis grudgingly took up his fork and sampled the dessert. It was lovely. He wrinkled his nose and shoved the plate away.

“I loathe almonds.”

The chef suggested he try the vanilla buttercream next.

“Far too sweet,” Louis lied, shaking his head in disgust. “I don’t think I could stomach more than one bite, much less a whole slice.”

The chef helplessly directed him towards the lemon cake.

“Too bitter,” Louis reached for a swig of tea to wash the delicious flavor from his mouth. “And, forgive me, but are your cakes meant to be this dry?”

“This is the finest patisserie in Paris,” Lestat snapped irritably. “And they have catered my first two weddings to great success.”

“Well, it would seem I’ve a far more refined palette than your previous wives.”

“It would seem you’ve a far worse attitude.”

Louis raised his eyebrows in exaggerated offense. “I beg your pardon, my lord?”

The chef excused himself from the room.

“Do you insist on being difficult for some larger purpose, or are you content to aggravate me for its own sake?” Lestat hissed across the table.

“I didn’t like the cakes.” Louis replied primly. “I’m sorry if that offends you.”

The count took a deep breath to compose himself. Louis hid a smile into his cup of tea.

“What flavor palette do you tend to prefer?” His groom attempted with strained civility.

Louis surveyed the range of desserts across the table with performative skepticism.

Lestat exhaled noisily through his nose. “Is there nothing in all of France that would please you?”

“I don’t mean to cause a fuss, but this cake is to be served on my wedding day. I hope you’ll excuse my being a bit scrupulous.” Louis gave him a false, sugary smile. “I know preparing a third wedding must be mundane for you, but as this will be my first marriage, I’d like it to be something special.”

Lestat forced a smile back, his lips drawn taut so he appeared to be baring his teeth.

“Of course, my darling betrothed. I only ask that you understand we are to be wed in less than a week’s time, which means we cannot sit at this table entertaining your scruples all afternoon.”

Lestat considered for a moment. “What kind of cakes did you have back in the colonies? Is there some local delicacy that can be recreated to suit your tastes? Something a bit more rustic, perhaps?”

Louis thought instantly of the cake they’d served for his father’s birthday two years back. His last birthday. A rich, fragrant gingerbread cake covered in decadent white swirls of frosting – Paul had said it looked like clouds.

“Not clouds the way we see them here on Earth,” he’d explained earnestly, “but as seen from above. The way God sees them, as he looks down on us from heaven.”

At their father’s wake, Paul had looked up at the sky, a thick blanket of grey shedding raindrops onto their heads, and wondered if their father could see them now, or if the clouds were in his way.

“Louis?”

Lestat’s brow was furrowed with confusion. Louis blinked rapidly to clear the tears glazing his eyes. He took some more tea, his hand wavering slightly as he raised his cup.

“I didn’t mind the vanilla.” Louis mumbled, now wanting nothing more than to leave this place and get back home – but he couldn’t, could he? The only home he’d ever known was an ocean away, and it wasn’t his anymore. He didn’t have a home, and he didn’t have a father.

“The chef will be more than happy to make anything you request.” Lestat told him, looking a little uncomfortable now. “It’s really no trouble.” He hesitated. “I hope you don’t mistake my…impatience for apathy. I want our wedding to be special, just as you do.”

When Louis just sniffled in response, Lestat reached across the table to take his hand.

“Our wedding will be special, no matter what cake we choose.” He gave Louis’s hand a light squeeze. “It will be special because I’m marrying you.”

Louis squeezed his hand back. He hadn’t meant to, but the loneliness of his world had overwhelmed him suddenly, and Lestat was there, offering him kind words, a gentle smile, his hand warm and solid as it grasped Louis’s, holding him together so he wouldn’t fall apart.

--

Louis had a horrible night’s sleep.

No matter how he tossed and turned in the satiny sheets, he couldn’t escape a persistent sense of wrongness. This wasn’t his home. This wasn’t his bed. Everything was foreign and strange, no comfort to be found. How could he possibly sleep here?

He gave up sleep and rose in the wee hours of the morning, padded over to the window to draw back the blue velvet curtains and watch the sky change until the first rays of light sent golden streaks up from the horizon. Pale amber-yellow sun – the same color as the count’s hair when it caught the light. Louis closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose, like he could bury his face in that hair and breathe Lestat in from memory alone. He couldn’t. There wasn’t a trace of his scent anywhere here.

Feeling suddenly anxious, Louis turned to the dresser where he’d set out his scent dampeners the previous night. They were to be taken in the morning, preferably with a meal – but Louis could hardly bring them down to breakfast with him, when he knew the count would be there waiting.

Louis uncorked the first bottle and raised it to his lips – there was nothing for him to swallow. Empty.

Louis stared into the tinted glass, uncomprehending. He checked the other bottle, lifting it to eye level to swirl around for any sign of liquid. Both were empty. Had he forgotten to set out two new bottles the night before? Louis was tireless in his suppression routine, but he rummaged through the little case where he kept his store of tonic all the same.

Every glass bottle had been emptied and recorked. All of Louis’s precious protection down the drain. If Louis had to guess, he was mere days away from his naturally-occuring heat, and he was left with no way to stop it.

His body felt flush with anger – and fear. Louis had never had to deal with a heat before. And now he was in a foreign land, with no one he could go to for help, forced to endure the worst, most helpless, most animalistic part of his nature alone.

But that’s exactly what the count wanted, wasn’t it? To reduce him to a desperate, drooling, pathetic creature of need?

Louis stormed downstairs, striding right past the servants waiting to welcome him into the dining room to wrench the door open himself.

“Good morning, my darling,” Lestat cooed from the head of the table. “Did you sleep well?”

“I need to speak with you. Alone.” Louis glowered across the room at him. “Now.”

Lestat raised his eyebrows in innocent surprise – though the telltale beginnings of a smirk played at the corners of his mouth.

“I’m in the middle of having breakfast.”

“Leave us.” Louis hissed in French at the servants posted around the room. They looked at him uncertainly and then glanced to their master for direction.

“Give us the room.” Lestat conceded with a nod to the staff, setting his teacup down.

They swiftly filed out, heads bowed.

“Do these people understand that I am to be master of this estate just as much as you?” Louis couldn’t help but blurt out once they were left to themselves. “I won’t have them waiting around for your word every time I give them an order.”

“When we are married, you will be mistress of this estate.” Lestat corrected smoothly. “Until then, you are my guest.”

“Mistress?” Louis sputtered ungracefully, his skin pulsing with rage. “Mistress? I will have you know – ”

He started towards the count, then stopped short when the man’s heady scent snaked towards him through the air. Louis swallowed a sudden wave of saliva. It was so much more potent, now that he hovered on the cusp of his unblocked heat. Louis planted himself firmly where he was and wielded a righteous finger in the count’s direction.

“It is an archaic, offensive practice to refer to male omegas as though they are women. I object to it. Wholeheartedly.”

As a matter of fact, it was a practice Louis’s family all subscribed to, and that Louis had grown up subscribing to himself. But this self-important alpha didn’t know that – and had no right to presume Louis would allow such!

Lestat merely shrugged, his eyes unnervingly cool in the face of Louis’s outrage.

“You may object all you like back in your liberal colonies. Here in France, you are to be my wife, mistress of my house, la comtesse d’Auvergne. Or, if you prefer, Countess de Lioncourt.”

Countess de Lioncourt. Strictly speaking, it was an improvement in rank – but to go from Lord de Pointe du Lac, his family name, his respectable father’s name, to being this man’s little countess wife bearing his name, a thing this alpha owns – it made him feel sick. It made him feel furious.

“You have no right,” Louis’s voice trembled with rage. “Just because by some accident of birth you became an alpha and I became an omega – it gives you no right to decide what I will or won’t be. You have no right to speak to me like an underling, to give me orders, to – to grope at me in public like some common whore, or to decide what I do with my own body. Because it is mine, and not some plaything of yours. If I wish to block my scent, I will do so, because it is mine to control. I refuse to tolerate you sending servants into my private chambers to tamper with my things – taking away my ability to govern myself just so you can better force me to your will. I don’t care what your backwards, ridiculous, barbaric country would have you believe; where I come from – which is no longer your French colonies, but a free, independent nation – no self-respecting omega would abide this kind of treatment, and I certainly will not.”

Lestat stared up at him for a few patient moments, as though making sure Louis was finished.

“Why don’t you take a seat, Louis?” The count said at last, reaching to reclaim his cup of tea. “Have some breakfast.”

“…What?”

“Surely, you must be hungry.” Lestat continued with nonchalance. “My previous wives were always famished just before they went into heat.”

Louis stiffened as the man’s nostrils flared slightly, scenting the air. A little smile graced Lestat’s lips as he caught onto Louis’s scent.

“Yours is due soon, I can tell. I understand you omegas are easily conquered by your emotions during this time, so I will overlook your petulant little outburst.” He gestured to the chair beside him. “Sit, Louis. Eat.”

Louis was near dizzy with anger. A shaky, disbelieving laugh, escaped his lips.

“Of all the insufferable alpha swine – is that really all you have to say to me?”

“What else is there to say?” Lestat’s tone sharpened just a hair, his own frustration straining at the edges. “Unless you have yet more to add to your senseless tirade.”

“Senseless?”

“Senseless. Inane. Absurd. Foolish – I can go on if you need further clarification, as my English far surpasses your French. Evidently, you have precious little understanding of your own situation.”

Lestat set his teacup down so hard, tea sloshed up over the rim to stain the tablecloth below. “You are not standing here on my soil, on my estate, through any accident of your birth, Louis. You are here because I made an offer of marriage – at exorbitant expense, I might add – and you accepted it.”

The count chuckled bitterly. “Or your family accepted on your behalf, whatever the case may be; clearly, I was misinformed on the particulars. Nevertheless, an agreement was made. We are to be wed, and you are to bear my child. Under advisement of my physician, I was told you were not to take dampeners of any kind in the days leading up to the conception of our child, as it may have an adverse effect on the child’s health. I instructed you to cease taking them and you refused, so I was forced to deal with the problem myself.”

His soft pink mouth twisted into an ugly snarl. “I won’t have my heir come out stillborn, stunted, or otherwise deformed because you were incapable of following a simple instruction.”

Louis’s stomach dropped. He hadn’t been thinking about that. He’d only been focused on rejecting the count’s control of him – it hadn’t occurred that he might have a good reason for it. Louis’s hands went unconsciously to his lower abdomen, to the child that wasn’t yet there. He’d endangered his child. Paul was wrong. He was a bad mother already.

“As for my treatment of you, if you don’t want to be disciplined, I suggest that you don’t misbehave. I don’t much care what you are or aren’t willing to abide; I am le comte d’Auvergne, and I will not abide disrespect in my own county, in my own home, from my own omega wife.”

Lestat’s beautiful face had gone hard, his pale cheeks reddening, a thick, winding vein pulsing in his forehead, the barest hint of alpha crimson burning at the edges of his blue eyes. It was enough to make Louis frightened – he could tell by the rigidity of the man’s body, the sharp edge creeping into his scent, that this was Lestat holding himself back, suppressing the urge to do something worse.

“Now sit down,” The count spat, “And we’ll have our breakfast.”

Louis’s body twitched to obey, shifting towards the chair beside Lestat automatically, but he resisted. He fought down his every bodily impulse – the fear, the urge to run; the wretched desire that rose up inside him that wanted nothing more than to please his alpha, to placate and soothe the furrowed brow, to apologize until he was satisfied and all was well again; and, worse, and sicker still – the craving to push just that little bit farther to see what Lestat would do to punish him.

Louis clenched his jaw, ground his molars tight and suppressed it all, just like he’d always done.

