Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Clarke is 17 when she meets the man she’s going to marry. 

It’s nothing romantic at all. There’s no lightning, no fireworks, no fabled mate bond snapping into place. The alpha just looks her up and down, turns back to her new stepfather, and says: “She’ll do.”

And that’s it. 

She barely has a chance to get a look at him before she’s hustled off: Bellamy Blake, capo of the New York Outfit. He looks— young. Much too young for the sort of reputation he’s already amassed. 

The Rebel King, they call him. And now, her fiancé. 

It’s not until later that Clarke is told of the arrangement. 

It’s normal, in her world. Clarke never expected to be allowed to marry for love, but she never really considered the alternative either. Perhaps if her father hadn’t died, if her mother hadn’t immediately married Kane, if Marcus’s claim to leadership had been a bit less shaky, if he’d had any children of his own; maybe Clarke would’ve had more choice, and more time. But she doesn’t. Being engaged to a man she’s seen once before she’s even graduated high school isn’t exactly what she envisioned as a little girl. And to someone like Bellamy—

Clarke isn’t afraid of many things, and she’s not afraid of him, but if she were to be afraid of anyone— Bellamy has earned fear. His name is whispered in dark rooms and spit as a threat across battlefields. He’s a beast, a boogeyman: a monster amongst monsters.

He’s handsome, she thinks, when she allows herself to think about it. At least he’s handsome.

She’s put on suppressants immediately after the bargain with Bellamy has been struck, even though she hasn’t presented yet. They all know she’ll be an omega, have known since she was born. It’s rare to test for designation, the procedure exclusive and expensive, but the Griffins have never been known to shy away from something so little as a price-tag.

Sometimes she wishes the test had been wrong. That she’d been born a beta, or an alpha even, and then she wouldn’t have to go through with the idiotic farce of a marriage. But then she thinks harder and realizes there’d be no escaping. Her mother’s beta status hadn’t saved her from not one but two arranged marriages, not that Clarke has ever heard her complaining. If she’d been born a different designation, she’d simply be engaged to someone else. Still, she’d be spared the humiliation of the biology.

With Bellamy an alpha, and her an omega, marriage and mating are synonymous. She’ll have her heats suppressed until the time comes for them to marry, at which point she’ll be married, knotted, and mated; all before she has a chance to get to known her husband-to-be. And everyone will know.

She knows in normal society that people have partners before they marry. That her friends at school aren’t virgins, and that alphas see omegas through their heats without mating all the time. But that’s not an option for her.

Clarke would like to rebel, would like to have someone of her own, on her own terms. Let biology take its course and screw the plans. But it would be a death sentence for that person, if not for Clarke as well. Bellamy won’t take her if she’s soiled. No one will.

For some reason the idea doesn’t scare her as much as it should.

Anyways, it’s a moot point. She’s as safe as it can get barring her own mistakes. It’s traditional in circles like hers to have the wedding right before an omega’s first heat, but these days that can mean anything if you’re lucky enough, and with the help of the right suppressants. Clarke’s got the best money can buy. Bellamy is being relatively generous, even, for letting her go to college first. Maybe she’ll push him again as it closer to the end, aim for grad school, med school maybe. She could buy herself another five years.

College is the closest to freedom that she’s ever had, even with the bodyguard who follows her everywhere. She doesn’t have friends, not really, but she’s off-campus, and she loves her work. She loves going to class, she loves learning. It’s depressing to know it means nothing— she be a trophy wife to Bellamy no matter how many degrees she gets; women in her world don’t work. But still, she’s good at it and that’s—  it feels good.

It goes well for three years, no bumps, no mishaps, no failed classes or assassination attempts. No missed suppressants, no unladylike behavior, no loss of innocence. But then— her mother visits.

“Come,” Abby tells her. “We’re going shopping.”

It becomes clear immediately that they’re shopping for something, not just doing something fun. Her mother’s eye is too calculating as she looks Clarke over, too critical as she tugs the fabric tighter around Clarke’s waist, watching the way her breasts spill out of the tops in the size she used to wear.

“You’ve gained weight,” she tells Clarke gravely, like it’s a terminal diagnosis. Clarke rolls her eyes and pulls back, snatching herself away with a frown.

“Who cares?”

Abby raises an eyebrow, crossing her arms over her chest. She’s tall, willowy. Not like Clarke in the slightest, but why should she be? She’s not an omega, after all. “Your fiancé might.”

Clarke glares at her own reflection. She likes her body just fine as it is. “And I repeat, who cares? I have a year and a half, he can sneer at me disdainfully himself if he’d like.”

“You will see him tonight.”

Clarke whirls at the words, her mouth dropping open. “What— no! He agreed, til the end of college! I haven’t graduated.”

If Abby was the type to roll her eyes, she’d do it now, but she isn’t. Instead she just looks down her nose at her daughter, taking in her wild eyes and flushed face with cool indifference. “He would like to meet you. Speak to you. This has no bearing on the wedding.” She looks Clarke up and down, lip twisting. “God willing, that is.”

Clarke isn’t sure how best to play along. She’s numb through the rest of the day, letting Abby take her into the salon, wash and buff and trim her to a shine, and shove her into a dress that if Clarke was in a better mood she’d describe as lawyer-whore chic and heels that make her look slightly taller than she actually is, although it’s still not a lot.

She looks like a little doll.

If this had been a courtship, if the wedding was not already set, there’d be a chaperone, but it’s too late for that. Her mother drops her off with a sniff and an oblique threat to not fuck this whole thing up. Clarke feels nothing.

He’s waiting when she walks in. She’d like to say she’d almost forgotten his face, but it’s not true. She recognizes him instantly, and the scent that overwhelms her. She steels herself, rolling her shoulders back and shaking her hair. Typical fucking alpha.

Bellamy watches her approach with a small smirk, sipping on a glass of something amber. Whiskey, most likely. He stands as she gets closer, pulling out the chair across from where he was sitting. Clarke resists the urge to take the seat he’s just vacated, just to see what he’d do. It’s too early to show her cards.

She takes the hand he offers and allows him to help her into her chair. He pulls her hair back over her shoulders as she sits. It’s a move Clarke would normally never allow, but as he does it his fingers graze her neck, barely brushing over her scent glands. Her mind goes completely blank, a shudder running through her body.

He’s smiling as he takes his seat across from her, eyes gleaming black with satisfaction.

“You look very beautiful tonight, princess.”

Clarke blinks at him. The haze begins to clear from her head, the butterflies in her stomach going sour. “My name is Clarke.”

Bellamy raises an amused eyebrow. “I am aware of that, yes.”

Clarke opens her mouth to say something biting like ‘you could’ve fooled me’ or ‘then save the pet names for your dogs’ or ‘please, alpha, don’t make me marry you’, but she thinks better of it and closes it again. She takes a sip of water, examining the edge of her napkin.

“Would you like a drink? Wine, maybe?”

She shrugs in response.

He seems content to just watch her, not that she’s checking. His scent is heavy with pleasure though, warm and bright and chokingly good. It makes her almost dizzy, and she tries to subtly breathe through her mouth to avoid it. She’s quiet for a long time, wrapped up in her thoughts. He must have missed a blocker, or maybe he takes low doses to maintain his alpha schtick for the Outfit, Clarke’s not sure. Either way, it’s inconvenient for her, and likely any other omega he comes across.

How many others is he around?, her omega wonders nervously. Does he want them? Do they make him smell like this too?

Clarke takes another sip of water. She doesn’t look at him.

“Is this how it’s going to be, then?”

She startles at the sound of his voice, pulling her out of her reverie. He’s still looking at her, but his expression is resigned, shoulders tense. His grip around his glass is tight enough his knuckles have gone white. His scent, though still regrettably delicious, is less overwhelmingly intense.

“How what’s going to be, sir?”

Bellamy frowns. “Our marriage,” he says, sounding tired. “And you don’t have to call me sir.”

Clarke bristles, lips tightening. Her voice is hard, and Abby would kill her if she heard the next words out of her mouth. “I will not call you alpha.”

Bellamy actually cracks a smile at that. “You will eventually, omega,” he purrs. Clarke shivers involuntarily, heat shooting between her legs at the crude use of her designation. She rubs her thighs together and his grin widens. “But Bellamy will do fine for now.”

He’s so— irritating, for someone who could have Clarke and her entire family killed at any minute. Who could kill her right now, if he wanted. She’s heard stories of his brutality, and yet, here he is, grinning at her. Boyishly charming, and handsome. He’s wearing a suit, and it should make him look official, but it’s artfully disheveled. His long dark curls graze the collar in a way her stepfather would never allow.

“How’s school?” Bellamy asks, and her eyes snap back to his.

“Fine.”

“What are you studying?”

“Biology.”

“What an excellent conversationalist my fiancée is.” He gives her a wry smile over his whiskey, raising his glass. “You can’t bore me into finding another wife, you know that as well as I do. We may as well make some attempt to get to know each other at least little bit before—” Bellamy trails off, his eyes falling to her neck. Clarke resists the urge to pull her hair over her scent glands. They prickle, itchy with just the idea of being touched.

Of being bitten.

“How’s work, then?” Clarke shoots back, sitting back in her seat. “I’d love to hear about your life too. About the— family.”

It’s a trick, and he sees it, but his smile doesn’t fall. If anything, he looks even more satisfied at her challenge. “Oh, how easy it would be spill my secrets to a Griffin,” he says, shaking his head. “But I know better than that. Once we’re married, princess, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

Will he? It would be unusual, to let a woman in on business secrets, even if she is his wife. Even Abby isn’t privy to the inner machinations of Kane’s Outfit, nor was she privy to Jake’s before his untimely death. Clarke looks Bellamy over thoughtfully, holding her water to her mouth. “I’ll still be a Griffin.”

His lip curls. “Not by name. And not where it counts.”

She considers him, searching his face for— something. Some sign that he’s joking, or being cruel, but there’s nothing. He’s an open book, or at least he seems like it. “I’m an art minor,” Clarke offers eventually, setting her glass down on the table. It’s a concession. “Painting. And my biology thesis is on differential metabolomics between designations. Or it will be once it’s finished.”

“What does that mean?”

Clarke hesitates. Abby would hate if she answered, hate it if she bored him with the details of her research. That in itself is enough to make her continue.

Bellamy nods as she speaks, asking questions in the right places. He seems more interested than she would’ve expected, given how obvious it is that the subject is well outside his scope of knowledge. She tries not to allow it to endear him to her.

They order, and chat, and eat. He tells her about his sister, Octavia, and abashedly admits he wanted to be a historian when he was growing up. She laughs at that, and he doesn’t get angry. It’s shocking, given his reputation, his alpha-ness, but she’s really not afraid of him. No, Clarke feels regrettably at ease.

Of course, not enough that she wants to marry him. There are times, odd lulls in the conversation, where she can tell he’s holding something back. He’s a crime boss, a lord of the underworld she was born into, and there’s no escaping that. There’s no escaping that she wouldn’t have chosen him, if she’d been allowed a choice.

Clarke sees an opening. She wasn’t planning on asking so early in the year, and hadn’t even entertained the idea of asking him directly, but— he’s here, and he’s listening, and he seems interested.

“I was thinking,” Clarke broaches carefully, giving him a shy smile. Her hand inches across the table, coming to rest lightly beside her water glass. Every move is calculated, every glance and flutter of her eyelashes a glue trap waiting for him to get stuck. “Maybe I could continue my research. I know there’s no need for me to work, but I like it. And I really do think this could be useful to other people.”

“Yeah?” He smiles, and Clarke tries not to shiver as he slides his fingers across her palm. She’s got him, she thinks.

“Yeah. And grad school isn’t that long really, only a few years. Four, maybe five—”

His fingers wrap around her hand, squeezing slightly. “I’m sure something could be arranged.” Clarke’s heart leaps, success roaring through her chest. She beams at him. “I’m sure there are plenty of programs in New York.”

She freezes. “New York?”

“Of course,” Bellamy says, nodding. “I don’t expect my wife to just stay home all day, but we’ll have to make sure it’s a manageable commute.”

My wife.

He’s misunderstood her, possibly on purpose. “I—” she stutters, her throat thick as the wheels spin in her head. “I really like my advisor, actually. I was hoping to apply to the graduate program here.”

Bellamy frowns. “That won’t be possible, Clarke, you know that. Once we’re married, and mated—”

“We don’t have to be.” The words leave her in a rush, spilling out on top of his. Clarke gives him a weak smile. “Or— not yet, I mean.”

Bellamy’s expression is hard, his eyes burning. His hand clamps down around hers. “This advisor of yours, is he an alpha?”

Clarke’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. “Yes, but—”

“You expect me—” he continues darkly, “—to just leave my fiancée, my omega, unmated so she can spend more fucking years working with another alpha, smelling like that?”

She stiffens, insulted. She takes her suppressants everyday, and she still hasn’t even presented, technically. She doesn’t smell like anything. And she is not his omega. “It’s not like that. He’s not interested in me, nor I in him. And besides that, I’m on suppressants—”

“Not enough, clearly,” Bellamy sneers. Clarke glowers, attempting to wrench her hand back, but he holds fast. “I could smell you the second you walked in. Suppressants can’t keep your heat in check forever, princess. You were close, when I first met you, and it’s been five years. You really think they’ll last another six?”

He leans in closer. His fingers extend down her wrist, clasping around the scent glands there. Twisting, he turns her hand over, frowning at the bare spot on her fourth finger where a ring would sit. “I’m not a patient man, Clarke. I gave you your college years; don’t ask me for more.”

Bellamy drops her hand, and the conversation is over.

****

The rest of the dinner is awkward. They’re both enraged, but both too stubborn to admit it. She can smell it on him though, a sharp tang that makes her feel like she needs to hide, or show him her belly. She does neither, and her cutlery scraping over her plate is deafening in the silence that follows.

He drops her off at her apartment with nary a word. She’s not sure how he knows where to go.

The next day she goes to class as usual, and to the lab. She works with a sort of self-righteous fury that leaves her uncomfortably warm. Her advisor sends her uneasy looks but says nothing, keeping his distance after she snaps him when he points out she’s accidentally borrowed his lab coat. Her bodyguard is equally silent, his menacing presence in the corner of the lab a given at this point. Clarke doesn’t understand why her advisor keeps looking at him, too.

Bellamy is waiting at her apartment when she gets home. She stalks past him without a glance. “What do you want?”

“I have something for you,” he says, his voice husky. “Invite me in, and leave your dog at the door.”

Clarke glances at her bodyguard, who looks unmoved at the rude nickname. He nods slightly. Clarke huffs, and finishes unlocking the door. She doesn’t hold the door for Bellamy, but he follows her anyways.

“This is…charming.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, setting her bag on the breakfast bar. Her apartment is smaller than it needs to be, but still more luxurious than any normal college student would be able to afford. She wanted to blend in at least a little, but the security was non-negotiable.

She turns, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well?”

“I wanted to—” he pauses, searching for a word, “—clear the air, before I go back to New York. The next time we see each other won’t be until the engagement party in December.”

Good, Clarke thinks, her nose in the air. Even that is too soon.

“The way I acted at dinner was… regrettable. I know this is an adjustment for both of us, and I shouldn’t have been so— forceful.”

She wishes he wouldn’t look at her like that. His eyes are so dark, pupils huge, and it makes funny things happen in her belly. She hates him, and his stupid alpha scent that she won’t be able to get out of her apartment for days.

“Have you changed your mind?” Clarke asks, expression carefully blank.

“No.”

Her heart sinks, but she does not allow herself to show it. “Fine.”

Bellamy steps closer, taking something from his pocket. “I have something for you.”

Clarke glances at the dark velvet box and flinches internally. She should’ve guessed.

She stands still as he invades her space, taking her hand. She can feel the satisfaction rolling off him as he slides the ring into place. Marking her as his. “There.”

Clarke pulls away, turning from him, and Bellamy goes still. His muscles tense, chest puffing, and his nostrils flare. She frowns. “What—?”

He tugs her towards him, sealing his body against hers. She can feel the growl that vibrates through his chest, the bump of his nose against her neck as he shoves his face into her hair. “I can smell him on you, omega.”

Clarke feels a hot rush of fear and— something else. Something that makes her panties damp, makes her ache for something inside her. For him.

“B-bellamy, wait, it’s just—” Her words cut off into a moan as his tongue slides down her neck, running over her scent glands. He marks her again, with his own scent this time, so there’s no mistaking who she belongs to.

Her omega purrs at the thought, but her conscious mind jerks back.

“Mine.”

No. She’s not his, not anyone’s. Not yet. For now, Clarke belongs to herself. She only has a year left of freedom. She will not submit to him before she must.

His smell though, is overwhelming. So strong, so good; it makes her reactions slow. Makes her head foggy. Makes her want— him. She arches her back, feeling the hard press of his cock against her ass. He grinds forward, fingers sliding over her stomach, over her thighs—

“Alpha, please—”

Bellamy freezes. Clarke whimpers as he peels himself off her, pushing her away, and feels bereft until she gets a whiff of clean air. Her eyes widen, and she backs away.

“Clarke—” He looks apologetic, but she doesn’t trust it. Doesn’t trust him.

She shakes her head. “No,” she says, voice trembling slightly. “Go away.”

Bellamy holds up his hands, taking a big step back. “It’s fine, I won’t—” his teeth grit together, like he has to force the words out. “I’m not going to touch you.”

His eyes are still black though, and she hears the word he doesn’t say. Yet.

“Just go.”

“I will, but Clarke— you have to call your mom. You can’t— your scent.”

“There is nothing wrong with my scent,” Clarke spits. Her whole body is hot, stomach cramping. She feels shaky, dizzy like she has a fever. Her panties are soaked, like she’s gotten her period. “It’s you. I don’t smell like anything, so it must be you.”

“It’s not,” Bellamy swears. He takes a half step forward. “Clarke—”

She can’t listen anymore. She turns tail and runs, locking herself in the bathroom. She sets the shower on cold and pops a couple of fever reducers for good measure, stripping off her clothes. There’s no blood on her underwear, of course. Just slick. More than she’s ever seen. Clarke’s throat closes.

She’s— she’s fine. She’s just sick. Bellamy will leave, and she’ll go to sleep, and when she wakes up everything will be back to normal. He’s just— imagining things. Being an alpha.

Alpha.

Clarke shudders, struck by the unrelenting need to open the door, to check if he’s still there. She gets all the way across the room, fully naked with one hand on the doorknob, before she catches herself. She throws herself into the cold shower.

It’s going to be fine, she thinks, shivering under the icy water. She feels just fine.

****

It’s not fine.

She feels so horny she can’t breathe, even after the shower. She stays under the water so long her lips turn blue, and even that isn’t enough to stop it.

By the time she gets out, Bellamy's gone. Clarke doesn't have a chance to be grateful. In his place, standing impatiently in her hallway is Abby, car keys in hand.

“Get dressed,” she orders her daughter, voice rife with irritation. “Let’s go.”

“It’s a breakthrough heat,” the doctor tells her mother once they arrive at the clinic. Nobody looks at Clarke where she sits flushed and sweaty on the exam table. She clenches her thighs together, wincing as the paper crinkles underneath her ass. It’s humiliating, sitting there in the hospital gown, her thighs dripping with slick. She’s not even fully in heat yet, not even close, but the fire in her belly is almost overwhelming. She can’t even imagine what a true heat will be like.

The room is cold, AC blasting in an attempt to keep her heat at bay, and it makes Clarke’s nipples prickle uncomfortably beneath the gown. The fabric feels rough on her skin. She wants to tear it off, needs to tear it off, but—

She crosses her ankles, squeezing her fists tight.

“Can you stop it?” Abby asks.

A doctor shrugs. She’s an alpha, Clarke can smell it despite the woman’s blockers, but just barely. Not like it was with Bellamy. Her hair is long and dark and shiny, hanging down in sheets over her white coat. “We can postpone it. For a time.”

Abby waves a hand. “Do it.”

Still, no one acknowledges Clarke. Not when they grab her arm, not when they inject her with the emergency suppressants.

“How long will they last?” Abby asks brusquely. Her eyes follow the needle, not bothering to check her daughter’s face.

“Three months, give or take. If you bring her back in next week, we can do some bloodwork to pin it down more precisely.”

“Yes, we’ll do that. We have an entire wedding to plan so it needs to be exact.” Abby sniffs at the inconvenience, like it’s Clarke’s fault she has to move up the wedding, and it’s not fair. Clarke didn’t ask to see Bellamy, and she sure as hell didn’t ask for him to skip his blockers and throw her into heat. Hell, she didn’t ask to be engaged to him in the first place.

“Of course.” The doctor nods like this is all fine, all normal. Like her patient’s life isn’t about to be uprooted, like she’s not going to be pulled out of college and married off like chattel. Like Clarke wants this. Or like it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t. “She’ll have to keep her distance from the groom until then. If his scent was enough to set her off now, then a second exposure before the marriage could result in—”

Clarke glares at the ring sparkling happily on her finger. She wonders if he did it on purpose, because she asked about grad school. If this is her punishment.

“I won’t do it,” Clarke says quietly. Two sets of eyes turn towards her, two sets of neatly plucked eyebrows arched questioningly. Her fists clench. “I won’t marry him.”

Her mother’s eyes flash, expression darkening. Clarke resists the urge to shrink back, to hide behind the exam table.

Abby’s annoyed gaze flicks to the doctor, who shrugs apologetically. “A side effect of the suppressants, most likely. They have a tendency to make omega patients a bit less”— she searches for a word here, hands waving dismissively—“pliant.”

Clarke flinches.

“The effects are temporary, of course, nothing to worry about,” the doctor continues. “But perhaps we should move this conversation to my office.”

The two older women exchange a meaningful look, moving towards the door without another word towards Clarke. She’s left alone, three months ticking down over her head like a pipe-bomb ready to blow. She could give in now, let it happen. Let it tear her life apart in one ugly explosion.

Instead, she starts to plan.

Chapter Text

“In a little more around the waist, I think.”

The seamstress pulls the heavy white fabric slightly tighter around Clarke’s body and she shrugs. “Whatever you think is best.”

The woman looks at Abby, who nods. She’s got the final say on all of this stuff anyways.

It’s her final dress fitting before the wedding. The dress had been one of the first things they picked, after she left school. There was no reason to stay, and Clarke hadn’t fought her mother when she suggested dropping out. The wedding is set for nearly a month before the end of the semester, too long before finals for Clarke to be able to finish early. Better to just withdraw immediately, rip off the bandaid. Her advisor had been shocked when she told him, and disappointed in a way that made Clarke’s stomach clench. Didn’t he know that this was always how it was going to be for her?

Probably not, if she’s honest. Mob connections aren’t exactly anyone’s first assumption, and she’s not even sure he knew she was an omega. Before her unfortunate encounter with her fiancé she had smelled like any other beta student.

Not anymore.

Once the dress is pinned and painstakingly peeled from her body, she only has three more appointments to get through. The wedding preparations are elaborate, each successive step leaving Clarke more and more filled with an impending sense of doom. All of these people celebrating how her life is about to begin, and all she can feel is it drawing to an end. 

There’s an energy in her, slightly unsettled, and she knows that the doctors were right. Her heat is coming, right on schedule. In three days, if all goes according to the prescribed plan, Clarke will be ensconced in her marriage bed, taking her husband’s knot for the first time, and that will push her over.

The thought makes her sick. 

Clarke has made other plans. She may be sheltered, but she grew up in a family where crime was a way of life. She’s nothing if not resourceful.

The wedding ceremony is set to take place at the family church, with the reception to follow at a nearby hotel owned by her stepfather. Clarke arranged to stay there in the months before the wedding instead of moving home. Abby was concerned about all the alphas coming and going from the house, seeing Kane for business or— at least she was when Clarke oh-so-casually wondered about it.

So many scents, she had said. But they only said to stay away from Bellamy, so it should be fine. Right, Mom?

The hotel is equipped with a state-of-the-art indoor pool, and Clarke took to swimming laps for exercise. She was supposed to keep as cool as possible, after all.

She goes again today, when she finally finishes with the prescribed activities. They’ve set aside times specifically for her, a perk of being the owner’s stepdaughter, so she’s alone in the locker room. No need for a bodyguard inside, not with all the security on the outside of the building. That means there’s no one to watch her as she adds the last passport to her stash.

She’s developed somewhat of a collection, over the past few months. The lockers are the kind with settable codes, so any hotel-goers can use them. Clarke uses a random one each time she swims for her clothes, making sure her scent is diffuse across the lot of them, but there’s one she returns to each time: B12.

Inside is a backpack containing everything she needs to run.

Before leaving school, she applied for multiple of the high-limit credit cards offered to her as a college student. She also sold all the furniture in her apartment for cash, and slowly started taking withdrawals from her trust. With some of the cash, she bought passports: all from different sellers, all with the same photo of her with her hair pulled back, wearing glasses. With the cards she bought plane tickets: to Mallorca, to Prague, to Tokyo, to Cancun, and more. Big and small cities, all over the world. So long as they aren’t in the US.

Also in the bag are clothes she’s thieved from other lockers, scent-reducing body wash, scent-concealing spray, and another dose of emergency suppressants. They’re the pill form, which don’t work as well as injection, but they’re fine as a contingency plan. A second dose at this point will hold her heat off for maybe 48 hours at most, enough to get her wherever she needs to go, but Clarke doesn’t expect to need them if she gets away before the wedding night.

And she will, god damn it.

She has to.

****

One of the benefits of having her supposed purity used as a bartering chip is that she’s spared the ordeal of a bachelorette party.

Unfortunately the alternative is a prolonged bridal shower with a bunch of evil Abby clones of various ages who all like Clarke even less than her mother does. Clarke gets the idea that marrying Bellamy is somewhat of a coup for the Griffin name, and for Kane in turn, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem here. No, the issue with these women is that they’re jealous of her not because of the power she’s wedding, but the man.

The body.

Everyone else is enjoying the benefits of an open bar, inhibitions falling as their blood alcohol content rises. Clarke is permitted only one drink, so she’s stone cold sober. She can see the way they’re all eyeing her critically, hear how they whisper just a little too loud.

Too small, she hears. Too curvy. Not what he normally goes for, that’s for certain. And like a punchline; whispered between two girls not much older than her, their brows raised speculatively: Does she really think she’ll be able to take him?

If all goes according to plan, she won’t have to try.

It makes her feel uncomfortable: all the talk. It’s not even the judgement, or the insults. It’s the fact that the bitterness coming from the women her age appears to be based in something real, like they know him. Not the ones from her side necessarily, but the guests from New York seem like they know Bellamy personally. Like they know what he goes for. Like they know just how much Clarke would have to take, because they’ve had him. Taken him.

He’s supposed to be her fiancé, her future mate. Has he fucked every woman in New York, all while Clarke has been practically locked in a chastity belt?

The idea makes her seethe.

It’s not— she doesn’t care who he’s been with. Why would she? A man who looks like Bellamy does—an alpha with power who looks like Bellamy does—could have whoever he wanted. Probably has had whoever he wanted. And she’s not planning on sticking around anyways, so why should it bother her if he’s a philanderer? She’s just angry because it’s not fair.

Besides, some small part of her crows bitterly; Clarke is an omega. Of course she can take him. She’s built to take him.

She just doesn’t want to.

“They all hate you, you know.”

Clarke startles slightly, her face relaxing in confusion. She hadn’t realized she’d been glaring. At her side is a tall brunette, her long hair falling in shiny sheets down the back of a midnight blue gown. Her makeup is intense, nothing like the peachy virginal look Clarke’s been allowed, but she can’t be much older if at all. 

Clarke turns back to the room, watching the eyes that flick not so casually away from her as she does. “They could be a bit more subtle about it.”

The girl laughs, something gritty and raspy that surprises Clarke in its inelegance. “Don’t hold your breath.” She grins mirthlessly at Clarke and extends a hand. “Octavia.”

Clarke’s eyes widen as she takes it. “The sister.”

“The sister,” Octavia agrees, somewhat bitterly. She looks Clarke over. “You know, you don’t seem as excited as I’d expected. Shouldn’t you be arrogant as fuck, lording it over all of them? You’ve won, after all.”

And what a prize it is, Clarke sighs internally. She considers Octavia for a moment, weighing her words with what she knows about the girl, about her possible motivations.

“No offense to your brother, but would you be? Marrying someone you don’t know, dropping out of school, moving halfway across the country. Leaving everything you know behind.”

Octavia raises an eyebrow. “Is what you know really that good?”

“No,” Clarke concedes, shrugging lightly. “But is he?”

The other girl snorts. “Touché. And for fairness, I wouldn’t be excited either. Thankfully my brother knows me well enough not to try and pull this shit with me.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s not entirely stupid,” Octavia says, grinning conspiratorially at Clarke over her champagne. “He knows I’d run.” The blonde shifts uncomfortably, unsure of how to respond. She laughs, a beat too late, as if Octavia had just been joking around. The forced sound of it earns her a curious look. “Thought about it, haven’t you?”

Clarke shrugs, smiling weakly back. “Maybe once or twice.”

“It wouldn’t work, you know.” Clarke blinks at the sudden change in tone, at the way the brunette’s eyes go piercing. All of Octavia’s attention is fixed on Clarke, her words like ice down down Clarke’s spine. “The only reason I’d get away is because he’s my brother and he’d let me. There’s no getting out of this world, not if someone’s looking for you. And if you’re caught—”

“I know.”

Octavia lets out a deep breath, shoulders relaxing. Her expression gentles. “For what it’s worth, I don’t hate you. In fact, I think I might actually be happy to to have a sister, so long as it’s you.  Bellamy could’ve chosen a worse girl to force to marry him.” She makes a face. “One who would’ve been excited about it.”

Clarke feels a little guilty at the other girl’s pleasure, knowing she will be gone before they even head back to New York. She won’t ever be Octavia’s sister, or even her friend. She’ll just be gone.

She tries not to let the girl’s previous warning shake her resolve.

“How awful that would’ve been,” Clarke replies drily.

Octavia beams. “See that right there? I can tell you’re going to be trouble. And since we’re going to be sisters, I can let you in on a little secret.” She leans closers, whispering conspiratorially. “Trouble is a Blake family favorite.”

Clarke clinks her glass with the other girl’s in a mock toast, grinning tightly. At least that’s something she can deliver.

****

She doesn’t get back to her room until late.

The night was exhausting. Abby had pulled her away from Octavia shortly after their conversation, not even sparing the other girl a look. After that Clarke had been shuffled from matriarch to matriarch of the New York families, forced to stand in front of them while they looked down their noses at her and sniffed to Abby about how lucky she was, that Clarke had been born an omega.

Pretty enough, but if she’d been a beta, well— they’d said, letting the thought trail off. Luckily that’s not the case!

Clarke did not appreciate the implication.

Nor did she like the way some of the younger women had stuck their noses into the conversations. She’d met some real characters, not the least being a woman named Echo who looked her over with a sneer and immediately asked her mother: How old did you say she was, again?

Younger than she’d like to be, given the circumstances. But twenty-one was a normal age for a woman to get married, in their circles. At least, for a woman of Clarke’s social stature. Especially an omega.

Clarke had tuned out the rest of the brunette’s snide remarks. She didn’t need to hear her mother agree with them.

She tells her bodyguard goodnight in the hallway, tiredly unlocking the door to her suite. Normally he’d come in and check it for her, but he’s tired too, and the hotel is essentially on lockdown.

It’s dark inside, the smell comfortingly familiar. She kicks off her heels at the door, unpinning her hair. It falls in soft golden curls over her shoulders. Clarke lets out a soft groan at the relief, her scalp aching from the weight of having it up for so long.

Her feet pad across the floor to the bedroom, bypassing the sitting area and kitchenette. She hardly ever uses them, after all there’s no real need. It’s not like she has anyone to invite over. Her dress is unzipped and kicked unceremoniously off, leaving Clarke in just her underwear as she shuffles through her dresser. The lights of the city shine in through the open blinds, illuminating the room in a soft orange glow.

She extracts a nightgown from her drawer and tosses it on the bed. Her fingers reach behind her, finding the clasp of her bra.

“Clarke.”

She jolts at the voice, spinning towards it. She tries and fails to keep from stuttering.  “You—you’re not supposed to be here.” Bellamy steps forward and she inches back. “We’re not supposed to see each other until the wedding.”

The backs of her knees hit the bed and she stops, snatching the nightgown off the covers and clutching it to her chest. It barely covers anything.

Bellamy stops in the doorway of the bedroom, not coming any closer. He gives her a wry smile, but Clarke can see the black of his eyes even in the dim light. “I don’t think twelve hours will make much of a difference at this point. They gave us an extra two days, so that you wouldn’t go into heat until you’re—”

Knotted.

Clarke cuts him off, flushing deeply. “Yes, thank you, I’m aware. But it’s still not safe.”

She wants him out, as fast as possible. She doesn’t want to have to look at him—smell him—and lie to his face. Clarke personally doesn’t mind, but her omega rebels against it. She’s worried her scent might change, give her away. That he’ll know she’s lying, know she’s going to run. Unlike Octavia, she doesn’t expect him to let her go.

Stay, her omega pleads. Alpha will provide.

Clarke takes another step back.

Bellamy’s eyes follow. Clarke can see the twitch of his muscles, the tick of his jaw as he keeps himself from giving chase. She swallows hard and turns, pulling the slip over her head. The nightgown is too short—and too thin—but it covers her slightly better on than off, and frees her arms in case she needs to use them.

“Why are you here?”

She’s proud of the steadiness of her voice, the strength of her words.

“I came to—to speak to you. I know that this”—he gestures vaguely around the room, but it's clear he means the situation as a whole and not just her accommodations—“isn’t what you wanted.” His eyes soften slightly, drinking her in. Clarke resists the urge to cross her arms over her chest, hide the remaining skin from his view. “I didn’t mean to trap you.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Not like this. I’m a man of my word. I told you you could finish college. I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Bellamy sighs. “I want you to know that this isn’t some kind of punishment.”

“I never considered that,” Clarke replies, even though she certainly did. She had eventually deemed it unlikely, due to the unpredictable nature of breakthrough heats, but not implausible.

She hates him, good and truly. He can take his half-hearted apologies and go to hell. If he truly cared about her feelings, he wouldn’t be forcing her to marry him at all. He wouldn’t be looking at her like that, like he owned her.

“I’d like to make you a deal,” he says, and Clarke blinks.

“Me?”

No one ever makes deals with her. Everything in her life goes through Abby, or Marcus, or Jake before him. Clarke’s wants, Clarke’s agreement— they’ve never mattered.

She supposes it’s different in this case. She’s supposed become his wife, his mate. Almost a part of him, in a way. Once they were mated, he’d be able to feel her unhappiness, her discomfort, her rage. It makes sense that he’d want to placate her.

Of course, Clarke doesn’t intend to let that happen, but she’s curious.

“I cannot let you go back to your school immediately. The bond will be too fresh to allow it, and things are—unstable, right now, in New York. But—” He grimaces, as though the words are physically painful for him to say. “After a year, maybe two, we could revisit it. You’d have to take guards, of course, and return on weekends. But you could finish your degree.”

“That’s—generous,” she says cautiously, and in a way, it is. It’s far more than she’d ever expected him to give, far more than she’d thought he would even entertain. Far less than it would take to make her stay, however.

Her fingers fidget with the hem of her slip, running over the satiny fabric, and his eyes narrow. “What are you thinking, princess?”

Her heartbeat kicks up a notch, pounding hard in her chest as she looks up. Her eyes are wide, mouth dry. “Nothing.” It comes out a squeak. She licks her lips and shakes her head. “Just— I didn’t expect it. Thank you, alpha.”

The word slips out of her unbidden, but it serves its purpose.

Bellamy relaxes. She can smells the satisfaction rolling off of him and half expects him to starts purring. She’d roll her eyes if he couldn’t see it.

“There’s something else.” He pushes off the door frame, walking towards her. Clarke clenches her fists and swallows, refusing to move as he comes closer and closer still, stopping just in front of her.

He takes her hand, turning her arm in his grip. She feels the cool brush of metal, the slight weight of stones. They clink softly as he fastens the bracelet around her wrist.

“This—” Bellamy swallows slightly, his eyes fixed on the jewelry, on the scent gland it shifts to cover. Clearing his throat, he turns her wrist back over and releases it. His voice is gruff. “This was my mother’s. It’s— well, something old and something blue, I guess.”

Clarke blinks, her breath caught in her throat. Slowly, she lifts her wrist, watching the way the gems sparkle against her skin. Sapphires.

“It’s—lovely.” Clarke is disarmed, her omega cooing at the gift. She shakes her head, trying to clear the pleasurable haze that clouds her thoughts. “But—I can’t take this. It was your mother’s, it should go to Octavia, or—” Your daughter, she thinks, but she can’t say that. After all, his daughters are meant to be hers.

“It’s yours, Clarke.” She looks up, catching a flash of a catlike grin on his lips. He shrugs. “Matches your eyes.”

She looks down at the delicate bracelet again, admiring the way it gleams. “Thank you,” she says, her throat slightly thick. “I love it.”