“I suppose now I know what became of your past wives.” Louis worked to keep his voice steady. “They must have impaled themselves on the gates in their haste to escape you. And who would blame them?” Louis scoffed. “Le comte d’Auvergne. All this money and land and no one will have you, except someone who doesn’t know any better. It’s no wonder you’ve had to pay an exorbitant price for a stranger to come keep you company. It's no wonder you’ve been sitting here in this big house rotting away all alone.”

Lestat’s expression faltered, just subtly, a flash of vulnerability – a crack in the armor. Louis allowed himself to take satisfaction in it. There, he thought. You’re not invincible after all.

Louis strode straight out of the dining room, and Lestat didn’t call him back.

--

The rains had paused, though dark grey clouds lingered in the air.

Louis roamed the estate grounds, desperate to be away from wherever Lestat was. He hadn’t bothered to wait to see if he'd left the guest house. He’d retrieved one of the books he’d brought over from home and headed out in search of a less-muddied spot he could settle down and read.

Louis decided on a bench placed alongside a small pond in one of the estate’s surprisingly lush winter gardens – on the opposite side of the grounds from the guest house. The pond was just beginning to freeze, dotted over with little white patches of ice. Like clouds, Louis thought absently. He saw his father’s face in his mind, smiling with a slice of cake, the last birthday cake he’d ever have. Louis dropped his eyes to his book, a novel about a single man, in possession of a good fortune, who wanted a wife.

“Ah, there you are, Your Lordship!”

Louis had made it nearly halfway through the story when one of the servants came puffing up to the bench where Louis sat. The man was red-faced despite the cold.

“We’ve been looking all over for you, monsieur! The dancing instructor has arrived from Paris – it’s time for your dance lesson.”

“Dance lesson?”

“For the wedding. For your first dance with the master as husband and wife.”

Right now, Louis couldn’t stand to be in the same room as the count, much less prance around in endless circles perfecting his waltz with him.

Louis sniffed and turned a page. “Give the instructor my regards – but I won’t be attending his lesson.”

The servant wrung his gloved hands. “The master has been asking for you. He feels very strongly that you are to be found and brought to him, Your Lordship.”

“He may feel however he likes.”

The servant hesitated, looking rather at a loss for what to do.

Louis snapped his book shut, making a decision.

“How soon could you have a carriage prepared?”

“Ah…within the quarter of an hour, if Your Lordship wishes?”

“That would be just fine, thank you.”

The servant looked uncomfortable. “Where shall I tell the master Your Lordship is going?”

“If you must tell him something…” Louis thought. “Tell him I’m out practicing my French.”

--

Louis had the driver take him into the nearest town, Clermont-Ferrand.

He ambled down the crowded cobblestone streets, submersing himself in the bustle of the city. The townsfolk had come out to take advantage of the reprieve from the rain – which was to be fleeting, according to the snippets of conversation Louis overheard. They hurried about, huddled in their long scarves and winter coats to accomplish their errands before the weather turned against them.

Louis liked to watch people. It calmed him to observe them going about their lives, the busy little routines that occupied their days. Some were in a hurry, while others took their time. Some traveled in twos and threes, clustered together like penguins, bolstering each other against the cold. Some, like him, walked alone.

Louis stopped to smile at a chubby-faced baby, babbling at him from a little covered baby carriage, so swaddled in thick white wool – hat, mittens, blankets – it looked like a sentient snow drift, only its big, curious eyes, button nose, and drooling little mouth left visible.

“How old is she?” Louis asked the baby’s mother in French.

“Eight months.” She answered, with a tired smile of her own, from the streetside bench where she sat, several bags of goods piled beside her as she took a rest from her shopping.

“She’s beautiful. She takes after her mother.”

The woman laughed, her cheeks bright. “Oh, you flatter me, monsieur.”

The baby goggled at Louis with wide eyes, reaching out a tiny mittened fist. Louis put his finger out. The baby grasped it tight, a laugh bubbling out of the little mouth like a happy cherub. Louis’s heart ached.

He offered to help the woman carry her bags as she finished her shopping, and she gratefully accepted. Louis kept up a stream of small talk as they went – his French sufficed just fine for pleasant conversation, thank you very much – but his mind was elsewhere.

Had he really put his baby at risk by taking his tonic one day more than he was supposed to? The wedding was in three days. Surely, all trace of the dampeners would have left his system by then? Should they postpone the wedding, to ensure they could conceive on their wedding night without issue? If only Lestat had told him why he didn’t want him to take his medicine – not that Louis had bothered to ask. Did the count’s physician live here in town? Could Louis get an appointment with him on such short notice?

As he hefted the shopping bags into the summoned carriage and bid the woman and her baby ‘au revoir’, Louis was left alone with his thoughts. He realized, with some dread, he hadn’t once contemplated not having Lestat’s baby.

Louis sighed. Curse his foolish omega hormones. Even now that he’d been thoroughly demeaned by the count, Louis couldn’t help but wish Lestat was here beside him, to keep Louis warm in the cold, to quiet the flurry of Louis’s concerns with his reassuring scent.

Louis turned to head back towards the center of town and a figure caught his eye.

A tall man in all black, lingering on the opposite street corner, watching him. A cold wind blew past – Louis caught the man’s scent: acrid, musky, unmistakably alpha, with a round head of bourbon-y richness that Louis knew instinctively signified his pre-rut.

Louis shot the man a quick, polite smile. The man didn’t smile back.

Louis hunched his shoulders and went in the opposite direction. He only knew one other place to go in this city – the cathedral where he and his groom were to be married.

They hadn’t had time to visit the previous afternoon before the rain hit, but the driver had made sure to point it out as they rode through the city on the way back to the estate. It would have been impossible to miss – the towering, twin black stone spires of la Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption de Clermont-Ferrand piercing the heavens like two wicked fangs. It had looked to Louis more akin to something he’d expect to find in Hell than the place he was used to doing his worship.

The streets looked different in the daylight than they had when Louis had been driven through a downpour, but he felt fairly certain he could find his way. Louis turned left down this road, right at the next. He glanced over his shoulder. The man was a few yards behind him, doggedly matching Louis’s pace.

Louis walked a little faster, very conscious of the fact that he’d misplaced his scarf, and his scent glands were exposed to the crisp open air. If he could smell the man’s scent, the man could certainly smell his. Louis focused on keeping his breathing steady, trying to remain calm and not release more of his scent due to sweating, or an elevated heartrate; not that he was sure that worked. He had been blocking his scent his whole life – he’d never had to deal with this. He’d never had to worry about being careful.

Louis had heard stories – horrible cautionary tales, as well as bawdy anecdotes swapped by drunken alphas crowding tables at the backs of bars – about unmated alphas close to their rut, driven mad by lust, taking out their biological urge on whatever poor, unsuspecting, unmated omega crossed their path first. That’s why omegas are so important, one particularly repulsive cretin had shouted across the bar, as if he’d wanted Louis to hear, if the poor sods couldn’t get their jollies out, all that pent up energy would have nowhere to go. They’d be resorting to violence; they’d be killing each other.

It was broad daylight on a crowded street. Louis hardly expected an attack – alphas weren’t actually animals, despite Louis’s prejudices, and most of those stories had probably been exaggerations – but the icy wind shifted as he turned a corner and the man’s scent swept up from behind Louis to bear down on him like fetid breath on the back of his neck. He was being ridiculous, paranoid. It was his hormones – he felt jittery, scrambled, on edge. He wasn’t thinking clearly.

The crowds thinned as Louis reached the entrance to the church. The twin black spires rose before him like massive stakes through the city’s heart, the grand doors, two red arches, two red mouths screaming in pain.  It was quieter here.

Louis forced himself to pause, to take a breath. He forced himself to look over his shoulder.

The man was standing across the street from the church, still staring, holding himself very still. Even at a distance, Louis could see his mouth was ajar, his nostrils flaring. His stomach turned. The man was trying to take Louis’s scent from there, drinking him on the wind.

Louis had always thought all alphas were the same to him, but he realized now how wrong he’d been. This wasn’t anything like the soft tickle of breath when Lestat had pressed his nose to the crook of Louis’s neck – this felt like a violation. It made him feel sick to know this filthy stranger was savoring the smell of his body.

Louis turned from the church and took slow measured steps to the nearby cemetery, careful to appear unhurried. Inside, he was panicking. He couldn’t seem to remember the French word for help.

When Louis had been dropped off, he had purposely strayed from where his carriage had left him, hoping the count’s driver would lose track of his whereabouts and leave him to himself. Now, Louis found himself alone in quiet corner of the city, with no clue of how to find his way back, no way to escape the strange man pursuing him. He was heading into an enclosed space, a graveyard surrounded with a wrought iron fence, trapped.

However, as Louis stepped past the cemetery gates and into the rows of graves, he felt his panic subside just a touch. After his father’s death, Louis had come to find a strange comfort in graveyards. The dead could leave the living, but they weren’t gone from the world. They were here, beneath the earth, slumbering eternally in a place their loved ones could come and visit. Louis had shed so many tears over his father’s headstone, little white flowers had sprouted in the corner where he’d bent his head.

Louis slowed as his eyes wandered over the graves, longing to find de Pointe du Lac among them. His father’s burial plot lay an ocean away now. He’d never cry over his father’s grave again.

Louis’s heart suddenly stuttered in his chest – a familiar scent on the wind, a warm, amber rose unfurling against his nose. He looked up. Lestat was strolling towards him through the rows of the dead, his beautiful face solemn.

“You’ve caused us to forfeit our appointment with the dance instructor. I’ve convinced him to return tomorrow, but a truncated lesson is all he can provide. I hope you have a strong sense of rhythm.”

Louis turned to study the closest headstone. Some poor woman had been Louis’s age when she’d met her demise. Now she rested underground, and Louis was standing six feet above her, on the soft grass that blanketed her tomb.

“I’m not much for dancing.”

Lestat came to stand beside him, his hands deep in his tailored overcoat. Louis loathed himself for feeling instantly relaxed by the man’s presence, the fear and turmoil within him fleeing at Lestat’s presence like rainclouds from the shining sun.

“You dislike cakes, you dislike dancing. Have I found myself engaged to one of those poor, misfortunate souls who prefer rain to sunshine, and tears to laughter?” Lestat glanced about. “Perhaps you’d prefer a funeral to a wedding.”

“Death is honest. It doesn’t ask you to smile as it bleeds you dry.”

Louis saw Lestat in his peripheral vision, regarding him with a strangely sad tenderness.

“I know this must be hard for you,” Lestat said quietly, “Coming all this way alone. Crossing an ocean to wed a man you hardly know, preparing for your wedding day without your family beside you to lend support, to advise you. To comfort you.”

Louis stared down at the damp earth where a young woman lay dead. The kinder Lestat’s voice became, the harder it was for Louis to look at him – and the more he wanted to.

“It’s a lot of change for one person to withstand on their own. I hope you will believe that it is not my intention to make that change more difficult.” Lestat paused. “If you like, I can arrange a meeting with my physician. He can prescribe you more tonic. We don’t have to start trying for a child right away.”

Louis looked up at him, startled. “No.”

Lestat’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “No?”

Louis cleared his throat. “It’s just, the agreement was for me to give you an heir.”

“I don’t mind waiting a few years.” A teasing smile tugged at the corners of Lestat’s mouth. “Unless…you are eager to carry my baby, Louis?”

Louis’s hands fidgeted in his pockets, his face going warm.

“It’s just what was agreed upon.” He mumbled helplessly.

Lestat laughed at him. It was a jarring, almost profane sound to Louis’s ears – laughter in a graveyard.

Fondling Louis in a public shop, cackling amongst the dead; it seemed there was no boundary the count wouldn’t cross. It was a kind of disregard for the world and its rules Louis had never known – a kind of freedom. By some strange turn of events, Louis was beginning to find it exciting instead of disquieting.

“Are you so alienated from your own desires that you cannot speak them aloud?” Lestat gazed at him as though Louis was the strange one, something fascinating and rare.

Louis could think of no response other than to shrug his shoulders.

“Tell me something,” Lestat demanded, “Name one thing that you want right now, in this moment. Anything at all.”

Louis thought. He wanted to bid Paul farewell when he left for seminary school. He wanted to watch Grace get married. He wanted to be with his family again, the way they were before his father’s burdens had been laid upon his shoulders, before he’d spent two years disappointing them. Above all the rest – he wanted his father to tell him he was proud of him.

“The things I want, I can’t have.” Louis admitted in a hush. “I want to bring back the dead.”

“Ah. Your father.”

Louis looked at Lestat, caught off guard.

“I heard word of your father’s passing.” Lestat explained, his blue eyes turning soft. “Two years ago, was it? You loved him very dearly, I can tell. You must miss him terribly.”

Louis’s throat bobbed with emotion. Two years had passed, but the ache of his loss had never faded, even as the rest of his family seemed to finish grieving and move on with their lives. How could one finish grief, polish it off like a slice of birthday cake and be done with it, set the empty plate aside to be washed clean? Louis had never understood it. His eyes slid over the rows and rows of death standing silent around him – suddenly he didn’t want to look at them anymore. He didn’t want to be here anymore. He wanted to go home. There was no home to go to.

“Will you tell me about him?”

“He was…” Louis searched for a succinct way to summarize his father. He didn’t want to talk about him, not now, it was too – but it felt an insult to his father’s memory not to speak of him when asked. “Steady. I could rely upon him.”

Louis had always seen his father as a rock: immovable, unshakable. Even when he disapproved, it was a reliable pain. Louis knew the rules, the expectations, knew when he would succeed or fail. His father’s world made sense. He’d hated finding out his father’s reliability had been a farce, that this proud, admirable man who’d always seemed to know best had driven his family into debt and hidden the evidence of his failures like a coward, even as he had continued to shame Louis for his. It had been like losing him twice; the man and the memory of what he’d been, destroyed. It upended Louis’s understanding of the world around him. He hadn’t felt safe since.

Louis’s chest felt tight. He took a shaky breath – it caught halfway up his throat and came out as a sob.

Lestat drifted closer and Louis let him, desperate for his warmth in the cold, the reassurance of his scent. Before he knew it, Lestat’s arms were around him, and Louis was welcoming the embrace, clutching at the man’s broad chest, needing to be close.

“As we mourn the dead, we must take comfort in the living.” Lestat urged him softly. “Let me comfort you, Louis. Rely upon me, as you once relied upon him.”

More blasphemy.

Louis sniffled, looked up at Lestat through a watery glaze, confused. “You can’t be my father.”

Lestat cradled Louis’s face in his large hands, brushed away the tears that had spilled with a gentleness Louis wouldn’t have thought him capable of. In spite of everything he had witnessed of the man thus far – the rage, the lust, the cruelty – Lestat smiled at Louis so kindly then, Louis could have believed he was an angel.

“No. But I will be your husband.” Lestat murmured.

He said it as if the two were interchangeable, as though one could naturally fill the void left by the other. What was it Paul had said? Wives obey your husbands as you obey our Father in Heaven…

Lestat’s face came closer. His hands were warm on Louis’s cheeks, that perfect scent enveloping him like a veil. Louis let his eyes flutter shut, wishing more than anything that Lestat would kiss him this time.

Louis felt Lestat’s lips soft on his forehead instead, pressing a kiss where his father would, when Louis was a child and his father still loved him. All of a sudden, Louis was a small, vulnerable thing in Lestat’s hands, cocooned in the fragile peace of being cared for, protected from the harshness of the world.

When Lestat whispered ‘Let me take you home, chéri’, Louis just nodded his head and clung to his alpha’s arm all the way back to the carriage.

The strange alpha was gone, of course. Nothing could hurt Louis when Lestat was with him. Lestat would get him home safe.

--

The instructor was due to arrive bright and early for their rescheduled dance lesson, which was just as well for Louis. He hadn’t slept a wink.

He couldn’t tell if it was the stress of the situation, his impending wedding now only two days away, or the unchecked hormones running rampant inside him like a band of demonic hooligans, rendering his body wholly uninhabitable.

He couldn’t sit still without feeling like he would go mad – but he couldn’t bear to pace the floor of his room. His bed repulsed him – too soft on one side and too firm on the other, too hot and freezing all at once. Louis went so far as to attempt to sleep on the floor, but leapt up within minutes, incensed by the texture of the carpet. He snapped at the staff for more blankets, then hurled them back into the hallway with a huff. He knew he was being unreasonable, and it made him feel wretched – but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

The guest house held a small ballroom, a section of which had been cleared to create a makeshift dance floor. Louis stomped into the room two hours early with a book in his hands he couldn’t force himself to read. He ended up tying and untying the fastenings on all the rooms’ curtains just to occupy himself as a servant hovered anxiously nearby, then counted every candle in every chandelier hanging from the ceiling to see if they all held the same amount. They didn’t – and some of the candles went out as he was counting, which infuriated him all the more.

By the time Lestat arrived with the dance instructor, Louis thought he’d like very much to rip the man’s head clean off, just to temper the pain of his boredom.

“Let us begin, messieurs. My lord, if you will take your lovely bride by the waist…”

Lestat put one hand on Louis’s waist, and took Louis’s hand with his other. Louis’s shoulders relaxed a fraction, the steady weight of Lestat’s touch a balm to his nerves.

Louis placed his hand on Lestat’s shoulder. He knew how to waltz, of course, but he’d never had anyone else lead; before he presented, it was a given that he would lead his partners, and after he presented, he’d preferred to sit out while everyone else took their turns. It took him a few tries to remember the rhythm, and accustom himself to dancing backwards – but Lestat was guiding him with a firm hand, and they quickly fell into step.

It's like floating, Louis thought, as they glided around the room, like dancing on air.

Except…Lestat’s hand on Louis’s waist wasn’t a steady weight anymore. Suddenly, it was an irritant, a maddening annoyance. Lestat’s hand was laying limp on Louis’s waist like a dead thing. Louis wished Lestat would hold him properly, tighter, was struck with an insatiable craving for the hard grip on his jaw in the bedroom, or the rough squeeze of his chest in the tailor’s shop.

Louis squirmed with dissatisfaction.

“Stand up straight.” Lestat told him.

“I am standing up straight.”

“Keep your pace, messieurs!” The instructor called, clapping his hands. “One, two, three, one, two, three!”

“Can you move your hand?” Louis huffed, his irritation mounting.

Lestat’s hand remained in place. “My hand belongs on your waist, my dearest, that’s how the dance is done.”

Louis gave a little wriggle. “Do you have to hold me so tight? I feel like I’m being smothered.”

He wasn’t sure why the words coming out of his mouth were the opposite of his feelings. Maybe he wanted to punish Lestat by making him figure out the truth for himself, or maybe the hormones wreaking havoc on his body were making him incapable of behaving reasonably.

“I am barely touching you, Louis.” Frustration began to seep into Lestat’s voice.

“Well, barely is too much.”

To Louis’s horror, Lestat’s hand became even looser on his waist.

“If I am not permitted to touch you, how do you presume we shall be married?” Lestat hissed. “Will I be blowing a kiss to the bride? Perhaps we shall be waiting around for a stork to deliver our child.”

Louis squirmed some more. His skin felt hot – also freezing, everywhere Lestat wasn’t touching him. The warmth at his waist was practically a ghost now, Lestat’s dead limp hand hovering like a phantom touch. Why is it Louis could say no in the tailor’s shop and Lestat held him fast anyway, but now Lestat was so set on giving Louis space? Was the man infuriating Louis on purpose?

“You’re a terrible dancer.” Louis grumbled churlishly.

“Wrangling an insolent partner has its challenges.”

“One, two, three, one, two, three!”

“So, I’m to blame for your leaden steps?”

“You are the one who has taken it upon yourself to thwart my grace at every turn.”

Louis scoffed. “What grace? You move like a living corpse.”

“My pace is a reflection of my patience – which is quickly waning. Stand up straight, Louis.”

Despite Lestat’s annoyance, he did nothing to enforce his demand – his hand remained as bewilderingly lifeless as ever.

Well. If he wasn’t going to put in any effort, Louis certainly wasn’t going to!

Louis slouched even more. “I am.”

Lestat chuckled bitterly.

“I’m sure all the alphas back home were falling over themselves for your hand on the dancefloor. Did you have many suitors in the colonies? Or was your attitude so repellant, they left you to mope around on the sidelines with a book, until your mother had enough and decided to sign you away to the first man who would have you?”

Louis bristled, slightly stung. “I had plenty of suitors.” He lied. “And they all knew how to dance. I would much rather dance with any of them than I would with you. Of course, a man of your advanced age could hardly be expected to keep up.”

Lestat halted their waltz.

“Fine!” He snapped. “We shall have no dancing at our wedding. Let it be as joyless an affair as you seem intent on making our marriage.”

Lestat removed his hands completely, and Louis’s body screamed in protest of the loss – it was the final straw.

Louis turned to storm out of the room without another word.

“Louis. Louis! Get back here this instant!”

Louis ignored him, letting the doors to the ballroom slam shut as he left. Clearly, Lestat didn't want him there that badly, if he couldn't be bothered to hold onto him.

--

“Your Lordship, the master is here to see you.”

Louis didn’t bother to look up from his book, as he sat stubbornly in his horrible bed.

“Tell him I’m not here.”

The servant hesitated at the door. “I’ve…already told him you were here in the guest chambers, Your Lordship.”

“Tell him you’ve made a mistake.”

“Your Lordship, I…” The servant wrung her hands, distressed. “The master is a most reasonable man. I’m sure if you only spoke to him about what was troubling you…I’m sure he only wants all to be well between you before your wedding in two days’ time.”

“Have I asked for your advice?” Louis snapped.

The servant’s earnest face wilted.

Louis immediately felt awful – he’d never spoken to his own servants this way, and abhorred men who did. But he couldn’t still the storm inside him. Just sitting motionless in this miserable room reading this terrible book in this nasty, frigid country was all he could bear. He couldn’t tolerate a disturbance on top of it all, especially not from the count.

Louis just couldn’t understand the things Lestat was making him feel, and it was driving him mad. He wished he could will the feelings out of him, suppress them down deep like he’d always done. But it was impossible now. He wanted to blame his hormones, but he was beginning to think it wasn’t that at all.

Louis had yearned for everything the count wanted to give him long before they'd met. Lestat wanted to give him a child. Lestat wanted to bear the burden of Louis' sorrows, wouldn’t punish him or think him weak for crying, but only asked that Louis let him be there to dry his tears. As much as Louis had objected to the idea, the more time he spent with the man, the more he saw a true chance at happiness in being his wife. His countess. Every time Lestat touched him, held him close, Louis fell a little further into him – and he loathed himself for it.

Being without Lestat was impossible, and being with him was unforgivable. Why couldn’t Louis just let himself have what he wanted?

Perhaps it was because he never had. Happiness was a stranger to him, and the strange was frightening.

Louis tossed his book aside and flopped back onto his awful bed with a sigh.

“…Your Lordship?”

“I don’t want to see him.” Louis called at the door, loud enough that the count would hear.

The servant bowed her head and went out to convey the message. Louis hoped desperately that Lestat would return in her place, angry enough to refuse to be denied. He wished Lestat would burst in with his cold eyes blazing and force Louis to take his happiness.