Bellamy steps forward, sliding a hand beneath her chin and tilting it up. Clarke freezes as he leans in, brushing a soft kiss over her lips. Her whole body is on edge, ready to shudder, eager to feel his hard muscles against her.

She steps back, spine stiffening. Her arms wrap around her torso, holding back the shivers. “You should go.”

Bellamy cocks his head, clearly confused by the hardness in her tone. Did he really think it would be that easy? That he could throw her some baubles and she would just give in and simper at his feet with the rest of them?

His lips thin. “Till tomorrow then, omega.”

Clarke feels her temperature tick up a few degrees at the word but all she does is nod.

“Tomorrow.”

****

She throws herself in the shower as soon as he leaves, scrubbing at her skin. His scent is overwhelming, lingering everywhere he touched. She can feel the itchiness of her glands, the heaviness in her stomach that she had been so quick to dismiss last time.

There’s no mistaking what it is.

It’s too soon! If she planned on staying it would be fine, they’d simply leave the reception early and spirit her away to be fucked and mated, her heat quenched by Bellamy’s cum. But Clarke refuses to let that happen.

It’s too early for her to leave now, with the bulk of her stepfather’s security focused on guarding the hotel before the wedding. She briefly entertains the idea of heading to the pool now, taking just the suppressants from the locker and coming back up, but it’s too risky. There’s no reason for her to be there now, and if she’s caught they’ll be suspicious if she's seen heading there again tomorrow during the festivities. 

Instead she scrubs her body raw and opens the windows, letting the frigid November air fill the room and wash Bellamy’s scent away.

She sleeps fitfully, naked except for the bracelet around her wrist and the ring on her finger. Abby finds her like that the next morning: sprawled out on top of the covers, her lips purple. Clarke jerks awake at the disdainful cough.

“Get up,” her mother tells her, one eyebrow raised. “Time to get ready. We've got a long day ahead of us.”

Clarke flushes, slinking out of bed and slipping a robe over her shoulders. She’s ice cold, but that’s a good thing. And she can’t smell Bellamy at all. Maybe it’ll be fine, she thinks. Maybe her plan isn’t ruined. Not yet, at least.

“And close the windows,” Abby adds. “It’s freezing in here.”

Clarke grins, and leaves them cracked.

Chapter Text

Getting ready is a whole production.

A lot of things in Clarke’s life, being who she is, are a whole production, but this— it really takes the cake. The twelve layer, buttercream frosted, artfully decorated meyer-lemon cake, to be exact.

After Abby arrives a veritable slough of beauticians, who poke and prod Clarke into bridal acceptability without saying a goddamn word to her. She sits in a chair in front of a mirror, but it’s not like she can actually see a damn thing they’re doing to her. There’s too many of them blocking her view. 

They wash her face, pluck her eyebrows, paint her eyes and lips and cheeks until she’s fairly certain she looks nothing like herself. Which is fine, why does Clarke care? The wedding is clearly not for her benefit. 

She gets warmer as they work, glands itchy and uncomfortable as her skin is touched and touched and touched, but there’s nothing to be done about it. One of the girls, a small waif of a thing with kind eyes, looks at her apologetically as she dabs medical grade scent blocker over her glands. It won’t stop them from blowing off pheromones like crazy, but it should neutralize them enough to keep her fit for public consumption. The girl sprays a bit of perfume over them to mask the slightly antiseptic smell. It stings.

Her hair is brushed and pulled and somehow both straightened and curled, she thinks, though it’s hard to tell. It gets braided and twisted into a stylish but tasteful chignon, or so Clarke assumes, studded with tiny enamel flower pins that dig into her scalp. They leave little pieces free around her face, cooing over the natural curl as if they hadn’t attempted to beat any sort of naturalness out of her hair in the first place.

When they finally step back, Clarke blinks at the girl in the mirror. She’s wearing the same silk robe that she is, and her hair and eyes are the same color, but— 

She looks away, a lump in her throat. “It’s fine,” she tells them, waving a hand. They hover nervously, looking for tears that could ruin all the work they’ve put into making her look so— bridal. “It’s good.”

The team shuffles out once Abby gives her approval, switching in with the clothing team. Clarke isn’t familiar with any of them, and it’s deeply uncomfortable to have them help her dress. Especially when they bring out the garments she’s expected to wear under her gown.

Clarke, so easily going along with every other irritant that morning, finally balks.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. If she could physically retreat, hide in the bathroom until they put that— that ridiculous thing away, she would. “There’s no way.”

Everybody freezes, unsure of what to do. The girl holding the lingerie set blinks at Abby, as though asking if Clarke is even allowed to say no. 

She’s not, of course.

“Don’t be a child, Clarke,” her mother commands imperiously. “I had my girl pick this out for you. It should be tailored to Bellamy’s exact tastes.”

It’s mere scraps of fabric, basically see through. There’s a bra, if you can call it that, and a thong and a garter belt, all in the most beautiful white eyelash lace Clarke has ever seen, and she’d probably think it was pretty if she wasn’t intended to wear it in front of him . If it wasn’t intended to be torn off her.

“It’s impractical,” she argues weakly. “It won’t hold anything up.”

“It doesn’t need to,” one of the girls adds snidely. “The dress is tight enough you could’ve gone without a stitch.”

Clarke looks at her mother, begging her not to make her, but Abby just raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

Clarke puts on the stupid lingerie.

She feels warmer just wearing it. The lace feels like silk against her skin, which knowing her mother it probably is, but it makes her shiver. She steps into her dress and holds still while the attendants pull it up her body, holding it in place while someone does up the million buttons studding the back. The veil is tucked into her hair with a comb, cascading down over her shoulders.

Clarke stares at herself in the mirror. Her fingers fidget nervously, twisting the bracelet around her wrist. Abby snags her hand, holding it up so the sapphires catch the light. She gives Clarke an approving look.

See , her eyes seem to say. He’s not that bad after all, is he?

Clarke snatches her wrist back and turns away from her reflection. She doesn’t know the girl looking back.

****

It’s not until the ceremony that the heat becomes truly unbearable. She can feel it as she walks down the aisle, a bead of sweat dripping down her spine. Bellamy’s scent is overwhelming, hitting her like a truck with each step she takes nearer to him. His eyes are glued to hers—piercing, possessive—and something in her belly cries victoriously.

Her steps falter.

It’s only a split second, just a moment of hesitation, but it’s enough. She knows he sees it, knows by the way his eyes tighten slightly, by the way his scent sharpens. If she runs now, he will chase her.

She continues on.

Marcus steps forwards as she hits the altar, taking her arm and drawing her the last few steps towards her fiancé. Clarke keeps her eyes down. She does not smile as she takes her place beside Bellamy.

She’s practically vibrating in her own skin. Heat radiates off her like a furnace, and while hopefully the medical grade scent suppressants are keeping him from smelling her, she knows at least he can feel it. Her fingers clench hard around her bouquet, crushing the stems of the bundle. A drip of water runs down her wrist, blissfully cool.

The officiant drones on and on, the words buzzing past her like flies. It doesn’t matter what he says anyways, not to Clarke. It’s not like it means anything.

Either she stays and is trapped, or she gets away. Nothing else matters.

She’s so distracted she barely catches the priest’s direction to face Bellamy, whose hands are extended for her to take. For a moment, Clarke fumbles, unsure of what to do with her bouquet. There’d been no rehearsal, not when she’d been banned from seeing the groom. A bridesmaid, one of the girls Abby chose for purely aesthetic reasons, steps forward and takes it, giving Clarke a gentle smile. 

Clarke tries to smile back, but it’s more of a wince. Hopefully her veil obscures it.

Her hands slip limply into Bellamy’s. The lace edge of her veil flutters back, skating over the swollen glands in her wrists. Clarke shudders, and Bellamy’s fingers tighten around hers. She looks at their joined hands instead of meeting his eyes.

“Do you, Bellamy, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? Do you promise to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, as long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” Bellamy rumbles, the words wrapping around Clarke’s neck like a set of chains. She doesn’t fail to note they’ve chosen to leave out the part about forsaking all others. She feels her heart thump loud in her chest as the priest turns to her, posing the same questions with a relaxed expectation of submission. 

“Do you, Clarke, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband? Do you promise to love him, comfort him, honor and obey him for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, as long as you both shall live?”

Obey.

Her body rebels against the word, no matter how much they claim it’s in her nature. Her spine straightens, chin lifting defiantly. She meets Bellamy’s eyes and he stares at her. His lips almost curl, daring her—

“I do.”

She has to force the words out from between her teeth.

Her head spins, feeling the full weight of what she has done. She hardly moves, hardly even blinks as they exchange rings. The metal is ice cold around her finger. 

“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the priest crows, grinning magnanimously. He gestures Bellamy forward. “You may kiss the bride.”

Bellamy steps into her space, eyes blazing. She can smell the satisfaction dripping off him, the pride—ownership—as he lifts her veil, exposing her face to the waiting crowd. His palm slides down to her cheek, cupping her face in a soft caress. Clarke’s heart squeezes hard in her chest.

There’s a roar of applause as he crushes his lips to hers.  

Clarke practically melts into him, the heat in her blood reaching a new crescendo. His arm loops around her waist, dragging her body against his, pressing her soft breasts against the hard muscle of his torso. She can barely think— all her senses, all her fight drains out of her. When he pulls back, her cheeks are a fever-bright, eyes wide and glassy.

Bellamy’s pride morphs into concern. 

He can tell now, she realizes. Maybe he still can’t smell her—and that’s a big maybe— but it’s written all over her face: just how close she is.

He wraps his arm around her, hand splayed on the small of her back as he leads her down the aisle. He’s still smiling, but it’s tight now. He walks with a purpose, not bothering to stop and talk to any of his cronies in the pews.

They’re supposed to take photos now on the steps of the church, but Bellamy rushes them through it. Clarke is practically boneless against him, sweating in the heavy layers of her dress, and she hardly complains. Instead of the full wedding party, he allows just one of the two of them, and one of them with their families. Abby and Marcus for her, only Octavia for him. Clarke feels her lucidity return as the cold November air blows his scent away from her, cooling her skin.

She sits as far away from him as possible as they climb into the limo that will ferry them between the church and the hotel. The heat is on and she adjusts it immediately, changing the temperature to a cool 60 degrees before pouring herself a glass of champagne. She doesn’t drink it, just presses the glass to her neck beside her scent glands. She can feel Bellamy staring at her, but she doesn’t spare him a glance.

“Are you okay?”

Clarke nods, irritation flashing across her face. “Just warm.”

He creeps towards her, she feels rather than sees, and Clarke scoots slightly farther back. “Is it—?”

She can hear the dark excitement in his tone, barely concealed by his weak attempt at concern. “No,” she informs him, lying through her teeth. “It was just— a lot.”

Bellamy deflates slightly. His nose twitches, scenting the air with a hint of disbelief, but he leaves her obvious lie untouched. He leans back against his seat, pouring his own glass of champagne. “Yeah,” he snorts. “Yeah, it was.”

****

The reception begins with a meal. 

You’d think Clarke would be hungry, having eaten almost nothing that morning, but she can’t seem to stomach anything. She sits as far away from her new husband as possible, which is not very far all things considered. Someone seems to have told the staff about her— predicament, however, because the air is on full, cooling her skin and keeping Bellamy’s scent from overwhelming her again.

She hardly says a word to him, sitting stiff backed with a soft smile plastered on her face. Her dress doesn’t allow her much movement anyways.

She can feel him looking at her, though, can feel the way his body faces hers, the way he puts himself into her space whenever someone approaches. Overbearing. Possessive. It makes her shiver, makes her ache between her legs, makes her— 

Makes her absolutely furious. Who does he think he is?

Your alpha , her omega coos. Your husband.

Right , Clarke thinks. Just great. She rolls her eyes internally. 

The first dance is somehow both better and worse. Better because it gives her a view of the room and the security at the doors, and worse because she’s right next to him, with his hands hot on her feverish skin. It makes her mind fuzzy, makes her mouth water. Almost distracts her enough that she doesn’t notice the door by the kitchens, where the staff are entering and exiting.

Almost.

And just like that, she has her out. Clarke has memorized her way around this floor of the building, traipsing through it during her time as if she hadn’t a care in the world when really she was building a mental map. She knows that that door leads down a hall to the laundry and the kitchens, and it will take her two rights and a left to get to the powder rooms, to the locker, to the pool. To freedom.

She waits, though, biding her time. She has to let the crowd get a little more inebriated, let the focus shift off her and Bellamy. Let Bellamy get caught up with the other men and their—business. 

And eventually, he does. Marcus leads her in a dance, something excruciating and awkward and deeply uncomfortable, and then slaps Bellamy on the back, leading him over to a table of the other Chicago high-ups in the organization. She can still feel his eyes on her, but when she doesn’t immediately get snatched into a dance with someone else, his attention shifts. 

Perfect.

She slips back, moving along the wall. She doesn’t move too fast or too slow, doesn’t make any special expression, just acts—natural. Or as natural as she can when she’s finally, finally making a break for it. 

She’s sweating out of her skin at this point, right on the verge of the heat being too much for her to take. It’s still not quite the right moment, but it’s as good as she’s going to get. If she waits any longer, she’s not going to be able to leave at all.

Clarke holds her breath as she slips out the door. Nobody notices.

Her heart beats like a drum. She lifts her skirts, dropping her shoulders back, and marches purposefully ahead. Some of the staff are in the hall, but she doesn’t acknowledge them, so they don’t acknowledge her back. They are too well trained.

When she makes it to the powder room, she deflates. Her feet race for the lockers, skittering to a stop in her heels in front of B12. Her hands are shaking, fingers stuttering as she attempts to put in the combination. It takes her three tries, desperation rising high in her throat. She feels like her skin is boiling by the time she finally grabs the bag, digging the emergency suppressants out of the front pocket where she’d tucked them. Clarke settles the bag back in place in the locker for a moment while she fumbles with the blister pack, popping the pills into her waiting hands.

Just then, there comes a subtle squeak. The sound of the outer door opening. She’s still concealed in the locker area. 

“Clarke? Are you—?“

Fuck.

Her heart slams into her chest, panic racing through her veins. She gulps the pills down dry, shutting the locker as quietly as she can. The door swings shut and latches, all her carefully laid plans disappearing from view in the blink of an eye. 

“I’m fine!” 

“Do you want me to get someone?” Octavia’s voice is tentative. “You mom or— Bellamy, maybe?”

Clarke’s eyes fly open wider. She spins, searching for something—anything that can explain what she is doing here of all places. Her hands grab a towel and she flits to the sink, soaking it in cold water. 

She holds the towel to her wrists and steps out. The grin she plasters onto her face is weak and probably more than a little guilty, but Octavia has no way of telling what she’s interrupted. “I’m fine, really,” Clarke says. “I just—,” She holds up the towel, shrugging wryly like she’s embarrassed to have been caught instead of terrified. The flush that paints her cheeks is genuine. “I got a little too warm.”

“Oh,” Octavia says. She blinks once, understanding passing over her face. “ Oh ! You mean—”

Clarke backpedals. “ No , no, just—” She winces, looking for an out. If she can get Octavia to leave, maybe she still has time to make her move. “I think I need a few minutes alone to cool down. It’s not— that , yet.”

Octavia bites her lip, shifting from side to side. Her eyebrows are furrowed in concern. “But it’s your first one, right? So you can’t know— I’ve heard omegas push people away, when it’s happening, and don’t realize why. I’ll just— I’ll go get my brother. He’ll know, and then—”

“ No! ” Panic bubbles through her chest like an over-carbonated soda. She smiles again, tossing the towel into a laundry basket. “No, I’m fine. Let’s go back.”

“Are you sure?” The other girl looks so worried that Clarke actually feels bad for lying. Well, she would, if the crushing despair of her chance at freedom crumbling to pieces allowed her room to feel anything else.

“I promise,” she says, stepping forward to put a hand on Octavia’s arm. Her sister-in-law, for better or for worse. “Let’s go back.”

****

Octavia delivers her straight to Bellamy, much to Clarke’s chagrin. He’s finished his conversation with Marcus apparently, the older man sitting back and looking satisfied with himself. 

“What was that all about?” Octavia asks her brother, looking suspiciously between the two men. Clarke is grateful she asked. She’d been wondering herself.

“Nothing, O.” Bellamy brushes her off, to no one’s surprise. “I’ll tell you later.”

The siblings share a look, something that confuses Clarke to no end. Did he— mean it? He would actually tell his little sister about Outfit business? Or, maybe it wasn’t anything to do with business. Maybe he was asking for restaurant recommendations. 

Clarke doesn’t believe that for a second. 

“Come, Clarke,” Bellamy says, holding a hand out expectantly. She eyes the appendage like it’s going to bite her. “Let’s dance.”

Reluctantly, she slides her hand into his. Bellamy leads her out onto the dance floor. He turns as they reach the center, pulling her close against him, hand circling her waist. Clarke moves slowly, her wrists tentatively coming up to link behind his neck. The stones of her bracelet press between her skin and his, biting into his flesh. Bellamy hisses slightly, his lips turning up.

She doesn’t apologize, but then again it doesn’t seem like he wants her to. His eyes look her over appraisingly, searching her face. “How are you?”

The question shocks her, startling an answer from her before she can think. “Fine.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Fine?”

Clarke’s eyes narrow. What is he trying to ask? What does he want her to say? Should she be thrilled that she’s married, that he’s trapped her? “Yes.”

“I just wanted to check in after— earlier.” After the way she’d practically melted against him at the ceremony, he means. Clarke flushes, looking away. “We can leave whenever you need.”

“How generous,” Clarke says, her tone absolute acid. She enjoys his confusion, the way he doesn’t understand why she isn’t falling at his feet like he expects. Why she isn’t panting after him, her alpha.

Her alpha.

Her breath stutters. Suddenly his hands on her waist are burning into her flesh. Her lips part, eyes looking up to find his, black and wanting and right there. Right there. Her belly twists, thighs rubbing together. 

Bellamy’s hand lifts from her waist, finding her jaw. His thumb strokes softly over her cheek. “Clarke?”

She blinks. She can feel the exact minute the emergency suppressants kick in, washing the heat from her heavy abdomen, leaving her feeling sick. She stiffens, flinching away from the hand on her cheek, and she understands.

He’d seen her leave, earlier. He’s the one who sent Octavia after her. He’s been waiting all night, waiting for her heat to take over and leave her brainless, so he can fuck her. Too bad, she thinks. He’ll have to wait.

“Not yet,” Clarke tells her new husband. She steps out of his grip.

Not yet.

****

She holds out till late. Till the party starts to wind down, and her eyes start to grow heavy, and there’s no possible reason she can think of for staying.

They go back to the room together, Clarke herded a half step in front of him as if he’s concerned she’s going to run. She wants to laugh, or maybe cry, at that thought. She would’ve run already if she could’ve. She would’ve been halfway to China by now, or Italy, or Peru. 

They come to a stop at the honeymoon suite, not Clarke’s room. Clarke’s room, which is no longer hers, she supposes. Just another hotel suite. Anyways, it wasn’t deemed big enough, or fancy enough or— she doesn’t know. Romantic enough, for their purposes. For the wedding night.

For her heat.

It’s almost funny, how afraid she’d been of losing herself to the heat. Now, with the emergency suppressants coursing through her body, the idea of being touched seems awful, like the worst possible thing. And not just to her conscious mind, either. It’s like the spot inside her, the hunger she feels around an alpha, around Bellamy in particular, has been frozen. Now, the idea of being touched makes her physically nauseous instead of dizzy with need.

Maybe she prefers that, maybe it’s better this way. At least if he fucks her now, she won’t have to like it. At least she’ll still be herself.

Funnily enough, it doesn’t help.

She’s in front of him still as they reach the bedroom, as he closes the double doors behind him. As he steps towards her, hands settling onto her hips. As his nose presses into her hair, inhaling her scent. As his head dips, as his lips find her neck.

She hates him.

It’s the only thing she can think as Bellamy’s fingers move down her spine, nimbly undoing each of the tiny pearl buttons. She’d kind of expected him to just rip it open, send them spraying across the floor. She can even imagine the sound it would make: the clatter as the buttons hit the floor and the hiss as they rolled away.

He reaches the end of the row. Her dress is loose now around her body, held limply by the tension in the primarily decorative straps. Bellamy’s hands slip over her shoulders, and the fabric falls.

Clarke fights the urge to cover her body. Instead, she steps out of her heels, steps away from the pile of her dress on the floor. She doesn’t look back towards Bellamy behind her, but he follows.

She can feel his eyes hungry on every inch of her. Can feel the way they linger on the lace and bows and ribbons that wrap her like a present, just for him.

She stands stiffly, hardly moving. Her breaths come shallow as he circles her like he is a predator and she is his prey; which—in a way—she supposes she is. Her hands tremble at her sides, clenched into fists, but she keeps her chin lifted high.

Clarke refuses to meet his gaze as he comes around to the front of her. He’s so tall, so broad, stepping into her space like he owns her already. Her throat ticks as he reaches out, cupping her jaw. His fingers slip around behind her, loosing the comb that holds her hair in place. The pins slip, dragged down by the weight of her curls.

Bellamy wraps a little bit of golden hair around his fingers, running his thumb over the strands, and then he pulls her in. His lips find hers, and Clarke’s mouth opens.

He tastes the same, like whiskey and sin. Like fire.

It doesn’t burn her now though, at least not in the way it had. It’s still— there’s still something intoxicating about it, about the feeling and the attention and him , here, with her. Something that makes her almost wonder if it’s not just her omega that wants him. 

But it’s no surprise that he’s attractive, even to Clarke. It’s no surprise that Bellamy is good at kissing. He’ll probably be good at the rest too, if he bothers to care about her pleasure. If he bothers not to break her, like all those girls said he would. And now that she won’t be in heat, he just might actually be able to. Able to break her. And even if he doesn’t, is that any better? 

Clarke’s eyes begin to burn behind her lids.

He hasn't done anything to her yet, not really, but he’s trapped her. He’s made her marry him, and made her stay. And now he’ll take her, and take what she has left that still belongs only to her. He’ll knot her and bite her and mate her and she’ll never be able to leave. She had been so close to freedom, so close she could taste it, and now she’s never been so far. 

Clarke sucks in a ragged breath. She hopes he thinks it’s pleasure, hopes he’s fool enough to believe she’s playing along. Because she is, by god, she is. There’s nothing else left for her to do.

She starts as he pulls back, looking at her with dark eyes. “You’re crying.”

Her hand flies to her cheek, and sure enough, it’s wet. Fuck. She hadn’t meant for that. She doesn’t want him to see her fear.

“Do you care?”

Her words are a challenge, foolish and unrestrained. He doesn’t care, or at least, he’s not supposed to. Clarke shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t be impertinent to him: her alpha, her husband. She should just— hold still. 

She gulps in a shuddering gasp, the very edge of a sob.

Bellamy’s hands fall away from her and he takes a step back. Her head jerks up, taking in his furrowed brow, the tight line of his body. The way his fingers clench, knuckles white. Clarke flinches.

“I’m not a monster.” His voice is low, rough, and from the guilty way he meets her eyes they both know it’s not quite the truth. “Not that kind of monster,” he amends.

Clarke doesn’t dare move, unsure of just what he means. He lets out a heavy sigh, rucking a hand through his dark curls. He shucks off his jacket, tossing it over the back of a chair and stalking out of the room. When he returns he’s got two glasses of whiskey in his hands.

Bellamy pushes one towards her. “Take it.”

Her fingers feel stiff as they close around the cold glass. She doesn’t take a sip. He watches, waiting, but when she makes no move to drink he simply downs his own. 

“You flinch when I touch you,” he observes, his tone a studied shade of indifferent.

“I don’t.”

Bellamy raises an eyebrow, taking a half step towards her. Clarke sways back instinctively and his mouth tightens. He doesn’t seem pleased to be proven right. “You do.”

She feels irritation start to rise through the panic, annoyance tinging the fear red, burning her reticence away. “Can you blame me?”

His lips curl slightly. “There she is.”

Clarke looks at him incredulously, hating the way the smirk crawls across his face. Hating the way something warm sings in her chest at the sight. She huffs and throws back that whiskey. There, at least now she has a reason for the burn.

“I’ll make you a deal.”

Clarke sets the glass down on the bedside table, crossing her arms over her chest. She tries not to shiver. “You say that a lot.” She turns, wiping the stubborn tears from her face. “Well?”

“I won’t touch you when you’re begging me not to. I’m not going to fuck a woman who’s sobbing at the idea of it, not even if she is my wife.” Clarke looks up sharply, her eyes wide. There’s no hint of a lie on his face.

She lets out a breath, relaxing slightly.

“But Clarke…” Bellamy trails off, a tight sort of edge to his sigh. When he looks up again, there’s steel in his black eyes. “Soon you won’t be feeling so strongly opposed. And I’m not a good enough man to turn that down.”

His gaze pins her, holding her in place in front of him. Her lungs feel tight, like he’s reached his fist inside her chest and squeezed the air out of her. Slowly—so slowly—she nods.

He nods back, his eyes deadly serious. They stare for a moment at each other, unmoving. There’s something thick in the air between them, something like understanding or maybe suspicion. His or hers, Clarke isn’t sure.

“Well then, dearest,” Bellamy says finally. He gestures grandly to the bed. “Right side or left?”

****

She waits until his breathing is even and quiet. 

It feels— a little like taking advantage, honestly. His face is so soft as he sleeps, betraying his youth. But she knows who he is in the daylight, who—and what—she will be tied to forever if she stays. And she doesn’t even know him, not really. What has he given her except consolations, things that were rightfully hers in the first place? Just because he didn’t assault his wife on their wedding night doesn’t make him a good person. He said so himself.

Still, Clarke can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt as she slips silently out from between the sheets she was meant to lose her virginity on. 

She moves as quietly as possible, tiptoeing across the room. She doesn’t have any real clothes here other than the dress, so she pulls Bellamy’s shirt off the floor instead. It’s probably a bad idea, surrounding herself in his scent, but she’ll need to wash herself anyways. 

The hallway is silent as she slips out of the room, empty of guards. Clarke lets out a sigh of relief. She’d thought they’d clear the floor, expecting them to be holed up in the room until her heat was over, but she hadn’t been certain. Apparently they deemed an alpha in rut a good enough final line of security.

The next hurdle is the elevator. Clarke knows the stairways will be guarded, so she can’t risk using them. The elevator on the other hand, is a risk, because there’s no telling if it will stop, or who will be there when it does. She presses the down arrow and waits, nervously looking over her shoulder at the door to the room she’s just left. She half expects him to come storming out after her.

Her heart clenches as the bell dings, and the doors open.

The hall is clear, lights dimmed for the night. It’s quiet, only a murmur of voices floating down the corridor. Clarke sticks close to the wall, walking as quickly as she can without being suspicious. She’ll be suspicious enough, if anyone recognizes her.

The voices get louder as she reaches the hall where the locker rooms are. She peeks around the corner. Her pulse races in her ears, calculating her chances. There’s a guard at the end of the hall, because of course there is, but he’s talking to someone she can’t see behind his broad torso, a girl by the sound of it, and seems distracted enough she may just be able to get to the door unnoticed. She takes one careful step forward, two—

Clarke freezes as the man shifts, catching the eye of the brunette behind him. Her expression, caught in a laugh, sobers instantly at the sight of Clarke.

Octavia.

She sees recognition, confusion, and understanding pass over the girl’s face in quick succession. Clarke’s own expression is one of panic, one of heart crushing despair. She begs the other girl with her eyes to consider what she’s been asked to do, what she's told Clarke she would’ve done in her place. 

Clarke feels the hope drain out of her as the guard begins to turn, noticing Octavia’s distraction. The brunettes expression shifts to resignation, and Clarke takes a half step back, preparing to run—

Octavia catches the man’s arm and smiles beatifically, forcing his attention back on her. Clarke doesn’t hesitate. She darts down the hall, only stopping once she’s reached the door to the locker room. Only then does she look up, back to the girl at the end of the hall.

Thank you , Clarke mouths, catching Octavia’s eye once more. The girl’s head dips in an almost imperceptible nod, and then Clarke is gone.

She’s shaking as she unbuttons Bellamy’s shirt and strips off the lingerie. Her shower lasts only seconds, just long enough to coat herself with the scent reducing body-wash and send the lingering sweaty pheromones from her earlier close call swirling down the drain. 

She picks up the shirt and underthings with her towel, careful not to let them touch her skin. She’s being paranoid, of course: it’s not like alphas are bloodhounds, but it’s better safe than sorry.  The shirt and towel both get shoved unceremoniously into the laundry, buried under the other discarded towels.

Clarke dresses quickly in her stolen clothes: a pair of leggings, a t-shirt, sneakers, a nondescript hoodie. She’ll be freezing when she gets outside, but a coat would’ve been too obvious to steal.

Her rings come off, shoved in the pocket of her leggings. She considered leaving them in the room, but it would’ve been too much of a statement. Everyone would’ve known immediately that she’d run of her own volition, and it would’ve enraged her alpha.

No, not her alpha. His alpha, Bellamy’s alpha. Not— Clarke doesn’t have an alpha.

She can feel the heat clawing at her suppressants, desperate to prove her wrong. She won’t stick around long enough to let it.

The backpack is heavy, both with physical weight and meaning. Clarke hefts it onto her back, feeling it pull on her like stone. Her hair is untucked from the straps, balled up at her neck. She forgot to bring a hair tie, unused to not having one around her wrist at all times. She brings her hood up, tucking the damp tresses into the sweatshirt instead.

Something snags on the fabric. Clarke holds her arm out, eyes landing on the string of blue gems around her wrist.

She’d forgotten it, somehow.

She should take it, same as the ring. Leaving it would mean something, but— it’s not hers to take. It was his mother’s— Octavia’s mother’s too, Octavia who just helped her leave. Clarke can’t just abscond with it.

She takes a moment to think it over, staring into the empty locker she pulled her backpack from. After a few long minutes Clarke stands, shutting the locker door and striding towards the exit to the pool. She leaves no trace of her presence as she slips out the side door of the aquatic center into the cold night: no scent, no clothes, no evidence to prove she was ever there at all.

The sapphire bracelet sits inside locker B12, a delicate circle glinting lonely against the dark cherry wood.

Chapter Text

It’s cold outside. 

That’s all the better for Clarke, as it keeps the heat down while she steals into the night. She walks four blocks before hailing a taxi, making sure to keep away from any brightly lit places or stores that might have security cameras. From there she heads to the greyhound station, where she uses her credit card to pay for a ticket on the next bus out of Chicago, which happens to be headed to Nebraska. She hands it to a battered looking girl outside the station who doesn’t seem to care where the destination is, so long as it’s not here.

Clarke can relate. 

From the bus station she heads to the subway stop across the street and takes the airport line to O’Hare. She chooses a passport and a ticket from her backpack at random, heading through security with the pair of thick glasses she’d sported in her photo. 

This is where the plan starts to get tricky. Clarke heads to her gate and waits, sitting carefully in a blind spot by a potted plant. She looks for the right target, getting increasingly anxious with each passing minute. She has a plan B, and a plan C for that matter, but this was her best one. She finally spots her five minutes before her flight takes off. Clarke gathers up her bag and heads out of the waiting area. One exaggerated stumble later, and her phone—battery carefully drained to zero—finds its way into a man on her flight’s bag. It will ping when he inevitably finds it and charges it, which she assumes he will. He looks like the type. She gives him an apologetic glance and follows the woman she’d picked into the women’s restroom. 

Clarke heads straight for a bathroom stall. As quickly as possible, she strips off her hoodie and pulls her second bag out of the backpack. Her hair is covered by a brown wig, glasses shoved into the trash can. 

The girl she identified is doing her makeup, which is even better than Clarke had hoped for. She picks the sink next to hers and surreptitiously knocks the makeup bag off the counter. The contents go everywhere, rolling across the floor every which way. In the resulting commotion, Clarke snatches the girl’s coat, wrapping it around herself as she exits. 

She keeps her face down as she heads out back out through security, hands buried deep in the pockets of the coat. She exits the international terminal, taking the sky rail across to domestic. Clarke folds the coat up and tugs it into the strap of her bag as she enters, smiling at the ticket agent.

“Hi,” Clarke says. She thumbs open the girl’s wallet and pulls out a credit card. The blue eyes on the girl’s driver’s license stare back at her, bearing just enough of a resemblance to get her back through security. “How much for the next flight to New York?”

****

The thing is, Clarke doesn’t expect to be able to run forever. 

She didn’t even expect to make it this far, feeling her skin itch as the plane’s wheels leave the runway. She leans against the window, pressing her face into the plastic, trying to reach the chill of the glass behind it. The lights of Chicago sink into jewels beneath her, twinkling against the velvet black of Lake Michigan. 

She knows Bellamy won’t let her go easily, but she just needs to be gone long enough. To provide enough misdirection and dead ends that by the time he finds her, it will be too late. She needs to make him not want her, enough that he leaves her be. For all his sharp edges, Clarke isn’t afraid of him, not when it comes down to it. If he were someone else, being found would mean death, but with Bellamy— she thinks he’ll be disgusted enough to let her go. 

She’s relying on it. 

He could always make her a whore, send her to one of the many establishments she’s sure he operates in the city. And if not, she’s sure Marcus would happily find one for her. But Clarke doesn’t think he would do that, if only because he’d have to know. Have to know that men were having her, and that he was not. 

She’s hoping, mostly, that he will give up. 

Clarke doesn’t want him to find her at all, because she doesn’t want to see him again. Doesn’t want to have to look in his eyes and see the anger, the betrayal. Doesn’t want to feel the aching guilt that her omega projects onto her whenever she thinks about him waking up alone. He will think she’s been taken at first, but he’ll realize the truth quickly enough. He’ll realize how long she’s been planning this, the lengths she’s gone through just to get away from him. The lies she’s told, the concessions he made for a wife who would never have him. 

She picked New York because it’s the last place he’ll think to look, when he realizes she’s not on any of the flights she’d paid for. Who would run to the very place they’re trying to escape?

Clarke wants him to decide she’s not worth it well before he realizes where she’s gone. She wants him not to care anymore, so she won’t have to. 

The heat begins to rise again before they touch down in New York. It’s not supposed to yet, not so soon, but the oral suppressants can only do so much. Clarke got too close. She turns her air on full blast, squeezing her thighs together and closing her eyes. 

She needs to stop thinking about Bellamy. 

It’s making it worse, like his scent is actually here with her on the plane. It isn’t, of course, but she can remember it so clearly, the heady musk of pine and whiskey that went straight to her head. She can feel her glands prickling on her neck where he’d licked them, and her lips burn with the memory of his kiss. 

Her hands clench around her armrests, knuckles white. 

“Scared of flying?” asks the kind old lady in the middle seat. 

Clarke nods, wincing. “I’ll be fine once we’re on the ground.”

It’s a lie, of course.

She’s ten times worse when they finally land, screeching to a stop at LaGuardia. She rushes through the airport as fast as she can, bursting through the doors to gulp in the morning air. It’s not as cold here as it was back at home, but it’s good enough. 

Clarke digs into her bag for the burner phone she’d purchased months ago and activates it. She downloads two apps: Uber, and a heat matching app. Her panties are still dry, the suppressants still managing her physical symptoms even as they lose their grip on her mental ones, but it’s going to be close.

She makes an Uber account under a fake name, using a card from the girl’s stolen wallet. She hopes the girl hasn’t had a chance to cancel all of them yet. Thankfully, the card number goes through without issue.

Clarke calls a ride to the nearest airport hotel. The car comes fast, her driver giving her an odd look as he notices the destination. Clarke shoots back a wan smile, and he looks away. She looks strung out as hell, she knows, and he probably thought better of asking. Some things aren’t worth knowing.

As the car pulls away from the terminal Clarke pulls up the heat app, and makes a profile. The unfamiliar cityscape rushes past the windows, sky streaking with pink as the first glints of morning sun start to color the air. 

She’s free, she tries to tell herself, feeling her heartbeat hard in her chest. There’s a tight feeling in her stomach, something that has nothing at all to do with her burgeoning heat. She’s free, but for how long?

Has Bellamy realized yet that she’s gone? Is he still in bed, or still in Chicago even? Is he chasing the trails she’s left him? Is he angry with her?

Does he still want her?

Clarke shivers, and looks back down at the phone. Fingers trembling, she starts to swipe.

****

The next few days pass in a blur of sweat and slick and pain. 

It’s excruciating, like nothing Clarke has ever experienced. She’s not fully cognizant, and that’s the only saving grace. If she’d been fully aware of her actions she’d be disgusted and humiliated. As it is she is already bereft: horny out of her mind and feeling the violent pang of abandonment. An omega isn’t meant to spend their heat alone, especially not a triggered heat.