He didn’t.

--

The rain returned in force that night.

With it came a surge inside Louis’s body, a fresh wave of madness. The bed was excruciating. The room was insufferable. There wasn’t a tolerable spot in the entire guest house, so Louis prowled it like a half-crazed alley cat, seeking incessantly for something he knew he wouldn’t find.

No amount of sniping would keep the servants from fussing around him, pestering him with questions and offers to fetch him tea, or blankets, or something else to make him comfortable – but there was no comfort here.

Louis gave up. He grabbed his coat and stalked out into the downpour.

Light beamed from the window to Lestat’s room, a fiery beacon shining in the distance across the freezing estate grounds. Louis staggered towards it like a drunken moth. He didn’t even feel the biting winds, the icy rain pelting him from all sides. He could think only of Lestat, and the warmth of his arms.

Louis stumbled into the main house, tracked muddy boot prints through the grand foyer and up the magnificent crimson stairway, ignoring the servants that flocked to ask him what was wrong, what was he doing here, to warn him against going to see the master, who was in his chambers for the might, and had asked not to be disturbed by anyone.

Louis shoved past them all, marched through the count’s anteroom with its piano and fireplace, and threw open Lestat’s bedroom door.

He found Lestat standing there, in an ornate robe and slippers, his long hair damp like he’d just emerged from the bath.

“Louis.” Lestat looked shocked to see him. “You’re soaking wet.”

“I can’t sleep there.” Louis managed, his chest rising and falling with rapid breath, only hit by the exertion of his trek now that he was standing still again.

Lestat frowned, abruptly moved towards him. He placed a warm hand on Louis’s forehead.

“Your skin is like ice,” Lestat murmured. His eyes narrowed in alarm. “You didn’t walk here, through that storm? It’s freezing out.” His lip began to curl into a sneer. “If you think giving yourself pneumonia is going to get you out of our wedding, you’re going to find – ”

Louis’s eyes fluttered. He swayed a little on his feet, leaned into Lestat’s touch. Lestat’s other hand came up to steady him. A firm hold, this time – so firm it made Louis realize how violently he was shivering.

“I can’t sleep there,” Louis repeated in a whisper, gazing up at Lestat, imploring him with his eyes. All his fevered madness was draining from him now, leaving him weak. Louis felt like glass. If the count was cruel to him now, he was sure he’d shatter.

Lestat’s features softened with some kind of realization.

“Your heat. You need to nest.” His cold eyes were tender and beautiful again. “You want to be here, with me?”

It felt impossible to admit it. Louis wished Lestat would understand without words, just read his mind and know, but the count was watching him, waiting for Louis to confirm his desire.

Louis forced himself to nod, even as his body shook.

Lestat brought him into his arms, crushed him to his chest, allowed Louis’s rain-soaked coat to dampen his fine robe. Louis sagged into his embrace, so grateful he could weep.

“Heat some more water and draw another bath,” Lestat ordered the servants watching helplessly from the anteroom. Lestat rubbed Louis’s back. “Let’s get you warm, my love.”

The servants buzzing around Louis made him anxious – too many voices, too many unfamiliar smells. When he fussed, Lestat dismissed them all, and bathed Louis himself.

Louis hadn’t slept properly in so long; he was too tired to be embarrassed. The hot water had unraveled his muscles, left his naked body soft and pliant. He let Lestat move him as he saw fit, trusting his strong hands, his gentle voice.

Lestat shifted Louis’s body forward to wash his back. He scrubbed slow, delicious circles into Louis’s scalp, cleansing his hair, even going so far to send someone to fetch the tubs of product Louis had brought from home, so his curls could be moisturized and set the way Louis liked. He ran a warm, sudsy cloth over the soft brown flesh of his thighs, down his calves – Louis watched in a balmy haze as Lestat bent to wash his feet. Wasn’t that something Christ had done for his disciples? Louis wondered what Paul would make of it.

Afterwards, Louis lay swaddled in Lestat’s massive Gothic castle of a bed, clothed in one of Lestat’s fine robes, wrapped in red silken sheets and layers upon layers of thick blankets, encircled by down-stuffed pillows – the ones that smelled the most like Lestat, gathered at Louis’s instruction. Louis’s chest swelled with the deepest breath he could remember taking in months and he sighed, basking in his alpha’s scent surrounding him, feeling warm and clean and pleasantly drowsy. Content at last.

Lestat stretched out on the other side of the pillow wall, propped against a stack of cushions Louis had deemed unfit for his little nest. He looked nearly as pleased as Louis felt, just to have his finicky bride voluntarily near him at last.

“Is it always like this, for omegas?” Louis wondered, peeking at Lestat over the corner tassel of one red velvet cushion.

“When an omega’s heat draws near, they feel the urge to nest. It’s my understanding that your biology drives you to seek somewhere you feel safe, where you can rest and prepare for your heat.” Lestat glanced over at Louis. “You don’t know this?”

“I’ve never done any of this.” Louis admitted softly. “I’ve been blocking my heats since I first presented.”

Lestat scoffed. “That can’t possibly be healthy. There’s your Puritan nation for you; repress your body’s every natural urge. I imagine, to their logic, the pain of suffocation is akin to holy penance, atonement for the sin of being alive. Ridiculous practice.”

Louis cracked a smile. He found Lestat’s ignorance strangely charming in his cozy state of mind.

“You would say that.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re an alpha. There are no consequences for you when you choose to indulge in your hormones. No one’s going to attack you in the street if you forget to block your scent.”

Lestat frowned at him, disquieted. “…Have you been attacked in the street, Louis?”

Louis nestled further down into his blankets. “I was followed in town yesterday. Some strange alpha trailed me all the way to the cemetery. You frightened him off when you arrived.”

Louis just glanced up in time to catch a flash of crimson in Lestat’s eyes.

“I wish I hadn’t.” Lestat said in a low voice. “I’d have been happy to put another body in the ground.”

Normally, Louis would be repulsed by a display of alpha possessiveness, but – well. Maybe it was the serenity induced by his nest, but it warmed him to know someone wanted to protect him.

“You saved me all the same.”

“I endangered you.”  Lestat said quietly, guilt manifesting at last. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. I acted rashly, having your tonics discarded.”

Louis rolled onto his side so he was facing Lestat within his pillow fortress.

“You acted in defense of our future child. I…if I had known, I wouldn’t have objected.” He hesitated to continue, afraid to hear the answer. “Did I really hurt our baby, taking that extra dose…?”

Lestat heaved a deep sigh, looked away. “I may have exaggerated my physician’s warning.”

“What?”

“The doctor only said your suppressants would hinder conception. They wouldn’t affect the fetus. There is no reason to believe we won’t conceive a perfectly healthy child on our wedding night.” He glanced back to Louis. “I double checked with him yesterday, when I went into town.”

Louis was speechless a moment, the peaceful bubble of his nest threatening to pop.

“That…was cruel of you, to make me believe I had…”

Lestat gave him a shrug. “It was only cruel if you wanted to have a child with me. At that time, I was not sure you did.”

Louis’s relief won out over his rage, bolstered by the sweetness that surrounded him. Everything was okay. He hadn’t harmed his child. He was here with his alpha now, warm and dry and safe, and his alpha was going to give him a beautiful, healthy little baby soon.

“Don’t ever lie to me like that again.” Louis ordered softly. “Not about our child.”

A low laugh escaped Lestat’s lips. “Is my little darling giving demands?”

Louis grabbed onto his pillow wall to pull himself upright, just enough so that Lestat could see his face, and know that he was serious. “I mean it.”

A twinge of irritation around the corners of Lestat’s expressive mouth – but then it relaxed into a fond smile.

“Very well. I will concede to your maternal instinct, and obey you. Just this once.”

Satisfied, Louis flopped back down into his blanket pile.

“Have you given any thought to names?”

“I don’t know,” Louis demurred, feeling excited and shy. He’d waited for a baby for so long, and even after they conceived, it would be nine whole months before he could have it in his arms. It felt like jinxing things to discuss it so soon.

“If the baby is male, it shall be named after myself, naturally.” Lestat informed him. Louis rolled his eyes behind the safety of his cushion barrier. “If not…I haven’t come to any conclusion.”

Louis bit his lip. “I’ve always really liked the name Claudia,” he confessed, feeling like he was a child again, wishing on stars. “For a baby girl.”

“Claudia. A beautiful name.” Lestat leaned closer to peer over the pillows at him, smiling. “A perfect name for our beautiful daughter.”

Louis suddenly felt like he would cry. He busied himself with straightening his blankets. “For our first one, anyway. I’m still deciding on the others.”

“…Others?”

“Well, I guess we can’t know for sure, but I would assume we would end up with more than one daughter. Though I suppose there’s a slight chance they’ll all be boys.”

Lestat blinked. “…All?” He echoed dumbly.

Louis’s brow scrunched in confusion. “Surely, you don’t mean us to have only one child?”

Lestat’s mouth opened and closed again. “Well. The agreement was for you to bear me an heir.”

Louis’s feeling of utter betrayal and distress must have shown on his face.

“But of course I will give you as many children as you desire, my sweet.” Lestat rushed to amend his statement. “Incidentally…how many children do you desire?”

“Why does it matter, if you’re going to give me however many I want?”

“Construction is a lengthy process. I should like to know in advance if I’m going to need to add another building to the estate to house all our bountiful progeny.”

Louis smiled. “The main house should be enough. We may have to convert a few of the rooms.”

“...The manor already holds sixteen bedrooms, my dearest.” Lestat’s expression had turned anxious, a faint panic dawning in his voice.

Louis fought back a fit of giggles.

“I want at least three.” He admitted, taking pity on the man. “I have two siblings and they were my best friends growing up. I’d like that for our children.”

“Are you still close with your siblings?”

“I was.” A pang of sadness, as he thought of Paul and Grace, so far from him now. “My sister’s getting married this December. I’m going to miss it.”

Lestat hesitated. “As much as I want you to become accustomed to your new home, if you like…we can sail back for her wedding. December will be early enough in your pregnancy to permit you to travel.”

Louis's mouth fell open. “Do you mean it?” He asked excitedly.

Lestat smiled, his eyes crinkling in that charming way Louis was beginning to find irresistible.

“If it will make you happy.”

Louis felt like his heart would burst. It had never even occurred to Louis to ask for what he wanted, and Lestat was giving it to him anyway.

Louis thanked him, then burrowed back into his blankets, feeling shy when Lestat beamed at him even brighter.

Lestat told him it would be nice to meet Louis’s family. When Louis asked, Lestat shared a little about his own – that he had enough siblings to fill the manor’s many bedrooms, and that they were decidedly not on good terms.

“I hated having a big family – all that noise, everyone clamoring for attention, someone always getting left out. I was firmly against ever having one again.”

He gazed at Louis fondly. “But you seem determined to break all my rules. I’ve never encountered an omega as strong-minded as you. I’ve certainly never been pointed at and scolded by my bride to be. I’ve never had a bride demand to be here in the main house before the wedding. And I’ve never been allowed to share my omega’s nest.”

“Really?” Louis asked, touched. He was taking some of Lestat's firsts, just as Lestat was taking his.

“My experience of nesting is coming home to find my bed stripped of blankets, and my wife secluded off somewhere in a far corner of the manor.” Lestat sighed. “As I said, omega biology drives them to find somewhere they feel safe.”

It pained Louis to imagine – the lonely count abandoned in his big house, rejected by his closest companion – but that awful possessiveness inside him was pleased to hear of it. They weren’t a good match, Louis thought, Lestat and I are already closer than he ever was with them.

“They were unhappy.” Lestat admitted, with the pain of years in his voice. “I have no interest in an unhappy bride. One of the advantages we have over that fledgling Puritan nation of yours – it is not impossible to procure a divorce in France.”

“I don’t believe in divorce.” Louis replied firmly.

Lestat reached over the wall of pillows to take Louis’s hand and squeeze it tight. “Till death do us part.” He murmured.

Lestat snuffed out the room’s candles and they settled in to sleep. Louis couldn’t seem to keep from sleepily chatting away, straying time and again to the topic of children – the cribs, the nannies, the schooling – until his eyelids grew heavy.

“Once the first three are out of diapers, I’ll probably want more.” Louis mumbled through a yawn.

His first child wasn’t even here yet, and already Louis was mourning the day it would stop needing him. He knew he would treasure every moment he got to spend spoiling his baby with love, while it was still small enough not to want to squirm away from him. Louis secretly wished he could have a baby that would never grow, that would stay little in his arms forever.

“Three is…feasible.” Lestat conceded wearily.

“At least three.”

“Let’s save that discussion for a later date.”

Louis tried to protest, but sleep had sounded its inexorable call. He distantly felt Lestat’s hands tugging up the blankets to make sure he was safely tucked in, before he dropped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“Sleep well, my tempestuous one.”

--

It was the night before the wedding, and madness had gripped Louis once again.

Adrenaline throbbed in his veins in time with his horse’s hoofbeats pounding the earth. Thunder was rolling heavy overhead, but the night’s first rain had yet to fall. A momentary respite – but it wouldn’t last long. Louis spurred the beast on with a sharp jab of his heel. If he rode hard enough, fast enough, he would make it to the cathedral before the storm hit.

An omega’s nest was not unlike the mythic isle of the lotus-eaters – a honeyed swamp of indolence from which it was near impossible to escape. The comfort of it was seductive to the point of paralysis. Louis had felt suspended in amber, no strength in his boneless limbs to move.

“It’s natural to feel fatigued so near your heat.” Lestat had said after passing a few lazy morning hours in bed with him, having their breakfast brought in on silver trays, gently drawing Louis upright so he could have his tea. “Take your rest, my love. There are a few last-minute matters I must attend to in town before we wed tomorrow. I should return by suppertime.”

Lestat had placed a tender kiss upon his brow and left him. Louis had barely moved a muscle all day, utterly content in his paradise of warmth and softness and Lestat’s scent. Between bouts of drowsing, he watched the sky change colors in the window frame – the searing yellow-pink of sunrise collapsing into slate blue, fading to grey as the clouds rolled in. Slowly, the light failed. Servants came in to light candles.

It was like the bite of candle smoke in the air broke the spell Louis had been under, the sharp intrusion bursting through the cloud of the smoother, richer notes of the count’s scent.

Tomorrow, Louis was marrying this man. Two months ago, Louis had vowed to fight him at every step, to refuse to submit. Where had his resistance gone? All his fire had been snuffed out by thoughts of babies and gentle touches and a few tender words. A childish dream of happiness had taken its place.

Tomorrow, Louis’s life was going to change forever. He would be wed, no longer a lord, but a countess, a wife, and then brought back into this very room – laid down on these same silken sheets, his precious nest become a marital bed – deflowered, knotted, and claimed with a mating bite that would bind him to the count forever. His omega bride. Louis wasn’t repulsed by it anymore – in fact, he liked the way it sounded. All of it.

That terrified him.

Animated by a shock of fear, Louis had torn through the manor and rushed to the stables in nothing more than the robe Lestat had dressed him in and his pair of muddy boots. When the stable hands refused to prepare a carriage, confusion and alarm on their faces – “the master is due to return any moment, Your Lordship, he wouldn’t want to miss you. If you’d be so kind as to wait a while…” – Louis seized the beast’s reins from their hands and swung himself up into the saddle, shooting off into the night alone.

Confess, his head screamed. Confess, for this vile happiness can only be sin.

Louis thundered through Clermont-Ferrand, his skin stinging in the bitter cold, muscle memory or some holy instinct guiding him through the winding darkened streets to the church. Maybe it was God himself, leading Louis to his salvation. He would fall to his knees beneath the roof of the church and he would pray, like his father had taught him to. He would seek absolution and he would be made clean.

The church was shut for the night – Louis bloodied his hands tearing the doors open, wrenching at the sharp, rusted lock until it gave.

It was strangely warm inside, the chill already thawing on Louis’s skin as he closed the door behind him. The altar was suffused with golden light. Louis staggered towards it like the sinner he was, collapsed before the chorus of flickering prayer candles and made the sign of the cross.

“Cleanse me of my sin, Father. Take this sickness from me – this omega weakness that has infected me, that wills me to submit. For I know in submitting I shame my father – ” Louis’s voice broke.

“For I know he looks down on me in hatred and disgust for everything I’ve become, for allowing my purity to be sold like a whore, for allowing myself to be conquered by the will of others, by the will of my mother, by the will of this man, this alpha, who would take my father’s name from me and force me to bear his own. Forgive me, for I’ve forsaken everything he taught me and, in his absence, become a helpless, pathetic creature who knows nothing but to cling to those stronger than itself, in envy, and in lust, and in profane adoration.”

A sudden gust of wind slammed the church doors open, sent a shock of cold air searing into Louis’s lungs. He gasped for breath.

“Please, take away the love I feel for this man – this love that makes me weak, that makes me foolish – this sinful love that makes me crave the touch of his lips like I’ll die without it, that fills my head with wicked fantasies, that makes me find pleasure in his cruelty, that makes my body thrill at his violations, that makes me yearn to bear his children more than I’ve ever yearned for – ”

Louis’s body shook as thunder crashed around his ears, a white flash of lightning filling the room – then it was quiet and warm again. The church doors were closed with a gentle thud, blocking out the storm.

“You’ve fled to the altar? Most unconventional, for a runaway bride.”

Louis lurched to his feet and spun around. Lestat was striding calmly across the dark stone tiles, his hair damp with rain.

“Well, now that you’ve exorcised your wedding anxieties in your typical dramatic fashion, it’s time to go home.” Lestat held out a hand, beckoning. “Come, Louis. I have a carriage waiting.”

Louis clutched at the altar behind him, his knees weak. “No.”

Lestat sighed, put his hand back in his pocket to proceed down the aisle to his bride.

“You know, you gave my servants quite the fright. They said you rushed from the manor as though you feared for your life – that you were wild-eyed, speaking in stammers they could hardly understand, demanding a horse in some great panic, that you looked – ”

He stopped just short of Louis. Now that he was close enough, Louis could see Lestat taking in his disheveled appearance: the robe he’d been wearing since last night, already too big on him, now slipping haphazardly from his bare shoulders, with nothing but his muddied boots underneath to insulate him from the cold. The dark curls of his hair, made frantic by the wind and rain, pasted flat to his skull in some places and sticking up wildly in others. The terror etched into his face. The blood on his torn hands.

“Like you’d gone mad.” Lestat finished, regarding him with an eerily familiar expression – it was the same look Louis would give Paul, when he feared he’d fallen into one of his episodes.

Louis turned from him, squeezing his eyes shut in shame. He didn’t want to see Lestat look at him that way, like he’d finally realized Louis was too strange, too wrong, too difficult to love.

“Louis, what’s wrong? What’s happened to you?”

Louis shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You can’t what?”

Lestat’s hands were warm on Louis’s arms, a quieting caress, coaxing Louis to calm himself, to turn and face him.

Louis shrugged out of his grasp instead, staring down at his hands, his bloodied fingers gripping the altar.

“I can’t go home with you.” His voice came out like a strangled thing in his chest. “I can’t marry you. I can’t have your children. I can’t…I just can’t.”

“Why not?”

Louis just shook his head.

“Louis, look at me.”

When Louis wouldn’t turn, Lestat took him again, in a firmer grasp Louis didn’t resist, and turned Louis’s body for him.

“Tell me what’s making you feel this way.” Lestat ordered softly.

His eyes were full of concern. Louis wanted to run, to hide. He ducked his face.

Lestat forced Louis to look back up at him with a gentle grip on his jaw.

“My father,” Louis confessed in a whisper, tears falling onto his cheeks. “It would shame my father.”

“Oh, Louis.” Lestat stroked his cheek with a thumb, brushing away his tears.

Now that the words had been forced from Louis’s mouth, they all began to topple over each other in a rush.

“My father died in shame, because of me. It made him ashamed, to see what I was. And now, because of me, he’s…and if he looked down and saw me here, like this…”

“There is no sin in what you are, Louis.” Lestat told him, his voice suddenly fierce. “The only sin is this shame. It was a sin to plant this shame in you, in the name of false prophets and the vapid words of an old book – ” he tossed a glare at the cross on the wall behind Louis, an angry look that made Louis shiver “ – but your only sin is clinging to it, letting it fester and take hold inside of you.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be…my father didn’t raise me to be…”

Louis tried to make Lestat understand that he was wrong inside, that he had failed because he was weak, that his soul had warped around his weakness and these thoughts, these feelings, these wicked urges that pulled him towards Lestat were all a punishment for that failure; but the words wouldn’t come out how he wanted, and Louis failed at that too.

“Your father isn’t here.” Lestat told him coldly, his anger beginning to surface beneath his patience. “He’s a dead thing in a box now. Do not drive yourself into the earth with him. Stop trying to convince him to love you.”

His tone softened, holding Louis’s face in both his hands now.

“Think of me, who already loves you. In all your beautiful contradictions, your maddening complexities, your…” He laughed breathlessly, looking again at Louis like he was the most uniquely wondrous thing in the world. “Your irresistible stubbornness. The perfect challenge of you.”

Lestat leaned in to kiss him. Louis’s heart leapt – he turned away at the last second, and Lestat’s lips fell on his cheek. Lestat was undeterred, peppered soft, lingering kisses along his cheekbone, his ear, his jaw, down to the little dimple in Louis’s chin.

“Don’t,” Louis breathed, making to push Lestat away.

Lestat caught his hands, kissed them, every joint in his fingers, every knuckle, every line in his palms. He licked the blood from Louis’ wounds.

“Stop,” Louis voice trembled.

When he tried to pull away, Lestat crowded him back against the altar. Louis shivered as Lestat slid his hands into the gaping fabric of the too-large robe to run his palms over Louis’s warm skin, find the dip of his slim waist and hold him steady so he could press kisses into Louis’s neck.

Louis gasped when Lestat’s lips brushed over the ridge of his scent gland – his fingers clawed desperately at Lestat’s coat when the man’s tongue darted out to lap at the sensitive spot, sending a blinding wave of pleasure through Louis’s body.

“No.” Louis squirmed helplessly between the firmness of Lestat’s body and the stone altar behind him.

“No?” Lestat hummed. His large hands smoothed down Louis’s back inside the robe – Louis let out an ungainly squeak when Lestat found the bare flesh of his ass and gave a firm squeeze, forcing Louis’s pelvis flush with his own.

Lestat smirked against Louis’s neck – Louis knew Lestat could feel his erection, barely hidden behind the thin fabric of the robe, which was ever-shifting, the tie at the waist slackening and leaving Louis more vulnerable as Lestat pawed at him. One quick movement and Louis would be utterly exposed.

It made Louis shudder to think of it – stripped naked, here, in a church, the night before he was to wed his groom. Louis was sure Lestat had glimpsed his bare body in the bath, but this was different. This was sacrilege. The complete wrongness of it, the utter humiliation – shamefully, it only made Louis harder. To be defiled here, in a place of God…

Louis’s mouth fell open with a shocked moan as Lestat started sucking at a spot just outside his scent gland, a tantalizing edge that was too much and not enough all at once. Louis fisted a bloodied hand in Lestat’s long hair without meaning to, his eyes sliding shut, his sanity eroding away.