Her body is prepared to take and take and take, but she has nothing to give, and no one to give it to her. She spends half the time crying, fucking herself uselessly on her fingers to unsatisfying climax after unsatisfying climax, and the other half on the floor in the bathroom, shivering against the cool tiles in an attempt to keep herself from burning to ash from the inside out. She can’t bear to shower and wash her own scent away, some fucked up instinct from her omega that longs for an alpha to smell her and find her. To fuck her.

She doesn’t eat, barely sleeps. Half the time she orgasms it’s with her husband’s name on her lips. Her body is always momentarily confused by his absence, by the lack of a cock splitting her open and a knot filling her up. If she had better control, Clarke wouldn’t think about him. She’d think of some faceless, nameless alpha, like the ones she could find on an app, the one whose scent is on her neck, and her sheets. But she has no control at all, so she thinks of Bellamy, and sobs into her fist as she imagines him pumping her full of his cum, filling her with his pups. Knotting her, biting her, making her his. She thinks about the very things she’s run from, and wallows in guilt when they make her come.

He finds her just as her heat ends. 

Thankfully, she’s in possession of her faculties by the time he does. She would have begged him otherwise, and made it all useless, but he arrives mere hours after the ache in her belly dies down, and her mind settles back into bleak consciousness. Everything hurts, every muscle in her body screaming at her in protest like she’s run a marathon. She sinks into a restless sleep for the first time in days, and wakes up to the sound of the door being thrown open.

Clarke is still sweaty, still naked, tangled up in the sheets of the shitty motel bed when Bellamy bursts in. His nose flares, eyes blazing. 

“You’re too late,” she says primly.

She can see him sniffing, taking in the heady scent of heat slick and fertile omega, and knows he’s looking for something else. He takes a step towards the bed, and she can see when he finds it. She’s not sure whether to be glad or terrified that she’d failed to shower, failed to wash the evidence away.

Bellamy inhales deeply, eyes going black as pitch. Clarke struggles to keep calm. She can smell his anger, the way his painfully delicious scent turns metallic in the air. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he says, and it’s half-threat, half-plea. “Tell me that isn’t—”

Clarke tugs the covers up further, inadvertently wafting the scent of unfamiliar alpha towards him. A low rumbling noise begins to vibrate out of his chest, a sound Clarke feels through her bones, down to her very core.

You’ve displeased Alpha.

She swears at her inner omega. She hasn’t done anything wrong, not really, even if she refuses to tell Bellamy otherwise. This was the whole point, to make him not want her. The alpha from the heat app hadn’t even touched her except to scent-mark her. Her virginity—Bellamy’s prize—remains regretfully intact, not that anyone would believe her now, anyways. And wasn’t that the point?

“ Where is he? ”

The alpha command startles her so much she doesn’t even bother to fight the compulsion laced into the question. “I don’t know.”

She waits for him to ask what they did— exactly how he touched her—and ruin her ruse, but he doesn’t. 

His jaw tightens, eyes still black with fury. She expects Bellamy to come at her, to hurt her; but he just stands there, glaring. “Go take a shower,” he spits, but it’s a normal demand this time, one she can refuse if she’s stupid enough to try. “We’re leaving.”

The door slams shut behind him.

****

Bellamy, as Clarke probably should have expected, drives like an absolute maniac. 

She’s glued to her seat, fingers clutching at the seatbelt as he weaves through traffic. His mood has not improved, if his scent is anything to go by, but even with that bitter tinge of anger he smells appallingly good.

“Can I roll down a window?”” she asks, aiming for nonchalant and missing by a mile. Her heat may be over, but without an alpha cock or even a good fake knot to satisfy her omega, Clarke is almost drunk on his scent in the enclosed space. Her lower body—blissfully—is not physically reacting, but the lightheadedness is still highly disconcerting.

Bellamy’s reply is curt. He does not look over at her, but his fingers tighten on the wheel. “No.”

Clarke shifts uncomfortably, turning her attention out the window. They’re flying down the highway, scenery zooming past. She doesn’t recognize it, but why should she? She’s never been to New York before.

She swallows hard. “Where are you taking me?”

“Home.”

Clarke’s heart leaps, panic rising in her throat. She can’t— they’ll kill her. She knew he wouldn’t want her after this—couldn’t want her after this— and that was the point, but if she goes back to her family she’s as good as dead. They’ll count this as a betrayal, and there’s no way out, not through them. Even if Bellamy annuls the marriage, she’s tarnished goods now. Worthless.

But— the airport is behind them. So if he meant to take her back to her family, he’s going the wrong direction. 

“Whose home?”

“Mine,” Bellamy says tersely, then glances over at her, his eyes leaving the road for a beat before focusing back ahead. “Ours.”

He can’t mean that, can he? Even after all this, even after he thinks she’s betrayed him and fucked some other alpha, he’s still going to keep her?

“I thought—” she starts, not even really knowing where the sentence is intended to end, but he cuts her off with a near growl.

“I know what you thought.” His mouth is twisted in a bleak grimace, and it’s a bold statement considering Clarke isn’t even sure she knows what she thought. She sinks lower into her seat. When Bellamy speaks again, it’s so low she almost doesn’t catch it. The words are silky smooth, his tone impossible to decipher: venomous, she thinks, or maybe fond. “Did you really think I’d make it that easy?”

Clarke gulps. 

No. No, she most certainly did not.

Chapter Text

The rest of the ride passes in tense silence, and Clarke is glad for it. She couldn’t bear to hear anymore from him, not now, not today. Not right after her heat in a tiny enclosed space.

New York is taller than Chicago, she thinks, looking out the window in wonder as they move into the city proper. Her home may be big, and sprawling, but it’s got nothing on the density of Manhattan. 

She already misses the lake.

They pull up in front of a tall building, the car screeching to a stop. Bellamy practically tears himself from the vehicle, tossing the keys unceremoniously at a man Clarke assumes is a valet. Her door is opened for her by a man she vaguely recognizes from the wedding, and she climbs out with more than a little hesitation. Bellamy, who she thought had stormed ahead, is waiting for her just inside the entrance to the lobby.

“Where are your things?” She holds up the purse with all of her current possessions in it and his lips tighten. “That’s all?”

Clarke shrugs. He had seen what she brought into the car with her. It’s not like a girl on the run has a lot of room for luggage. She has the clothes on her back, a stolen wallet, a burner phone, and some travel sized toiletries. Nothing else.

Now, after the fact, Clarke is starting to realize a few flaws in her flawless plan. For starters, she hadn’t brought any normal suppressants for after her heat, and she would’ve had to see a doctor to get them. She will have to see a doctor to get them, if Bellamy will even let her. She has no clothes, and to get them she would’ve had to go into stores unsuppressed just after her heat, stinking like a big omega beacon. 

She can tell Bellamy is thinking the same things by the way his scent sharpens, and his eyes go dangerously sharp. 

In Clarke’s defense, she’s never had to live with the stark realities of her designation before. She’s been suppressed since she hit puberty, her first brush with heat wasn’t until the fiasco with Bellamy however many months ago. She doesn’t think about things like scents or heats or birth control, or at least she hadn’t until the brute beside her walked into her life and fucked everything up.

“C’mon,” Bellamy orders gruffly, jerking his head towards the elevator. “Let’s go.”

The man who opened the car door for Clarke follows them into the elevator, making the ride excruciatingly awkward. The hostility rolling off of Bellamy is palpable, and she’s not sure which one of them it’s directed at more. Probably her.

Definitely her.

She doesn’t understand why she feels so goddamn guilty. It’s not like she owes Bellamy anything. They hardly know each other, even if they are man and wife. He doesn’t love her, he just— wants to possess her. She’s just a prize to him, a trophy to be won. His pretty little omega wife, his pretty little brokering piece with the Familia in Chicago. There’s no logic to it, to ascribing any emotion other than anger to him.

Clarke’s omega, on the other hand, seems to think otherwise.

That part of her—its prominence in her head so new and raw—is battered by the heat she’s just spent alone. That part is so intensely angry with her for leaving, for abandoning her alpha, for putting him and Clarke both through the pain of the separation. If she hadn’t left, she’d be his is every way: bitten, claimed. 

Which is, of course, exactly what Clarke had been trying to avoid.

The elevator comes to a stop at the penthouse, to no one’s surprise. Clarke steps out after both men, taking in the space. It’s pretty much exactly what she would’ve expected from a mob boss: sleek, contemporary, expensive, and entirely soulless. There’s not one hint of Bellamy in this place, not that she’d know what to look for in the first place.

She stands uncomfortably by the elevator, unsure where to go. She’s not sure what happens next, now that he’s gotten her back here. Will he call her mother and Marcus? Will he yell? Will he hurt her?

Clarke doesn’t expect him to, hadn’t calculated it into her plans, but she’d have to be stupid not to recognize the possibility. She’s betrayed him, and humiliated him. That’s not a thing a man like Bellamy takes lying down.

She doesn’t expect to die, but she doesn’t expect to come out of this completely unscathed either. Not with the way Bellamy’s fists are clenched, anyways.

The other man slinks past her, taking a seat at the breakfast bar so casually it’s almost comical. He turns on the stool to face Clarke, giving her a calculating look as Bellamy begins to pace. His head tilts slightly. 

Why you, his eyes seem to say. What makes you so special?

Clarke bristles, meeting his gaze with a stony stare. Nothing, she wants to tell him. Nothing but bad luck.

Bellamy stops suddenly, startling them both. 

“Where are your rings?”

Clarke blinks at the question, surprised. “What?”

Bellamy lets out an impatient noise, stalking towards her. Before Clarke even thinks to move his hand is around her wrist, wrenching up her hand to display her bare finger. “You left this,” he said, pulling the bracelet out of his pocket with a flourish. It dangles in front of her face, blue stones glinting as the delicate strand spins. Clarke gulps and refuses to meet his eyes. She knew it was a mistake to leave it. “But not your rings.”

His fingers stroke possessively over the soft skin of her wrist, finding the beat of her pulse. He leans in, his breath hot on her neck. “Did you keep them, little princess?” Bellamy inhales, breathing in her scent as it spikes with adrenaline. “ Principessa .”

Clarke shudders.

“No,” she blurts impulsively, the words a gasp. Her heartbeat races, pulse pounding in her ears. She wants to pull away, to shake off his hand, but she stands frozen in his grip. Still, but trembling.

“No?” Bellamy prods.

She swallows hard, stuttering out her answer. “I— I left them at the airport. Threw them away.”

It’s a lie, of course, and it seems like Bellamy knows it just as well as she does. The rings are in her purse, zipped up safely inside the side pocket. It wouldn’t be hard for him to check.

“Really?” The words are low, his eyebrows raised. He doesn’t believe her.

Still, Clarke nods. “Really.”

He clucks his tongue, pulling back. With deft movements he turns her arm, re-clasping the bracelet around her wrist. Clarke's breathing stutters as he strokes over it the way he did when he first put it on her, pupils so wide his eyes are nearly black. 

The man seated at the bar behind them clears his throat, and Clarke lurches back. Her breath is shallow, heart pounding. Bellamy lets her go, still watching closely.

“Sorry, Boss—”, the man says, not sounding sorry at all, “—but don’t you have somewhere you need to be going?”

Bellamy nods. “Right, yes.” He gestures to the man, eyes still on Clarke. “This is Murphy,” he tells her. “He will be your bodyguard when I’m gone. And for the foreseeable future.”

Clarke blinks, her head clearing as she breathes in air not saturated with Bellamy’s scent. Her eyes narrow. “Bodyguard?” This man is here to keep her safe, she’s sure, but that’s not all of it. “More like jailor.”

Bellamy shrugs. His expression cools, hands shoved in his pockets. “Call it what you will.”

Murphy smirks, tapping his fingernails against the countertop gratingly. “Jailor works for me.”

Clarke’s chest flares with rage. She turns to her husband, but his attention is no longer on her, and his demeanor is cold, nothing like the man who’d just had his hands on her. “I’ll be gone for three, maybe four hours.” Bellamy directs his words at the other man, ignoring Clarke completely. She wonders angrily how he does that, how he just— switches it off. Her skin is still itching from his touch. “Call the doctor, have him look at her while I’m gone. I want her tested for everything.”

Clarke gasps in outrage. “You can’t possibly—”

“I can,” he reminds her, his voice hard. “And I will. You let another alpha have what’s mine. If you think I’ll touch you without knowing if you’re diseased or—” his voice cuts off, mouth tightening even further. 

Pregnant , Clarke hears, even though he doesn’t say it. Instead his fists clench again, muscles flexing. He’s still enraged, she realizes, though he hides it well. Enraged at the idea of someone else having her first.

She crosses her arms over her chest, lips pressed together. Good .

Bellamy starts towards the elevator, not bothering to spare her another look. She can feel the anger rolling off him in waves, and she basks in it, in having caused him discomfort, even if it results in problems for herself. She will not go gently.

She watches him go, glaring as he steps into the elevator. Just before the doors close, she blanches, lurching forwards. 

“Wait!” Clarke cries. She shoves her hand into the door, stopping it from closing. 

Bellamy looks at her flatly. “What?”

Clarke’s shoulders are heaving, her breath unsteady in her throat. “My family; are they—?” Bellamy looks over her, jerking his head silently at Murphy. The other man slinks forward, wrestling Clarke back from the elevator with surprising strength. The door starts to close again. “Wait, don’t— Bellamy, please!” 

Her husband’s head tilts appraisingly, eyes narrow. Just before the doors shut, he rolls his eyes. “They’re fine.”

Clarke curses, wrenching herself away from Murphy as Bellamy disappears from view. The other man lets her go easily, throwing up his hands and grumbling in annoyance. She stands  staring at the elevator for a moment, body still taut with anger. 

After a moment she spins, turning angrily towards her bodyguard. “What did he mean by that?”

Murphy has his phone pressed to his ear, and holds up a finger. Clarke’s mouth snaps shut in irritation as she waits for him to finish. “—yeah, just the doc… No, nobody’s hurt.” His eyes scan Clarke up and down. “Or I don’t think anyone is. Not yet at least.” She glares back at him. “Tell him to bring everything he would for a La Rosa intake…a few hours at least, it should be fine…yeah, okay. Thanks.” Murphy hangs up, dropping the phone to the counter with a soft clatter. He raises one eyebrow. “Yes?”

Clarke crosses her arms again and huffs. She’s being immature, she thinks, but Murphy seems to match her energy, if not surpass it. “What did Bellamy mean by ‘they’re fine’?”

He shrugs. “I assume he meant that they’re fine.”

Great . How supremely unhelpful. Clarke huffs again. “Of course they’re fine, I mean, why wouldn’t they mean?” Murphy raises an eyebrow and something in her chest tightens. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“It was suggested that they may have had a hand in your— disappearance.”

“They— No!” Clarke shakes her head desperately. “They had nothing to do with it.”

Murphy snorts. “Well, yeah, princess .” He spits the name like an insult, mockingly imitating the way Bellamy had said it. It feels more like a condemnation of her than her husband, however. “We know that now.”

“So why—?” Clarke shakes her head again to clear it, her eyebrows pulling together. She swallows hard. “Are they angry?”

“Angry?”

“About me leaving.” She looks down at her hands, twisting her fingers nervously. Clarke imagines her mother’s face, and the disappointment she knows so well. Abby must be ashamed, that her daughter would be so weak. “Running.”

Murphy looks her over speculatively, reading the posture of her body, the sharp edge of discomfort. He doesn’t reply, and when Clarke looks up he’s watching her, something inscrutable in his expression. His shoulders relax. 

“They don’t know.”

“They— what?”

He looks at his nails and shrugs. “They don’t know. Bellamy didn’t tell them you were gone.”

“But—” Clarke stutters, unable to wrap her head around his words. It’s a good thing, for her at least, but— “Why?”

“Do you know how bad it would make him look? To get married and have his little omega bride run away before he’d even had a chance to fuck her. Or worse, to have her stolen out from under his nose.”

Clarke swallows, blinking at him. She doesn’t know, obviously, hadn’t even really considered it. She’d known he’d been angry, and humiliated, but the insult she’d considered was to his pride. She hadn’t expected—

“It makes him look weak, what you did,” Murphy says matter-of-factly. “Your family may not know yet, but the Outfit does; we had to find you. It leaves Bellamy open to challengers. You put him and his family at risk.”

Her expression sours. “I didn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Murphy interrupts. “You did.”

Despite his flippancy, he’s angry, Clarke realizes. His casual manner earlier with Bellamy had made her think the younger man didn’t really care what happened either way, but it’s clear his loyalties run deep.

She thinks for a moment, about what he’s said. Bellamy is in charge of the Outfit, but he’s by no means universally popular. He’s too young for the old guard, his grip on the organization held only through sheer force of power. He didn’t inherit his position, he won it. Which means someone else might win it back. If Bellamy is challenged, if he’s overthrown— that probably means his death. Clarke would be free, or— Or she might be killed along with him. Or she might be taken as a trophy.

If anyone could beat him, of course. It’s unlikely, but—

Clarke swallows convulsively, a nervous ripple running down her spine. “The meeting he just went to, is it—?”

Murphy nods. “Someone is bound to try him.”

Her throat goes dry. “And he—” She chews on her lip, unwilling to say it. “Bellamy, that is, he—”

“Will win,” he finishes, sounding wholly unconcerned. 

Clarke nods. “And if he doesn’t?”

“Then he dies.” Murphy shrugs carelessly. “But he won’t lose.”

Clarke wishes she had the same faith in him. She also wishes she could make up her mind on whether she even wants him to win. She knows Bellamy’s reputation, knows he’s made a name for himself as a bloodthirsty animal, but— she’s yet to see that side of him, at least not really. With her, he hasn’t been soft, but he hasn’t hurt her. Not physically at least, and she’s given him plenty of reason to. If she’d been married to any other alpha in the organization, she’d be black and blue by now, if not dead. Clarke is worried maybe his reputation is just that: a reputation. 

She lets out a heavy breath.

Some part of her—of her omega—must have latched onto him. Must’ve decided that he was her protector, her alpha. It makes her fear for her own safety, if his is threatened. That’s the only explanation for the bite of panic in her stomach, the pang of loss. It’s not him she fears for. Only what he can do for her.

Clarke has to admit it, her life is now hopelessly entangled with his. There will be no freedom for her. No escape. He may not have mated her, but they are as good as tied. She has none of her own resources here, no way out, nobody to help her. It’s Bellamy or nothing, and Clarke’s fought too hard for her life to accept nothing. He will be her husband, and her mate, and she will hate him— but she will live.

As long as Bellamy lives, so will Clarke. She’ll fight him every step of the way, but she’ll live.

“I don’t like the look in your eyes,” Murphy muses, lips quirking wryly. “Reminds me of him.”

It’s a compliment, Clarke thinks. Coming from him, at least.

****

The doctor comes a while later.

He’s a beta, on the older side of middle aged, with silvery-grey hair that’s thinning gracefully at the temples. He looks Clarke over appraisingly, ushering her down the hall into a room Clarke realizes must be Bellamy’s bedroom. She waits for Murphy to protest, or to follow at least, but he leaves them alone.

She’s not sure what makes her feel less at ease: the doctor’s presence, or her surroundings. The room is richly decorated and finely furnished in a way that screams interior design, but feels— inhabited, somehow. The photos on the dresser, the book on the nightstand, the coat slung over the chair: Bellamy lives here. Sleeps here. It smells like him so strongly it’s like his scent is etched into the very seams of the room, ground into the carpet, painted into the walls. This place is not for Clarke, despite what the pull in her belly is telling her.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asks her, his voice calm and reassuring.

Clarke shifts uncomfortably. “Fine.”

“I understand it was your first heat.” Clarke says nothing, her lips pressed tightly together. She looks down at the carpet. “Do you have any physical injuries? Bruises, tearing?”

She shakes her head. She’s worried he will insist on a pelvic exam, and then her jig will be up with Bellamy, and he’ll know the other alpha was a lie. Clarke’s not sure why, but she really doesn’t want him knowing about her lingering virginity. It’s just— it’s hers , even if he will be the one to take it. At least he won’t be able to gloat while he does.

“Very well.” She’s more than a little surprised at the doctor’s easy acceptance, and his mouth quirks into a gentle smile at her obvious confusion. “Did you think I would insist on examining you?” He lets out a small laugh. “Bellamy would have my head, not to mention my balls, if I had his wife undress without his presence.”

Clarke blushes, but is more than a little annoyed at the thought. What if she had needed care? Would he really make her wait until her husband came back to give it?

“It wouldn’t be comfortable for you either,” he adds. “Not so soon after your heat.” 

Clarke has to agree with that, at least.

The rest of the appointment, if you can really call it that, goes smoothly. The doctor asks questions, and Clarke answers as truthfully as she can. She goes into the bathroom and pees in a cup, knowing there’s nothing for them to find.

“We should have the results by this evening,” he tells her. It doesn’t matter for a moment, and then she realizes why it does. The sooner the test results come back, the sooner she is officially clean— the sooner Bellamy will have no reason not to touch her.

“So soon?” she asks, throat dry.

The doctor nods almost apologetically.

He writes her a prescription for birth control but not suppressants for some reason, and offers her a morning-after pill. Clarke takes it, knowing Bellamy would be told if she didn’t, and vows silently to flush it down the toilet once she’s alone. They both know it would be too late to be effective if she’d been with someone her whole heat, but she guesses it would be better than nothing. Luckily it’s a moot point.

He leaves not long after, leading Clarke back out to Murphy, who’s still in the kitchen. Someone else has joined him, an older woman, and he’s currently scarfing down a plate of food that would feed Clarke six times over.

“Hungry?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. Clarke shakes her head. She stands awkwardly in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around herself. 

She’s lying, of course, and her stomach growls traitorously loud. The woman and Murphy exchange knowing glances. 

“What would you like, dear?” she asks, waving a spatula. “It won’t do to waste it.”

Clarke shrugs, and steps tentatively towards the breakfast bar. “Whatever you have is fine. I’m really not very hungry.”

Her words are promptly eaten as a plate is set in front of her, and she wolfs the contents down in seconds. In her defense, she hasn’t had any food since the wedding, too wrapped up in her heat to do anything other than sweat and cry and fuck herself raw.

The second plate goes as fast as the first, and when she’s done she cleans up her face a bit abashedly, blush staining her cheeks as she meets the amused eyes of the older woman. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, dear,” she tells Clarke, eyes sparkling. “It’s my job to feed you.”

“It would have been polite to at least introduce myself first.” Clarke wipes her hand on her pants and extends it. “I’m—”

“Mrs. Blake,” the woman finishes for her. “Yes, I know.”

“Clarke,” she corrects, feeling more than a little sour at the use of her married name.  It doesn’t feel like it belongs to her at all. “And you are?”

The older woman opens her mouth to reply then closes it, frowning as an alarm goes off on her phone. “Late.” She washes her hands quickly in the sink and pulls back her hair. Her voice trails behind her as she makes her way to the elevator in a rush. “Sorry to run, I’ll see you two tomorrow!”

Clarke feels a pang of regret as the doors slide shut behind her, leaving her and Murphy alone again.

“So,” he says, and Clarke huffs automatically, twisting her face in a grimace.

“Fuck off.” Her bodyguard just laughs, amused by her impertinence. “Where’s my room, anyway?”

“Your room?” He raises an eyebrow like he doesn’t understand the question. “Didn’t the Doc show it to you earlier?”

“That was Bellamy’s room.” Murphy raises the eyebrow further and she huffs again. “Never mind, I’ll find it myself.” Clarke snags her purse and moves to stalk down the hall, intending to throw each and every door open until she finds a bed that is not Bellamy’s, but she pauses for a moment. “How long has it been?”

How long since he left, she means, and Murphy seems to understand the question she is asking. Should she be worried? Has anything gone wrong?

“His meeting is taking longer than anticipated.” The words are loaded, each syllable heavy with meaning she doesn’t want to consider. Murphy tilts his head, looking at her curiously. Eventually, he sighs. “He’s fine. It’s nothing he hasn’t handled before.”

Clarke jerks her chin in a tight nod, and heads down the hallway.

****

The room she finds is smaller than Bellamy’s, sterile in a way guest bedrooms usually are.

Clarke is exhausted from her heat and the stress of the day, and despite her anxiety and determination manages to pass out almost immediately on top of the covers. She wakes up disoriented, her limbs stiff and head groggy, unsure of how long she’d slept. The light outside is dimmer now, the low gold of a winter evening.

The room has an attached bathroom, and Clarke showers again, still feeling grimy despite her shower that morning. When she comes out, wrapped in a towel, she realizes her problem from earlier remains: namely, she has no clean clothing.

She sits on the bed for a moment and ponders her options. She could put her dirty clothes on again like she did before, and just suffer through the filth. The idea of making Bellamy smell her sweaty clothes is appealing for a moment and only a moment, until she realizes the sweat—though dry—is still stinking with heat pheromones. And putting back on her dirty underwear— Clarke’s skin itches at the thought. Her other options include asking Murphy, which she’d rather eat her own shirt than do, or steal something out of Bellamy’s room.

Clarke opts for the latter.

It’s no big feat to sneak across the hall, slipping into the room she’d been in earlier. There’s not a direct line of sight down the hall from the kitchen, and Murphy is clearly staked out of the couch if the faint sound of the TV is anything to go by. She shuts the door silently behind her.

The dresser she’d noticed earlier is empty for some reason, it must be purely decorative. She scoffs as she opens drawer after drawer, finding nothing but immaculate white drawer liners. There’s two doors next to each other on one side of the room. Once is open, clearly leading into a bathroom, so Clarke chooses the other. 

Bingo. A closet.

She looks around herself, fingers trailing over the silk ties and bespoke suits that hang from the racks. Clarke sneers slightly as she looks them over. It’s not that she disapproves of extravagance, coming from the family that she does. But the combination of his scent and the mental image she has of Bellamy in these clothes make her hot with irritation.

She makes a beeline instead for a set of drawers at the back. Inside she finds athletic clothes, boxers, and t-shirts. They’re so casual she almost wants to laugh, unable to picture her husband actually wearing any of them. He must though, of course, given what he looks like. There’s no way a man can look like that without a heavy gym routine.

Clarke pulls out a large t-shirt and, on further thought, a pair of boxers. She doesn’t really want to wear his underwear, but walking around the apartment without them—even sleeping without them, really—seems like tempting fate.

Or tempting Bellamy, more like.

She throws her clothes into the hamper by the door. Maybe it’s foolish, as she doesn’t know when exactly she’s going to have fresh clothes, but the irritated look on Bellamy’s face when she showed him the sum total of her belongings earlier makes her think they will appear somehow. He doesn’t know her size, but her mother certainly does, and he’s overbearing enough he could probably guess.

Her curiosity gets the best of her as she moves to leave. She should go back to the guest bedroom and close the door, see if she can lock it, but she lingers in Bellamy’s space, looking around. She hadn’t gotten the chance earlier, and she wants to know.

Clarke looks at his nightstand first. The book surprises her again, because it seems like he actually might be reading it. It’s a history of the Peloponnesian War, something almost comically academic and dry, but there's a bookmark halfway through and the spine is cracked. If Bellamy isn’t reading it, someone else is.

Pushing her luck from curious to stalking, she opens the nightstand drawer and examines its contents. A few pens, an unopened set of earplugs, a broken charger, and— condoms. 

Lots of condoms. Big ones, if the labeling is accurate..

Clarke slams the drawer shut, face twisting in disgust. She’s not sure what she expected really. She knows he’d been fucking other women—and probably other omegas—before their marriage, and why wouldn’t he do it here? In his bed, in his home? 

She shakes off the sting, moving over to the dresser. The pictures she’d seen earlier are almost all of Octavia at various ages. There’s only one of him, with Murphy and a few other men, and Clarke looks at that one the longest. He looks so young, maybe only 16 or 17. She wonders if the boy in the picture had killed yet.

The answer is likely yes.

She’s so wrapped up in her inspection that she doesn’t hear the door swing open, doesn’t feel the eyes on her until it clicks shut again. Clarke spins, the picture in her hand clattering against the top of the dresser.

“Bellamy,” she breathes, the name coming out shaky on her lips.

His scent hits her hard then, tangy with the scent of anger and want and something else, something metallic. Like blood.

He steps closer and she sees that’s exactly what it is. 

Bellamy is splattered with it. His knuckles are bruised, the skin split in places. The pristine white shirt he’d had on this morning is stained and ripped, covered in dirt and sweat and blood. Most of it comes from a gash on his ribs, visible through a slit in the fabric. His sleeves are rolled up, and his arms are littered with small cuts, places where a knife had found purchase. He smiles ferally and there’s red against the pearly whites, like he’s torn into somebody’s flesh with his teeth.

“ Omega ,” he purrs, eyes black, and Clarke takes a half step back, pressing her spine against the dresser.

She’s never seen a man look so much like a monster.

Clarke forces herself to step forward, breathing as evenly as she can manage. “Did you win?”

He laughs then, the sound savage and cruel. “Does it look like I lost?”

She swallows and shakes her head. 

Bellamy follows her motions, shaking his head as well.  His eyes run over her pilfered outfit, his lips curled in satisfaction. “Are you scared of me, little princess?”

Clarke shakes her head again slowly. She’s not sure if it’s a lie.

“You should be.” He tilts his head at her, smile still on his lips. He’s pleased with her answer.

Clarke’s never seen an alpha after a fight before, but she knows what happens. She knows how they’re supposed to lose themselves, how their baser natures take over until there is barely any man left, but this—

He’s out of control but somehow fully in control at the same time.

She’s not sure how he does it.

Bellamy moves toward her like a predator, an animal stalking its prey. She doesn’t move, hardly dares to breathe. She expected to feel trapped, but instead something like anticipation curls in her belly, hot and eager. If he’s going to take her, let it be like this. Let him do his worst.

“I got an interesting call from the doctor. He says you’re clean as a whistle.” Bellamy leans in, his lips brushing against her ear. “But we both know that’s not quite true now, is it? You let someone else have what was supposed to be mine.” His mouth drifts down, teeth and tongue scraping against the gland on her neck. Clarke stifles back a moan.

His voice is smooth and silky, one big hand pressing against her throat, cupping her jaw to hold her in place. He doesn’t hurt her but there’s nothing gentle in his touch, like fully-bridled rage. “That’s okay, though. I’m gonna fuck him out of you. Till there’s no one left but me.”

His mouth moves away from her glands and finds the taut line of muscle at the juncture of her shoulder. His teeth dig in earnest, nearly breaking the skin, and release. “Will you flinch away from me tonight, Principessa ? Will you cry?” He presses a kiss over the sore spot. “Will you do what you’re told?”

She shakes her head defiantly. No.

Clarke can feel the pleased curve of his smile against her skin. “Good.”

He tears the clothes off her with a single rip. Clarke gasps, moving to cover herself, but Bellamy snatches her wrists in his hands, clucking his tongue. “No, omega. Let me see.”

Clarke flushes all over. His eyes move hungrily over her skin, eating up each exposed inch of flesh. She feels burnt by his gaze, marked and branded and claimed. Satisfaction permeates his scent, filling the air with heady pheromones. 

Clarke feels lucky, that she just had her heat. His scent alone would be enough to bring her to her knees normally, but her senses now are dulled just enough, body worn out from going so long unsated. It keeps her omega from making her mindless, but that’s not to say she’s unaffected.

At least now Clarke knows this is real. At least she can remember she hates him.

Bellamy doesn’t go slow, and why would he? He thinks she’s done this before, thinks she’s spent days doing this. He throws her unceremoniously onto the bed and crawls over her body, pinning her down beneath him.

He doesn’t undress and Clarke is glad for it. She doesn’t want to see more of him than she already does, doesn’t want to think of him naked and moving over her, slow and sultry. She wants this to be what it is: a fuck. A claiming.

Bellamy’s lips and tongue are all over her, marking her everywhere with his scent. His hands and teeth leave bruises on her skin, purple marks Clarke knows will linger for days after this, reminding her of what they’ve done.

He doesn’t kiss her mouth.

His cock is hard between her legs, pressing against the hot ache of her cunt through the fabric of his pants. It feels big, so big that Clarke has to swallow, imagining how such a length could possibly fit inside her. She’s an omega, she’s built to take him, yes, but— it’s not her heat anymore. If he’d fucked her then, she probably wouldn’t even have bled, so wet and willing and ready. Now, though— This is the worst time really, the time she’d be the least prepared.

She refuses to let that frighten her. If it hurts, good. It will remind her not to like this. Not to like him .

Clarke groans into Bellamy’s chest, grinding up against him, meeting the movement of his hips. He growls in response, and flips her. Her face presses into the mattress as he drags her hips up so she’s on her knees. His teeth clamp down on her shoulder, holding her in place.

She freezes as she hears his belt clink, his zipper open. The hot shaft of his cock slides heavy between the crease of her thighs, slicking himself in her wet heat. Clarke’s hips wiggle and a heavy whine of anticipation slips through her lips before she can stop it. Bellamy chuckles darkly into her nape.

“You’re mine,” he tells her, and his cock spears her open.

Clarke cries out in earnest, pain spiking through her core. She lurches forward, trying to move off the intrusion, but Bellamy holds her still. She grits the words through her teeth: “I am not.”

He growls again, and his hand twists in her hair, yanking her head back so her spine is arched. She feels him slide even deeper. His lips brush against the side of her neck. “We’ll see.”

Then he begins to move. 

It’s not the slow gentle glide she might’ve had if he’d known he was her first. The pace Bellamy sets is brutal, each thrust a punishing slam of hips that jars her very bones. His cock is huge, so deep inside her she can feel him in her throat. Her body parts as best it can to make room for the invading rod of flesh, but it is a struggle to stretch wide enough to take him. She can feel the way her walls cling to him, the way her cunt rushes to make enough slick to ease his entry.

It feels good, she’s almost sick to realize. It feels so very fucking good. He is breaking her, ruining her, and Clarke actually likes it. Even with her omega as sublimated as it can be, she likes the way he fucks her, the way he makes her take his cock over and over. 

She. Her. Clarke .

She fought against him every step of the way, and the moment she gives in, she likes it. It’s humiliating, it’s awful, it’s—

“ Oh .”

“That’s it,” Bellamy tells her, his hand wrapped around her throat. “Take it all.”

She wishes now that he was naked, that she could feel his bare skin pressed against her back. Instead, the buttons of his shirt press into her spine, the fabric stiff with dried blood. Bellamy is curled over her, covering her; his hands around her wrists, pressing her down into the covers as he fucks into her savagely.

He fucks her like a monster, and Clarke likes it. Does that make her a monster too?

“There’ll never be anyone else after this,” Bellamy hisses, his pace picking up even more. Clarke groans, feeling the way his cock tugs at the tender rim of her pussy. Was he getting bigger? “Only me. If you ever even think about another alpha again— You’re mine, omega. Mine .”

The rage is rolling off him now in waves, but it’s triumph as well. He has her pinned, degraded, impaled on his cock, right where he wants her. 

If Clarke’s omega was more active she’d be incoherent, babbling her agreement, but thankfully Clarke is in control. She grits her teeth, bracing herself as he pounds her raw.

He is getting bigger, she realizes. It’s his knot, swelling slowly at the base of his cock. She’s already stuffed full, practically choking, and he has more he wants her to take. Her eyes fly open wide as she feels the knot pull at her stinging entrance. Her fingers scrabble beneath her, trying to wrench away from his hands. “Bellamy, wait—”

He growls, teeth closing around the back of her neck like she’s a pup. He transfers control of her wrists to one hand, the other sliding between her spread thighs, finding the small nub of her clit at the top of her mound.

Clarke whines, hips bucking hard. Bellamy laughs darkly and only works her harder. She leans into his touch, trying to get more and less of him all at once. Finally it all becomes too much, too much, too much — and she shudders, cunt rippling around him in violent orgasm.

He’s still fucking her when she comes down, and Clarke begins to panic, feeling the full press of his knot working at her. “Wait, please—” She scrambles forward, tilting her hips to get away from  the blunt pressure. His hand soothes her, moving softly down her thigh, but she clenches her legs together, shaking her head. “Please don’t, please—”

A sob escapes her throat, even though she swore not to cry. “Please don’t knot me.” 

Bellamy doesn’t move, lips right against her ear. His voice is hot with rage, fingers tightening around her wrists “Why not? You let him fuck you. Let him knot you. Why not me?”

The words burst from her with a rush. “I didn’t— it was only you! There’s only ever been you!”

She can feel him jerk back in surprise. His cock twitches inside her, his grip loosening as he considers her words.

Bellamy curses, and the pressure against her cunt moves away. A hand presses down on her spine, pushing her hips down into the mattress. She hears slick noises, a bitten off moan, and then he’s turning her over, flipping her so she faces him, meeting his eyes. Something hot and wet splashes against her stomach, dripping sticky down over her mound. 

His cum.

There’s blood on his cock from where he tore through her virginity, just as there’s blood everywhere else on him. Bellamy inspects it with glittering black eyes. A low purr of gratification rumbles through his chest, and Clarke feels it vibrate through her as well. His fingers trace through the mess on her stomach, rubbing his cum into her skin, moving to her neck to slick it over her glands.