“You don’t want this?” Lestat teased, each word brushing over the sensitive skin.

Louis shook his head. “We…we can’t.” He struggled to form thoughts when Lestat started sucking at another spot on his neck, so dizzyingly hard Louis was sure it would leave a bruise. “We’re not wed.”

“Well, we stand in the church, at the altar.” Lestat mused. “Do you…” He nosed at Louis’s gland again, taking a deep breath of his scent that tickled Louis’s skin and made him embarrassingly wet – his alpha, scenting him, relishing him – “take me, to be your lawfully wedded husband?” Lestat groped roughly at Louis’s ass again, letting out a low, blissful groan at the plush give of his flesh that made Louis’s cock jump. “For better or for worse?”

Lestat ended with another wet kiss directly on Louis’s scent gland. Louis’s whole body spasmed with it, his fingers tightening to a painful grip in Lestat’s hair – but the man seemed to enjoy it, judging by the way his breath hitched and his hips ground subtly, wonderfully, forward against Louis.

When Louis did nothing but helplessly shake his head, Lestat pulled back to look into his eyes.

“Use your words, my love.” He breathed, his hand cupping Louis’s jaw, a thumb brushing over the curve of Louis’s lips to part them.

Louis was confused for a moment, lost in enjoying the soft sweep of Lestat’s thumb across his lips, wanting to draw it into his mouth – he started to nod before he shook his head, and only then remembered how to speak.

“…No.” He mumbled. Try as he might, Louis couldn’t bring himself to say anything else.

“I see.” Lestat nodded, a light in his eyes like Louis was a game he was catching onto, like he’d discovered another new captivating part of him. “Very well.”

He gently disentangled himself from Louis, ignoring the little noise of protest that burst from Louis without his consent. Lestat straightened his robe for him and tightened the tie at the waist. Louis watched him, a miserable panic rising inside, that he’d gone too far, that his wretched weakness had finally driven the man away for good.

Lestat stood up straight when he was finished and eyed Louis expectantly, as Louis leaned back against the altar, panting slightly, his skin still burning beneath the robe where Lestat’s hands had been.

“Get back on your knees, then.” Lestat said simply with a nod to the church’s tiled floor. “Resume your praying.”

Louis blinked at him, feeling dazed. He slowly lowered onto his knees, not understanding anything other than Lestat had stopped asking him things, and was telling him what to do now, and that was so much easier.

Lestat shrugged out of his coat and let it fall carelessly to the floor. He came to tower directly over Louis.

“Three ‘Our Father’s’.” Lestat instructed, reaching for the fastening of his trousers.

Louis swallowed, suddenly aware of how close Lestat’s crotch was to his face. Lestat was unbuttoning his pants – Louis couldn’t allow himself to think any further than that. If he started thinking he would panic again.

“Sign of the cross,” Lestat prompted him, as if he could tell Louis needed the guidance, a playful smile tugging at his lips. “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

Louis opened his mouth, stalled for a moment as he remembered how to make sound – Lestat’s scent was so strong here, a heady flood of goodness Louis yearned to press his face into – he swallowed again. He made the sign of the cross.

“Our Father, who art in heaven,” Louis began hoarsely. “Hallowed be thy name.”

Lestat pulled himself out of his pants. Louis’s words faltered again. He was huge, and fully erect, the whole thick, beautiful length of him throbbing just a breath from Louis’s face. Louis could see a vein winding beneath the skin on the underside, and immediately wondered what it would feel like sliding across his tongue.

Louis unconsciously swayed a little towards it – then stopped himself. He glanced up at Lestat, uncertain.

“Keep going.” Lestat murmured, beginning to stroke himself.

Louis kept going. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give – ”

Louis broke off with a startled sound when the fat pink mushroom head bobbed closer, grazing his cheek. He tried to rear back, but Lestat slid a hand into his wet curls to hold him in place.

“Keep going, Louis.” Lestat’s voice had become a low rumble, his gaze unfocused.

Louis took a shaky breath. His hands fisted into the hem of his robe, staving off the impulses rioting inside him – to run, to draw closer – making a choice to heed none of them, and to instead heed Lestat’s voice, Lestat’s hand cradling his skull. Louis closed his eyes and he kept going.

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us – ” Louis’s breath hitched, his cheek twitching when Lestat’s cockhead brushed against it once more. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those wh – ”

Louis gasped when he felt Lestat’s cock trace over his lips, warm, heavy, pulsing full of blood. He couldn’t pull away; Lestat’s hand held him steady. “Forgive us…forgive those…um…” Louis was having trouble thinking, and his mouth kept flooding with saliva. The room was so warm. His heart was speeding in his chest. He swallowed hard.

“As we forgive those who trespass,” Lestat grunted above him.

His cock smeared a messy line of pre-cum across Louis’s cheekbone, bumped wetly against Louis’s nose. Louis nearly swooned – the scent was intoxicating, and so close – he couldn’t help but put his tongue out for a taste – Lestat swore under his breath and obliged him, tapping the head crudely against the flat of Louis’s tongue a few times. Louis made an embarrassing noise – it was surprisingly bitter; it was the best thing Louis had ever tasted. He wanted to guzzle it.

“Keep going, chéri.”

“As we forgive those who trespass against us.” Louis mumbled into Lestat’s cock. “And lead us not into temptation.”

Lestat kept rubbing his leaking cock over Louis’s moving lips, seeming to enjoy the shapes Louis’s prayer made against it.

Profane, a distant voice in the back of Louis’s head scolded.

“Good,” Lestat breathed above him.

Louis decided to listen to Lestat.

“But deliver us from evil.” He whispered, nuzzling into the thin, blood-flushed skin as it throbbed in time with his own beating heart. “Amen.”

“Again.”

The second Louis rounded his lips to shape ‘Our’, Lestat began to nudge himself inside. Louis flinched at the shock of sudden pressure, his mouth automatically clamping shut to deny him entry.

“Look at me,” Lestat murmured. He waited for Louis to shyly bat his eyes open before pressing the fat, weeping head against his mouth once more. “Pretend it’s the body of Christ.”

Louis demurely parted his lips to receive the offering. He whimpered when Lestat’s cock filled his mouth. It was so big, his jaw was already beginning to ache – and he could only fit about half inside.

But Louis kept going; even as he struggled around Lestat’s cock, his mouth buzzed with the Lord’s prayer in dutiful vibrations that made Lestat sigh with pleasure. Lestat began to guide his head gently back and forth, working Louis’s mouth around his cock, coaxing him to take a little more, a little deeper. Louis’s own cock was painfully hard now, his hole soaking a damp patch into his robe.

It took Louis a while to figure out a rhythm, how to keep breathing through his nose – he choked and sputtered violently when Lestat pressed too deep, and graciously allowed Louis to pull off and take a breath.

But Louis opened right back up and let him press in again, obediently locking eyes with Lestat, eager to do better this time. He relaxed his throat, humming the prayer when Lestat was too deep for him to shape muffled words. He experimented with sucking, hollowing his cheeks around it, letting his tongue lave at the vein on the underside, fascinated by the texture – his lips splitting around the cock in his mouth with a wet smile when Lestat swore again and his hips stuttered. Lestat began to throb more desperately in his mouth, spilling more of his wonderful bittersweet essence down Louis’s throat. His hand gripped Louis’s hair harder, a pleasant sting to his scalp, his deep voice telling Louis how good he was being, how well he was doing, how beautiful he looked like this.

He likes this, Louis thought dizzily, his knees aching on the church tile, spit dribbling down his chin, I’m making him feel good. I’m making my alpha feel good.

Louis would have been happy to sit there on his knees forever.

But Lestat was thrusting into him now, shoving Louis’s head down harder to match the pace of his hips. This time, when Louis choked, he was not allowed a breath - Louis was forced to cease his prayer. His head was held down and down and down by Lestat’s strong grip, even when his hands pressed frantically at Lestat’s thighs – when it became too much, Louis's body seized - he came all over the inside of his borrowed robe with his face smushed against Lestat’s coarse blonde thicket of hair, the tip of Lestat’s cock teasing the back of his spasming throat as his alpha groaned above him.

Lestat uttered a transcendently filthy French phrase when he finally let up, harshly fisting his cock as Louis coughed and struggled to regain his breath, the tremors of his untouched orgasm wracking his body.

“You’re perfect, Louis.” Lestat gazed reverently down at him like he was seeing Christ on his knees. “Oh, you’re perfect.”

Perfect. Louis felt lighter than air.

When Lestat’s breath hitched and Louis realized he intended to cum on his face, Louis tugged Lestat’s hand out of his way and took him in his mouth again, swallowing down every thick pulse of his release, refusing to let a single sacred drop be wasted.

--

Louis wed his count early the next morning, beneath a cascading bough of blood-red Amaranthus blossoms.

He hardly comprehended a word of the entire service, and not because of the French. All Louis could think as he walked down the aisle to meet his groom - impossibly handsome in a suit of midnight black, the perfect contrast to the pale cream he’d chosen for Louis - was that none of the French nobles gathered for the ceremony had any idea that he’d taken Lestat in his throat in this very church, at this very altar, that Louis had been here on his knees beneath the cross not twelve hours ago.

It made him feel filthy – and made him ache with anticipation of what their wedding night would bring.

When they’d said their vows and it was time to kiss the bride, Louis found himself staring into Lestat’s startling bright eyes, struck once more with the urge to bolt. Lestat must have seen a change in Louis’s face – he grasped Louis firmly around the back of his neck, pulled him in hard for a searing kiss.

Louis’s every objection died on his lips. Lestat’s kiss at last: tender, soft, and demanding all at once, already laying claim to him. Louis melted, succumbed to him completely.

Louis’s husband carried him from the carriage all the way up the manor’s many flights of stairs to reach their bedroom, tossing Louis onto their marriage bed with a loud grunt of exertion. Louis found himself laughing as his body bounced lightly on his nest of blankets and pillows.

“Tired already, old man?”

Lestat hastily stopped rubbing his lower back and clambered onto the bed, tugging the bed’s gauzy red canopy closed behind him with a grin. “Oh, don’t you worry your pretty head. I have plenty of energy left for you, my little wife.”

Wife. Louis giggled again. He loved the way it sounded in Lestat’s voice, with his accent. It made Louis feel giddy. Louis hadn’t been giddy since – well, he didn’t want to think about that right now. He wanted to focus on his husband.

Louis wrapped his arms around his husband’s neck, meeting him halfway as Lestat leaned down for a kiss. He sighed happily when Lestat slid his tongue into his mouth. Lestat was a good kisser. Louis didn’t have anything to compare it to, but he couldn’t imagine it feeling this good with anyone else. He reached to undo the black ribbon tying Lestat’s hair back, laughing against Lestat’s lips when his soft locks tumbled down to tickle his cheeks.

“You are in an extraordinarily good mood,” Lestat mused, pulling back just to take in the happiness on Louis’s face.

“I've just gotten married,” Louis murmured, running a hand through Lestat’s hair, loving the silky slide of it between his fingers. “It’s meant to be a joyous occasion – dancing, cakes, laughter.”

Another giggle bubbled up from inside him at Lestat’s slightly bewildered smile, like he couldn’t believe Louis was capable of being this cheerful.

“Here I thought you abhorred such things.” Lestat trailed kisses over Louis’s happy face.

“Mm.” Louis tilted his head to let Lestat mouth at his neck. “Who could abhor a wedding?”