“You’re mine,” Bellamy says wondrously, drunk on his own satisfaction.

She turns her head and slips out from under him, tugging her hands from his grip. He lets her go, watching curiously as Clarke steps into his bathroom, wincing at the pain between her legs. She cleans herself off. She can tell Bellamy wants to stop her, but he stays on the bed, posture relaxed even as she pulls another shirt from his closet and redresses. The one she’d had on before lies in tatters on the floor.

Bellamy finally gets up as she moves for the door. He catches her by the arm and pulls her to face him, eyes burning down at her. His voice is soft as he repeats himself: “You’re mine.”

Clarke pulls away and shakes her head, refusing to meet his gaze.

“Not in any way that counts.”

Chapter Text

He lets her sleep alone. 

It’s a concession on his part, a big one, but Bellamy figures he has bigger fish to fry. He’d thought she’d fucked someone else, and she hadn’t. He’d been her first after all, and her last if he has anything to goddamn say about it. Clarke is his, for the rest of her life.

She can have one night to herself.

It’s an odd mix of feelings, he thinks. On one hand, he’s enraged that she lied, and even angrier that he believed her. He still wants to tear that unnamed Alpha to shreds, whether they touched her or not. Their fucking scent was on her. Clarke should smell like no one but him.

On the other hand, he’s fucking ecstatic. She came to his bed a virgin, and left it his . Not that she wasn’t already bound to him, but the sick pleasure of being her first, of being the one to break and defile her— Bellamy wonders if anything has ever felt so good to her as him. If her own fingers could have brought her as much pleasure as her alpha, because she’s had nothing else.

Is he jealous of Clarke, for being the first to make herself cum? It’s a ridiculous thought, but may well be the truth.

The horny alpha-ness of all his thoughts surrounding her is almost overwhelming. Bellamy likes to think of himself as an intelligent man, not a beast, but where Clarke is concerned his own instincts seem determined to prove him wrong. He wants her naked beneath him, wearing nothing but his bite around her neck and his ring on her finger. He wants her on her knees for him, her pretty pink lips stretched taut around his cock. He wants to hold her down and fuck her until she’s full, stuck tight on his knot and dripping with cum, his pups growing in her belly. 

Bellamy doesn’t even want kids yet, the idea of bringing a child into this brutal world of his so awful it’s almost unthinkable, but the thought of Clarke swollen and round, her tits huge and dripping, a dark haired baby already suckling at her breast—

It’s almost enough to make him cum right there. It is enough to drive him crazy.

Another much smaller part of him is guilty. Not over taking her, or essentially making her marry him but— she’d been a virgin.

She’d been a virgin and he was not gentle, not at all. Even if he didn’t knot her, she’s still going to be sore. He should’ve kept her in his bed afterwards, cleaned her up, brought her ice or a warm towel, something —

But she didn’t want that.

She didn’t want him, not that part of him at least. She didn’t want him to care.

And Bellamy doesn’t care, not really. He doesn’t. What is it to him if his stubborn little omega wife wants to suffer the consequences of her own lie by herself? The only reason he feels guilty is hormones; the stupid alpha drive to protect what’s his. It’s not—

She is so small though. So small, and the way she’d begged him not to knot her, the way she’d cried— He hopes she’s alright. She should be of course, she’s an omega, but even then—

Bellamy has to stop himself from speculating.

Wanting his new wife is fine. Caring on the other hand— caring is a liability.

He’s probably fucked, of course. Emotions and alpha drives are hard to detangle after all, the two blurring together until it’s hard to determine which is which. But Bellamy’s never had a hard time keeping his sex life separate from his personal life. The girls he’s been with have all evoked some level of psychotic alpha-ness from him—the possessiveness, the desire to dominate—but never anything beyond that. He never let himself love them, and he never even had to really try.

Except with Gina.

The thought of her doesn’t hurt anymore, not really, but it still makes his muscles tighten. She’d been his first girlfriend, his first love, back when he was too young to fully know what he had been born into. He presented earlier than most, only fourteen, and it didn’t escape notice of the Capo at the time. Bellamy’s always wondered why he even cared, why the grandson of a low-level foot soldier born to an unwed daughter was worth the attention. It’s possible the old Capo was his father, which would make the story even more lurid, but there’s no one alive who could confirm his suspicions now.

He’d been sent out on his first mission, tasked to find some rival gangs dealer and come back a made man. Gina had begged him not to go, told him he was too young, but he’d wanted to prove himself.

He’d come back shaken and beaten, the blood of two men on his hands. They’d been barely older than himself. It didn’t feel like justice.

He’d come back and Gina was bitten and claimed by the Capo, sitting docilely at his feet. Her eyes had been dead and empty, and she’d looked right past Bellamy, like she’d never known him at all. That was the last time he saw her.

He’d heard secondhand a while later that she’d killed herself before the year was out, and it could’ve even been the truth. But the old Capo got bored easily, so he’d never quite been sure. The old man wasn’t known for keeping girls around very long.

Bellamy wouldn’t do that. Hell, half of his inner circle probably expected him to, and no one would’ve complained given the circumstances, but Clarke is not a plaything to him. Or, well, she is, but—

She’s his. No matter what she claims.

And she’ll be his for the rest of her damn life, and preferably for the rest of his. He isn’t going to pretend like he’s not a player, like he hasn’t fucked his way through half of New York, but none of those girls was anything other than a tight cunt and a wet mouth to him. Clarke is going to be bitten, and Clarke is going to stay, whether she likes it or not.

And she will. She goddamn will.

He hears her in the hall long before she enters. 

Bellamy makes a little game out of it, guessing when she’ll finally work up the nerve to open the door and face him. He’s honestly a little surprised, after the night before, he’d thought she’d try and avoid him for a few days at least. 

He makes an effort to look busy as he finally hears the knob begin to turn.

“I need to see a doctor,” Clarke informs him without preamble.

Bellamy glances up from his desk, lips quirking as he takes her in. She’s standing in the doorway of his office, hands on her hips, glaring at him with an expression like she’s swallowed a lemon.

It’s delicious.

He sets his pen down. “You saw the Doc yesterday.”

“A real doctor,” Clarke insists, as if that means anything at all.

Bellamy laughs. “I assure you, Doc is fully licensed to practice medicine.”

Her nose twitches in irritation and her lips narrow. Bellamy waits obligingly. “An OB-Gyn.”

“Oh?” He raises an eyebrow curiously. “Why’s that?”

“None of your goddamn business,” Clarke bites out.

Bellamy stands, coming around the side of his desk. He smirks when she takes a half step back, and leans against the front of the desk. His arms flex, crossing over his chest. “Isn’t it?” She’s still wearing his clothes. His eyes sweep over her body lecherously, taking in each curve. He remembers how they’d looked the night before, when she’d been bare for him. “ Wife .”

Clarke stands her ground, blue eyes hot on his. It’s cute, he thinks. He likes her spark. Her fight. He likes the way she doesn’t fold like the omega he’d expected to get out of his deal with Marcus. Bellamy thought he’d be getting some spindly little waif like most omegas in their world, a girl so sheltered she probably didn’t know where her own cunt was. Someone who’d lay on their back and do their duty, and never complain. No, Clarke is a spitfire. A pain in the ass, and a gem.

At least she’s interesting.

Is he angry she ran? Certainly. But knowing that even then she’d been his, unfucked and untouched: it’s cooled the anger. And the chase—

Well, everyone knows how much alphas like to chase.

He’s so busy thinking of stalking her down like prey, a small grin tugging at the corner of his lips, that he forgets she’s talking to him.

“Are you even listening?!” Her arms are crossed over her chest now, pressing her tits up nicely. 

“No,” Bellamy says honestly, and smiles while she sputters in outrage.

“I need suppressants. Doc only prescribed me birth control.” 

Bellamy’s eyes narrow. “Yes, I know. That was on purpose.”

She gives him such a look of outrage that he wants to smile again, but as it turns out this subject makes him a little grouchier than he’d thought.

“Why?!”

Bellamy sets a bored expression on his face, looking at his nails. “You’ve been on them too long, not to mention the two rounds of emergency suppressants. They’re not actually good for you, you know.”

“Just because you don’t take blockers—”

Bellamy raises an eyebrow. “Who said I don’t take blockers?” 

Clarke gives him a dark look like she doesn’t believe him. Which is interesting, because Bellamy’s not lying.

“Regardless,” she continues. “It’s my body.” Debatable , Bellamy wants to say, but it’d be pressing his luck. “And besides, I can’t go anywhere smelling like,”—she waves a hand over her body, blushing red—“o mega .”

She spits it like it’s a dirty word, and Bellamy snorts. “I hate to break it to you, princess, but the scent isn’t exactly new. And it isn’t going away, either. Besides you don’t need them for that, not when my scent is all over you.”

And it is. He’d made sure of it last night, rubbing it right into her glands. It would take ages for her to get rid of it, and he doesn’t intend to let her anyways. He’s not planning on letting her out of the apartment for a while, not after her escape act, but people stop by. Even if they didn’t, he wants Clarke to have to smell him on her, so she can’t forget who she belongs to.

She’s enraged, practically shaking with it. “But! My heat—“

“Will come again,” Bellamy agrees. He sidles across the room, stopping in front of her. One hand reaches up and catches a lock of gold hair. He’s nearly purring. “And soon, I hope.”

She meets his eyes, and the fire dies down some. Her voice, when it comes, is a whine. “It hurt .”

He makes a tsking sound, running his thumb over the silky strands. “I know, pretty girl. But it won’t next time.” Bellamy drops the hair, tracing his fingers over the delicate line of her throat instead. He likes this dreamy-eyed version of his wife almost as much as the angry one. “Not with your alpha.”

Clarke blinks once. Her eyes clear with a jolt as she processes the words and she shoves him back, snarling. “You’re insufferable!”

Bellamy laughs. “And yet I’m all you’ve got.”

****

She hates him. 

She hates him so fucking much. Bellamy is more than evil, he’s also annoying. Stupidly arrogant, stupidly forceful, stupidly alpha .

After the disaster that was her attempt at asking for suppressants, she retreats back into the guest room. She showers for the third time since the night before, rubbing uselessly at the glands in her neck, trying desperately to wash his scent down the drain. It does nothing but make her horny, each touch jolting heat directly between her thighs.  With a growl, she gives up and rinses off.

Her room has been tidied while she was in the shower. It’s a bit unsettling, knowing someone was in there without her noticing, but she forgets her discomfort when she sees the fresh sheets. At least those won’t smell like Bellamy.

Her old clothes are there too, washed and folded on the dresser, and she puts them on gratefully. They’re not the best, thieved as they were from the locker room at the hotel, but they’re better than wearing Bellamy’s borrowed t-shirt for another day.

She’s not really sure what to do with herself after that. The room is sparse, no tv or books, no computer. Obviously Clarke doesn’t have any personal belongings, so there’s nothing to unpack. She really should ask about getting her things from Chicago shipped here, but that would involve another interaction with her husband where he has the upper hand, and Clarke is not eager to repeat the morning’s argument. It’s almost like fighting with her mom.

Well, no, maybe it’s not.

If Clarke had run from Abby she knows full well it would be worse than this, whatever this really is. Bellamy orders her around the same way, but Clarke feels like she can fight back. It’s not as heavy as it was with her mom because Bellamy thinks it’s funny. It infuriates Clarke that he does, but it’s not as awful as the cold distaste from her mother; the constant disappointment and judgement of Clarke.

Still, that doesn’t mean she likes it. 

Clarke wonders about Octavia, and how she’s faring. She grew up under the tyranny Clarke is facing now, but from the way she’d talked about Bellamy it seemed like there wasn’t any resentment. She wonders if Bellamy knows how his sister helped Clarke, that she’d known and didn’t stop her. She wonders if she told him.

It doesn’t look like she lives here, at least not from Clarke’s inspection the night before, which is odd given that Octavia’s still unmarried. Clarke supposes that she herself had been living alone before the engagement though, so maybe it’s not that weird. Still, she kind of wishes she had some company.

“This isn’t your room, you know.” 

Clarke’s head shoots up. She hadn’t heard the door open, let alone seen Bellamy come in. He’s leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. He does that a lot, she notices.

“Doesn’t seem like anyone else was using it.”

His lips tighten slightly, but he doesn’t argue the point. She doesn’t even really know what the point is, this is the only other bedroom in this place. He can’t expect her to stay with him, can he?

She thinks back to the empty dresser, the untouched nightstand on the left side of the bed and pales. Maybe he had expected just that. Clarke sets her lips in a hard line. Well, he’ll have to deal with it. She’s not giving up her privacy, and she’s certainly not sleeping in his bed. 

Who said anything about sleep?

She flushes at the thought, remembering the night before. The way he’d touched her. The way she’d let him touch her.

“You planning on staying in here all day or did you wanna eat?”

“Fuck off,” Clarke snarls. Bellamy rolls his eyes and leaves.

She waits a bit, being stubborn, but she is actually pretty hungry. Eventually she decides to risk it. Bellamy had gone in the opposite direction as the kitchen, after all.

It’s hard to get up now after she’s been sitting for a while. Clarke can’t help but limp a bit as she walks down the hall, sore between her legs in a way she’s never experienced before. Well, but of course she hasn’t, she’s never had anything shoved up inside her before, let alone something as big as—

She hears a thoughtful hum behind her and whirls, eyes flashing. “What do you want?”

“Maybe you should see a doctor,” Bellamy says with a slight frown. “I wish you’d told me the truth a little earlier.”

Clarke is irate, sore and frightened and annoyed to hell. She hates the way he looks at her, like he cares that she’s in pain. He doesn’t. He cares about what’s between her legs, and who her family is, but not about Clarke. She turns her back to him and walks the rest of the way into the kitchen, trailing fingers across the edge of the counter. “Why? So you could’ve properly enjoyed it?” 

His face twists and his spine goes straight.

“If I’d known—”

Clarke spins, her expression hot with rage. “Oh, spare me! Don’t pretend you would’ve waited. Don’t pretend you’d have been gentle. You wanted to hurt me, you liked it. Don’t act like you regret it now. I was there, if you remember.”

Bellamy’s eyes glitter darkly, his head tilting. “If I wanted to hurt you, principessa , I would’ve knotted your little cunt right there, when you were begging me not to. You might thank me for my restraint.”

 “Restraint?” Clarke scoffs, incredulous. “Is that what you call fucking me raw, less than a day after my heat? Nobody fucks that rough without wanting it to hurt.” She’s guessing of course, because how would Clarke know? But she could smell his rage, feel the force behind his thrusts. He wasn’t trying to be gentle with her. She remembers how his scent spiked with pleasure when she’d squeaked in pain. “You got off on it!”

“And so what if I did?” He leans closer and her body shudders as his lips brush against the gland in her neck. Bellamy presses a slow kiss to one side and then the other. “I was there too. You liked it just as much as I did.” 

Clarke struggles to keep her breaths even, holding tight to her rage even as desire begins to pool heavy in her belly. “No.”

“Oh?” Bellamy lets out a soft chuckle, the air blowing hot against her skin in little puffs. “I suppose I must be imagining the way your pussy clamped down on me then. The way you pulled me in, the way you begged for more.”

“I didn’t,” Clarke argues weakly, but she’s not even sure it’s the truth now. Maybe she did beg.  Her head tilts to the side, allowing him further access to the line of her throat, and Bellamy hums in satisfaction.

“You did,” he says, sharp with an edge of arrogance. His fingers play with the hair at her nape, pressing her head back further. “And you will again.”

The heat in Clarke’s belly sours and she rips herself away from him. 

Bellamy doesn’t follow. He watches her from across the room, casually indifferent except for his eyes. No, his eyes are black, filled with a grim pleasure as he takes in her flushed face, the way her shoulders heave with each gasping breath.

“Is it really so bad?”

The question takes her off guard. “What?”

Bellamy tilts his head. “Liking it?” 

Liking me? she hears.

It’s a moot point, because she doesn’t, but Clarke stiffens anyways, her expression going hard. “Yes,” she says honestly. “It’s the worst thing in the world.”

He looks her over for a long minute. His expression doesn’t change, not really, but some of the heat drains out of it. Bellamy shrugs. His voice is gruff. “Fine,” he says, turning towards the oven. He pulls out a plate wrapped in tin foil and sets it on the counter in front of Clarke with a clatter. “Eat.”

She blinks. “Did you make this?”

“No.” He pulls a fork from a drawer and passes it towards her. She watches in confusion as he leaves, shoulders tense. “Just fucking eat something.”

She does. 

She finishes the food on her plate and goes back to her room. After a while she works up the confidence to ask for a book or something, bored out of her mind, and to check about getting her clothes sent out, but she can’t find Bellamy. Out in the living room she finds Murphy, sprawled across the couch like he owns the place.

“Do you know where Bellamy went?”

“Why, you miss him already?” Murphy shrugs. “Out.”

She thinks of the night before, and the blood all over him when he came back. She stiffens, arms clasped around herself. “Out where?”

Murphy shrugs again. “Out.”

Clarke narrows her eyes. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

Her bodyguard glances over his shoulder at her, lips quirking up in a wry smile. He looks like an asshole, Clarke notes with little surprise. “He’s your husband, princess, not mine.”

She huffs and throws herself down on the couch, snatching the remote away from Murphy. If she’s stuck here, she can at least entertain herself. Murphy doesn’t look phased at all, simply settling back further into the cushions. “Well,” he says. “What are we watching?”

****

Clarke doesn’t see Bellamy again for almost a week. 

He comes back, she thinks, because his scent doesn’t fade at all, but she doesn’t ever see him. Her clothes appear in her drawers without her having to ask. She doesn’t see the housekeeper, or her husband, or Octavia; only Murphy, who does nothing but eat her food and take up space on the couch.

On the fifth day she gets fed up and waits in his room, knowing full well it’s a bad idea. Clarke just can’t take it anymore: the silence. 

She’s sitting on his bed when he comes in.

“Well,” Bellamy says, unbuttoning his cuffs. “This is a pleasant surprise.” He doesn’t sound surprised in the least.

Her response is stiff. “What are you planning on doing with me?”

He raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve left me alone this whole week. No one’s seen me except Murphy, the housekeeper I met is acting like a ghost, I have no idea what’s going on and nothing to do.” The words get more and more frustrated as she goes, anger bubbling up. “Why am I here?! You’re not even fucking me.”

Bellamy’s head tilts. “Would you like me to be?”

Clarke chokes on her words for a second, realizing what she said. “No! I mean, I just—”

In an instant he’s in front of her, one hand planted on either side of her hips. She’s startled into submission, freezing as his nose drags along the side of her neck. He suckles on her scent glands and she shivers. The flat of his tongue laves across the tender knots, teeth grazing just enough to make them ache.

She’s clutching his shirt, she realizes. The fabric is twisted around her fist, holding him to her as he rubs his scent into her glands anew. Her head tilts back, a soft whine falling from her throat.

“No?” Bellamy asks again sweetly.

Clarke lets out a shuddering breath, forcing the word out. “No.”

Bellamy surprises her by pulling away immediately.

“Suit yourself,” he says with a shrug. He walks across the room, looking wholly unbothered, and begins to unbutton his shirt. 

She watches his back with a frown. “But—”

“Clarke,” he says, cutting her off. Her own name, and not a little pet name. She can hear the tension in his voice now, carefully contained and sublimated. “You should go back to your room.” He glances at her over his shoulder, eyes black as pitch. “Unless you want me to finish it.”

She stands quickly, only hesitating when she reaches the door. “I need to know—”

He smirks. “Tomorrow, princess, you can leave your little cage. Just wait until tomorrow.”

Clarke looks him in the eyes, searching for deception. Finding none, she gives him a sharp nod and leaves.

Chapter Text

This outing is not exactly what Clarke had in mind. 

She’s not really sure what she expected, all things considered. The fact that he let her leave the apartment was more freedom than she’d been given in weeks, she’s not sure why she though it be something a little more important than—

She cranes her head to look out the window of the car where they’ve stopped. “Are we at fucking Saks?” Bellamy raises an eyebrow at her and she huffs. “I just mean— why?”

He drums his fingers on the edge on the car door, looking mildly annoyed. “Do you know what day it is?”

Clarke is unembarrassed to admit that she does not, in fact. What does it matter to her? 

Bellamy lets out a sigh. “It’s the 23rd,” he says, like that’s supposed to mean anything to her. “Of December.”

Clarke blinks at him. “And?”

“And it’s time you attend some social events. If you don’t come with me on Christmas, people are going to start to speculate.”

Speculate that she is dead, most likely. Clarke almost wants to laugh, but it’s too bleak. The wives of mob bosses don’t exactly have very long shelf-lives, but less than a month would be pretty fast even for that. But Bellamy’s people know she ran, so then again—

“Where are we going?”

He shrugs. “Dinner. And then there’s a party on New Years. Which is why we’re here.” 

She glances out the window again. After her weeks inside, even going shopping seems a bit— daunting. “I have clothes.”

His lips quirk up. “I know.” Bellamy gives her an expectant look. “You’re welcome for that, by the way.”

Clarke bristles in annoyance. “For what? They’re mine.” 

She should probably thank him for retrieving them for her without her having to ask, but he doesn’t have to look so smug about it. Bellamy clears his throat.

“Regardless, you’re my wife. There’s a certain amount of expectation—”

“I have expensive clothes. Designer clothes.”

He glares at her interruption. 

“Just go buy a new dress, Clarke. Jesus Christ.” Bellamy huffs, opening the door and exiting with a slam. Clarke is oddly pleased to have pissed him off. Serves him right for ignoring her for so long just to take her dress shopping .

Clarke picks herself up and shuffles out of the car. Bellamy hadn’t driven them today, maybe because parking in the city sucked or maybe because he just didn’t normally drive, she’s not sure. Murphy slides out of the passenger seat, waving off the driver.

Clarke groans. “You’re still here?”

He gives her a crooked grin. “What, you think he trusts you now?”

Clarke glares at him and stalks into the store. No, she doesn’t think he trusts her. But she figured he wouldn’t need a second person there to bring her down if she tried to make a break for it. It’s insulting, honestly.

The inside of the store, which Clarke expected to be bustling, is practically empty. She looks around in confusion, then back to Murphy. 

He waggles his eyebrows. “The benefits of being a mob princess.”

“Shut the fuck up, Murphy,” Bellamy says, his voice gruff. Clarke startles at the noise. It was like he came out of nowhere. 

Behind Bellamy is a well-dressed woman, who looks Clarke over nervously. A saleslady. Clarke smiles at her. “This is Greta,” Bellamy tells her. “She’ll help you find whatever you need.”

Greta looks at Clarke then back at Bellamy. Clarke is suddenly unsure of why Bellamy bothered to hush Murphy up, given the fear in this girl’s eyes. She clearly knows just who she is serving. “Is there— a budget today, sir?”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, waving away the question. “Whatever she wants.”

The girl perks up considerably. Clarke recognizes the dollar signs in her eyes, realizing she probably works on commission. Well, at least she’ll be able to make it worth her while. 

She looks back at Bellamy. “Formal?” 

He nods. 

“Okay, Greta,” Clarke says with a sigh. “Let’s get this done.”

Bellamy and Murphy follow the two of them up to the dressing rooms. Murphy stays outside, thankfully, while Bellamy comes in. It’s one of those fancy single person ones, with the separate changing area, so at least he doesn’t see her undressed, but he sees each of the outfits Greta puts her in. Clarke keeps expecting him to butt in, or say something mean like Abby would’ve, but he just sits and watches silently. She can see the way his eyes gleam at some of the gowns, smell how his scent spikes, but he doesn’t offer any input.

It’s— refreshing, if a little disconcerting. Clarke isn’t really used to making her own decisions on this kind of thing.

In the end, the dress she chooses is one she’s fairly certain her mother would hate, which is only slightly on purpose. It’s chesty, but tasteful, and it doesn’t force Clarke into any shape she isn’t. She likes it, and so does Bellamy, if his scent is anything to go by. Not that Clarke cares of course, but it is a little satisfying.

Greta does not show her the price, and Clarke doesn’t ask. She figures it doesn’t really matter, not with a budget of ‘whatever she wants’.

They’re quiet on the ride home, the air between them not necessarily awkward, but a little tense. It’s been a while since they were in the same space for a prolonged period, and despite everything they still don’t even know each other, not really. 

“How is your sister?” Clarke asks finally, unable to stand the silence any longer.

Bellamy’s lips quirk up. “I was wondering when you were gonna ask.”

Clarke shrugs nonchalantly. She still isn’t sure if he knows about his sister’s involvement in her escape.

“She’s fine. Mad at me for something or another but that’s par for the course with Octavia.” He sighs. “Maybe you’ll be able to get it out of her.”

Clarke’s heart stutters. “She’s coming too?”

“Yes.” Bellamy gives her a look, like it’s a stupid question, and maybe he’s right. She’s his sister after all, his only family. Clarke doesn’t have any siblings so she doesn’t quite understand their dynamic, but they seemed close. Of course she would be with him on Christmas. And New Years…

“To both?” Clarke asks.

“To both,” Bellamy confirms. If Octavia is there, at least she’ll have somebody she knows who doesn’t hate her, or at least see her as competition. Well someone other than Bellamy at least. He gives her a curious look, and she wonders if the relief is visible on her face, or if he can just smell it on her. She hates the idea of that. She’ll never have any privacy if he can read her scent that easily.

“It was your expression,” he says, and she jerks. Clarke hadn’t realized she’d been wondering aloud. He grins at the flush of pink that begins to paint her cheeks. “There are only two emotions that are easily scented.” He pauses for a moment, thinking, then amends: “Well, maybe three.”

Clarke thinks of the metallic tinge she’d noticed when he’d thought she’d slept with another man. “Anger.”

“Aggression,” he corrects. “Anger is too narrow.”

She cocks her head slightly, considering. “Fear?”

Bellamy nods. “That was my third one. But it’s almost entirely an omega scent.”

Clarke wants to snort at that, or maybe punch him. “Alphas don’t feel fear?”

“They do,” Bellamy allows. “ We do. But it almost always presents as aggression.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. He’s probably right, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous. Fucking alphas.

“And what’s the last one?”

She regrets the question immediately because she already knows. Of course she knows. She can smell it on him now: as his eyes darken, as he leans closer to her across the seat. Clarke shivers as his gaze falls to her lips, to her neck, and his nostrils flare.

“Arousal,” he purrs. “Desire.” His head sinks lower so she can feel his mouth right over her skin, hot breath sliding sweetly over her gland. “ Pleasure .”

“It would be a pleasure if you would roll up the partition before beginning the foreplay,” Murphy gripes from the front seat, and Clarke startles, jerking away from Bellamy. He doesn’t chase her, relaxing back into his own space with a satisfied grin that curls catlike over his lips. 

“Where’s the fun in that?”

****

Christmas, Bellamy thinks, is his favorite holiday of the year. This Christmas, however, may be something of an exception.

The morning is alright, close to good even. He goes downstairs to Octavia’s apartment for breakfast and presents. Willa and Ilian are already there when he comes in, the older woman in the kitchen, her grandson shaking presents under the tree.

“He’s gotten so big,” Bellamy remarks, looking fondly at the child as he leans in the doorway to the kitchen. It would ruin his reputation if anyone knew how he’d snuck down the night before to fill stockings and place presents, but some habits are hard to shake.

Octavia and Willa look up with expectant smiles, glancing behind him, and then— “Where is she?!”

Bellamy almost flinches at the dual screeches from the women in front of him. Octavia’s is enraged, Willa’s more disappointed. “Upstairs.”

“Alone?” You’d think he’d be immune to womanly guilting at this point, but it appears not. “Bellamy, it’s Christmas.”

“No,” he says, and winces. “With Murphy.”

More screeching. He thinks it’s Octavia who throws the tea-towel at him, but it’s hard to say. After some more prodding and goading and questions, he goes back upstairs with a grumble and collects his wayward wife. And Murphy.

Clarke looks a bit shell shocked if anything. She’s uncharacteristically quiet throughout the whole affair, clearly tense, and Bellamy has to shove down the urge to wrap her in his arms. She brightens slightly when Ilian brings her a present, placing it in her lap. 

“What’s this?” she asks, smiling weakly.

“It has your name on it,” Ilian explains. “It means you’re supposed to open it.”

Clarke looks up at Bellamy with narrowed eyes and he shrugs like he has no idea where it came from. There’s a few things for her under there, not that he meant anything by it. He hadn’t even really planned on her being here. 

Octavia chucks a present at Murphy, pegging him directly in the forehead. “Some for you, too.”

Well, he may have planned a little.

When they’re done Clarke gives his sister a hug, apologizing profusely for not bringing any gifts of her own. “I hadn’t thought anyone would get me anything.”

Bellamy looks at his nails, feigning nonchalance. “Yes, well, nothing stops O from buying stuff.”

At least one of the presents actually had been from his sister, so it’s not completely untrue. Octavia gives him a look over Clarke’s shoulder. Liar , she mouths, and Bellamy just grins back. 

It’s just after lunchtime when they head back to their own apartment, leaving Murphy behind for once. Clarke stops as they enter the hall, wringing her hands slightly. 

“Was there—” she stops, shaking her head. “Nevermind.”

“Was there what?” Bellamy asks, curious.

There’s a grimace, and her voice is so unsteady it almost makes him angry. He likes it when she’s mad, but this quiet thing — this he doesn’t like. “Was there anything from Chicago?”

From my family, she means, and he understands.

“Not yet,” Bellamy tells her apologetically, and it’s the truth. He hasn’t heard a word from Marcus and Abby, not since he had Clarke’s things sent over. “But shipping gets fucked up during the holidays. It could still come.”

She shakes her head slowly. “It won’t.”

He doesn’t follow her as she shuts the door to her room behind her. 

That’s not even when it starts to get bad. Awkwardness, he can handle. Even a little homesick melancholy. What’s bad is dinner.

While the morning was a family affair, dinner is another story. It’s tradition, dinner with his lieutenants and their wives, and the thing about it is that Bellamy mostly hates them. And they hate him back. The year before he’d been able to avoid it, using bachelorhood as an excuse to turn it into a party, but with Clarke now that’s not going to work.

Sure there’s some he trusts, some he doesn’t mind. Murphy, David Miller and his son Nate… that might be it, actually. The majority of his lieutenants are inherited—old guard—and they resent him for his power, for his youth, for his departure from some of the more archaic of their traditions.

They won’t challenge him directly, not after what he’d done to Antonio Valeri’s son the week before, but it doesn’t mean they’ll be polite either. He loves his wife’s spirit, her temper, but the others won’t. Those who don’t resent her for being Kane’s stepdaughter will resent her for being a Griffin. Octavia will be there for the actual meal, but she'll have no buffer before that, and that's when it really matters. He’s throwing her to the wolves, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

They have a formal dining room on the floor below the main apartment, along with the rest of the rooms he uses to conduct business. He goes to collect Clarke fifteen minutes before they’re scheduled to arrive. 

His mouth goes dry as she opens the door. 

“Is this alright?” she asks him, twirling this way and that as she puts earring on. Is the dress alright? No, not even close. It’s— it’s—

He clears his throat, tearing his greedy eyes away from the curve of her ass in green silk. “It’s fine.”

“Can you help zip it up?” She turns, giving him her back. The pale line of her spine, with the zipper ending just above the swell of her ass. She’s gotten it halfway up, to the small of her back, and Bellamy has never wanted anything less than he wants to finish zipping that dress up. He wants to ruck it up her thighs, peel it from her skin, suck her tits till they peek through the thin fabric. He wants to tear it off her, fuck her in the scraps—

Clarke gives him a look.

Bellamy zips up the dress.

He clears his throat again as they’re walking, trying to break some of the tension that’s fallen between them. Now is not the time for what he wants. He pulls her to a stop in front of the elevator. “The men we will be eating with tonight—” Bellamy starts and then falters, unsure how to phrase his sentence without it coming out like an insult. “That is, I think I should warn you—”

“Do you trust them?” He blinks at her question, cutting him off.

“Some,” Bellamy hedges.

Clarke nods. “Understood.”

She turns back to the elevator, pressing the down button. He frowns, eyebrows pulling together. “Clarke, what I’m trying to say is that tonight, you can’t be—”

“Me,” she finishes succinctly. “Yes, I know.”

Bellamy’s frown deepens. “You know?”

She looks at him finally, and he sees the fire in her eyes under the mask, but just barely. She looks every bit the perfect omega, the perfect wife. Bellamy hardly recognizes her. “Do you really think I don’t know the rules yet? I’ve been playing this game my whole life.” 

He follows her, dumbfounded. When the guests arrive, she plays her part perfectly. She’s quiet, and demure, and shy. She doesn’t speak unless spoken to. She smiles, and nods.

Bellamy hates it.

He also hates that it’s still not enough. He sees the looks she gets, from the wives and the men both. Sees the way they tilt their head together, murmuring vicious things where they think they won’t be heard. They’re disdainful, dismissive, lecherous. 

“Where’s your ring?” one of the wives asks Clarke, and he winces, preparing to step in.

Clarke just gives an abashed smile, answering without hesitation. “Getting resized. I told him it was fine but—” She meets his gaze with sparkling eyes and gives a little shrug. “It needed a cleaning, anyway, after the honeymoon.”

He can do nothing about the wives, he knows better than to think he can meddle successfully with their internal politics, but the men—

The men he calls into the smoking room before dinner, and raises a toast. “If I hear one single word from any of you against my wife—my omega —” He grins savagely, teeth sharp and white against the red of his lips. “I will tear out your tongue and feed it to you. Is that understood?”

The rest of the evening is quiet after that.

****

After the uncomfortable but low-key event that was Christmas, the New Years party blindsides her. 

Clarke has been holed up for a little over a month now with almost no outside contact. She sees Murphy, and glimpses of Bellamy and the staff, but beyond that she’s been living in a very quiet and empty apartment essentially on her own. This party, she thinks, is pretty much the exact opposite of that.

It’s fucking bustling. There are people crammed in every corner, their combined voices like a din over the chintzy jazz music. There’s waiters and bartenders and photographers, and Clarke is so overwhelmed for a moment she feels like she might pass out.

The smell .

She hasn’t been anywhere with so many scents, not since she presented. It’s a cacophony of clashing pheromones, absolutely assaulting her senses. She bristles automatically beside Bellamy, her feet refusing to take another step forward.

Danger , her omega cries, holding her back. Her fingers clutch instinctively at Bellamy’s sleeve. 

He glances down at her, an amused expression on his strong features. “Something wrong?”

Clarke’s stomach sours, and she stubbornly shakes off the press of her omega urging her closer, closer . She releases his arm, sidling as far away as she can from his body without making it obvious to the rest of the room. “No.”

Bellamy leads her around the room, stopping to say hello to various people along the way. Some Clarke has met before at the wedding, but most she has not.

“My wife,” he introduces her as, gesturing to Clarke with a smile. The people chirp and fawn, but they don’t say a word to Clarke. They don’t even ask for her name.

She fucking hates it here.

Her dress is too tight in the shoulders, drawing her spine up straighter than she wants it. Her tits are half out, and it seemed like an appropriate look at the store, but now it feels obscene. She wants to cover them, to put on a sweater. She wants to go home.

Clarke starts at that thought, realizing she was thinking of Bellamy’s apartment, not her place at college or even her mom’s house. Is she already so used to it? How can a cage be her home? 

Clarke practically guzzles her champagne, fidgeting beside her husband. Standing so close to him is still uncomfortable, even if it’s better than being thrown into the deep end alone. Sure, when she’s beside him his scent drowns out the rest, but—

It still affects her. Annoyingly so. 

Clarke is not sure why Bellamy smells so much better than anyone else to her. Maybe it’s proximity, or familiarity, even with her disdain for his entire being. It doesn’t really matter, anyways. He just— does.

It’s stopped making her dizzy, at least not as dizzy as before she presented. It was almost unbearable back then, and even in the early days of being in his apartment. She always felt half like she needed to strip off her clothes, half like she needed to faint. Now, she just feels— 

Warm.

Uncomfortably warm. Annoyingly, bitterly warm.

She’s sweating slightly, standing so close to him. It’s half the smell, and half the fact that Bellamy is a fucking furnace. Truly, the man puts out more body heat than anyone she’s ever met. Maybe it’s an alpha thing.

A drop beads up on her neck, dripping between the valley of her breasts, and Clarke shudders.

Suddenly Bellamy’s attention is on her in full. “Are you alright?” he asks. He’s boxed out whoever they were talking to, leaving them abruptly to themselves. “You seem—”

His eyes are dark, and Clarke doesn’t want to know what she seems like. She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

He tilts his head, gaze almost accusing. “Are you sure?”

Before Clarke can even bother to reply, they’re interrupted by a drawling hello. Octavia elbows her way through the crowd, inserting herself in between them. She looks back and forth from Clarke to Bellamy. “Hmm,” she says lightly. “Gross.”

Bellamy draws back, his expression lightening. “O. You’re late.”

“I’m not,” he sister replies cheerfully. “I just didn’t want to see you.”

Clarke snorts at that.

Bellamy shoots her a betrayed look, which she promptly ignores. “How have you been?”

Octavia shrugs. “The same. It’s only been a few days.”

“Clarke,” Bellamy says. His hand wraps around her waist. “There’s some other people we haven’t had a chance to speak to.”

Clarke elbows him off her. His gaze darkens, scent going bitter. She gives him a wide-eyed smile. “I think I should stay here with Octavia. We have so much to catch up on.”

Bellamy looks like he wants to argue, but there’s people watching the conversation with interest. He’s not exactly subtle, and Clarke is using that to the best of her abilities. 

“Fine,” he grits. “I’ll give you two a moment.”

Clarke lets out a heavy breath as he backs off, disappearing into the crowd. She turns back to Octavia. “Thank you.”

The brunette grins. “You looked like you needed rescuing.”

“These days? Always.”

She and Octavia chat for a bit, gossiping lightly. Clarke doesn’t mean to be looking for Bellamy, but she is, and he reappears faster than she’d wanted him to.

“You’re back,” she says curtly, taking a sip of her drink. “And so soon.”

“Well?” he asks tersely. “Have you caught up?” His tone is dripping with sarcasm, and it makes Clarke tense even further. “As I said, there’s a few more people we should talk to.”

“Who, exactly?”

She flicks her nail against the stem of her glass, feeling it vibrate through the crystal. Bellamy’s eyes narrow. “What?”

She looks up, standing her ground. “Who is it that we need to talk to?”

He humors her. “There’s the senator, Nate’s father, and…” He lists a number of names she doesn’t recognize. “…Natalia Angelieri, Echo Azgeda—”

Echo . That’s a name she remembers. Clarke bristles, her spine straightening. “I have no interest in being trotted out in front of your exes. You can speak to them by yourself.”

His lips quirk up slightly, like he’s amused, but his grip tightens. “My exes?”

“What am I really contributing anyway? It’s not like anyone’s ever talking to me.”

“I’d think,”—Bellamy says, eyes glinting—“that given the circumstances, you’d rather be there. Seeing as how we are married.”

“Just do whatever it was you used to do before,” Clarke says, waving dismissively. Her words are short, and frustrated, and she doesn’t like the way he’s looking at her, like this is a game. “It’s only been a few weeks, I’m sure you haven’t forgotten.”

“Do whatever I did before?” he drawls silkily. “With my exes? I don’t think you’d like that very much at all, princess.”

Clarke flushes red with anger, suddenly catching his meaning. Her omega cries out in protest, but her pride is stronger. “I don’t give a fuck what you do,” she sneers, ripping her arm away from him. “We may be married but that doesn’t mean I have to care.”

Bellamy stiffens, one eyebrow shooting up. “Is that so?”

“Go ahead and fuck around,” Clarke says, her voice too angry for her indifference to come off as genuine. “So long as it means you won’t touch me.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

He stalks away, leaving her fuming next to bewildered and more than vaguely amused Octavia. 

“Well that was—”

Clarke groans. “Don’t even start.”

Octavia snorts, throwing up her hands. “Fine, fine. But like—” She lets out a long whistle. “You know?” 

Clarke rolls her eyes and downs the rest of her champagne. “I know,” she grumbles. “Just take me to the bar already.”

Octavia lets out a laugh and complies. 

****

It’s three drinks later when Clarke sees him again. 

She and Octavia are still by the bar, caught up in a conversation with some kind of scary-looking older woman whose name Clarke didn’t quite catch. She’s ex-military, or ex-spy-ops, or something, and Octavia is absolutely enthralled. Clarke was interested too, but she lost focus almost immediately when she saw her husband again, being led across the room by an awfully familiar looking brunette. 

Echo, the one he’d mentioned before. The one from the bridal shower. The one who hated Clarke.

Well, they all hated Clarke, but Echo was the one who was the most obvious about it. Clarke feels something hot start to simmer in her belly, her eyes narrowing as they follow the two across the room. Bellamy’s eyes are dark, and glittering, but there’s nothing on his face. No smirk like he gives Clarke. He’s not touching her but she’s certainly touching him, stopping every few moments to make sure he’s still behind her, running her hands over his arms. 

It’s fucking obscene.

Clarke’s skin itches and prickles, hackles rising. Her fingers are wrapped around her glass so tight her knuckles are white. 

Echo leads Bellamy away from the room, down a hall. Down a hall that very distinctly is not the one with the bathrooms. Clarke is absolutely seething. 

Is he—? At a fucking public party? She knows what she said, knows it was tacit permission. Okay, she knows it was explicit permission, but— Is he fucking kidding?

Why does she care? She doesn’t, shouldn’t. She doesn’t love him, or like him, or want him. She wants him to let her go, doesn’t she? But this— It’s humiliating, Clarke decides. That’s why she’s angry. That’s what’s causing the uncomfortable twist at the bottom of her stomach, the tightness in her chest. He’s flaunting it, flaunting his infidelity. They’ve been married barely a month and everyone will know he’s already fucking around on her.

She stares across the room, eyes boring into the hallway like she could see through walls. She was not even pretending to pay attention to the conversation anymore, her body turned fully away from the other women. Octavia nudges her after a while, telling her the two of them are going to talk to one of the other woman’s colleagues. She asks if Clarke wants to join them, but she declines. She’s busy watching. Waiting.

She’s not sure how long it takes. It could’ve been ten minutes, could’ve been an hour. She empties her glass and doesn’t get a refill, standing stock-still with her back to the bar. She must look batshit insane, but she can’t help it.

When he comes back—

When he comes back, he fucking smells like her. The scent is all over him, like he’s bathed in it. Clarke’s omega snarls, her body flooding with instinctive rage. Mine , she thinks. How dare that bitch touch what’s mine.

Of course he’s not; but he is, isn’t he? He stood in front of an altar, in front of Clarke and God and half the people in this fucking room, and promised himself to her. He’s told Clarke she’s his how many times now? So he must be hers back, even just a little. And here he is, with the goddamn audacity to stand in front of her after— Clarke doesn’t even know. Did he fuck her? Did she suck him off? For some reason the thought of him kissing someone else stings more than anything else.

His hair is mussed, tie loose. His shirt is creased where it wasn’t before, rolled up around his forearms, and his jacket is slung careless over one arm.

He looks— fucked . And not by Clarke.

“I want to go home,” she announces imperiously. He doesn’t argue, following her as she stalks across the room like a wild animal. She doesn’t stop until they’re alone in the elevator, descending down from the penthouse. She can feel his eyes on her, burning her skin, but she refuses to look up.

“Something wrong?” Bellamy asks for the second time that night. His tone is smug, voice rough like he’s been— like he—

Clarke’s hands clench at her sides, fury boiling inside her. She wants to slap him, claw him, force him to the ground. She wants him to beg for her forgiveness on his knees. She wants to grab his girl by the hair and rip her throat out. She wants—

“Nothing,” Clarke grits out.

His eyes glitter darkly, and he steps closer. Clarke’s nose wrinkles at the sickly sweet stench rolling off him. “Oh?” Bellamy reaches out, his hand finding her throat. He strokes it softly. Clarkes flinches as he tilts her head up, refusing to meet his eyes. “I don’t know if I believe that, Principessa .”

How dare he?! How dare he accuse her of anything, not when he smells like— It’s not even her scent, Clarke realizes. That girl—Echo—she isn’t an omega. It’s obvious by her build alone, not to mention the disdainful comments she’d made about Clarke to her mother at the bridal shower. It’s a fucking perfume, meant to smell sweet. Meant to mimic omega pheromones, to draw in alphas.

What a fucking bitch.

“You stink,” she informs Bellamy.

“Do I?” he drawls, looking infuriatingly satisfied with her reaction.

Clarke breathes through her mouth as best she can, nauseated and furious. She can feel his amusement as she stalks out of the elevator, throwing herself into their waiting car, even if she can’t scent it. All she can smell is that fucking perfume and under that— pleasure . 

Is it pleasure at her reaction, pleasure at her anger? Or is it the sated sort of pleasure, the proverbial afterglow? Clarke can’t tell. 

She can’t tell, and she hates it.

“Why are you so angry, little omega?” Bellamy is relaxed against the leather seats as they pull away from the curb, eyes dark and eager. “I thought I should do whatever I did before. ‘ Fuck around ’, isn’t that what you said? I thought you didn’t care.”

She hates him for throwing her own words back at her, like she doesn’t already see the hypocrisy. She hates just how much she cares.

“Did you?” she asks, gritting the question out before she can stop herself.

Bellamy cocks his head. “Did I what?”

“Fuck around.”

He gives a pleased laugh and grabs her waist, hauling her bodily over his lap, so her thighs straddle him. Her chest heaves as she stares down at him, hands braced against his chest, and there’s a sharp gleam in his eyes as he meets her gaze. He extends his arms, offering his body out for her perusal. “Why don’t you find out?”

It’s something savage and feral that drives her to do it. Something like instinct. Her fingers clutch his shirts as her head dives down, mouth finding his just long enough to taste the clean whiskey of his tongue before moving down to his throat. His hands wrap around her, pressed flat against the small of her back. Her nose presses against his skin, inhaling deeply, but it’s too hard to tell. His fingers slide into her hair, urging her forward to seek his gland with her mouth. Bellamy shudders in pleasure as her tongue laps against the sensitive flesh, tasting his scent right from the source.

Bellamy. Just Bellamy.

Clarke hums in temporary satisfaction, loose against him for a moment before she dives back, switching sides. He’s clean there too but she keeps going, fingers clawing at the buttons of his shirt, practically tearing it open. She kisses her way over his collarbone, down his chest, tasting only the salt of his skin, but the scent is still there, stuck in her nose. She continues down, down over his abs, not even realizing that she’s clambering off his lap until she’s knelt between his thighs, lips on his stomach, hands on his belt.

Her fingers are on the button of his pants when he stops her, tilting her head back. Her eyes are bright, fevered, but it’s her. Clarke. Her omega is there too, egging her on, but this is a joint effort.

“I wasn’t done,” she tells him breathily, and Bellamy smiles.

“I certainly hope not,” he says, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “But we’re here.”

He opens the car door and pulls her after him, wrapping her tight against his body. He’s a mess—shirt open, belt undone—but nobody says a word, not as they open the doors for them, not as he practically carries her across the lobby into the elevator. Perks of owning the building, she guesses.

Or she would guess, if her husband wasn’t currently pushing her up against the wall, lips attacking her own with fervent urgency. Her arms link behind his neck, legs coming up to wrap around his hips. He grinds against her center, cock straining hard at the zipper of his pants. Clarke bucks up into it.

He spins her around as the door opens into their apartment, carrying her inside without taking his mouth off her. He’s strong, she thinks, so strong, feeling the way his muscles ripple under his skin as he carries her into his room, kicking the door shut behind him.

“I wasn’t done,” she reminds him as he sets her down, and he grins wolfishly back. 

Bellamy sits down on the edge of the bed and pulls her toward him, clasping her in the circle of his arms until she’s standing right between his legs. Clarke blinks, meeting his gaze. Slowly, slowly, he guides her to her knees until she’s where she was before, in the car. Kneeling between his thighs. His head tilts, a lazy smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Clarke gives it barely a moment's thought before she’s moving again. Her fingers find the button of his pants, then the zipper, dragging it down until his cock springs free, covered by the fabric of his briefs. Bellamy kicks off his shoes, helping her shove the pants down his legs.

She inhales deeply. The scent is still there, but she can’t find it. She kisses his knees, his thighs. His hands sink into her hair, guiding her head up to where his legs meet, where his cock juts huge under black fabric. She expects him to be rough, crazed alpha; but he just nudges her gently forward, until her mouth opens, until her lips and tongue are pressed against his hard length.

Bellamy groans. It’s an almost tortured noise, deep and low in his throat. She loves it, loves that it was her that caused him to make it. She suckles against the bulge between his legs, wetting the fabric with spit, but it’s not enough. She can’t taste his skin.

Clarke is nothing if not thorough.

His fingers tighten in her hair as she moves to pull down his briefs, but he doesn’t stop her. His cock springs up in front of her, hard and massive and daunting, and Clarke swallows. She doesn’t actually… know how to do this. 

But that’s not the point anyway. The point is to make sure it’s just her on him. Her tongue sticks out, licking a stripe up the side of his shaft. Salt, she thinks. Salt and alpha. Salt and Bellamy.

There hadn’t been a lot of looking last time, but now she can’t stop. Her pupils are dilated wide, breath coming in quick pants. There’s a bead of liquid at the head of his cock, shiny and interesting. She licks it off. More salt.

Tentatively she opens her mouth wider and takes more of him in, laving her tongue over his shaft as she goes. Clarke is hesitant, not even taking half of him, but from the way his scent spikes Bellamy doesn’t seem to mind at all. 

“Good girl,” he coos, and rips the shirt off his shoulders, balling it up and tossing it across the room. Clarke’s nose wrinkles as she’s hit with a wave of the sickly sweet perfume. Her eyes look across the room to where the shirt landed. She inhales again, and this time it’s only the two of them.

His shirt, she thinks, with no small relief. The scent was only on his shirt. 

Bellamy pulls her up off her knees into his lap, his hands tight on her hips, holding her to him. He looks shockingly together given the circumstances. Clarke knows she wouldn’t be, if the positions were reversed.

“Satisfied?” he asks, and she nods haltingly. Bellamy smiles. “Good. Then it’s my turn.”

He tears off her dress, literally rips it off her. The dress he’d bought her, the dress he’d insisted she needed. Her underwear isn’t quite so easily torn, but he removes it just as quickly, tossing it to the floor like garbage and depositing Clarke on her back. Then he’s diving between her legs, pushing her knees up with his shoulders so he can settle his head between them. His hands cup her ass, lifting her hips on the bed, raising her cunt to his mouth.

He eats her pussy like he’s starving, like she’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. She knew that this—oral sex—was a thing, but she hadn’t thought he would do it to her. She thought he’d want her to do it certainly, but she hadn’t expected him to— to want it.

To like it.

And he knows what he’s doing, clearly, urging her forward with his lips, with his tongue, with his fingers. He laps at her clit, sucks on the nub, all the while his fingers play with the soaking heat of her entrance. He murmurs pet names into her inner thighs, nipping at the sensitive skin until she gasps. Her hands tangle in his hair, not sure if she wants him closer or further away.

He growls against her and then she’s coming, breaking apart in his hands like glass. She can feel herself clamping down around his fingers, can smell how much he likes it. Before she’s even done he’s settled his hips between her thighs, broad head of his cock nudging at her soaked cunt.

Bellamy kisses her neck, breathing into her skin. “Can I?”

Can he? Clarke still remembers the pain of the time before, but she doesn’t think it would be like that this time. Not with how wet she is, how lax in his arms. But should she let him? Will it mean anything if she does?

And maybe it’s stupid. Maybe this is all a terrible mistake, a fit of pique, jealousy taking over. But they’re married, and it doesn’t seem like that’s about to change anytime soon. He’s all she has and she wants him and he’s good, at this at least. Why does she have to fight it?

Clarke nods, and he plunges inside her.

She’s right, it doesn’t hurt, but it’s not easy either. It’s still a stretch, still so much that she gasps at the feel of him inside her. She whimpers as he pulls out, sighs as he pushes in again. “So good for me,” Bellamy croons, his fingers slipping between them to rub at her clit. “Perfect little omega. Taking me just right.”

The filthier, baser part of her flutters at that, her omega preening under his praise. The rest of her is too overwhelmed in sensation to even begin to process it. She begins to relax around him as he pets her, thighs quivering while the tension builds again in her belly. His strokes grow longer, harder, faster; his alpha intuitively knowing just how much he can give her before she can’t take it anymore. Before she can’t take him anymore.

He fucks her hard and rough and still somehow sweetly, his lips and teeth and hands on her throat like it belongs to him. Clarke supposes it does in a way, though she’d never admit it to him. Especially not like this, while he’s moving inside her. While their skin is slapping together, the sounds wet and obscene.

She begins to get nervous as it goes on. She’s close to the edge again, but there’s a bit of fear that holds her back, keeping her from falling over. As Bellamy’s thrusts grow faster, as his rhythm breaks down she starts to feel it, feel the way he grows inside her. The way the base of his cock expands, readying itself to lock inside her, to fill her with his seed. 

“Bellamy,” she says, the word choked and nervous, and he covers her mouth with his. 

“I know,” he tells her, eyes clenched shut hard, muscles straining. “Don’t be scared. I know.”

She means to press, means to ask exactly what he thinks he knows, what it is she shouldn't be afraid of, but then she feels it. Feels the way he forces himself back, the way his thrusts get shallow instead of deeper, till she can’t even feel the press of his knot at her cunt. 

“It’s okay,” Bellamy says, grinding his thumb against her clit. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Not again , Clarke hears, tears beading up in her eyes as the pressure in her belly reaches its peak once more.

“That’s it,” he rasps, punctuating his words with short staccato thrusts. “Come for me.”

And she does, falling apart around him again, this time on his cock. Bellamy groans as he feels it, feels her cunt clench and pulse around him. With a growl he follows her over, spilling hot inside her cunt. 

Bellamy doesn’t pull out, not even when it’s done. He just shifts her in his arms, rolling them into a more comfortable position, one where he won’t be crushing her. Clarke can feel his knot now, not pressing insistently, just resting against her entrance. She imagines it inside her and shudders, gasping into Bellamy’s shoulder. He tucks his chin over her head and his arms tighten around her.

“You’ll be able to take it,” he murmurs into her hair. “It’s what you were made for.”

She’s too tired to argue. Too tired to do anything really, anything other than fall asleep in his arms. 

So fuck it, that’s what she does.

She can deal with the rest of it in the morning.

Chapter Text

There’s no good way to talk around it.

“There, god, yes—”

Really, truly— it’s a humiliating development. A big step backwards. Maybe five or six steps, really.

“More, I need—fuck—more.”

She’s ashamed to admit it, and honestly, who in her position wouldn’t be? It’s a loss for women and omegas everywhere.

“Please let me—oh!”

“That’s it, c’mon. Good girl.”

“I can’t—”

“You can. One more for me, principessa. You can give me one more.”

Clarke is having sex with her husband, and by all objective measures, she is enjoying it. Regularly.

“Oh god, I’m—!”

“Yeah, just like that. I knew you could. So perfect for me.”

In her defense, Bellamy is awfully good at it. Practice makes perfect, she guesses, even if the idea of his former practicing makes her omega scream with primal rage. And besides, it’s not like there’s a lot else for her to be doing, trapped in this Hotel California of a penthouse. She’s barely been out twice since New Years, and both times she’s been stuck with both her husband and her guard dog on watch duty.

It’s pathetic.

He still doesn’t trust her. Not that he really should, given her near constant daydreams of busting out and making a break for it again. But honestly, she’s his wife! And she’s letting him fuck her!

Well, she’s letting him fuck her to a certain degree. She still hasn’t let him knot her, and so far he hasn’t tried again. And she hasn’t really—Clarke blushes at the thought, still a bit of an idiot virgin at heart—gone down on him either, though he’s made it clear he has no qualms about performing the reverse. Incredibly clear, many times. Occasionally more times than Clarke thinks is entirely necessary. Or humanly possible, for that matter.

He’s unbearably smug about proving otherwise, and she glowers at him from her position on the bed, too fucked out and floppy to do anything more reproachful.

“Did you like that?” Bellamy asks her, absolutely reeking of satisfied alpha. Like the cat that caught the metaphorical canary.

She’s so sweaty she feels like she’s been dunked in a hot tub, her hair tangled and knotted from writhing against his sheets, and she’s not entirely sure she can feel her legs. Or if she still has legs, for that matter.

Clarke shrugs. “It was okay.”

To no one’s surprise, that answer doesn’t satisfy her brute of a husband. “Okay?” He rolls overtop her on all fours, caging her limp body in with his own. “I don’t think you’d keep coming back for only okay.” He leans down, dragging his teeth across the tender gland in her throat. Clarke’s fingers sink into his hair, and she shudders. “Always so wet and eager for it. For me.”

Clarke swallows hard, her back arching, teeth sinking into her bottom lip. “It’s—oh!—it’s something to do.” He pulls back, looks at her. His expression is less playful now. “Not like I’ve got anything else to pass the time.”

“Hmm,” Bellamy says.

He doesn’t like that answer, she can tell. It bruises his ego, which—good, frankly. It’s too big for any man, no matter how possibly, maybe, sorta, kinda well-deserved it may be. Clarke shrugs again, concealing a grin. 

“Better than nothing.”

****

Bellamy is having a bad day. 

For starters, he woke up to an empty bed (no surprise there, unfortunately) and a text summarily informing him two more of his runners were shot the night before. Besides the logistical pain-in-the-ass losing them means for the operation, it’s another black mark against his already stained conscience. Bellamy didn’t know the boys personally but they were his responsibility. 

One of them was only sixteen. He’d been an only child. Now he’s dead. 

Bellamy felt inexplicably obligated to give his condolences to the kid’s mother in person. It wasn’t normal for a Capo to involve himself so directly, but Bellamy hadn’t been born into his role. Sometimes it was hard for him to forget what it felt like to be powerless. 

The woman was definitively not pleased to see him. He wasn’t sure why he had expected it might be otherwise. 

He went from the wake straight to the warehouse, trying to sort out what had gone wrong the night before. He met with his men, but none of the ones he liked meeting with. The Christmas crowd instead, all old and craggy and self-important. They all as usual insisted on giving him their own sage and absolutely useless advice that he explicitly did not ask for. He almost preferred getting physically attacked by the dead boy’s bereaved mother. 

Things had finally started to look up when he got home, just after nine. His wife was in the kitchen when he came in, and didn’t put up even a front of rebellion when he picked her up and sat her on the counter, pinning her hands to the cabinets and ravaging her mouth. 

Clarke looked so pretty in his space, her hair loose, clothes disheveled. She smelled like sugar and spice and him, just the way she should. He wanted to eat her right up. 

So he did, and it was excellent. At least until she told him it was just “something to do”. 

Bellamy isn’t stupid, he knows she likes the things they do; knows she gets off to the way he touches her, licks her, fucks her. And he knows she doesn’t want to like it, which is half the fun. He can read her by scent, he knows she’s not scared of him or out of her mind on hormones. He enjoys knowing that his stubborn little omega wants him so badly she just can’t help herself. Which she does, he’s sure, given that she keeps letting him have her. It’s an obvious conclusion, really, unless—

“Do you think Clarke is bored?”

Murphy’s forehead creases, looking over at his employer in surprise. “What?”

“My wife,” Bellamy says flatly, waving his hand in the direction of the bedrooms. "Do you think she’s bored?”

The other man shrugs. “She’s fine.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Murphy looks at him suspiciously, eyeing the way his lips tighten, the tight line of his shoulders, the flex of his hands. “Is this a test?” Bellamy raises one eyebrow, the motion somehow full of murderous contempt, and Murphy puts up his hands in surrender. “Fine. Yes, obviously she’s bored out of her skull. Does it matter?”

Fuck.

“Why ‘obviously’?” Murphy gives him an assessing look that Bellamy thinks is pretty bold for someone he could have shot at any given moment if he felt like it. This moment, perhaps. He grits his teeth, forcing his fists to relax. “Speak freely.”

The other man shrugs. “She’s been stuck in this apartment with only me for what, two months now? You only bring her out for events or appointments. At least I get to go home sometimes. She just trades guard dog for—“ Murphy gestures vaguely at Bellamy. “You.”

You. Said apologetically, like it was a condemnation. What is he to Clarke, exactly? Her husband, her alpha, her protector? Her captor?

“Look, she was in school, wasn’t she? Living away from home, in her own place, doing her own thing. If you went from that to—” Murphy waves his hand around the room, “—this , wouldn’t you be bored? No computer, no phone, no friends. Not exactly a whole lot for her to do.”

Fuck.

“You think I should let her out.”

Murphy shrugs again. “I think she wouldn’t be as bored if you did.”

It’s not like Bellamy doesn’t know this. He’s not stupid, much as Octavia or his wife love to think otherwise. And he does still feel a twinge of guilt over Clarke’s abruptly ended college career, but he tried to give her that. He’d given her a plan to fix that, to make it up to her, and she’d run. The plan relied on her being bonded to him, so he’d know she had the protection of his bite at least. He can’t let her go back there alone, unmated and presented, no matter how much cum he works into her glands. It’d be idiotic, not just because she might run again. She could be taken, by anyone who had something to prove to Bellamy. Anyone who wanted her for themselves.

He won’t allow it.

But it’s not just school that he’s forbidden. And maybe, just maybe, keeping her locked up in this building for weeks on end is a little overkill. He hasn’t even let Octavia or Willa spend time with her. Hasn’t let her use the gym downstairs, even though he knows she liked to swim before. Hasn’t let her go online, or call her mom, not that he’s sure she’d even want to. Maybe he’s holding the leash a little too tight.

But then again, she’d run from him. Bellamy doesn’t doubt Kane and Abby were overbearing to an insane degree and Clarke had still managed to plan and execute her escape while under their collective thumbs. He won’t underestimate her.

“You think I can trust her?”

Murphy snorts. “I certainly didn’t say that. All due respect, your wife is more slippery than a greased eel.”

Bellamy nods. “But?”

“But she’s bored. And for some reason you care.” 

Yeah. For some reason he does.

****

Her husband is not fucking her, all of the sudden.

If Clarke was annoyed before by the fact that she was letting him fuck her, she’s ten times more annoyed that she’s noticed he’s stopped. Because it’s not like she wanted to be fucking him in the first place. She just wanted—

Well, she wanted to be fucked. She wants to be fucked. She’s gotten used to it; to the release, the pleasure. As begrudging as she was about it consciously, her obnoxious omega absolutely reveled in getting plowed by her brute of a husband on a regular basis, getting fucked and filled and marked with his scent. It kept that annoying part of her in check, kept her from acting on the dumbass things it wanted her to do, like beg or submit. 

Now when Bellamy’s around, her mind gets hazy again, her thoughts flooded with heat and desire and pathetic want. Not enough to make her do anything insane, at least not yet. But enough to keep her on edge. 

She tries touching herself once, after about a week of celibacy—getting herself off with her own hands, alone in her own bed—but it isn’t nearly the same. All she can think about is how close he is, and how empty she feels inside. How he’d fill her to the brim, if only he were a little closer. How he can probably smell her. Smell what she’s doing.

That is more than enough to make her stop.

She shivers under the cold water of the shower, trying to rinse the want right out of her. He’s testing her, she thinks. He wants her to come to him, to prove that she desires him more than she hates him. Clarke would rather freeze than admit Bellamy might be right.

She wraps a towel around herself as she steps out of the shower, twisting another around her wet hair. They’re soft, and clean, and nowhere near warm enough to take the chill out of her bones. Maybe she overdid it this time. 

“Are your lips blue?”

Clarke startles as she steps into her room, fumbling her grip on her towel. It gapes open and she flushes as she wrangles it back over her naked skin. Bellamy watches impassively from the door, his eyes dark.

“No,” she sniffs, the surety of her answer belied by the fact that it’s probably visibly untrue. It’s hard for her to think with him standing so close, even if ‘so close’ is currently all the way across the room. Pathetic.

He’d warm us up, her omega croons. Alpha is always hot.

Clarke beats the idiotic voice down with an imagined length of pipe. The thought of the word pipe then makes her even hornier, because she is living in hell apparently. Good fucking god. If only she’d been born a beta.

She pulls the towel out of her hair, letting it fall icy across her exposed—and traitorously itchy—glands. There. That is minusculely better, at least. “What do you want?”

“Dinner.”

Clarke raises an eyebrow, arms folded protectively over her chest. “And that is my problem because?”

Bellamy snorts, not even bothering to pretend to be irritated by her impertinence. She feels something stupid and almost proud start to rise in her chest, and she throttles that sensation as well. There is nothing likable about him not yelling at her sass like her mother would. He just likes her fight because he likes to watch her lose.

“C’mon,” he says, “Get dressed.”

Clarke eyes him suspiciously. He’d given her a list of events they were expected to attend. Tonight was not on it.

“For what?”

“For dinner.”

She lets out a huff. “I’ll eat later, thank you.” He’s still looking at her though, and her eyes narrow. “If you’re expecting me to cook you’re about to be gravely disappointed.”

Some of the other omega girls in La Familia may be taught to keep house the traditional way, but Clarke is a Griffin. Griffins have chefs for that. Her mother couldn’t cook instant noodles if she tried, and Clarke is little better. She could get by for herself with the basics probably, she had in college to some degree out of necessity, but her skills are nothing worth sharing.

But Bellamy just laughs. “I wouldn’t dream of it, princess. I was thinking Mexican.”

She frowns. “Like— takeout?”

Her husband smirks, leaning against the door. “If we were getting takeout there’d be no need for you to dress.”

Clarke feels like she really ought to argue that point but she refrains, if only to stop herself from picturing it. “What, then?”

“There’s a place a few blocks from here, I thought we could go there. As good as Willa’s cooking may be, there's only so much I can take.” He shrugs cooly. Clarke feels her hackles rise, not believing his nonchalance for a second. “Dress casual.”

She doesn’t move, staring intently at Bellamy. Just what is he planning, anyway?  

Is this a trap, somehow? Is that why he hasn’t been fucking her, because he’s decided he’s done with her? He won’t let her go, she knows better than to even hope for that, but would he sell her? Send her to a brothel? Kill her?

Bellamy stiffens, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Just put on some goddamn clothes, Clarke,” he huffs, biceps flexing as he pushes stormily through her door. “Not everything needs to be a fucking conspiracy.”

No, she thinks as she dresses, unchastened. Not everything.

But in their world, it’s certainly the safer bet.

****

That night he doesn’t sell her, or prostitute her, or kill her. Instead, he buys her tacos. Clarke is pleasantly surprised.

Nor does he sell, prostitute, or kill her two nights later, or that Saturday, or anytime the next week. No, instead he just takes her out to eat, to shop, to the Met. To see the city, because it’s her home now, too. It’s almost like they’re dating, except that they’re already married. 

And he’s still not fucking her.

Clarke couldn’t have planned it better if she’d tried. Bellamy might not have a conspiracy going, though she’s still not convinced he doesn’t, but she sure does. He may not be fucking her anymore, but she can play nice if it gets her more of this. She can pretend to be placated, pretend to have given up, pretend to start to like it here. 

It’s not entirely a lie. She doesn’t hate it, the things that they do. She may have her loyalty to Chicago, the city she grew up in, but New York is something. She’s willing to admit that, if only to herself. 

It doesn’t matter though, not really. She’ll never be happy here, not in any real way. Not when she isn’t free.

Is she manipulating him? Not entirely. She’s not stupid, not really. Certainly a bit reckless, but she knows better than to think she can slip the lead with him by her side. But she starts to feel a little too content with her life, with her short little measure of freedom, and suddenly it starts to chafe again. Is this what it’s like to give in, she wonders? 

Clarke can imagine her future here. She can see the meals, and the outings. The parties with his lieutenants. The nights in his bed. 

She doesn’t think he’s done with her, done with wanting her. He’s trying to make her comfortable by not fucking her. Trying to make her forget that she hates him, so when her heat comes, she won’t fight. And then he’ll knot her, and claim her, and she’ll be a trapped little mindless omega, and he won’t even have to take her out anymore because she’ll be too well tied to him to leave. He has power over her now as an alpha, if he cares to use it, but it’s nothing on the power he’d have over a mate. 

Clarke doesn’t trust him.

There are contradictions in the things she thinks, contradictions in the motives she assigns him, in the manner she believes things must happen, but she’s too stubborn to see them. All she can see is Bellamy, and the way it’s growing hard to hate him.

Maybe that’s what makes her do it.

“I thought we were going to the MOMA today.” 

Clarke hates the edge in her voice, the slight hint of desperation as she stands in the doorway of his office. She hopes he can’t hear it.

It’s just— he’d said they would. She’d planned on it, gotten dressed for it. She was actually excited to go. And Bellamy was— working.

He hardly glances up at her, doesn’t even bother to look at her outfit, which Clarke feels she must mention is fucking immaculate. She looks perfect. And her husband couldn’t care less.

“Right,” Bellamy says, distracted. “Sorry, something came up. Unavoidable.”

Clarke feels inexplicably crushed by that. It’s just— she loves art. She really really loves art. She’s wanted to see the MOMA her whole life, and he promised. He’d grinned at her when he did, teasing her for how excited she got. It had been almost nice, almost real feeling, when he tugged her hair and promised they’d go the next weekend. 

“Oh,” she says, her tone flat. “Okay.”

She starts to get angry, turning to leave. She should’ve been angry the whole time, she thinks. Angry that she had to rely on him for anything, angry that the things she wanted had to be doled out as he saw fit. It’s ridiculous. She’s a grown woman, she shouldn’t have to—

“Murphy will take you.”

Clarke stops. “What?”

Bellamy waves his hand. “You want to go, you should go. Murphy will take you.”

“Really?” Her tone is doubtful, disbelieving. He hasn’t let her go alone with Murphy anywhere. In fact, half the time they go out together, Murphy comes too. 

“Really.” And then he adds, clearly an afterthought: “You won’t run from him, will you?”

He doesn’t even look at her when he asks. He doesn’t even think it’s a possibility anymore. He thinks— he thinks she’s given up. Given in.

Clarke bristles. “No, of course not.”

“Great,” Bellamy says, finally glancing up at her. “You look nice, by the way.”

It’s a dismissal. Clarke takes it, and leaves.

She can’t stop thinking about the conversation the whole day. Murphy is an inattentive babysitter at best, clearly annoyed to be stuck with the job. 

“This looks like a finger painting,” he groans from over her shoulder as she looks carefully at a piece of multi-million dollar artwork.

“It is,” Clarke informs him sharply, huffing in exasperation. 

They go to lunch after the museum, somewhere close by that Bellamy had apparently recommended. Clarke intended to stay at the museum far longer than she did, but she’s in a foul mood, and her bodyguard had not made it any better with his constant griping. She finds herself wishing she’d waited until Bellamy could come with her, and then immediately tears that thought to shreds, hating herself for it, and hating him even more.

Is this what Stockholm Syndrome feels like? She never imagined it would be so annoying.

She picks at her food for the whole meal, her thoughts swirling in a dark and angry cloud. She feels almost sick, weirdly guilty. She’s angry, and disappointed, and she can feel her omega’s sharp ache, the gut wrenching feeling of— abandonment? And she can’t take it.

She tosses her napkin to her seat and excuses herself. Murphy waves her away, not even bothering to follow her to the bathroom. Clarke’s not sure why that feels like an insult.

She stares at herself in the mirror, taking in the drawn lines of her expression. She looks extremely put together, not one hair out of place. Her makeup is perfect, tasteful and precise; her outfit smooth and expensive and well matched. She looks—

She looks like Abby.

The thought practically gives her a migraine. No, she doesn’t look like her mother. She just looks like the girl her mother had always wanted her to be. She yanks the pins out of her hair, shaking it loose over her shoulders and letting out a deep breath. She fucking hates this. Hates how easy it would be to just— give in. To be content in her cage. Comfortable. Not happy, never happy. But to accept her place.

But that’s not her. She refuses to let that be her.

She raises her head and stares hard at herself in the mirror. Her eyes are determined, icy pale blue. Her lips press into a thin line. She will not break this easily. She will not embarrass herself by even considering it. She is a Griffin. She fights.

She lets out a sigh. She fights. She fights or she dies. Isn’t giving up a death of its own? Her soul, if not her life in the forfeit. It’s not a price she’s ever been willing to pay.

No matter how comfortable the yoke gets.

Clarke comes out of the bathroom and walks to the end of the hall, but stops before she re-enters the dining room proper. From her vantage point, she can see her table, and Murphy of course, but he’s not looking at her. 

He’s not looking at her. 

Clarke watches him not watch her, and a half-baked plan starts to form in her head. She should go back to the table. It’s an idiotic thing to contemplate otherwise, but what was the point then, of all her making nice with Bellamy? Was it not for this? For this opportunity? He’s never going to let her out alone, not truly. This may damn well be the best she gets. 

Murphy’s not looking at her, so she turns, and leaves. Around the corner, down the stairs. She tries not to draw any attention, walking quickly and purposefully, like she knows just where she’s going. There’s a door at the end of the hallway by the kitchen, propped open to let a breeze in. 

Clarke inhales sharply in relief, her heart pounding. She’s going to do it, make it out. Once she gets outside, she’ll find the nearest train station, hop the turnstile, and ride her way— she doesn’t know yet. Somewhere, anywhere. Anywhere but here. 

It’s almost too easy, she thinks as she reaches for the door, pushing it open and stepping out into the alley beyond. It feels almost like—

A hand snatches her wrist and spins her suddenly, the weight of a hard body pinning her to the alley wall. 

“Going somewhere, principessa ?”

Clarke feels at once a biting slice of fear along with the hard crush of relief. 

Bellamy.

Of course. It was a trick, all of it. She almost wants to laugh, if she were capable of it with her lungs compressed as they are by the pressure of the wall against her ribs.  