Lestat undressed him, kissing every inch of skin as it was bared. Louis panted beneath him, his temperature rising, his heart pounding, his head swimming in the glorious haze of the man’s scent filling the enclosed space of the canopy bed. By the time Lestat was naked on top of him, his hands heavy on Louis’s hips, groaning as he kissed him wet and deep, rutting his massive cock in sinfully slow grinds against Louis’s – smaller, but just as hard, and already leaking – Louis felt like he was in heaven.

Profane, a distant voice broke through the pleasure.

Louis’s eyes fluttered open. He stared at the ornate carving of the bed’s overhang as Lestat sucked a fresh bruise into his neck, like a scornful God was hiding in the swirls of dark wood.

Sick. There was no face in the pattern. The voice was inside Louis, that same engine of disgust he’d been suffering under all his life.

Louis’s lip trembled. He clung tighter to Lestat, fingers clawing into his broad, strong back – Lestat made a pleased rumble into the skin of his throat. This was his husband. His husband was making love to him, in their marriage bed. What was wrong with that?

Whore. The voice spat. Filthy omega whore, spreading your legs for a strange man who paid to have you in this bed.

The voice was right. He’d only met the count a week ago – they were practically strangers. The count had paid for Louis, spent an exorbitant fee because he liked the way Louis looked in a portrait and thought he’d make a pretty new addition to his hall of wives. Louis had shown up determined to resist him, and here he was –on his back in the man’s bed, naked, offering himself up to be touched and kissed in places Louis had never even shown to another man.

Louis was pathetic – an eager, stupid, lascivious, filthy omega whore, wet and desperate to be bred by the first alpha who’d offered.

Louis tried to smother the feeling – tried to focus on Lestat, the warmth of his skin, the softness of his lips, the throbbing of his cock – he wanted to be past this. Hadn’t Lestat told him that shame was the only sin? But the voice just came back stronger and louder with each thrust, each hitched breath, each heartbeat. Slut. Filth. Weakness. Sickness.

Lestat gripped one of Louis’s thighs, kneaded the soft give of flesh as it spilled between his strong fingers, hitched it up over his hip so that Louis had one leg wrapped around his waist, then reached down to line his cock up with Louis’s entrance, twitching fragrant slick onto the sheets already.

“Stop,” Louis whispered.

Lestat glanced up at him, his eyes hazy with lust. “Hm?”

“I don’t think I…” Louis swallowed, shook his head. “I can’t.”

Lestat just stared at him for several beats. “…You can’t be serious.”

Louis removed his thigh from Lestat’s waist, tried to close his legs as much as he could with Lestat’s body between them, inching his knees towards each other.

“I-I’m not feeling well.” Louis pressed gently at Lestat’s chest to get him to move. “Too much…dancing.”

Lestat’s heavy body remained stubbornly on top of him.

“Feeling dizzy, my love?” Lestat purred, hands stroking over Louis’s sides as if to soothe him. “Not to worry. It will pass.” He pressed a few reassuring kisses to Louis’s shoulder, up the line of his neck, his cheek. “Just relax.”

Louis took a deep breath. He tried to relax. When Lestat’s tender lips met his again, he nearly managed it – but Lestat’s tongue curled in a particularly pleasant way and the voice reared up again, incensed. Sick.  

Louis let out a distressed whimper into Lestat’s mouth and pushed him away again.

“Stop. I…I think I just…need to rest a while.”

Irritation began to sour Lestat’s face. “Louis, it is our wedding night.”

“I know.”

“Our marriage will not be legitimate until we’ve consummated it.”

“I know.”

“I have been astoundingly patient with you these past days, chasing you down, enduring your fickle moods – this after suffering the bitter chill of your silence for a month previous – and I will have you know I am not a patient man. I hardly think it reasonable for you to expect me to indulge your reticence on our wedding night.”

Louis’s throat bobbed, a hot wave of shame washing over him. He stared down at the bedspread. “I know.”

Louis wished God would smite him, just so he wouldn’t have to see the frustration on Lestat’s face. He must regret his choice now, Louis thought. Lestat must finally be repelled by his wrongness and now he wishes he’d held onto one of his other wives – they’d no doubt been easier to put up with.

“I’m sorry.”

Louis hesitantly placed his hand over Lestat’s where it lay on the mattress to give it a little apologetic squeeze, hating himself for being a disappointment – to God, to his father, and now to his husband, who would no doubt rush to his divorce lawyer in the morning.

Lestat raised Louis’s hand to his mouth, held it thoughtfully for a moment. Then he began pressing firm kisses to last night’s still-healing wounds.

Louis inhaled shakily when Lestat continued a line of kisses up his arm. He tried to shy away when Lestat pressed his face into the crook of his neck – Louis’s cock twitching, his hole fluttering in desperate anticipation as Lestat took in his scent – but Lestat held fast to his wrist.

“What does the Bible say, about a wife’s duty to her husband?” Lestat murmured into Louis’s ear. He moved Louis’s arm further out of his way so he could nestle kisses down to Louis’s jawline, raising his arm back against the headboard, and Louis felt the gauze of the bed curtain slide across his wrist.

“Um…” Louis tried to think, his heart knocking clumsily about in his chest as Lestat’s breath tickled his skin. What had Paul said? “A wife should…submit, to her husband…”

“That’s right.” Lestat was nodding before he’d finished, nosing at Louis’s cheek. “And you’re refusing?” He kissed down to the dip in Louis’s chin, then across to his other shoulder, taking Louis’s other wrist to hold it steady as he kissed down the length of his arm. “You refuse to be a good wife, and submit to your husband?”

Louis could only manage a nod, feeling wretched. He was rewarded with a kiss on the lips, slow and sweet, a bliss he didn’t deserve. He chased Lestat’s lips when they broke away, reached for Lestat to keep him close – but he couldn’t, something held his arms back.

Louis turned his head, blinking in confusion. Each of his arms was suspended out to the side and a little above his head, his wrists restrained, wrapped in panels of the gauzy red curtain surrounding the bed.

His breath came faster when he tried his strength against the ties – he could move a little, but they were too tight for him to break. Louis was thoroughly ensnared.

Louis flinched when strong fingers suddenly gripped his jaw – Lestat forced Louis to gaze up at him as he knelt over his naked body, unable to move, sprawled helplessly across his alpha’s sheets, trapped with him in his bed.

Lestat smiled down on him, cruel and beautiful as a God.

“If you will not behave,” Lestat told him in his low, wonderful voice, the same playful light he’d had in the church sparking in his blue eyes. “You will be made to behave.”

A heady thrill pulsed beneath Louis’s skin as he realized what was happening – Lestat wasn’t letting him go. He was insisting upon Louis, insisting upon their marriage. Forcing Louis to take his happiness. Louis would be bred tonight, knotted. Mated. Lestat would be his mate – his alpha at last.

His heartbeat thudding in his ears, Louis mumbled some nonsensical protest and struggled against his binds, despite knowing they would hold – or maybe because he knew they would. He began to think he might like the struggle, the freedom of being able to resist and fight, wrapped in the safety of knowing his bonds would never break.

“I was right,” Lestat mused to himself, fingertips tracing lovingly over Louis’s arms as they twisted within their gauzy scarlet confines. “Red suits you perfectly – brings out all the warmth in your beautiful skin.” He kissed and licked at the gaps between the winding fabric, little snatches of soft, trembling skin.

Louis jumped beneath his touch. “Please,” he asked, not knowing what he was pleading for. “Please…I…”

“You’re so beautiful, Louis. The most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.” Lestat went on, ignoring him, hands sliding down the soft curves of his nude body now in a possessive caress, relishing the flawless expanse of smooth brown flesh. “My Louis. My beautiful wife.”

Louis faintly registered a feeling of satisfaction beneath the panic and lust – He likes me better than his other brides. He whimpered and squirmed against the feeling. He shouldn’t be thinking that, he shouldn’t like this.

“Shh, it’s alright.” Lestat shushed him, like he could tell Louis’s thoughts were plaguing him. “I know it’s hard. Such deep-rooted shame is not so easily conquered.”

His hands found Louis’s chest again, toying gently with the dark nubs of his nipples until they stood in hard peaks. He rolled the tender bundles of nerves between his fingers, grinning when Louis whined high in his throat at a slightly harder tug.

“You want to behave, don’t you? You want to be a good wife for me?”

Louis did, so badly he felt it like a physical pain, like the empty aching deep inside that made him screw up tighter, leak more of his omega slick in the hopes of being filled. He wanted to be good for Lestat. He wanted Lestat to be proud of him, the way his father never had.

He couldn’t make himself say it. Louis just stared up at Lestat with wide, imploring eyes, desperate tears trembling in the corners of his vision.

Lestat nodded slowly down at him, a sympathetic tilt to his mouth like he knew it all, understood Louis perfectly.

“You do.” He confirmed softly. “You just need me to help you. Teach you how to be good.”

Louis’s breathing turned ragged as Lestat kissed a wet path down his body, to the downy trail of dark hair leading to his leaking cock, pausing for a brief kiss to his balls before spreading his thighs wide to lave his tongue over Louis’s wet, twitching entrance.

Louis keened, his back arching off the bed, his gauzy restraints pulling painfully taut around his wrists, as Lestat moaned into him, savoring the sweet taste.

“See how wet you are?” Lestat purred, petting two fingers over the velvety slick at Louis’s opening. “You’re already being so good. Getting yourself ready for me. You just want to make your husband feel good, don’t you? Here.” He leaned over Louis’s body to bring his fingers to Louis’s mouth, glistening with Louis’s slick. “Taste how sweet you are, Louis.”

Louis’s eyelashes fluttered when faced with the heady sweetness of his own scent – like nectar from a soft, ripe fruit, heavy on the vine. He tried to resist, tilting his face away to hide from the humiliation of being made to taste himself, but Lestat guided him back with a light hand on his jaw, tracing his wet fingers over Louis’s lips until he parted them.

“Good.”

Louis moaned softly at the honeyed taste, and at the mesmerized look on Lestat’s face when he sucked.

“Just like that.” Lestat breathed when he pressed his fingers deeper inside and Louis’s mouth relaxed to welcome him, his tongue swirling around the thick digits. “So good. So pretty, and so good for me. You took me so well last night, in your pretty mouth.”

He drew his fingers out to stroke a wet trail across Louis’s cheek, over the soft curve of his lips, the corner of his mouth. Louis leaned into his touch.

“You want to show me how well your pretty cunt can take me, too?”

Lestat moved to lay on top of Louis again, pulling Louis’s thighs up to wrap around his waist. The muscles in Louis’s arms trembled reflexively, but Lestat shushed him with a tender kiss, his tongue curling inside Louis’s mouth to taste the remnants of his slick, and Louis let his body go slack in his restraints, his thighs pliant again in Lestat’s grasp.

“You want it, my darling, I know.” Lestat reassured him, seeing through Louis’s feeble resistance. “You want it so badly, to take your husband’s cock in your sweet little cunt like a good wife. Isn’t that right? So we can have our baby?”

When Louis made a desperate little noise and finally managed a slight nod, Lestat rewarded him with a hand at throat, his strong fingers taking casual dominion over the stretch of his slender neck. Louis’s felt his pulse thundering against Lestat’s thumb, his head already going fuzzy just at the memory of the hard grip he knew Lestat was capable of – when Lestat gave him what he wanted with a firm squeeze, Louis’s eyes rolled back, his body twitching to release an embarrassing gush of slick that trickled down from his cunt. He’d never been this wet in his life.

Lestat groaned, his cock rutting more insistently against the warmth seeping from Louis’s entrance. Louis’s body started responding on its own, his hips hitching higher against Lestat, rocking to meet the grinding thrusts of his cock, working to entice his alpha inside. Louis gasped when the thick head dipped in slightly – he was so wet, it nearly slid right in.