Not everything needs to be a conspiracy, he’d said. No, indeed. Not everything. But this was. 

She’s a fool.

She thought she could play him, and the whole time it was his game. It’s always his game, isn’t it? This is his town after all. He’s the Capo, the alpha. Clarke can feel her vision blur, her lungs burning for air. Her fingers spasm, pinned under his. Let him kill her now, she thinks. Let him do it. At least then it’ll be done.

Bellamy pulls back enough to let her breathe, holding her up as she gasps in air. Clarke thinks she might cry. It was an accident, she can tell now. He hadn’t intended to squeeze the life out of her at all, he just didn’t know how easily he could. How easily he could break her.

“I hate you,” she tells him, her eyes shut tight. His breath is hot against her neck, burning sweetly over her glands. She’d almost gotten his scent out. Almost broken his claim on her.

“You don’t,” Bellamy promises. “That’s what you hate.”

She tries to buck against him but only succeeds in pressing her ass against his hard cock. A whimper falls from her lips, and she grinds back almost involuntarily. It’s been so long since he’s touched her. She’s forgotten how big he is, how hot.

“Where did you think you were going?” His tone is silky smooth, darkly curious. “What was your plan?” His teeth graze her scent gland and she shudders, heat shooting through her body like a wildfire. “Did you really think you could run?”

“No,” she admits shakily, and it’s the truth. “But I had to try.”

He spins her around then, hiking her thighs up around his abdomen and pinning her to the wall with his hips. His cock presses hard against her center, straining at the zipper of his jeans. His eyes are dark and insistent, lips pulled tight against sharp teeth. “Do you know how fucking dangerous it is for you? It’s suicidal for any woman, especially an omega, to be on her own out there, but you’re not just any woman. You’re mine .”

His lips find hers, opening her mouth with bruising pressure, and she gasps into his kiss. The intensity is overwhelming, consuming. His fingers fist in her hair, tugging her head back, moving his lips to her throat. Her back arches, shivers rolling through her body.

“I won’t let you go,” Bellamy growls. “I’ll never let you go.”

It should feel like a threat, like a crushing weight, but it doesn’t. It feels like a promise, like an oath. It feels safe.

She hates it.

When his mouth finds hers again, Clarke is feral. Bellamy doesn’t pull away, not as her nails dig into his back, not as her teeth sink into his bottom lip. No, he just kisses her harder, pulls her closer, tastes the sharp metallic tang of his blood on her mouth. His hips roll insistently against hers, grinding into her clit through their clothes until her cunt is aching, desperate. She can feel herself teetering on the edge of climax, and that is when he stops.

Bellamy pulls back, just enough to deprive her of any friction. His lips leave hers, breath ghosting across her neck. His finger traces the edge of a swollen scent gland, teasing it. Her nipples ache, hard and wanting. She almost screams. 

“What do you want, principessa ?” he asks her, the words deadly sweet. “Do you want to run from me now? Do you want me to stop?”

There are tears in the corners of her closed eyes, sharp and bright and hot. She shakes her head, teeth clenched together tight. “Please.”

“Please, what?” 

Take me. Bite me. Claim me, alpha. Make me yours.

Clarke sucks in a stuttering breath, stopping the flood of words her omega longs to say. “Fuck me,” she says instead. “Please.”

He obliges.

Before she has a chance to move, her dress is pushed up around her thighs, panties torn from her hips. His belt clinks as it falls open, the zipper of his jeans biting into her skin as he sheathes his cock inside her in a single thrust.

Clarke feels the breath punched out of her chest with the force of it, unable to breathe for the second time that afternoon. He fucks into her in brutal strokes, slamming into her, forcing her back up against the rough brick wall. It’s broad daylight, in a fucking alley, and Bellamy is rutting into her like an animal. The winter air is harsh and cold around them, but she’s burning from the inside out. 

He’s huge, his length splitting her open, and she takes him like a good little omega, slick and ready and desperate. Begging for more not with her words, because she refuses to give him the satisfaction, but with her hands, her lips, the grasping squeeze of her cunt around his cock. 

Ruin me, she thinks. Break me.

She comes before he even tries to thumb her clit. It’s a violent climax, shuddering and tearing through her in rough, jerking spasms. Not a wave but a riptide, drowning her before she has a chance to find the surface. Bellamy fucks her through it, strong fingers wrapping around her wrists. He pins her arms above her head and holds them there; so she’s stretched out under him, breasts arched against his chest, body one long, rippling line. 

“ Mine ,” he growls, and she doesn’t correct him. “My omega.”

He doesn’t knot her, not that he could unless he planned on holding her in that alleyway till it went down. Instead he comes with his cock just barely inside her, spilling his cum right at the entrance to her pussy, where it’s bound to seep down her thighs and make a mess. In fact, it’s probably on purpose, seeing how he immediately swipes his fingers through it and presses them first to her glands, then her lips. 

Her skin prickles at the sensation as their combined scent sinks into her throat, cool on the surface from the slick but hot underneath. Her mouth opens almost involuntarily, sucking on the fingers he presses to her tongue. Tasting him. Tasting them . 

“You won’t run again,” Bellamy tells her, his voice dark and so very certain. His eyes hold her in place, burning her with the intensity of his gaze.

Clarke, for what it’s worth, doesn’t promise a damned thing.

Chapter Text

His wife looks different when she’s asleep.

It’s not like Bellamy’s had many opportunities to notice given Clarke’s bull-headed resistance to sharing his bed for any reason other than carnal activities, but he still feels a pang of regret as he stares down at the omega curled up in his arms. She looks so innocent, so soft, so— fragile.

His fingers stroke the red skin on her shoulders, rubbed raw from the rough brick of the alley. His alpha growls at him, the memory drawing up an unholy mix of savage pride and self loathing. He hadn’t been gentle with her. He’s never been gentle with her.

She doesn’t want him to be.

Bellamy is not a gentle man. He has more blood on his hands than anyone his age rightfully should, even in the fucked-up underworld he lives in. He doesn’t regret the things he’s done, the things he had to do. And he doesn’t regret Clarke, no matter how much trouble she’s turned out to be.

He knew she was his the moment he first saw her at Kane’s, so young and sweet and ripe. Small in a way that made his head spin perversely, dreaming of pinning her down and covering her with his body, filling her up until she couldn’t take anymore. Her scent had been so good, so overwhelmingly omega that he’d had to hold on to his chair and look away just to avoid sinking his teeth into her throat right then and there. How no one else had seemed affected, he still can’t understand. Maybe they were just used to her.

He’ll never get used to her. He’s not sure he even wants to.

His relationship with his designation is an odd one, he knows that. His alpha doesn’t feel fully a part of him, not in the way it does for the others in his acquaintance, but it’s not something he rejects either, not like his wife rejects her omega. Bellamy and his alpha are symbiotic, relying on each other for life, for purpose. Sometimes they blur together, sometimes they’re starkly two entities, but it’s always there. It influences him, keeps him alive, but it does not rule him. When they act, it is in concert: strategy and savagery striking out in deadly tandem. His instincts point, Bellamy considers, and together they respond. It’s how he’s gotten where he is, how he’s maintained his position.

He’s not used to being at odds with it. When he’s challenged, it says fight, and he fights. When he wants something, it says take, and he takes. With Clarke though—

It’s not enough to simply possess her. He has to keep her safe. Has to keep her comfortable. Has to keep her— happy?

Bellamy suppresses a bitter laugh, tracing a finger hungrily over the smooth skin of his wife’s cheek. If his alpha is being the sentimental one, he must be a colder bastard than he thought.

What is it about her, he thinks, that makes her so special? Because she is special, there’s no denying it. But not just in her looks, or in her spirit, her fight. No, it’s something deeper; something about Clarke specifically, in the way she was formed. Something that called to him, that told him to take.

Sweet, perfect omega, his alpha purrs in response, and Bellamy sighs internally.

Yes, he thinks, but why? Why this one?

The question confuses his alpha, because for it the answer is so obvious. How can he not see immediately? Its head cocks. Mine, it insists. Ours. Can’t you smell it on her?

It presses him forward, challenging him. Bellamy inhales deeply, taking in the scent of Clarke, and of himself overlaid. It’s a heady cocktail, something so irrepressibly primal and right, intoxicating and comforting and delicious. He thinks of how he made her smell that way, of how he fucked his seed into her body and painted her with it for good measure. His. Inarguably his. Anyone could smell it, could smell the way he’s soaked his scent into her glands. Bellamy’s eyes blacken.

Yes, he agrees, nostrils flaring. Yes, I can. I do.

No, his alpha disagrees. No, you don’t. Bellamy frowns internally, and it shakes its head in disgusted disappointment.

Which is ridiculous, because his alpha is him. It’s his head it shakes, his lips it turns down into a frown. How can he be disgusted with himself? How can his alpha know something that Bellamy does not?

He doesn’t love the situation, he must say.

Try again, his alpha instructs, and he does, breathing in his implicit claim. Perfect, he thinks, but unchanged. Not us, his alpha chastises sharply, Not our scent. Hers.

He frowns, inhaling deeper. He finds the part of the scent that is Clarke’s and Clarke’s alone. The scent he’d caught the very first time they’d met, the scent that has haunted him ever since. Omega, yes, but something more than that. Something more complex. Something—

Something his.

See?, his alpha says, buzzing with satisfaction. I told you.

So it did. He can’t see how he missed it before, except that it’s so very right that it never occurred to him to examine it. It doesn’t smell like Bellamy, it’s not his scent, but it marks her regardless. Not his echo, not his mirror. His complement. It fits right against his, filling in all the spaces left open like a strand of DNA, weaving them together. It ties her to him, perfectly and completely. It always has.

Not completely, his alpha hums, looking at Clarke’s unbitten throat. Not yet.

Bellamy nearly groans. He’s not any happier about that than his alpha, but it’s not all the damn thing wants.

It doesn’t just want him to claim her, it wants him to care. Every other girl he fucked, it was about owning. About taking, and having, and using; but never keeping. Keeping would be a convenience for him, but it wasn’t a necessity. Not to mention that in the long term, it was bound to get the girl killed. Hell, it might get Clarke killed, if he can’t manage to get a fucking leash on her. It doesn’t matter how his she may be, not if she doesn’t acknowledge it herself. Not if she won’t obey.

And she won’t. He already fucking knows she won’t.

Bellamy sighs and grabs his phone, pulling up his contacts. He dials, not looking away from Clarke.

She answers in a clipped tone. “Reyes.”

“How many cameras do you have around the apartment right now?”

He hears the clacking of a keyboard as Raven looks it up. It’s not normal in his world, employing a woman for anything other than menial or sexual tasks, but that’s all the better for him. She works for Bellamy, not the Outfit. Her loyalty is to him alone.

“Eight in the penthouse. Two in the elevators, twelve on each floor, plus one on every exit on the ground floor. Twenty in the garage.”

Bellamy’s jaw clenches, watching his wife’s chest rise and fall. So small, he thinks. So fragile. “What about on the street?”

“We’ve got about fifty yards in any given direction, but beyond that’s the two block buffer region where we’ve got jammers.”

Bellamy swears quietly. “How many blocks is it to the nearest subway stop?”

Raven’s voice is more amused than curious. She’s never been one to ask questions. “Four.”

“I want eyes on all of them. Take the jammers down if you have to, but make sure we’ve got cameras covering at least four blocks in any direction.” Clarke shifts slightly, making a sleepy noise. His fingers tighten around the phone. “Five,” Bellamy corrects curtly. “Better make it five.”

The noise of the keyboard on the other end pauses as Raven hesitates. “Boss.”

Bellamy grits his teeth. “Yes?”

“I feel obligated to point out that in general, when one is conducting illegal business, it is generally best to have as little video footage of said business as possible. Hence the buffer region.”

He huffs, waving it away. “Encrypt the footage, I don’t give a fuck. I’m sure you can handle it.”

Raven responds patiently, like he’s an idiot child. Which, with her, is about par for the course. “If the jammers come down, there’s nothing guaranteeing we’re the only ones with eyes in the zone.”

He will not yell. He won’t. If he yells, he’ll wake up Clarke. And besides, yelling at Raven never works. It only makes her think she’s right.

“I understand that,” Bellamy replies, his tone venomously even. “And I don’t fucking care. Can you do it or not?”

She scoffs. “Of course I can do it.”

“Then do it. And minimize access from anyone who isn’t us. If we can’t use the jammers, use something else.”

“Something else?” Reyes sputters, annoyed at his heavy handedness. She gives him far more shit than any of his mob contacts, something he is exquisitely aware of in moments like these. If she wasn’t so damn good at what she does, he wouldn’t keep putting up with it. “Am I just supposed to pull new tech out of my ass? There’s a reason we have the set-up the way it is now, it’s not as easy as you—”

He can only handle so much bitching. He is still an alpha, after all.

“I don’t pay you for easy. Figure it out.”

Bellamy moves to end the call, but Raven senses his intentions and stops him. “Wait, wait, wait; cool your jets, there’s something I need to tell you before you hang up on me.”

“What,” he spits, the word flat.

She sighs. “You got an organization meeting tonight, right?”

“Sure,” Bellamy answers unthinkingly, then groans in understanding as his brain catches up with the topic change and reads her meaning. His gaze finally moves away from Clarke, eyes closing in resignation as he pinches the skin between his eyebrows. Fuck. “Which one?”

“One of Cavallero’s boys. Not sure which, but probably the older one.” Her tone is almost apologetic, at least as close as Reyes ever gets, and Bellamy knows why.

Boy is an inaccurate word for either of Cavallero’s sons, even the younger being a few years older than Bellamy, but it’s not just age they’ve got on him. They’re both alphas, and they both look it. The older of the two is an ugly fucker, with a particular penchant for cruelty. He’s got solidly six inches and ninety pounds on Bellamy, and has been nursing a grudge ever since Bellamy banned him from all the Outfit’s brothels. Bellamy doesn’t run them the way most of his ilk were used to: his girls are free to leave if they want, but those who stay do so with the expectation of protection. Cavallero’s piece of shit son kept bruising the merchandise at La Rosa, and his face kept pissing Bellamy off. Needless to say, the other man did not take the punishment gracefully.

Still, it’s not a fight he’s been preparing for. Cavallero has never been particularly thrilled about the Outfit’s change in leadership, but he’s also too fucking old and lazy to do anything about it. If one of his sons is challenging Bellamy, it’s gotta be the older one, Enzo. He doesn’t doubt he’s got his father’s blessing, Cavallero’s a stodgy bastard, but every instinct tells Bellamy that this is an opportunistic revenge match rather than an attempt at a dynastic overthrow. Pettiness instead of blind ambition. This will be alpha versus alpha, without any background machinations or politicking, no second or third man waiting in the wings to take up the battle when the first goes down. That is a welcome respite from the last few challenges he’s had, though it doesn’t make Bellamy any more eager for the fight.

Enzo is a beefy motherfucker, built like a brick shithouse and about as intelligent as one too, at least when it comes to anything other than causing bodily harm. It may in fact be the only region in which he excels, other than being big and ugly. Bellamy can beat him, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to hurt.

He swears aloud. “Tonight?”

Raven doesn’t answer immediately, her keyboard clattering away again. After a moment, she asks: “What are the odds he knows his lawyer’s phone number off the top of his head?

Bellamy snorts. “Low. Approaching zero.”

She makes a noise of agreement and continues typing. “I can get him picked up for assault if you want to postpone. You’ve got a coverage gap at the 17th now, but your boys will have him out within a half hour of shift change so it’ll only buy you until the next meeting at best, and not even that if this one goes past midnight. And if we’re wrong about which son, it won’t buy you anything.”

“We’re not wrong.” He’s being arrogant, sure. It could plausibly be the younger, smaller son making an unexpected power-grab in an attempt to prove himself; but Bellamy knows with resigned, absolute surety that it’s not. The younger one isn’t half stupid enough to try, not outright. He sighs and turns his attention back to the woman in his arms, letting his alpha surge forward. There’s nothing soft within it now, not for the moment. His protectiveness has slipped backwards, outdistanced by savage aggression. It’s better like this, he thinks. Much more comfortable. “Do it. I’ll deal with Enzo next week.”

Raven hums affirmatively, her fingers clacking away at the keyboard on the other end of the line. Bellamy gazes at his little omega intently, appreciating the hot press of her weight atop him. The marks on her back don’t bother him half as much anymore, not as he greedily relives how she got them. How he fucked her that time, and the time before that, and every time since the first. The time he took her virginity, covered in the blood of a man he killed, and felt her break around him, perfectly his. The red ring circling his cock had matched the red on his teeth, on his hands; the red he had painted on her pristine skin. Proof of his savagery, and proof of his ownership. Of his strength, his dominance, his control. His power.

Oh, he’ll deal with Enzo alright. He’ll tear out the other man’s throat and he’ll enjoy it, even if it comes with a bit of pain. He’ll tear out the other man’s throat, and then he’ll go home and fuck his omega.

Or maybe he’ll bring her. Make her watch. Let her watch. She’s a savage little thing too. She’d like that, he thinks.

“Done.” The mouse clicks once more, then goes silent. Reyes exhales audibly. “You know, you don't actually have to wait around for him to challenge you. I'm sure Murphy could make it look like an accident. You could just have him killed and be done with it.”

“I could,” Bellamy agrees easily. He pets his wife’s soft cheek and dreams of blood, lips curving into a smile that reveals sharp teeth. Sharp, like his alpha; like himself. Dangerous. Exacting. Lethal. “But it wouldn’t be half as fun.”

His thumb finds Clarke’s mouth and presses in, pushing gently until it opens just enough. Hunger rises in his belly as the digit sinks into the warm, wet heat of her mouth, and he strokes over her tongue. Pretty pink lips close around the intrusion, sucking instinctively. Bellamy watches her eyelids flutter, plush black lashes sweeping open to reveal pure sapphire blue.

Perfect, he thinks. Mine.

He tilts his wife’s chin up with one hand, dragging her bottom lip down. Her mouth is shiny, spit-slick and red. She stares at him, expression hazy with sleep and want. Beautiful. Sweet. Ripe.

“Oh, and Reyes,” Bellamy adds, his voice now a low purr. Clarke's eyes begin to clear, glinting as she reaches full awareness, but she does not pull away. Her teeth dig into his thumb, nipping at him saucily, and his grin turns even more feral. “Don’t forget about the cameras.”

He hangs up without waiting for a reply, tossing the phone away with a growl. He’s suddenly very, very busy.

Chapter Text

He takes her to the MOMA himself the next Saturday.

Clarke almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of it. The combination of the memories of the last failed trip with Murphy combined with the honestly ludicrous picture of a man like Bellamy in something so aggressively ordinary as a crowded museum makes her head spin with conflicting emotions, ones she frankly has no desire to pick apart.

Her life with him is bearable. He treats her as well as she can expect; better, really, given the extraordinarily low bar set for the men in her world. He didn’t punish her for trying to run again, at least not beyond the rough fuck in the alley way. He hasn’t limited her freedom back to the walls of her apartment, if anything he’s given her more. She’s allowed free rein to wander the building, even if Murphy is her shadow, and a laptop and cell phone appear unceremoniously in her room. Octavia and Willa come through and visit, and Bellamy makes an effort to show his face places other than the bedroom.

He’s trying. Not very hard, and to what end Clarke is still not sure but— well, he’s trying. She’s still not sure she likes him, and is insistent that she will never love him, and yet— she might not hate her husband. Not entirely. Not anymore.

It’s a galling prospect.

He’s just— sometimes he’s not what she expects. Sometimes he does things and she sees him truly: the man, not the alpha, not the capo. Just Bellamy. She wonders what he would’ve been like if he hadn’t been born into this world, or even if he hadn’t taken the helm of the Outfit so young. 

He likes history documentaries, and old boring books. He loves his sister, and Willa, and Ilian. He cares about his men, even the lowest ranks of them. He’s more progressive than most of the men she grew up around, even the younger ones, though he sometimes tries to hide it. 

He doesn’t sleep well.

It’s something she doesn’t try to notice, but her omega does it for her. The damn thing worries about him, about his wellbeing. It notices more than Clarke wants to notice, notices the way Bellamy wakes up every time she moves out of his arms, the way he didn’t on their wedding night. Her omega berates her for it, seems to think it’s Clarke’s fault. Clarke, despite the odd sinking bit of guilt in the pit of her stomach whenever she thinks about it, does not agree.

If you would just stay— her omega pleads, but Clarke shuts it down. She won’t move into his room. She can’t. It would— it would mean something, the same way putting on the rings she still has stashed in the back of her underwear drawer would mean something. Something too big. Something Clarke is not ready for.

“Do you like this one?” Bellamy asks her, his tone coaxing. 

Clarke startles and whips her eyes towards him, blinking rapidly. She’s been staring at the same painting for several minutes, she realizes, lost in thought. 

“Yes,” she answers, though she’s not sure it’s the truth. She hasn't really been looking. “It’s a beautiful piece.”

Bellamy raises his eyebrows, his lips curling into a hint of a smirk. Clarke feels her cheeks redden, feels heat start to simmer low in her belly at his dark gaze. She swallows. “What?”

“Interesting choice,” he says, and she looks back at the painting.

It’s— it’s a fucking penis. A cock. An alpha cock, if the knot at the base is anything to go by. It may be artfully done up in shapes and splatters but—

Her cheeks flame. “It’s well done,” she argues halfheartedly, trying to disguise her embarrassment. 

It’s the truth at least. It is a lovely rendition, though she must say it seems a bit— small, compared to the ones she’s seen. Or— the one she’s seen. His, Bellamy’s. Her husband’s cock is much larger, much more pleasingly proportioned. The shape of it, the softness of the skin, the hardness of—

Bellamy emits a low growl at her side. “I can smell that.”

Clarke rubs her thighs together sheepishly. “Shut up.”

He steps against her body, pulling her back against his chest. She leans her head back as he breathes over the glands at her throat. “I think it’s time to go home.”

Clarke, despite herself, very much agrees.

By the time they’ve gotten back to the apartment, she’s frantic. He doesn’t touch her at all on the way home, having driven them himself, and she finds herself wishing he’d slide his hand between her thighs at each red light. There’s so much traffic for some reason, and he has ample opportunity to do so. He doesn’t, and for some reason that seems like the cruelest thing he’s done yet. 

She’s probably not being logical, but hell, she needs to come. She needs to feel him inside her, any part of him: his cock, his tongue, his fingers. He keeps checking his watch for some reason, the longer they sit in traffic, and she’s worried he has somewhere else to be. Or maybe he’s just timing how long it takes for her to go crazy. Either one is possible.

When they get into the elevator at the apartment, he immediately hauls her up between his body and the wall, his hands tearing at her clothes as his mouth nips and sucks at her throat. Clarke gasps in satisfaction, grinding her hips against his hard stomach. Her head thuds back against the wall, hands laced in his hair. Her shirt is torn open at the front unceremoniously, buttons pinging across the floor. Bellamy growls at the exposed flesh. His lips close around a hard nipple and he grazes it with his teeth.

Then the elevator door opens and they’re tumbling out into the apartment. Clarke’s legs are wrapped around his waist, one of his hands on her ass, the other wrapped in the hair at the nape of her neck. Distantly she hears Murphy swear and scramble out of eyesight, but Bellamy is already striding down the hall to his room. He drops her onto the bed and crawls over her, his tongue dragging over her skin. 

He pulls off the rest of her clothes slowly, deliberately, until she’s shaking with want. He leans over her throat, inhaling their mingled scent at her swollen glands. “What do you want, principessa ?”

She can’t think, can’t speak. It’s been too long that she's been waiting, the time between the museum and his bed feeling interminable. Her panties, no longer on her body, were soaked through when he tore them off her hips.

“Touch yourself.”

It takes Clarke a moment to understand the words, her head cloudy with want and need and desperation. He’s not touching her anymore, not at all, and she wants to cry out, wants to drag his body back over hers and feel his weight pressing her into the bed, his cock stretching her wide. Her eyelids flutter open, and she meets his dark eyes. “What?”

He’s sitting on his heels in front of her, his lips curled slightly at the edges. 

“Touch yourself,” Bellamy repeats, his voice low and steady. “I want to watch you make yourself come.”

Her cheeks flare. “But—”

She wriggles, suddenly shy under his heavy-lidded gaze. Her knees move to come together, to hide her glistening cunt from his inspection, but he catches her thighs and pushes them apart again. His tongue clucks disapprovingly.

Clarke whines, her pussy clenching around nothing. “Bellamy, please—”

He shakes his head. His hands stay on her legs, hot and huge around her thighs, holding her open. It’s better than nothing, but they don’t move any closer to where she wants them, where she needs them. Her hips buck involuntarily, tears springing to her eyes. 

“Do you need something, omega?” Clarke whimpers at the word, clit aching for friction, for touch, for anything. “Do you need to come?”

“Please,” she moans. “Please.” Her fingers find his wrist, pulling at it, and for a moment she thinks he’s given in. He lets go of her thigh, letting her tug his hand towards her center. Clarke sighs in relief, but it’s premature. 

Before his skin touches her, he twists his wrist and grabs her hand, pressing her own fingers against her wet folds. She gasps, body jerking, and he guides her fingers up, then down, making her trace the length of her cunt. Up again, to the very apex of her slit, grinding down. “Right here,” Bellamy croons, and his hand moves back to her thigh. “Rub your little clit, just like that . ”

She gives in, to worked up to pull her fingers away. It’s not as good as his would be, her own too soft and small, but it’s something at least. She circles her clit desperately, roughly, but it’s not enough. “I need—” Clarke whines, eyebrows furrowing. “I can’t—” 

Empty , her omega cries. So empty.

Her husband hums knowingly. “Put them inside.” She complies without hesitating, slipping down from her clit to her tight little hole. She stuffs her middle and ring finger into her cunt, her palm pressed hard against her clit. “Good girl, that’s it. Fuck your fingers for me, principessa .”

She does, bucking her hips as she desperately rides her own hand. Her cunt clings to her fingers, tight around the digits, but it’s still not enough, not even close to what his cock would be. She tries to add another but that make her palm curve, making it harder for her to grind against her clit while she finger-fucks herself.

She cries out, forehead creasing with effort. It’s not enough, not enough . Clarke needs more, needs him . His fingers, his cock, his knot.

His knot. 

The thought comes unbidden, unwanted. The thing that has scared her so much, that she’s dreaded, and avoided, and begged him not to do, suddenly it’s all she can think about. All that she can hold in her mind, awash as it is in desperate need. It wouldn’t be like the one in the painting, no, she’s felt it against her entrance. She’s felt how big it is, seen the way it grows. She wants it, almost as much as she fears it. The idea now, of his knot swelling inside her, stretching her cunt so wide she can’t take it, so big that her hole is taut around him, that she can’t get him out, tying her to him, keeping her impaled on his length while he fills her with his hot cum— it makes her mouth water.

Her mouth. Oh, god. What if he fucked her mouth, fucked her throat, knotted behind her teeth? He’d stroke her hair as she swallowed spurt after spurt of cum, unable to pull away. He’d tell her how good she was, how perfect, how pretty as he filled her belly with seed, making her drink it down. 

She bites her lip, tugging it between her teeth, and Bellamy watches.

Watches her hump her fingers. Watches her chest heave. Watches her cunt twitch. Clarke lets out a choked sob, and he turns his eyes back to her face. Letting go of one leg, he brings his fingers to her lips and pushes them in. She closes around them automatically, suckling gently. He groans.

“You know what I want, don’t you, pretty thing?” She can feel the slight coolness of metal against her bottom lip, the brush of gold from the wedding band on his fourth finger. Bellamy presses down on the back of her tongue and she chokes, just enough to make her eyes water. “You want it too.”

She does, god help her. She shouldn’t, but she does. It’s too much to admit, too much to tell him, not that she could around his fingers even if she wanted to, but she really doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to want it, but more so doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. It feels wrong to lie, though, so she just looks up at him with wide blue eyes and keeps sucking. Her own fingers keep working between her legs and her body starts to tremble.

“Are you close?” he asks, and Clarke nods. She is close, so close, but somehow so far as well. She needs to come desperately, the ache burning deep in her belly. Please , she almost begs, but her mouth is still full, thank god.

There’s a knock on the door and Bellamy pulls back suddenly, withdrawing his fingers from her mouth and wiping them against her splayed thighs before standing. His lips curl into a smirk. 

“Good,” he tells her, his eyes dark. Clarke watches, mouth agape, as he straightens his cuffs and runs a hand through his hair, looking damnably immaculate while she sweats and shivers on the bed alone. “Stay right there for me, principessa . I have some business to take care of.”

And then, to her shock and horror, the bastard actually leaves.

****

That had not been part of the plan.

“What time is it?” Bellamy asks Murphy as he closes the door to his bedroom, leaving his wife alone to his alpha’s great consternation.

“You’ve got thirty minutes,” the younger man tells him lazily, Bellamy’s coat and holster dangling from his fingers. 

Bellamy snatches them with a curse, donning them both in quick succession. “Tell Reyes I’m taking the M3, get her on the lights. I can’t afford to be late again.”

Any minute he isn’t at the meeting is another minute for the men to speculate, another minute for whatever dumbass challenger who decides to try his luck to showboat around, attempting to sway the organization. Enzo may be dumb as a rock, but his father isn’t. The longer Bellamy isn’t there to take the fight, the more likely he is to have to put down more than just one idiotic rebellion. And he knows if Cavallero does manage to stir anyone else up, he’ll hold Enzo back till Bellamy’s through the rest and feeling it. Depending on who stepped up, it’s possible he could lose.

But more importantly, it would take longer. And Bellamy has an urgent need to get back tonight, and finish what he started with Clarke.

“This place is on lockdown until I get back. Nobody in or out but me, that includes O. If Clarke tries to convince you I said otherwise, it’s a lie.” He glances back at the closed door to his bedroom, pausing. “Leave her alone unless she comes to you. She’s probably going to be in a mood.”

“Really now,” Murphy drawls, and pushes off the wall to follow Bellamy out. He aims a sidelong look at Bellamy’s crotch as they walk to the elevator shoulder-to-shoulder. “I don’t suppose that’s strategic?”

 “Shut the fuck up,” Bellamy replies, his tone sharp. He steps into the elevator and turns, glaring at his friend. “Just do your fucking job and be quiet.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Murphy grins, waving cheekily as the doors begin to close. “Have fun out there.”

Bellamy lets out a sigh when the door shuts. The elevator begins to move, and finally he reaches down to adjust his unfortunately still raging erection where it strains against the zipper of his pants. He swears, checking his watch again. 

This better not take too long. Bellamy has far, far too much waiting for him.

****

Thanks to Raven’s not-so-legal hijacking of New York’s traffic light grid, Bellamy makes it to the warehouse just before either of the Cavalleros. 

That, unfortunately, is the last thing to go smoothly for him.  While Cavallero may not have had time to goad any of the younger men into backing Enzo, it’s clear that the old guard have taken sides, and it's not Bellamy they’ve chosen. The silence when Enzo steps forward is deafening, no one making even a token effort to talk him down.

That’s fine, Bellamy thinks, stepping forwards to beat the shit out of the other man. He doesn’t need anyone else. It would be nice to know that none of them will stab him in the back while he’s fighting, but hey, he can’t have everything. He has people in the organization who will back him, even if they’re not the ones with the big names. He has people who will get him out before they can kill him, if it comes to that. 

Probably, at least. There’s always a chance of something going wrong, and things have been rumbling lately. It’s why he needed Marcus in the first place, why he has Clarke as a wife. Ironic that that alliance has made things worse rather than better, but what does Bellamy care? 

He rolls up his shirtsleeves, and steps into the ring. 

The fight goes down almost just as he expected. Enzo is fast, but not as fast as Bellamy. He’s too big for Bellamy’s lithe grace, but when his blows land, they land hard. Bellamy is breathing hard, by the time he thinks it’s almost over, his mouth bloody, cheek split, head ringing. Enzo is more bruised than bloodied, but he’s gotten slower, and he’s favoring his right side after a hard strike to the kidneys. Neither of them have used the blades they both know the other has, but the threat is there.

He goes in for a punch, but Enzo dodges. The other man grins, spitting a mouthful of blood at Bellamy’s feet. “I can smell your omega bitch on you. Still haven’t bit her yet, have you?” 

He’s trying to goad Bellamy, trying to draw out his alpha rage is a way that makes it a liability, but his alpha is already here, just as it always is. The two of them watch Enzo in almost gleeful unison, vision clear as cut glass.

Enzo strikes out, his fist glancing off Bellamy’s cheekbone as he spins away. “When I win,” he says, stalking forward. “I think I will have her. Not worth keeping around used goods, but she certainly smells sweet enough to tie up on my knot once or twice.”

Bellamy, usually so controlled, loses it. He’s not sure if it’s his alpha or just him or maybe even both, but a growl tears through his throat like an animal and he lunges wildly for the other man, his teeth gnashing. He wants blood, needs to see Enzo’s throat torn open, needs to see him dead and silent. 

He plays right into Enzo’s hands. As he shoots forward, Enzo sidesteps him, getting his arms around Bellamy. He squeezes so hard Bellamy hears his ribs crack, feels the breath forced out of him before he’s thrown to the ground. His head bashes against the concrete, leaving him dazed. Enzo steps over his prone body, flipping the knife in his hands with a wicked smile. Before Bellamy can stand there’s a knee in his back, what feels like a half ton of man holding him down as Enzo grabs his hair, forcing his head back and bearing his throat. 

Enzo laughs as he presses the blade to Bellamy’s neck. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of her.” The skin on his throat breaks, blood beginning to stream down from the thin cut. “While she lasts, at least.”

The same thing that allowed Enzo to bring him down is the thing that kills him. Bellamy isn’t even sure what happens next, isn’t sure how he gets the other man off him or gets the blade out  of his hand, but next thing he knows he’s on his feet with Enzo on his knees in front of him, the man’s own knife buried in his temple, throat slashed open. Bellamy watches coldly as the other alpha’s body thuds to the ground. Blood pools on the concrete where he falls, and Bellamy turns.

He stalks out of the ring, stopping in front of a dumbstruck Cavallero. “I might’ve let him live—” he tells the dead man’s father, “—if he hadn’t mentioned my wife.” He throws his next words over his shoulder, addressing the gathered crowd. “Don’t make the same mistake.”

If that was the end of his night, he would’ve called it a success. He’s a little more beaten than he’d have appreciated, having come a little closer to death than he’s entirely comfortable with, but at least he won. He won, and while he lost control there twice, it was only for a moment. Only for as long as it took to get him down, and only for as long as it took to turn the tables.

Miller is at his side while he walks out of the room, and Bellamy murmurs to him as they go. “Call Doc tomorrow. Tell him I need to up my dose again.”

Miller gives him a sidelong look. “Blockers again? Is that the best idea? Seems like that’s what saved you tonight.”

Bellamy grunts. “Just do it.”

He wipes the blood from his throat with his shirtsleeve, wincing at the sting of the cut. Fucking Enzo. He let that fucker get far too close to killing him.

He’s almost to the door when the call comes. Miller stops him, and Bellamy knows just by the look on his face that the news isn’t what he needs tonight. 

“Where?” he growls.

“It’s the warehouse,” Miller tells him grimly. “The Russians. They’ve got three of ours pinned down.”

Bellamy swears. “Let’s go.”

****

Clarke paces back and forth in her bedroom.

She’s been doing this for about an hour, maintaining the rage that boils through her with a little physical exertion. How dare he. How dare he work her up like that, make her work herself up like that, and just leave? For god knows where, for god knows how long?

Did he even know that he’d issued her an Alpha command?!

Stay right there for me, he’d said, the words innocuous enough sounding, and then he’d left. It wasn’t till after the door had shut and she’d caught her breath that she’d recognized that telltale double timbre behind the casual tone. It had taken her two hours of struggling against her omega to break the command and get up, and by that time she was so angry she felt like she was the one with the psychotic inner alpha, ready and raring to rip out his throat.

How dare he order her about at all, but an Alpha tone? They weren’t mated yet, which was the only reason she’d been able to shake it off, but it wasn’t like it had been easy. It was unconscionably domineering, controlling, and frankly rude. Clarke no longer worries about not hating him anymore, not after this. As soon as he gets back, she’s going to go and give him a piece of her mind, not that she expects him to do anything but smirk about it. 

Where the fuck is he? Murphy wouldn’t tell her, in fact, Murphy wouldn’t even look at her, and it was probably for the best because she is liable to lose her shit at any minute. 

A fucking Alpha command! She’s never felt so powerless in her life. 

Meanwhile, Bellamy is off gallivanting about, doing whatever the fuck mob bosses do when they’re not torturing their wives, and he apparently can’t be bothered to come home and finish what he started!

Okay, so maybe she’s also mad about that. She shouldn’t be, because what is an orgasm in the scheme of things, especially compared to her block-head alpha husband forcibly exerting his will onto her to make her sit and wait on his bed of all things! But she can’t help it. The sexual frustration simply made everything ten times worse.  