“That’s it.” Lestat panted between wet kisses to Louis’s cheek. “Oh, Louis, you’re so good. Look at you - being so good for me. I'm so proud of you. My beautiful – my perfect wife.”

Louis let out a broken sob - he was perfect. He'd made Lestat proud.

Lestat finally forced himself inside his tight virgin bride, inch by agonizing inch, and with the sweet stretch of being perfectly filled at last, Louis came harder than he had ever thought possible, his mouth falling open in a soundless cry, his fingers fisting tightly in the gauze wound around his wrists, his thighs clamping tight around his husband’s waist.

Lestat kept fucking him through it, his thrusts turning harsher – it quickly overwhelmed Louis, too much, his tender nerves on fire – but he rapidly acclimated, his insides turning molten hot and greedy even as his body continued to shake with the spasms of his aftershock, missing the ache as it faded, needing Lestat to fuck him rougher to bring it back. He could feel his omega heat waking up in his blood, pulsing in his ears – this is exactly how you’re supposed to be, this is what you were made for, what you’ve been craving all along – rays of mindless pleasure piercing his brain at every angle, chasing everything other thought away. Louis gave himself over and submitted like a good wife was supposed to, clung sweetly as his husband rocked into him.

Lestat was watching him, captivated, another beautiful smile on his face that Louis wanted to trace with his tongue.

“Beautiful,” Lestat kept saying in a low ramble, “If you could only see yourself. I should have you painted like this, hang a portrait in my hall of you speared on my cock.”

He hiked Louis’s thighs up higher to drive into him a new angle – so deep Louis saw stars. “You’re even better than I ever dreamed. The way you cling to me – ” He groaned as though in devastating pain. “I could die with your sweet cunt wrapped around my cock.” A breathless laugh burst from him. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you? Oh, Louis, you’ll be the death of me.”

Louis felt suspended in a kind of dream state – an entire ocean of clouds – wasn’t this what heaven looked like? Louis couldn’t hear the scornful voice in his head anymore – not enough oxygen in his brain to feed it.

He couldn’t even hear his own voice, though he realized his lips were moving, responding to Lestat. Louis couldn’t tell what he was saying – some mewling babble of gratitude – he thought he might have thanked the Holy Father, or thanked his earthly father, or mistakenly called Lestat ‘father’, he wasn’t sure – but something he said made Lestat let out a guttural sound and forcefully rip down the gauze curtains restraining Louis, freeing his arms from their binds so he could haul him into his lap and start bouncing Louis on his cock.

Louis laughed deliriously, draping his tingling arms over his husband’s shoulders, so inanely happy just to have him close – perhaps the happiest person in the whole world. Maybe he should kill Lestat, so they could stay locked inside this happy place, never have to leave the paradise of their marriage bed, freeze the sun in its tracks and let it be their wedding night forever, eternal newlyweds, forever a bride and a groom.

“My husband,” Louis murmured senselessly into Lestat’s ear. “My husband, mine, mine.” Then, realizing he hadn’t said Lestat’s name yet, not even once since he’d arrived, “My Lestat,” he whispered, clenching as hard as he could around the cock inside him, as though he could truly stop his husband’s heart and cage them both in heaven.

Lestat’s hips stuttered against him. Louis felt the deep hot spill of his release before Lestat sunk his teeth into his neck, hard enough to draw blood. A shock of pain – Louis felt like prey in his jaws, Lestat’s bestial growl vibrating against his throat, the last sound a fawn hears before the end. Louis had only just begun to feel his alpha’s knot swelling inside him – a blinding stretch that he couldn’t possibly – before the room went white.

--

When Louis’s senses returned, he was wrapped in his alpha’s arms, his nest of sheets and blankets a cozy tangle around their sweat-cooled bodies.

Louis nuzzled his face into Lestat’s collarbone, enjoying the soft rumble of his voice murmuring sweet nothings into his ear – his accent was stronger when he was tired, Louis was pleased to discover, a rougher, lazier drag that made the English vowels near incomprehensible. Eventually he worked up the courage to voice something he’d been wondering about since he’d first arrived to the estate: where Lestat was keeping his portrait.

“What was that, my love?” Lestat’s hand paused from stroking Louis’s hair to ask.

“The portrait of me my mother sent you. Before you proposed.”

“I don’t have a portrait of you.”

Louis sat up slowly, confused. His body ached in protest. “What?”

“If she sent one, I never received it. We shall have to have one done soon, of course.” He touched Louis’s cheek with a fond, dreamy smile. “Our first portrait together. The first of many.”

Louis blinked at him, his mind working. Lestat had described his appearance in detail, down to the dark circles that had been etched beneath his eyes ever since he started working with his father. Louis had thought it a bit strange that such an unflattering attribute had made it into his portrait, especially one his mother would use to attract a suitor – she was always telling him how unsightly they were.

“How can that be?” Louis asked. “You knew what I looked like before we met.”

Lestat kissed the frown bunching between Louis’s eyebrows. He gathered Louis into his arms again, drew him back down to lay against his chest and began to tell the story of the first time he'd laid eyes on his wife.

Lestat’s duties as count kept him largely confined to France – but not always. He sometimes had occasion to attend business abroad, and it just so happened that New Orleans was his favorite foreign city.

Lestat had just stepped out of a café in the French Quarter into the sunny New Orleans afternoon, the air thick with springtime humidity and the scent of magnolia blossoms, when he noticed a crowd of men filing out of the municipal building across the street.

“It looked as though some business deal had been struck – all the men nodding to each other, shaking hands. Then the crowd parted, and I saw you standing there.” A tender smile graced Lestat’s lips as he remembered it. “You were so beautiful, you stopped my heart.”

A slender young man, the springtime sun just beginning to deepen the soft beige of his skin, his high cheekbones, the narrow cleft in his chin, and the slight point at the tips of his ears adding an almost feline sharpness to an otherwise devastatingly vulnerable face, the delicate pout of his full, rosy-brown lips somehow wholly innocent and painfully alluring at once.

“And those eyes,” Lestat sighed. “Such fathomless misery I saw in those gentle brown eyes, so much sorrow at such a tender young age.”

The young man had kept glancing up at the man beside him, a confident older man who commanded the attention of the group, observing his mannerisms, straightening his spine to match the man’s self-assured posture, nodding along when the older man nodded. As the crowd began to disperse, Lestat could tell the young man was waiting to hear some word of approval from him, some commendation of a job well done. It never came. The older man simply gave the sad young man a brief nod, and headed off on his own. Lestat thought his heart would break at the sight of it.

“My father,” Louis murmured. “You saw me with my father.”

Louis couldn’t have placed the day if he tried – to his recollection, every day he’d joined his father at the office had ended in the way Lestat had described. But if his father was alive, it could be no more recently than two years ago. Louis wondered if it had been the spring he had finally shattered his father’s hopes by presenting as an omega, the last spring of his father’s life.

“After your father left you alone, you looked so lost…you started going aimlessly down the street in the opposite direction, half-dazed in your misery. You hardly looked up from your shuffling feet until you’d reached a bench in Jackson Square, and took a paperback book out of your pocket to read.”

Lestat laughed, shook his head. “I tried for hours to make out the title on the cover, to no success. I’m no great lover of literature, but I thought it must have been quite the captivating read to hold your attention so.”

Louis glanced up at him. “You followed me and watched me read for hours?”

Lestat nodded, a soft, sentimental look in his eyes, as though lost in his own romantic anecdote. Louis supposed it didn’t occur to his husband that being trailed around by strange alphas was a fear Louis had already confided in him about.

“I was so taken with you, I hardly knew what to do with myself.”

No great lover of literature – Louis remembered the manor’s library, stocked full of unread books, all in English. Lestat had prepared it all for him, just because he’d once seen Louis pass a few hours with a book in his hands, years before they would ever meet. Louis felt a tug at his heartstrings – maybe it was a romantic anecdote after all.

Lestat continued his tale. Louis had finally put his book down to greet the woman who came and sat beside him on the bench – a finely-dressed woman well-known to Louis, it seemed, with a squalling infant in a carriage Louis was quick to scoop into his arms and soothe.

“My aunt had just had a baby that February,” Louis recalled. He could remember now, bouncing his fussy little baby cousin in the park until he burped into his shoulder.

“It was the only time all day I saw you smile.” Lestat told him.

Lestat had watched from afar as Louis said goodbye to his aunt, then returned to strolling around the city, roaming without seeming to have any destination in mind as the light faded in the sky and the streets grew dark. Lestat thought all the while of how to introduce himself, how to catch Louis’s eye or make an approach – but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“I already felt I knew you, and it was so intimate a feeling …I couldn’t bear to have you look at me and see a stranger.”

Lestat shadowed Louis all the way up to the gates to the du Lac estate, watched through the wrought iron bars to make sure he made it inside safely, then bid his mysterious lover farewell, and left him to his life.

“The following morning, I boarded a ship bound for France.” Lestat sighed. “I returned home. Every night I slept beside my wife in this bed, and thought only of you. I thought I would have to content myself with dreams of you, until I got word that Florence du Lac was seeking a match for her children.”

“Why didn’t you ever have children with your other wives?” Louis asked, reluctantly curious.

“I never wanted them. It was only when I saw the joy on your sad face when you held that child in your arms that I first considered having children of my own.”

“You…only wanted a child because of me?”

Lestat gazed down at Louis in his arms. Louis had never seen an expression like his before, such vast love in his eyes it looked painful to feel. Louis wondered if he was reflecting it back up at him. It struck him all at once that he loved Lestat desperately, with all his heart, and that he always would.

“I have loved you from the first moment I saw you, Louis. I saw a sorrow inside you that matched my own, and I knew I would do anything to take that sorrow away from you. When I saw you in the park that day, I knew that a child would make you happy. And I knew that you were the only one I wanted to give my child to.”

Louis’s eyes welled with emotion. Lestat had loved him even when they were strangers, loved him so much since that very first day, he’d wanted to give Louis his greatest happiness. And now he had.

Overwhelmed, Louis rolled onto his side away from Lestat, felt absently at his stomach where he would carry their beautiful baby.

Lestat laughed softly and curled his arms around Louis's middle, tucked his face into the crook of Louis’s neck where he now bore the bite mark that would forever symbolize their union. He placed his large warm hands over Louis’s, low on his abdomen.

“You won’t start showing for another few months, mon cher.”

Louis bit his lip. “How will we know if it took?”

“My doctor will help us watch for the signs. Nausea. Tender breasts.” Louis’s breath hitched as Lestat’s hands slid up to knead gently at the small swells of his chest. “Strange cravings.” Lestat placed a lingering kiss to the bite mark he’d left – Louis squirmed in his arms at the pleasurable sting; it was still sensitive.

“In the meantime…” Lestat pressed Louis onto his back, came to lay on top of him. “We can always keep trying. Just to make sure.” He grinned, taking hold of Louis’s thighs to spread them again.

A shy laugh bubbled from Louis’s chest.

“I…I don’t know.” But his body was moving on its own, his arms wrapping around Lestat to pull him closer, his lips brushing Lestat’s cheek. “I’m not sure we should…”

Lestat chuckled. “No?” He teasingly nudged the tips of their noses together, laughing again when Louis caught himself leaning in further for a kiss and shied away, embarrassed by the impulse. “Perhaps you’d like to pray over it?”

“Mm,” Louis sighed when Lestat began kissing down his neck again. He gasped, shuddered with a sharp thrill of pleasure, fingers curling tight into Lestat’s hair when he started sucking roughly on his mating wound, his alpha’s mouth working like he was going to give him another bite on top of it, like he needed to taste his blood a second time, to claim Louis twice.

Louis let his eyes flutter closed. “Our Father who art in heaven…”