It’s nearly three by the time he comes home. Clarke knows this not because he comes to see her, to grovel at her feet and beg her forgiveness, but because she hears heavy footsteps, the the sound of his door clicking open and closed.

She draws herself up into the straightest line she can manage, tucks her hair back, and stalks across the hall. She doesn’t bother knocking, but throws his door open instead, strolling boldly inside.

“You have some fucking nerve—” The angry words die on her lips and she stops still, taking in the sight before her.

Bellamy is standing by his bed, his shirt halfway off his shoulders. He looks almost like he did the first night he fucked her, the first night she’d been here, but worse. That night he’d been feral, a predator, tonight he just looks— bruised. His torso is covered in newly blossoming bruises, dark and mottled and ugly. His cheek is swollen and split, and there’s an angry line across his throat, caked with dried blood. Worst of all is the wound she can’t see, the one at his shoulder, swathed in white gauze stained so dark blood in one spot that it almost appears black.

He winces, shrugging the shirt the rest of the way off. Clarke’s throat ticks as she swallows, frozen. He looks so, so— vulnerable.

“Are you okay?” It’s a stupid question, and she regrets it the second it leaves her lips. “What happened?”

“There was a challenge,” Bellamy tells her wryly, but the small smile doesn’t meet his eyes. 

Clarke senses there’s more. “And then?”

He sighs, balling up the bloody shirt and dropping it into the laundry. “And then I got called over to one of our warehouses. We were told it was the Russians.” Bellamy rolls his shoulder, his lips going tight with the pain. “It wasn’t only them.”

It had been his own men, when he got there. His own men who turned on him, who turned on each other. Enzo had just been a diversion, only half the plan. It was a set-up. The people his men called for help before Bellamy had been in on it, had been waiting for him. He managed to put the Russians down, managed to get into the warehouse to his men— and then it had become a standoff. One of his men was dead already, another wounded, the third was so young Bellamy wondered why he was even there in the first place. 

Bellamy dragged the injured one out, shot as many of the goddamn traitors as he could see, and realized the younger man hadn’t followed. He’d sworn and gone back for him, and found him on his feet facing two other men. His gun was up, but Bellamy could see by the way his hands shook that he couldn’t pull the trigger.

“It’s okay,” he told the kid. “It’s me they want.”

And he’d been right, but only to a degree. They wanted them both, wanted them all dead, no witnesses. They’d fired at the kid as he turned to face Bellamy, and Bellamy lunged forward before he could think about it. The bullet tore through his shoulder, but he was already firing back, dragging the kid with him. 

“I’m sorry,” the boy was saying. “I didn’t— I couldn’t—”

“It’s okay,” he promised, as they fought their way back. “It’ll be okay.” He was bleeding profusely even as he ran; one hand clutching his gun, the other wrapped around the kid’s arm, pulling him. “I’m going to get you out.”

And he almost had. Almost. 

They shot the kid in the head right as Bellamy was pushing him through the door to the outside, the bullet ricocheting loudly, splattering him with blood.

Bellamy had killed them all.

He meets his wife’s eyes. She’s at his side now, pulled there as if by an outside force. Her eyes are huge, fingers fluttering over his wounds as she examines them. “I’m fine. It’ll heal.”

Clarke purses her lips, unsure of what she should do or say. Bellamy’s eyes are dark and heavy, half-lidded with exhaustion. He reaches out a hand and cups her face, stroking her cheek, tilting her chin up towards him. His lips find hers, uncharacteristically tender but still fierce with desire. 

“I need you,” he tells her, pressing her back towards the bed.

Clarke lets him, incapable of doing anything else. She helps him as he pulls off her clothes, helps him strip off the rest of his own. He leads her up onto the bed, settling his body over hers. His mouth meets her in slow, languid kisses. His fingers stroke her face. He is hard, his cock grinding against her between her legs, but he doesn’t push into her, doesn’t fuck her like a beast like he had the time before. When he pulls back, his eyes are so full that Clarke can’t meet them, doesn’t know how to.

He kisses the corner of her mouth. “Sweet Omega.” The head of his cock finds her entrance, and he slides into her so slowly she almost wants to cry. “So good.”

She doesn’t— she doesn’t understand this, doesn’t understand why it feels so different. Why it feels so much more. She was so angry just minutes ago, but then seeing him, seeing him hurt— something inside her hadn’t been able to hold onto the rage. It slipped through her fingers, just like the hatred she thought she would feel for him forever. Instead, there was concern, worry, fear— caring?

The way he’s looking at her now as he fucks into her—so slow, so measured—like she’s something special. Something good.

It’s too much.

It’s because he’s hurt, she tells herself. Nothing more. It’s because he’s hurt and he’s still holding himself over you. He has no other option than to go slow. It’s not because this is— more.

She stiffens under him and Bellamy pulls back, kissing her gently. “What’s wrong?”

Clarke shakes her head. “Nothing, it’s just—” she forces a smile and sits up, pressing a hand to his chest. Bellamy lets her turn them, doesn’t fight her as she moves to sit astride his body and sink down on his hard length. “I need more.”

She places his hands on her hips and leans back so she doesn’t accidentally rest her weight on his bruised torso. Clarke rises up on her knees and fucks herself back down hard, feeling his cock bottom out inside her. “You left me all alone earlier,” she reminds him, trying to work up a faster rhythm, one she’s more used to, more comfortable with. “I was so close.”

She wants the Bellamy from earlier, the one who smirked and grabbed and pushed. The one who didn’t look at her like she’s something beautiful, but like she’s something to eat. She knows that Bellamy, knows how to handle him. 

“You told me to stay here, but I didn’t,” she goads, hoping to spur him into action. “You commanded me.”

He frowns, his grip on her hips tightening. “Did I?”

“You did.”

He opens his mouth, his eyebrows pulled together, and for a second she thinks he might apologize and that’s the opposite of what she wants. She can’t hear that, not now. Not with him looking like that. Clarke is so close to losing herself in him tonight.

“ Alpha ,” she begs, and it’s a hail Mary attempt. “ Please .”

It works.

She can see the way it shivers through him, see the way his eyes sharpen, the way his muscles tense. His fingers close tight around her hips, lifting her up and slamming her down on his cock. “Is this what you needed, Omega? You need it hard and fast?”

Clarke cries out at the feel of his entire length hammering inside her cunt, the way he impales her on his thick girth with each thrust. “Yes, yes .”

“Were you wet for me all night?” he asks. She nods frantically. “But you weren’t a good girl.”

Clarke’s eyes open wide, a cry falling from her lips. Her cheeks are bright red, hair swirling around sweaty shoulders. “What?”

“You didn’t wait, pretty thing.” Bellamy pushes himself up and she groans, his cock sliding deeper as she falls into his lap. His hand glides up her chest to her neck, fingers closing around her throat without squeezing. “You disobeyed your alpha.” 

Is this— is this what she wanted? She wasn't able to handle the slow tenderness he’d shown her earlier, but is this really better? Clarke swallows hard. “I—”

He hums, cutting her off, and moves his hand to her hair instead, wrapping it around his fingers and pulling her head back. His mouth finds her exposed neck, his teeth coming dangerously close to her glands. 

“Mine,” he murmurs. “My omega.” 

He flips her with no care for his injuries, pinning her down and fucking her hard. Just like she wanted him to, but Clarke sees the way the dark spot on his bandage grows and something in her stomach clenches. 

This is better, she thinks, as he holds her wrists down against the mattress, his cock dragging in and out of her in punishing strokes. He’s fine.

And when the adrenaline wears off? her omega chastens, but Clarke refuses to acknowledge it. 

Bellamy growls low in his throat and she closes her eyes, guilty tears spiking at the corners of her eyes even as he drives her closer to her climax. This is better, she insists. Better for both of us.

She can’t even convince herself it’s true.

Chapter Text

If there’s anything Bellamy enjoys less than getting shot once, it’s having it happen again less than a week later.

This time the shootout was less well organized, less of a conspiracy than a simple power grab, but it’s not great. He’d caught them right on the edge of Raven’s no-fly zone, trying to sneak past his surveillance with far more firepower than any random encounter would require. No, they were coming for his penthouse, for him. 

It was far closer to home than he would prefer. He could’ve sent his men out to put them down the moment he’d gotten the alert, but it had felt personal, this attempt on his turf. It had felt personal, so he’d responded personally. 

Five on one was fine odds for a man like Bellamy. He’d finished them off himself, left the mess for his men to clean up.

“You were lucky this time,” Doc tells him sternly, peeling back the blood soaked gauze with an even expression that tells Bellamy very little about whether the words are true. “It’s a graze.”

It doesn’t feel like a graze. It burns like a fucking bitch, worse than the shot to his shoulder. He lets out a growl as the older man prods at the wound further. His fists clench, blunt nails sinking into his palms. “Think I preferred the hole.”

Doc snorts. “I’m sure you did.”

Bellamy shudders as the doctor dumps what feels like a gallon of ice-cold saline over the laceration in his side. It soaks into his jeans and he winces. “Stitches?”

Doc shrugs, humming thoughtfully. “It’s deep enough in a few places that closing it up wouldn’t be a bad idea. It’d probably heal on its own, but it’ll scar worse for sure. If I sew you up are you just gonna rip ‘em out again?”

Ah.

Right.

Bellamy thinks about just how he’d ripped those stitches and the sounds his wife had made as he’d done it. It had been stupid, stupid and masochistically Alpha to fuck her like that so soon after his injury, but she’d goaded him into it. Something hot and languid uncurls in his belly at the memory, part of him unthinkably proud of his little omega.

Another part of him—a part that has frankly no business still existing after the life he’s lived—stirs uneasily at the memory. That part exists a bit higher up in his abdomen, somewhere uncomfortably close to his heart. 

She only wants the Alpha , it tells him. Not you. 

Never you.

Bellamy tamps down hard on that thought, shoving it back down into the depths of his head. He is the Alpha, and the Alpha is him. At least—

Well, maybe he’s been taking too many blockers. 

“Just cover it,” he tells the Doc. “What’s another scar to me?”

Not like he’s not got enough of them already.

****

Clarke is pacing. 

“When, exactly, do you think he’ll be back?”

It’s the third time she’s asked this in the last hour, and Murphy seems more than a little tired of giving her the same answer. “Fuck if I know.” He glances down at his phone with a frown, then returns his gaze to the TV. “Would you sit the fuck down? You’re stressing me out.”

Clarke pauses to glare daggers at her bodyguard. He doesn’t look stressed to her. Not even a little bit. He’s just sitting on the couch like he always does, his knees spread way further than they reasonably need to be, his shoulders slumped lazily. His eyes flick to his phone again. His jaw ticks.

Something is wrong , her omega flutters nervously. Clarke stuffs the feeling down, resuming her pacing.

She’s not worried. She’s not worried because there’s no reason for her to be worried. Yes, Bellamy had left abruptly, and yes, he had smelled more than a little bit like ‘aggression’ as he’d once so nicely put it, but it’s not like that was entirely out of the ordinary. She knows this world, knows his place in it. Aggression and abrupt exits are par for the course.

And yet—

Something about his demeanor when he’d left, something about the way he hadn’t bothered with a coat, something about the way he’d kissed her hard and harsh before he’d left, his hand fisted tight in her hair like a promise—

He’s injured, her omega reminds her. And we made him worse. If there’s a fight—

Her back stiffens. There’s always a fight.

Clarke is not worried. There’s always a fight, and Bellamy always wins. No matter what. That’s why he’s the capo, when by all rights he should still be a lowly foot soldier. She’s not worried. She’s just— impatient.

Impatient and bitter about being kept out of the loop. If anyone would ever just tell her what was going on for once, maybe she wouldn’t spend so much time harassing people for scraps of information. Honestly, it’s like she’s a child, like they don’t even trust her to keep the front door locked. Which obviously she doesn’t have to do, seeing as how they live in a heavily fortified penthouse and she’s constantly under guard by made men, but she would if she were meant to. 

It’s her own fault, to some degree. He doesn’t trust her because she hasn’t given him any reason to. Sure, she hasn’t betrayed him to his enemies, nor does Clarke intend to do so, but she’s not exactly been the most docile. Or obedient. Or— Well, it doesn’t matter. 

He’d told her at that stupid dinner that had rushed all this along that he’d tell her things once they were married. He tells Octavia, she knows he does. He probably tells Willa more than he tells Clarke, and she’s his fucking housekeeper. Meanwhile, his wife is left to wait and wait and wait and—

She’s just opening her mouth to ask Murphy for the fourth time when the elevator opens behind her.

His scent hits her all at once, fingers uncurling involuntarily as all her muscles relax at once. Her shoulders fall, eyes closing.

Alive , Clarke breathes internally. 

Alpha , her omega sighs.

The relief she feels is dangerous. She doesn’t know why it feels like this, why she feels like this. Why she feels so much. 

“How many?” she hears Murphy ask. 

“Five,” comes Bellamy’s gruff reply.

“You take care of them?” 

A snort. “What do you think?”

Clarke lets out a short, silent sigh. Five of what? Of who ? Does she even want to know?

He came back , she reminds herself. He always comes back. 

You’re the one who keeps leaving , her omega adds helpfully. 

And she is, isn’t she? Without a word to her husband, without even looking back to see him, to check if he’s alright, Clarke stalks down the hallway to her room. 

She might as well keep up the habit.

****

Bellamy watches Clarke go, his body rigid. He clenches his jaw tight, fingers gripping the counter hard to keep from following her like a lovesick pup. It’s ridiculous, and he refuses to run after his wife like he’s done something wrong, because for fucks sake, he hasn’t. He’s been out making sure she’s safe, not that she knows that.  

“What’s her problem?” he asks Murphy.

His lieutenant scoffs, shrugging insolently. “She’s been all up in arms the whole time you were out. Pacing and demanding to know where you went.”

Well. Pacing? That, at the very least, sounds promising. “Did you tell her?”

Murphy looks vaguely insulted that Bellamy would even ask. He crosses his arms over his chest and snorts. “Of course not.”

“Good.” Bellamy shoots another lingering glance down the hallway, looking for— what the fuck is he even looking for? Does he really think Clarke is hiding in the hall, peeking out at him? She’s not coming back out now that she’s made a dramatic exit, and he knows it. “I’m going down to see O.”

Murphy waves him away, his attention already back on the TV. Bellamy lets out an annoyed sigh and winces when it pulls at the freshly bandaged wound on his ribs. He should’ve just let the Doc stitch it and given Clarke a few days to stew without any release. It’s not like he needs to fuck his wife every day, it’s just— well, he deeply prefers to. And how was he supposed to know she’d be in a snit when he came back? Last time she’d been more than eager. 

Perhaps even overly eager.

Bellamy punches the elevator button to Octavia’s floor, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He’s unsettled, obviously frustrated by Clarke’s dismissal, but it’s something more than that. His skin feels too tight, something deep inside him raking long-sheathed claws across the confines of his flesh. Not so much trying to escape as— as reminding him it’s still there.

He shakes himself slightly as he steps into his sister’s apartment, throwing off the unwanted sensation.

Octavia is on the couch when he comes in, and she meets his eyes over her laptop. Bellamy can see her take in his appearance, cataloging the visible injuries from his latest fight. Despite the carnage of the past few weeks trying hard to prove otherwise, Bellamy’s position as the head of the Outfit has historically functioned to spare his direct participation in the physical violence of the organization, and in that time Octavia has grown unused to seeing him bruised and bloodied. She frowns.

“Again?” Bellamy nods and she closes her computer, setting it aside. “Who?”

He flops back on the couch at her feet, leaning back with a huff. “Ours. Again.” He tilts his head back and runs a fist over his brows. His head hurts, whether from the fight or whatever else, and it’s not helping his mood. “Couldn’t tell you on whose orders this time though. Raven said Cavallero is out.”

His sister leans forwards, her eyebrows drawing together. “What was the target?”

Bellamy gives her a look. “What do you think?” His tone is dry, and he picks at his fingernails. “They were on their way here, armed to the fucking teeth.”

Octavia straightens further. “Here?”

Bellamy shrugs. “That’s what I came here to tell you. Things are getting— bad. Worse, I guess. They’re getting bolder, and I don’t fucking care for it. Until things calm down, I don’t want you going out alone.” His sister opens her mouth to argue but he waves it away. “Don’t give me any of that shit, O. It’s this or you get a full time bodyguard again.”

Octavia’s expression darkens, and Bellamy winces a tiny bit internally. Her last bodyguard had been killed in a knife fight just a few hours after Bellamy had found him and Octavia making out on her couch and for obvious reasons it remains a sore point for O. Bellamy maintains that Atom’s death was purely coincidental and he hadn’t purposefully sent him into a trap, but the beating Bellamy had delivered after removing him bodily from his sister’s apartment probably hadn’t helped.

He sighs. “It’s not forever, O. This one time, don’t fight me on this. If you need to go out just bring that giant Alpha boyfriend you think I don’t know about.” Octavia’s mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. Bellamy’s lips turn up. “You look kinda like a fish when you do that.”

She sputters indignantly and pushes at him with one foot. “Shut up!” Bellamy groans as her foot finds the wound on his ribs, quickly snatching her ankle and pushing her foot back to her side of the couch. Octavia lets out a huff and settles back against the armrest. She eyes him carefully. “So… you know about Lincoln then?”

Of course he fucking knows about Lincoln. Octavia may not have a bodyguard anymore, but that doesn’t mean he’s not having her watched. He knows where Lincoln lives, where he works, where they met, when Octavia stopped seeing other people. Lincoln isn’t part of their world, but he’s not squeaky clean either. He’d been a prizefighter at one of the unaffiliated underground rings, and people don’t leave that life without bloodying their hands. He knows who Bellamy is, and who Octavia is, and knows that if she comes to any harm in his presence, Bellamy will take out his throat as payment.

He raises an eyebrow. “Do you actually want to talk about it?”

“No,” she replies. “Not even a little bit.”

“Good,” Bellamy agrees. Not for the first time, he thanks God that Octavia didn’t inherit the omega gene from their mother. Keeping tabs on her love life is bad enough for his mental health without him having to smell it. “Me neither.”

Bellamy wonders if his sister realizes just how many of her boyfriends he has actively not murdered. If she appreciates just how much freedom she has been, if she understands that any other man in his position would’ve kept her cloistered and cosseted until he could marry her off to some stranger for his own benefit, the way Clarke was.

Probably not.

They sit for a little in a comfortable silence, neither speaking. After a while, Octavia hums, her expression contemplative. “How is Clarke taking it?”

Bellamy very obviously does not respond. What the fuck is he supposed to say? 

Octavia sits back up, frowning at her brother. “You didn’t tell her?”

He shrugs tightly. “No.”

“ No ?” Octavia echoes. “ No or not yet ? You have to tell her.”

“I don’t, actually. Clarke is my responsibility, O, and these challenges— they’ve only gotten worse since she came here.” Since she ran , he doesn’t say, but he doesn’t have to. Octavia knows it just as well as he does. This marriage that was supposed to bring him the power of the Chicago Familia , to make the Outfit stronger— all it’s done is made Bellamy look weak. Keeping her—keeping Clarke—was always a liability. That hasn’t changed. “She doesn’t need to know.”

“It’s not just you they’re challenging, Bell. You said today they were coming here, how close did they get?”

“Five blocks away,” he grits out. “But—”

“Five blocks away. And did they even know you were home? Clarke has a right to know the risks.”

The risks? She makes it sound like they’re talking about eating red meat or having unprotected sex, like it’s something easy and intangible. The risks of every aspect of their life—of his life—are so great that if any normal person knew the extent of them they would drown in impending doom. Every time he goes out, there’s a chance he won’t make it back. It’s the same for all of them, but Bellamy is the lightning rod. He draws in the attacks, but the closer someone stands to him, the more likely it is they get caught in the strike. 

Clarke has lived all her life in the storm, it’s part of what made her a good match. She knows what it means that he’s in charge, has first hand knowledge of how quickly things can fall apart, like they did for her father. In theory, he should be able to tell her everything, because she’ll understand.

He can’t do it.

Maybe it’s because she’s an omega, maybe it’s because she’s his wife, Bellamy isn’t sure. But he can’t bear the thought of telling her she should be afraid, because she shouldn’t. Not for herself. And telling her to be afraid for him—

Well, they're not quite there yet.

“She’s a Griffin, O. She knows the risks better than anyone. She doesn’t need to be looking over her shoulder all the time any more than she already does.” He closes his eyes and opens then again. He won’t tell Clarke that she's made it worse for him. She doesn’t need any more reasons to run. “I won’t tell her about this, and neither will you.”

“Then she needs to learn how to fight,” Octavia presses doggedly.

Bellamy’s lips narrow into a thin line. “No.”

“You have to be kidding, Bell! She’s your wife, shouldn’t she know how to defend herself?”

It’s an absolutely ludicrous suggestion, and one that makes something in his stomach twist uncomfortably. Clarke doesn’t need to know how to fight, because he will never let her be out in a position where she has to fight. She’s his wife, his omega, and he is doing just fine keeping her safe so far despite her best efforts.

 “She has Murphy for that.”

Octavia’s eyebrows shoot up incredulously, and she lets out an exasperated huff. “And in the case she doesn’t?”  

Bellamy’s eyes harden, his arms crossing over his chest. “Then she has me.”

“Are you sure about that?” Octavia’s voice softens, and she leans towards her brother. One hand reaches out, laying hesitantly on the hard curve of his arm. “Bell, what happened with me and mom—”

No. 

No, he won’t even think about it. He would never allow that to happen. It won’t. It can’t . It just— 

Bellamy wrenches himself away from her, stalking across the room. His hands flex into fists at his sides. “That won’t ever happen again.”

Octavia’s question is gentle but firm. “Can you guarantee that?”

He’s silent for a long moment, because he can’t. Of course he can’t.

“You won’t always be there to protect her. You can try, and I know you will, but there will always be a chance. Are you really willing to risk it?” She waits a beat, voice low and still altogether deadly:  “Are you really willing to risk her ?”

Bellamy swears.

No. No, he really isn’t.

****

He doesn’t come to see her that night. 

And by see her, of course what Clarke means is that he doesn’t come to fuck her. And she’s fine with that, really, she is. She’s not a sex addict, no matter what her designation may make people believe. She doesn’t need to get off every 12 hours to remain sane. And if she doesn’t sleep very well that night, well, it’s because she’s annoyed at him. Frustrated, not sexually frustrated.

Well— maybe a little sexually frustrated. And okay, yes, maybe part of the reason she couldn’t sleep was her omega doing the absolute most to make her feel unloved and abandoned while insisting that it was Clarke’s fault for not being a perfect little submissive sycophant for her Alpha.

For Bellamy. Not her Alpha. He’s not—

The distinction, once so very desperately important, is starting to get a little blurry despite Clarke’s best efforts. He’s her husband, he’s an alpha, he’s fucking her— well, when he feels like it, she guesses. He’s the only one fucking her, and the only one who ever has. All these things, taken together, for all intents and purposes make him her Alpha. If she let him knot her, let him tie her up on his cock the way she just knows he’s dying to do, the way she’s started craving instead of rightfully fearing—

She’s not quite ready to go that far.

Clarke is embarrassed to admit she wants it, or her body does at least. Even the promise of the pain involved has begun to heat her blood, whatever fucked up part of her sex drive her omega has its dirty fingers in slowly working away at turning her into a depraved slut.

She is lying on her back in bed fully clothed, glaring at the ceiling and steadfastly not fantasizing about being knotted by her husband, when the door opens.

Clarke sits up, surprised to see Octavia waltzing into her room instead of Bellamy.

“You have gym clothes, right?” the other girl asks without preamble, heading to Clarke’s closet instead of waiting for an answer. “Aha, got them. Here.”

Clarke catches the leggings and workout tank before they can hit her in the face. She stares at Octavia, unsure what exactly she’s meant to be doing. “Did we have plans I forgot about?”

They didn’t, because Clarke would remember having anything at all on her schedule, but she figures it’s polite to ask. Octavia just waves a hand. “We do now. C’mon, get dressed. It’ll be fun.” Clarke is not so convinced, especially when the other girl gives her an assessing look, lips pursed in contemplation. “Have you eaten yet?”

Clarke shakes her head, looking down at the clothes in her lap and then back up at Octavia. She’s leaning against Clarke’s dresser, expression eager. The door is still open. Clarke looks over at it and raises an eyebrow. She’s not going to just start stripping.

“Oh, right!” Octavia catches her meaning, pushing off the dresser and heading towards the hall. “I’ll let you change. You’ll need a snack anyway, I’ll rustle something up. Meet me in the kitchen when you’re ready. Wear sneakers.”

She does not close the door behind her, and Clarke lets out a heavy sigh before getting up to do it herself. She puts on the clothes Octavia picked out, tugging uncomfortably at the elastic of the sports bra where it cuts into her skin as she digs out her sneakers. She hasn’t worn these clothes since Chicago and she’s not sure they still fit. She’s gained some weight since getting here, or maybe her boobs are just growing again.

Clarke sighs, shoving her feet into her shoes and lacing them up. She hopes it’s not that. Her tits are big enough as it is.

She heads for the door, bracing herself for whatever Octavia has deemed fit for a snack, but it opens right before she reaches for it. She almost collides with Bellamy, stepping forward just as he steps in.

She’s hit with a wall of his scent, so heady after the long night alone that it makes her knees quiver. One hand snakes around her back, steadying her. Clarke looks up at her husband, watches his nostrils flare. He’s so tall like this, so close, and she has to crane her neck to see his eyes. 

They’re black, pupils blown just as wide as she suspects her own are. At least there’s that. 

“I’m going out with Octavia,” Clarke tells him, for lack of anything better to say.

Bellamy’s brow lifts. “I know. That’s why I’m here.”

“Oh,” Clarke says dumbly. She can’t seem to look away from him. “Are you coming with us?”

He shakes his head, the movement barely perceptible. His eyes are on her lips, greedy and hungry, like he’s as starving to taste her as she is to be tasted. Clarke feels the air leave her slow and steady.

“Long night?” he asks, and she snaps back into annoyance.

Clarke lets out a huff, moving to step away from her ass of a husband, but Bellamy catches her by the wrists and turns her, crowding her up against the wall by the open door. He makes a disapproving sound as he steps even closer, his expression bordering on feral. “Uh-uh, principessa . Not so fast.”

He transfers control of her wrists to one hand, pressing them up over her head and holding them there with his weight. Clarke has to struggle against herself to make herself struggle against him. It’s infuriating, and when she does try to pull away it’s more than a little half-hearted. Bellamy doesn’t loosen his grip in the slightest, not that she expects him to.

He leans in, his nose brushing hers.

“Let me go,” Clarke whispers.

“Not yet,” Bellamy promises.

Not ever , she hears in the rumble of his voice.

She closes her eyes, her lips parting as his chin dips, but the kiss she’s expecting doesn’t come. Instead his head moves up, warm breath caressing the thin skin of her inner arms before his mouth comes down hot on the glands of her wrist. Clarke gasps involuntarily, and her body jerks with the unexpected rush of pleasure. 

Bellamy suckles first at her right wrist and then the left, peppering the skin with licks and nips that leave her breathless and shuddering and inconveniently wet between her thighs. When he finishes there his mouth moves to her throat. The sensation is equally dangerous, even more so as his lips skirt over the gland she knows he intends to eventually sink his teeth into, the one that will mark her forever as his. It wouldn’t take now, when she’s not in heat, but it doesn’t stop her body from wanting it, just as it doesn’t stop her brain from screaming at her to run. 

Her fingers curl and open again in his grasp, desperate to feel him, to sink into his hair and pull him closer, to shove at his chest and push him away. Bellamy holds her fast and she can do neither, so instead she daydreams about his teeth in her throat and his knot in her cunt, claiming her from both sides.

He finally pulls away, and—for now—Clarke remains unbitten. 

“There,” Bellamy says, his eyes gleaming bright with animal satisfaction. “That should be adequate.”

She stares dumbly back at him, too much of her attention on the burning heat pulsing in her abdomen to formulate a reply. Her tongue feels thick and heavy, her mouth dry.

“Go, principessa ,” he says lowly, and it’s a warning as much as an order.

Go while I can still let you.

With a stiff nod and an ache between her legs, Clarke obeys.

****

By the time they get to the car, Clarke has recovered her faculties.

Bellamy was just scent-marking her, for fucks sake, there’s no good reason such a simple thing should leave her so addled, but from the mildly revolted look on Murphy’s face when he gets within a few feet of her, her husband had done an abnormally thorough job. Her bodyguard doesn’t make any snide comments about her absolutely reeking of possessive Alpha pheromones, but he does make a point to roll a window down the minute he gets in the car after her and Octavia. The other girl rolls her eyes knowingly and urges Clarke to try the thing that she whipped up in the kitchen while her brother was pawing at Clarke. It’s a green semi-solid substance that could very generously be described as a smoothie. It’s truly foul.

“It’s great,” Clarke lies through her teeth, fighting the urge to gag.

“Kale,” Octavia tells her. “And lots of protein!”

The protein in question is grainy and vaguely vanilla flavored, and therefore impossible to miss. “You, uh—” Clarke swallows convulsively, attempting to remove as much of the sludge from her tongue as possible. It seems inexplicably sticky. “You make this a lot?”

“No, but I’ve seen Willa do it a million times,” Octavia says with a shrug. “Figured it couldn’t be too hard, clearly I was right!”

From the front seat, Clarke hears Murphy’s snort of disbelief. She shoots him a queasy glare through the rearview mirror, taking another defiant gulp of the concoction.

Oh god, it’s disgusting. Like pre-chewed salad with birthday-cake flavored dressing and gravel croutons. It’s a crime against God. It should be taken into the back alley and shot.

“It’s great,” she tells Murphy’s snarkily raised eyebrow, clamping down on her body’s need to shudder violently. He looks back, reluctantly impressed. Clarke wonders if Octavia would notice if she dumped the rest out the window.

Ten minutes and one truly horrific drink later, they arrive at a fairly nondescript looking building. Clarke looks around, but none of the storefronts seem open. Still, Octavia hops happily out of the car and Murphy follows without argument, so they must be in the right place. 

They follow Octavia down an alley to a side door, which she holds open for Clarke then promptly drops on Murphy’s shoulder before he can fully enter. He grumbles, rubbing at the spot, and steps in behind them. Clarke takes the place in, her eyes scanning across the room.

It’s a gym, and not a particularly nice one. A boxing gym, by the look of the equipment. It’s not dirty, but it’s not pristine either. Nothing is shiny and new, no chrome or stainless steel or minimalist contemporary architecture. It's a functional space, full of functional objects that look well used and well maintained. 

Clarke likes it, she decides. It feels lived in. It feels— real somehow, in a way Bellamy’s shiny penthouse never will.

She follows Octavia further in, raising an arm to run her fingers along the ropes of one of the boxing rings. The whole place smells a little like sweat, but not in a bad way. Like exertion, rather than funk, along with leather and cleaning spray. Underneath that is the scent of alphas, so many it’s impossible to pick out any distinct scents, and the slightest tinge of metallic blood. She begins to understand Bellamy’s over-insistent marking. 

Octavia leads her across the room to a severe-looking black woman whose spine is ramrod straight, her eyes piercing. “This is Indra,” she tells Clarke. “She’s going to teach you how to fight.”

Indra looks Clarke over. She doesn’t look impressed, but that’s not to say she looks unimpressed either. Her expression is extraordinarily, infuriatingly level. It gives nothing away, and neither does her scent.

“You’re not an alpha,” Clarke blurts, and immediately wishes she could stuff the words back into her mouth.

Indra only raises an eyebrow. “Neither are you,” she replies calmly. “Do you intend to let that stop you?” 

Clarke’s back straightens. Her hands clench at her sides, teeth gritting together. “Haven’t yet.”

The older woman’s lips curl up into the barest hint of a smile.

“Good,” she says. “Then let’s begin.”

****

Bellamy spends the whole day out of the house.

He can't be at his desk, because his computer is at his desk, and he’s had access to the video feed of the boxing gym—courtesy of Raven—since Octavia started going there years ago. He can’t be home, because he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from sitting down, from pulling up the feed, from watching. And if he watched—

There’s a reason women in his world, and omegas especially, are not taught to fight. Part of it is misogyny, part of it is over-inflated sense of self-confidence inherent to alphas and men in positions of power, but part of it—

Part of it is that they cannot bear to watch someone hurt what belongs to them. And Clarke, for all that she tries not to, belongs to Bellamy.

Learning to fight means fighting, even if the danger is manufactured. To learn to block a punch, someone must throw one at her. To learn to get back up, she will have to first be knocked down. Over, and over, and over again.

Knowing it’s happening is bad enough. To watch it—to see Clarke take a hit, to see her fall, knowing full well he could prevent it from happening—it goes against some very basic part of his biology. It was bad enough with his sister, but Clarke is an omega. 

His omega.

He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from going after her. From stepping in, from fighting off whoever dared to lay a finger on her. He’d like to think he’d be able to pull back before he killed his sister’s teacher, but he can’t say in all honesty that he trusts himself enough. Enzo had only mentioned her, and Bellamy had gone from being prone at the other man’s feet to spitting on his bleeding corpse in the span of a heartbeat.

He respects Indra, and likes her well enough. No need to ruin it by murdering her in cold blood for performing contracted services.

He goes to one of his clubs instead, and spends longer than necessary perusing the books. He has a few drinks once it opens, and finds some cold comfort in starting an unnecessary brawl with an idiot frat boy who’s trying to sell somebody else’s coke under the roof of an Outfit establishment. He doesn’t kill the kid, but he’s really not worth killing. Barely even worth the scrap, for all the fight he put up. Bellamy doesn’t even have to roll his sleeves up. He doesn’t think the little shit lands a single punch, which is too bad. 

Clarke’s home when he gets back, but Bellamy already knows she will be. It’s well after dinnertime, far beyond when Octavia had promised to have her back by, so he’s not surprised she’s there, just surprised to find her in his bedroom.

He stops short when he sees her, his jacket half off.

She’s standing by his dresser, or her dresser really, her finger running along the edge of a picture frame. Her lip is pulled between her teeth and he wants to pluck it out, or maybe to replace her teeth with his own. She’s dressed for bed, in a little tank top and a pair of sleep shorts, and her hair is wet around her shoulders from a shower. She smells warm and sweet and perfect and his, all his.

His girl, his omega, his delectable little wife. His principessa.

She turns at the sound of his jacket hitting the floor, pulling her fingers back from the picture almost guiltily, as though she’d been caught doing something wrong.

“You’re home,” Clarke stutters, then her eyebrows pull together as she looks him over. “You’re bleeding.”

Bellamy follows her gaze to his ribs, where sure enough a few spots of blood have started to seep through his shirt. Either he was wrong about the frat boy, or he’d reopened the wound with his own movement during the fight. Likely the latter.

“It’s nothing,” he tells her. “Nothing new.”

This answer does not satisfy Clarke. Her brow wrinkles further, and she worries her lip twice as hard. He watches her think, watches her make the decision to come closer. Bellamy doesn’t say anything as she unbuttons his shirt, as she pushes it off his shoulders. He shrugs out of it, helping her undress him.

She finds the gauze taped to his side, the clean patch he’d applied earlier now stained red with fresh blood. He watches her face as she runs her finger along the edges of the rectangle, frowning. “When did this happen?” She looks up at him when he doesn’t answer. “Yesterday?”

He nods, and her face scrunches up adorably. “Don’t bite your lip, principessa,” he tells her, tapping at it with one finger. “That’s my job.” 

Clarke releases the lip but doesn’t relax, fidgeting in front of him. Bellamy can bear it no longer, sweeping her up into his arms and depositing her in her rightful place atop his bed. He climbs over her, bracketing her with his much larger form, tugging the clothes from her body and undoing his pants. She doesn’t protest, doesn’t fight him, but she doesn’t move to kiss him either. Her eyes keep moving back to the newer wound, and the older one on his shoulder. 

Bellamy sighs. “What’s wrong?”

“I—” Clarke stops, reaches towards the wound, then pulls her hand back. She takes a breath. “Are there stitches? Last time—”

So she’d noticed then. He’d wondered. “No stitches. It’s only a graze.”

He doesn’t tell her that there could’ve been stitches, if he’d allowed there to be. Bellamy does not think the information would help his case.

She looks conflicted, her eyes big and blue and worried. “But—”

“I’m fine, Omega,” he tells her, and watches as the primal power of that name causes his reassurance to shudder through her and sink in. Clarke relaxes visibly, then tenses again in rebellion. Bellamy almost laughs. “Do you not believe me?

She doesn’t answer him immediately, and he brushes a kiss over her mouth to loosen her lips. Clarke sighs.

“I don’t like to see you hurt.”

She says it guiltily, like she’s admitting something terrible. Bellamy lets out a low chuckle. “No? What progress we’ve made.”

Her eyes flash, and she moves to slap at his uninjured shoulder but stops before she makes contact. He smirks, and leans in to press his lips against her throat. She smells clean, untouched by the scent of any other alphas despite her day rolling around in their old sweat. 

He needs her, even more than he usually does. Needs to feel her under him, around him, taking his cock. Needs to feel her warm and wet and supple and alive. Her hands are by her shoulders, palms facing him, and he tugs them up over head, pressing them together by the wrists in a mimicry of the pose he’d had her in earlier, before she’d left. She doesn’t fight him at all, his sweet girl, just gasps and moans as he laves his tongue over her glands again, as his teeth scrape lightly over the place where his bite will go someday soon, God willing. Soon, and then forever.

Bellamy has waited long enough.

He releases his cock, positioning it at her entrance. He should test her readiness, should slick himself in her wetness before he enters her, but he doesn’t. He just pushes in, feeling her open around him, feeling her sweet cunt cling to his shaft like a fist. Clarke sucks in a sharp breath, but it’s not in pain. She likes this, his little omega. Like how he stretches her wide, like how his cock forces her open and makes her take it, to take him.

She was made to take him.

She doesn’t break as he fucks into her, not even when his thrusts go so deep they kiss the mouth of her womb, rutting up against the place where his seed will eventually take root and grow, filling her with his pups. She’s so good for him, stretched out and pliant, her back arched and hips tilted to take him deeper, as far as he wants to go.

Clarke wants what he gives her. She wants him. She needs him, needs this just as much as he does. Bellamy could smell it on her this morning, smell the unspent frustration of the lonely night in her own bed. He had wanted to have her then, fuck her against the wall and paint her with his cum, so no one could’ve mistaken her for anything but his. 

He tells her this as he fucks her, his voice low and hot in her ear. 

“I—” she tells him in panting breaths, between punishing thrusts of his cock. “I wanted you to.”

The beast inside him roars in satisfaction, his hips pumping faster, harder. Clarke would be sliding all over the bed with the force of it if Bellamy didn’t still have her held by the wrists, pinned down where he wants her. 

“Good girl,” he says, growling against her sweat-slicked skin. “My good, perfect little wife. My omega.”

She doesn’t argue, doesn’t try to tell him he’s wrong, and Bellamy is grateful for it. He likes her fight, but he likes her submission just as much. It tastes so sweet, to have her fire burning for him instead of against him, a wildfire in the palm of his hand. A wildfire, or a wild animal. He doesn’t want to tame her, but he doesn’t mind having her temporarily leashed. Temporarily coming to heel, before the inevitable next time that she snaps at her tether.

Bellamy is her tether. He holds her here, in New York, in his home, in his bed. In this world of theirs, as ugly as it is. He’ll never let her go, never let her be taken from him. If that means letting his sister teach her to fight, then she’ll learn to fucking fight. But afterwards Clarke will come home, and she’ll be his.

Bellamy can feel her underneath him, bucking, writhing. He can feel her pussy clenching around him, feel the way it ripple over the girth of his cock as she comes, squeezing him while he strokes in and out of her tight heat.

Clarke is his, goddammit. And she’ll fucking stay that way.

There’s a tension in his lower abdomen, a tightening feeling in his cock as his knot starts to swell at the base of his shaft. He keeps fucking into Clarke, feels how it catches on her entrance as he pushes into her, feels how it tugs at her rim when he pulls out. He should bury it inside her, make her take it, and fill her up with his cum the way he was meant to, the way she was meant to be filled. Tie her to him on his knot, keep her locked around his cock and full of his seed the way he wants to, the way he knows she craves even if she won’t admit it.

He could do it. He could take her, and have her. He could push his way inside and stay there, and she wouldn’t be able to stop him. She wouldn’t want to, not once she got used to it. It would be right, natural.

With a groan, Bellamy pulls himself back. He finishes with his cock still tucked in her sheath, but his knot pressed against her folds instead of lodged inside her cunt. He’s not an animal, not entirely.

He gathers his wife’s pliant body up in his arms, shifting her over him and onto his chest without removing his cock from her heat. Clarke makes a soft little mewling sound as he lays back against the pillows, and Bellamy strokes contentedly over the bare skin of her spine. 

“Thank you,” she murmurs, and his lips quirk up.

“For what?”

“For today. It was— I don’t know. I’ve never been allowed to fight before. Never realized I wanted to.”

His lips press together, his brows furrowing. “It went well then?”

“As well as could be expected. I didn’t realize—” He hushes her quickly, not wanting to hear about it. Not wanting to hear her thank him for allowing her to do something he never wanted to see her do. Clarke lifts her head to look at him, annoyed by the interruption. “What?”

“Just— I let you do it. I’ll let you keep doing it, if it’s what you want. But Clarke—” 

Bellamy catches her wrist. He tugs it up towards his face, gently turning it and extending her fingers. His mouth turns down in a frown at the fresh bruises on her knuckles, the ones he knew would be there but hoped to never see. His body goes tight, his jaw clenching. His stomach roils to see the injuries, the beast inside him howling at him to stop her, to never let her go back to that place again. 

Instead, Bellamy drops his lips over each little red mark, kissing her knuckles tenderly before releasing her hand. Clarke looks at him, and he meets her eyes, giving her a wry smile. “I don’t like to see you hurt either.”

Something passes between them, a long look that feels somewhere between understanding and acceptance. She lets out a sigh, tilting her head back down to his chest. Her fingers trace the edge of the bandage on the other side of his ribs. 

“Okay,” Clarke breathes, and Bellamy relaxes.

“Okay,” he agrees.

Chapter Text

Believe it or not, Bellamy’s life used to run a lot smoother than this.

He’s not talking about before, when he wasn’t the capo and didn’t have charge of this whole operation. He’s talking about last year, or a few months ago even. Things weren’t always this fucking ugly all the goddamn time.

“Fucking get down,” he growls, hauling Miller’s boyfriend down by the collar as bullets fly over the countertop he’s crouched behind. There’s three men shooting—no, four. One by the right corner, one by the left, two by the door. They’re not Outfit at least, but Cartel men. Their aim is fucking shit.

He starts to make calculations in his head. If he brings down the one on the left first, the middle two will have trouble—

Miller’s boyfriend, whose name he really should know, makes a noise like a squeak, drawing his attention. The man’s eyes are wide and terrified. Bellamy watches with a frown as he pulls his phone out and jabs at it with shaking fingers. “Who the fuck are you calling?”

Eric (his name is Eric, Bellamy remembers that now) stares at him in blank non-comprehension. “The police?”

“ Oh for the love of— ” Bellamy snatches the phone out of his hands and throws it across the floor. Eric lunges for it as it slides under a counter, and Bellamy grabs his collar again, rolling his eyes. “Leave it.”

“But—!”

“Leave it,” Bellamy repeats, his tone laced with the full power of his alpha tone. Eric, despite being a beta, shrinks visibly. “Stay down.”

The other man nods. Bellamy draws his gun with one hand, his knife with the other, and Eric’s eyes widen. “Who— who are you?”

Bellamy shoots him a toothy grin, sharp and dangerous. Listening closely, he rises up on one knee till he can just see over the counter. In an instant his knife whips in one direction, a full clip unloading in the other. Four dull thuds, and the room goes silent.

He stands, offering a hand down to the man cowering beside him. “I’m the fucking king.”

****

He doesn’t feel quite so fucking powerful when he picks his wife up from the gym.

“You’re late,” Clarke tells him with a sniff, sliding into the backseat with his sister while Murphy reluctantly takes the passenger seat. Bellamy glares at the other man but he just shrugs and gives him a look like, What am I supposed to do about it?

His hands tighten on the wheel. “I got held up.”

What is he, a fucking Uber driver ? She’s acting like Bellamy’s her employee, not her husband, her alpha . He wants to look back at Clarke but she got in first and is sitting directly behind him. Bellamy tries to catch her eye in the mirror but she’s out of sight, leaned over by the door. She rolls down her window. “Can we turn the AC on?”

Murphy hits the button before Bellamy has a chance. It’s not like it’s warm outside, but he guesses she did just do a workout. Clarke doesn’t smell like it though, just like steam and generic soap. They must’ve showered.

She doesn’t smell like him, he gripes internally, throwing the car in drive. He’ll have to fix that.

When they get home, however, Clarke nixes that plan. “I’m eating dinner at Octavia’s,” she says, her arms linked with his sister’s as they walk towards the elevator. “Don’t wait up for me.”

O throws him a triumphant look over her shoulder as they go, inordinately pleased with herself for usurping his rightful place at his wife’s side. He stands still, watching them as they go, internally seething.

“Go up with them,” he tells Murphy, who is cooling his heels beside the car. “I’m going back out.”

The other man grumbles, but does as he’s ordered while Bellamy slides back into the car. He cracks his knuckles, then heads to his own gym. 

Sometimes a man’s just gotta hit things.

If he thought he’d catch a break from his troubles, he’s sadly mistaken. Thankfully Bellamy isn’t that fucking foolish to think he can escape Outfit problems at a gym entirely frequented by Outfit men. He’s three fights— excuse me, sparring sessions— in when Miller steps in front of him.

Bellamy suppresses a groan. 

“How’s your day been?” he asks, then dodges as the other man jabs hard for his nose. “That good, huh?”

“It’s getting worse,” Miller tells him blackly.

Bellamy rolls his shoulders back, bouncing on his heels to stretch out his tight muscles. “You think I can’t fucking tell that?” He waves a hand. “I’ve been in more shootouts in the last month than the last two years combined.”

Miller swings at him and he blocks, ducking under the other man’s fist. “We’re not even supposed to have business at the clinic, so why the fuck were they there? My fucking boyfriend—”

Bellamy huffs, throwing a kick that glances off Miller’s knees. He stumbles, but catches himself. “There isn’t any business at the clinic that isn’t above-board. Your boyfriend clearly had no idea who he’s employed by, let alone who he’s dating.”

“He’s not a part of this,” Miller growls, hitting Bellamy with a quick combo. One of the fakes isn’t a fake after all, and Bellamy turns his head as his jaw takes the blow. “He wasn’t supposed to need to know.”

“Why the fuck are you dating a civilian? In our world—”

“In our world I’m supposed to marry some fucking omega chick like you did. How many made men do you see fucking each other?”

Bellamy’s eyebrows raise slightly and Miller scoffs. “More than just the once, I mean. It would be a fucking bloodbath.”

Bellamy sweeps the other man’s feet of from under him, leaving him gasping on his back. He stands over his old friend, and tells him: “It was already a fucking bloodbath, and would’ve been worse if I wasn’t there. Your man tried to call the fucking cops, Miller. You don’t have to tell him everything, but teach him the fucking basics at least.”

Miller growls and kicks out as Bellamy turns to leave. He thuds to the ground beside his lieutenant. “This isn’t about Eric and you know it. It’s been bad for months, and this is only the latest shitstorm. They’re coming at us from all sides. Whatever you’re doing, it’s not working.”

Bellamy swears. “I know, alright? I fucking know.”

The clinic wasn’t even a front, it was a legitimate business that he just happened to fund, albeit through six different shadow corporations. It had never been targeted before, and he never expected it would be. None of the staff were Outfit people or even family of them. It should’ve been safe. Off limits. Neutral territory.

Clearly, it wasn’t.

“We need more men.”

Bellamy huffs, pushing himself to his feet. “Your boyfriend know how to shoot a gun?” 

Miller glares at him but accepts the hand Bellamy offers. “We need more men, Sir .”

Bellamy’s mouth twists at his old friend’s formality. He drops Miller’s hand, shooting his eyes heavenward. “I’ll make some calls.” Miller dips his chin in acknowledgement, posture rigid. “Get back to work, soldier .”

****

Marcus gives him the runaround for three days before answering with a cool refusal. 

“You can’t expect me to send my men in to solve your petty squabbles, Blake. If you can’t hold the throne, perhaps it wasn’t meant for you.”

Bellamy grits his teeth, his hand clenching so hard around the phone he’s surprised it doesn’t crumble into dust. Their agreement, admittedly, had not been for manpower, but for Kane's tacit support of his leadership and recognition of the Outfit's continued autonomy. But they had agreed to other stipulations as well, joint trade and resource management, things that benefitted both parties. Bellamy had assumed that those, along with his agreement to wed the Familia heiress, had put them in a position of true allyship, rather than just a ceasefire. 

Apparently Marcus does not agree.

“When I married your daughter—”

“My wife’s daughter,” Marcus corrects. He knows, by now, that she tried to run. The full truth of the situation has been kept as quiet as Bellamy can manage, but Kane has connections to enough of the New York families that he at least knows some of it. “The girl is no relation of mine. And you’re the one who chose to keep her around after what she did.”

“She’s mine ,” Bellamy growls.

Clarke’s stepfather laughs lowly. “You’re welcome to her.”

He goes to the gym after that, works off his frustration by beating the absolute shit out of whoever of his men is foolish enough to try him. When he’s out of opponents he goes to the nightclub, to his office there, and tries to do some planning, moving men around and making lists of the few he actually trusts.

Miller was right, there aren’t enough.

He’s pissed off and tired, not to mention sexually frustrated. His wife has been mysteriously sparse in the last week, and in no mood for any playful banter or less playful fucking. Which is fine, to a degree, because he’s too fucking busy to be screwing his little omega quite as often as he has been, but still.

He calls Raven in, has her go over his lists to see if she’s seen anything he’s missed. She crosses off a few names he wishes she hadn’t, and adds a few he’s surprised by. She’s got a few more hints as to his major foes in the organization, but they’re hardly surprises. Old men with big egos and big sons. Nothing he hasn’t seen, and nothing that explains the competency of the recent attacks.

Clarke is nowhere to be seen when he gets home that night.

Murphy is on the couch as per usual, watching some extraordinarily soapy reality TV show that Bellamy would give him shit for if he wasn’t quite so fucking exhausted. The other man gives him a cursory once over before turning his attention back to the screen.

“Our king returns unscathed, I see. Getting shot finally losing its charm?”

Bellamy thwacks him on the back of the head as he passes. “Keep your mouth shut unless you want a reminder just how charming it can be.”

He’s getting pretty goddamn tired of how much his men talk back to him. Well, the few that are actually loyal to him. It’s a shitty yardstick for who’s planning a coup: whoever feels secure enough to talk back to their capo. And yes, Bellamy was friends with Murphy and Miller before he took charge of the operation, but still.

“Where’s my wife?”

Murphy shrugs. “Where’s she usually?” He must sense the tension coiling in Bellamy, the irrational urge to rip his throat out boiling higher than either of them prefer, because he elaborates immediately. “She was in the guest room last I checked.”

Bellamy grunts in acknowledgement, stalking down the hallway towards the bedrooms. He appreciates that Murphy called it the guest room and not Clarke’s room, because that’s what it is. She may not accept it, but the set-up they’ve been living with is temporary. Her place is in his bed, where she belongs, and he intends to get her there. Keep her there. Fuck her there and fill her up, make her stay.

He’s allowed her far more than she realizes. Not punishing her for leaving, nor for her repeated attempts. Letting her keep her own space, letting her out of the apartment, out of his sight. Letting her learn to fight when every instinct of his tells him to keep her locked up safe and sound. Leaving her rings in her dresser where she thinks she’s kept them hidden from him instead of putting them right back on her pretty finger. He still hasn’t fucking knotted her, for god’s sake. And does she appreciate it? 

Absolutely not.

So she doesn’t want him shot like a dog in the street anymore. That’s progress, Bellamy guesses. But it’s hardly a success.

The door to the guest room is open, and he glances inside. Clarke’s not there, but it looks like a grenade hit the place. Bellamy’s eyebrows pull together and he steps back, crossing his arms over his chest.

What was previously the cleanest and most uninhabited looking room in the apartment is now strewn with clothing, the bed rumpled and stripped of sheets, what looks like every towel in the place tossed in a pile on the floor.

What the fu—

He turns, stalking into his own bedroom. It is similarly in shambles. At the center of the storm is his little omega wife, wearing what appears to be the shirt he wore yesterday, wrestling the linens off his bed.

“What are you doing?”

Clarke doesn’t even glance at him. “I’m allergic to whatever new detergent Willa is using. She changed my sheets and they’re all— wrong. It’s making me itchy.”

Her skin does look a bit pink, like she’s scrubbed it raw in the shower. Her hair is still wet, coiled loosely around her shoulders and soaking through the thin fabric of his shirt. “So you’re stealing mine?”

“They haven’t been washed yet.”

She says this like it’s a completely reasonable thing to be doing, like Bellamy is the fool for even questioning her. If this is some sort of scheme, some sort of test, he can’t even begin to figure it out.

He sighs. “For fuck’s sake, Clarke. It’s the middle of the night.”

Her eyes flash at him for just one second, electric blue, and heat coils low in his belly. “You weren’t using them.”

His eyes drink her in, hungrily skating over her bare legs, the places where his shirt clings to her damp skin. The gape of the buttons over her breasts, the soft pink of her pretty nipples where they press hard against the semi-transparent fabric. He wonders if she’s wearing anything underneath it at all.

He clicks his tongue, tilting his head thoughtfully. “We can change that.”

Bellamy starts towards his wife, ready to sweep her up and lick the twisted frown off her pretty pink lips, but she skitters back, holding up the ball of sheets as if it’s a fucking rosary and he’s a demon. Normally Bellamy doesn’t mind chasing, normally he enjoys it, but there’s something off this time. He tilts his head, sniffing, but all he can smell on her is his own scent, mixed with the clean wet fragrance of her conditioner. Why she’s not wearing her own clothes—or even his clean ones—he has no idea. It’s not like Willa could’ve washed everything at once. Or would’ve, in any case.

She stares at him with wide eyes, like a fucking prey animal. Like she doesn’t trust him at all. Her pupils are huge, black rimmed with the barest hint of blue, but it doesn’t look like desire. It doesn’t smell like desire. It doesn’t smell like anything but fucking conditioner.

“I’m going to bed,” Clarke announces. “Alone.”

He takes another step towards her and she shies back again.

“Fine,” Bellamy grumbles, throwing up his hands. He’s too tired, too angry to deal with whatever has gotten her into a tizzy. “Good fucking night then, wife.” She slams the door to the guest room behind her. He hears the lock click.

Bellamy glares down at his bare mattress, noting that Clarke left nothing: sheets, duvet, even the pillows. He swears, and stalks back down the hall.

He’ll go downstairs, sleep in Octavia’s fucking guest room. And if her boyfriend is there, maybe Bellamy will get to kill him.

That, at least, will improve his mood.

****

She’s gone the next morning by the time he comes back up to the apartment. 

He’d known she would be, because Octavia had left to meet her at the gym. His sister had not been pleased to see him in her apartment, and even less so to see he’d slept there. 

“What did you do this time?” she asked, standing in the doorway to the guest room with her hip cocked, eyebrows raised accusingly.

Bellamy practically growled in response. “Give me a fucking break, O.”

This was not his fault, and not even in the defensive half-truth sort of way. He hadn’t even pissed Clarke off, not as far as he could tell. She’d just been acting— weird, as he told Octavia. His sister, on the other hand. had rolled her eyes and snorted. 

“ Weird ,” she muttered. “Fucking men.”

He heads up to his own apartment for breakfast, meeting Willa in the kitchen. She’s doing dishes, and pushes a plate towards him as he sits down at the bar. He grumbles out a thank you. 

“You’re in quite the mood,” she notes, looking him over far too curiously. 

Bellamy bites back a snide comment. Willa doesn’t deserve his ire, it’s not her fault his wife is fucking insane. He chokes down his breakfast and stands, pushing the plate back towards the older woman. 

“I’ll be back for dinner,” he says, stalking towards the elevator. He hits the button for the garage then pauses, his arm keeping the door from closing. “Did you see my wife this morning?”

Willa shakes her head apologetically. “She and Murphy had already left by the time I got here.”

Bellamy sighs. “Clarke is allergic to the new detergent.”

His housekeeper tilts her chin, her forehead wrinkling. “New detergent?”

“Detergent or fabric softener or something, I don’t know. Whatever you used when you washed her sheets, whatever changed.” He takes his arm away from the door and steps back. His hands sink into his pockets, shoulders lowering. “You’ll need to switch back.”

Willa frowns. “But—,” she starts, but the elevator door closes before she can finish. 

Bellamy leans back against the elevator wall, his skull thunking against the paneling. His head hurts and his body is tense with frustration, both violent and sexual. He can feel the more beastial aspect of his nature growing impatient, claws begging to be flexed, teeth needing to be bared. He’d forgotten to take his blockers the day before, he realizes as the elevators open into the garage, and this morning too. It’s the first time in years he’s missed more than one dose, despite what his wife may think, and Bellamy swears internally. He should go back upstairs, take them, and come back down, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to go back into his room before Willa fixes it, doesn’t want to feel whatever it is it makes him feel to know Clarke would rather steal all of his linens than just sleep in his bed.

He’ll take them later, he thinks. When he gets back. It’s not like he’s not on a dose five times higher than recommended, anyway. They’ve probably built up in his system.

He goes to his club, to his office, and throws himself back into his work. He doesn’t call Raven, or Miller, or anyone, because he doesn’t trust himself around people he cares about right now. He’s too volatile, and he can feel it. 

He sits, and he plots, and he thinks about how much better his office would look if he smashed his stupid fucking glass desk. If he threw his computer against the wall, if he tore the contracts laying in neat little piles as they wait for his signature to shreds. If he found whatever traitor was fucking up his neat little organization and ripped their throat out right here, and coated the place with blood.

The pen in his hand cracks, and Bellamy drops it to the floor, standing so abruptly his chair knocks back against the wall.

Something is wrong. He knows it. Something is deeply, deeply wrong. He should’ve taken his fucking blockers, should’ve gone to the gym and picked a fight, should’ve fucked his pretty little wife and filled her with his knot. He feels like he’s on fire, like he’s drowning, like he’s going to explode.

Something is wrong. 

Nothing is wrong.

He drops his hands to the cold glass of the desk and leans over it, clenching his eyes shut. He remembers what it was like, when he was a teenager. Before he started burying himself in blockers, back when he still had ruts. The way his alpha— the way he would get, so filled with rage and lust and possessiveness, like his world was awash in red. 

He’s not that kid anymore. 

Bellamy pulls in a deep breath, drawing the feelings down into himself, lashing them down. His breathing slows, his pulse calming into a steady thud. He opens his eyes. The red retreats, his vision going crystal sharp instead. Not normal, but better. Useful. In control.

He sits back down.

Something is wrong , his alpha insists, cool and crisp and subdued, and of course it is. Bellamy sifts through his documents, sorts through the folders of information Raven has compiled on their top suspects within the organization. He knows something is wrong, and that’s why he’s here. He’s trying to fix it. He’s going to fix it, because that’s what he does.

You’re not listening, his alpha tells him again. Something is wrong.

That’s when the phone rings.

Octavia’s voice is frantic, babbling. “Bell?! You have to— it’s… I just— you need to— something is wrong.”

See? his alpha says. 

Bellamy shakes off the sting, shooting to his feet again. “What is it, O?”

“It’s Clarke,” she says, and he hears a million terrible stories in that one single word. “She’s—”

“Where?”

“The gym. But, Bell, it’s—”

“I’m on my way,” he tells her, storming through the club to the alley where his car is parked. “Is Murphy there?”

“Yes, but—”

“He better be fucking shot if he’s hasn’t called me himself. It’s his fucking job to watch her, to keep you both safe.”

“It’s not— Murphy can’t help with this.”

Bellamy swears, throwing the car in gear and peeling out of the alley. He takes the back streets, rounding each corner with the speed and skill of a drag racer. “Is she hurt? Or did she run again? Why the fuck wouldn’t he be able to—”

“Bellamy,” Octavia says, and something about her tone makes his stomach drop. “It’s her heat.”

The phone crumples in his fist like a piece of paper.

****

She’s locked in the bathroom when he gets there five minutes later.

He can smell his wife from across the room, from behind the locked door. His eyes go black, strides lengthening to a run. Octavia and Indra are outside the door, guarding it from the other alphas in the room who stand in a mass between the bathroom and the entrance to the gym, their eyes hungry. Bellamy growls as he shoulders through them, something deep and animal, something that tells them to keep their fucking distance or else. They back away but do not retreat.

He vaguely acknowledges the unmoving form of his lieutenant on the ground as he steps over Murphy’s prone body, but his attention is fixed on what he knows is in the room behind the door. Clarke. his wife, his omega. 

His mate.

He can hear her heart beating from where he is, can feel her terror and her rage and her need. Her pain. His alpha roars.

Bellamy reaches for the door.

“It’s locked,” Octavia tells him, but that doesn’t matter to Bellamy. Not now, not at this point. He wrenches the knob and pushes hard, shearing the latch clean off the door.

And there she is.

His sweet, perfect little omega. His girl. His wife. His principessa . 

His .

She’s pressed against the wall in the corner, curled in on herself like a ball. Her beautiful skin is flushed bright red and fevered, damp with sweat. She’s naked, her clothes torn off and strewn about. He can tell without looking that her leggings are drenched with slick, just like her thighs are now.

Clarke meets his eyes and whimpers, her nails digging into her skin. She shakes her head. “No, no. It’s too soon, it’s—”

“Omega,” he soothes, “Let me help you.”

Bellamy watches the word shudder through her, watches her fight against the relief it brings. The relief he brings. 

“It hurts,” she sobs, rubbing her thighs together. “I can’t— I didn’t think—”

He approaches her carefully, like a wild animal. He’s suddenly viciously thankful for his outburst in his office earlier, for the time he took to pull himself together. If he’d come to her like that, with his mind full of blood and rage— 

No, he wouldn’t have hurt her. He wouldn’t have hurt her, but he wouldn’t have been able to do this either. To be patient. He would’ve pulled her down and knotted her here, on the cold tile floor of the gym bathroom, and that’s not where she needs to be. Not where she should be, not for this.

For her heat.

His mouth waters, his head filling with her delicious scent. Bellamy kneels before his wife, pulls her into his arms. She’s so hot, a barely contained wildfire raging beneath her skin. He can’t wait to sink his teeth into it, to taste it, to own it.

Mine , his body hums, the beast within him preparing to burst forward at the seams of his control. Mine .

“I need—” she bites the words off, pressing her wet face against his chest. Her fingers cling to his shirt, the knuckles white. 

Bellamy hushes her, clutching her to him as he stands. His cock is rock-hard in his pants, aching and desperate, just like his omega. He needs to be inside her. She needs him to be inside her.

He needs to get her the fuck out of here. 

“Any man who wants to keep his eyes in his skull has three seconds to turn around.” The order is sharp, laced with the full force of his status as both Alpha and Capo. It works. Not a single one of the other men dares to look as he storms through the gym with his naked wife in his arms, despite the biological imperative that her heat-soaked scent arouses.

Bellamy kicks open the door, bundles her into the car. He doesn’t even pretend to put her in her own seat, instead pushing his back and keeping her clasped firmly against his body. It’s not safe at all, not with her between him and the steering wheel, not with neither of them in a seat-belt, not with the absolute hellish pace he takes on the city streets, but he can’t let her go. 

He can feel her hot cunt against his thigh, feel how her slick drips from her, wetting the fabric of his pants. She cries out as they hit a bump, her pussy clenching down around nothing at the barest hint of friction. Bellamy can’t stop himself from slipping one hand between her thighs, stroking open the pretty petals of her cunt and thumbing the nub of her clit.

She gasps. “I need—!”

“I know what you need,” he growls, pressing down harder, rubbing in tight circles. Her hips buck and she whimpers. “I’ll make it better.”

“You’re mine,” he tells her as he works her clit. “My omega. You’re gonna come for me here, then I’m going to take you home and fuck you like you need. Give you my knot, my cum.”

My pups , he thinks but doesn’t say, the idea of her swollen with his seed shuddering through him almost violently. Tied up on his knot, her belly rounded, breasts swollen, his bite adorning her throat like the prettiest necklace. That last part, at least, he can have. His omega, his mate, for real this time. For good.

“Such a good omega,” Bellamy coos as she orgasms against him. “My principessa .”

He leaves the car parked haphazardly in front of the elevator in the garage, lifting Clarke from the seat and carrying her inside with his nose pressed into her throat, inhaling her scent deeply. It’s like a drug, like the sweetest poison. He’ll never get enough of it, not ever. 

“You’re mine,” he promises as he carries her through the apartment, kicking open his door and laying her on his bed. “All fucking mine.”

Bellamy climbs over his wife, his mouth latching on to the pulse at her neck, just above her gland. Just where his mark will go, where she’ll never be able to hide it. Not after this.

He feels her hand sink into his hair, feels the way it clenches around the strands and wrenches back, dragging his mouth away from her tender throat. His eyes open, hazy and black and confused, to meet the blazing glare of his defiant omega. She’s so close, he can tell to losing herself. So close to letting go. To giving in.

But she hasn’t, not yet.

It’s still her. His Clarke.

His bratty, rebellious, determined wife. He almost sighs.

“If you bite me,” Clarke tells him, shaking violently. “I will never forgive you.”

“I know, sweet girl,” Bellamy says, tracing the perfect pout of her lips. “I know.”

And he does. It just might not be enough to stop him.

Chapter Text

The world is on fire, or maybe she is.

Clarke can't tell anymore. When she woke up that morning, she could feel something: something off, something not quite right, but she hadn’t recognized it for what it was. She’d felt unsettled for a few days, angry and anxious and uncomfortable, but not this.

It’s not the way it was last time. Not like the breakthrough heat, nor like the one she spent alone. Her suppressants curbed those, let her notice how she was burning without truly setting her aflame. She’d thought it hurt then, when she was alone.

She didn’t know pain, not really.

Not the kind that she’d felt when she got to the gym this morning and inhaled the scent of forty different alphas, none of them hers. The way it hit her all at once, and hit them as well, each man turning to look at her, hunger in their eyes. The way her panties drenched with slick despite her fear, despite everything. The cramping pain stabbing through her core, the overwhelming urge to be fucked, taken, filled.

But her omega wasn’t so mindless as to want any alpha at all. It wanted hers. Bellamy.

It wanted him so loudly that Clarke wanted him too. Wanted him on her, over her, inside her. Wanted to be ruined by him, to ruin him back.

The small part of her that clung to sanity—to herself—knew it was the heat. Knew that the fire wasn’t real. Knew that when this was over, nothing would’ve changed. They wouldn’t suddenly be in love. She wouldn’t suddenly have chosen him, or him chosen her. Their past and their present wouldn’t simply go away. A bite, a claim, it wouldn’t be something she wanted, even if at the moment it felt like something she couldn’t live without.

So she told him.

Told him no.

And he made no promises.

Clarke can’t bring herself to care.

She can’t fight anymore, not with the way the fire burns inside her belly. Her insides twist and cramp, desperate to be used, to no longer be empty. Bellamy is atop her, his body and his scent blanketing her in a mind-numbing weight. She bites her lip until it bleeds, eyes squeezed shut tight, fingers fisted in the linens beneath her, but the plea breaks free regardless: “Alpha, please.”

A growl rumbles through his chest, something feral and wild. His mouth is on her skin, on her throat, her wrists, her breasts. It’s not enough, not what her body is begging for. She sobs, head thrashing back and forth. “No, no, I need—”

“I know what you need,” he rumbles for the second time that day, but he’s not giving it to her. Why—oh God, why—isn’t he giving it to her? Has she done something wrong, something to displease her Alpha? He’s torturing her.

His mouth finds her cunt, suckling at her clit. She gasps, the sensation electric, like a shock baton between her legs. It’s ecstasy and agony, all in one. “No, no, no— your cock, Alpha. I need—”

He hushes her with sharp teeth on her inner thigh. “I will taste you first, Omega. Be a good girl for me.”

She tries. She tries so hard she feels like she’ll explode, shaking and crying, her skin so tight it feels like it will split apart if she so much as moves. Bellamy watches her from between her thighs, his eyes dark and black and glittering. If she had the capacity, she would fear him more in this moment than she ever has before. That look—hungry and possessive, more animal than human—promises destruction. Devastation.

He’s so much bigger than her, so much stronger. The hand pressing down on her belly, holding her hips to the bed, has crushed the life out of men whose livelihoods were violence. The teeth on her skin have torn into flesh, ripped apart those who dared to challenge him. He’s a monster amongst monsters. Brutality wrapped in muscle and sinew and golden skin. She should be afraid of him.

She needs him so very badly.

The pleasure his mouth wrings from her pales in comparison to the gnawing pain of her empty cunt, to the fire ravaging her core. She takes what he gives her with a grimace and a whimper, trying, trying—

To be good for him. Obedient, like her Alpha wants her to be. Expects her to be.

The climax, when it comes, is a broken little thing. More ruin than orgasm. It does nothing to quench the heat inside her, nothing to calm the flames. Her hole clenches weakly around nothing, desperate for her Alpha’s cock, for his knot, for his cum. Her cheeks are wet with tears, chest heaving, breaths ragged.

Bellamy sits back on his heels, looking at her. He’s still dressed, mostly, in dark slacks and a white button-down that stretches taut at the shoulders. It gapes open at the front, a few buttons missing. She doesn’t remember tearing it open but she must’ve. She wants to tear it more, to tear it all off. To feel his skin against hers, bare and hot and smooth. He licks his wet lips, hands slowly moving to unbuckle his belt.

Her stomach cramps again, the agonizing pain punching the breath from her lungs. Clarke’s back arches off the bed, a cry tearing from her lips.

Bellamy moves so quickly she doesn’t even see him coming. His hand snatches her ankle, wrenching her down the bed towards him and turning her onto her belly. His fingers fist in her hair, turning her face to the side and pressing it into the sheets as he lifts up her hips, forcing her back into a slope. She doesn’t struggle, doesn’t even think to, because finally, finally he’s inside her, stretching her open on his thick cock.

She’s crying, babbling nonsense, begging him as Bellamy fucks her hard and fast, his strokes long and deep. The buckle of his belt bites into her skin with each thrust, stinging pain that only adds to the pleasure. He’s still so big, even like this, when she’s so slick from the heat, so desperate and wanting and needing. It’s delightful, feeling her walls struggling to accommodate his girth, his length, shaping herself to fit his body within hers.

“You were made for this, Omega,” he tells her, his voice low and dark. “To be fucked. To take my cock. To be mine.”

“Yours, Alpha, yours! Please—”

His teeth on the back of her neck quiet her, the words bitten off into a choked moan of pleasure. His body covers her so completely, so fully, it’s like she’s wrapped in him. Like her world is nothing but the Alpha above her, moving inside her. Nothing but him and the flames.

“So good for me,” he croons. “So tight. So wet. So fucking perfect.” He punctuates each word with a brutal thrust. “My sweet little Omega.”

She can feel him deep, so deep each thrust bruises the mouth of her womb, but she welcomes it. It feels right, his cock reaching up inside her like that, like he’s trying to plant himself within her. In a way he is, or he will, if she’s lucky. If she’s a good girl, and takes him just right, he’ll fill her up with his cum, give her his babies.

He licks a line down the side of her neck, his hot breath coasting over her aching, swollen glands. She wants him to touch them, to suck them. To bite them. Make her his, forever. She can’t remember why he shouldn’t.

“I’m going to knot your pretty cunt, Omega. Won’t you like that?”

Clarke sobs out her agreement. She wants it more than anything. Wants to feel him locked inside her, his seed filling her body. She wants his knot, his cum, his bite, his pups. She wants everything and anything he can give her.

His fingers are between her legs, slipping over her hard clit, rubbing in tight circles to the same pace as his cock inside her hole. She can taste her own tears, salty on her lips. She needs this so badly. Needs him.

She thinks the goal is to come, to orgasm on his cock, but it isn’t. She climaxes violently around him, her whole body wracked with spasms, but the burn only intensifies. It’s an overwhelming sensation, her vision whiting out from the odd combination of exquisite pleasure and wrenching need. “It’s not— I can’t—”

Clarke can’t think, can’t speak the words when she can’t even find them. She doesn’t know what she needs, but her Alpha does.

“Good girl,” Bellamy praises, stroking down her shuddering spine. “Take it.”

She feels it now, the way his cock swells inside her. The way each thrust stretches her delicate rim, pulling at her cunt. The way he has to push just a little harder each time to lodge his shaft deep.

His knot.

She had been so afraid of it, of him, for some reason she can’t remember now. Instinctually, her body remembers the fear and tries to wriggle out from under him, but he holds her fast, pinning her down with his weight. There’s nowhere for her to go.

“Don’t fight me, sweet thing.” Bellamy shoves his half-formed knot into her and pulls out once more, the width of it stretching her more than she thought possible. Her eyes go wide, nostrils flaring. “This is what you need.”

It won’t fit. It can’t.

And yet—

He pushes his knot inside her, past her resisting entrance, and fireworks flash behind her eyes. She comes again without warning, clenching around the intrusion as it swells further, locking in place while Bellamy spills inside her. She feels his cum fill her, hot and wet, and that’s it. That’s what she needed, what her body was craving. It soothes the fire in her blood, turns the cramping ache in her belly into a pleasant warmth.

Her body goes slack beneath him, hips sinking into the mattress. The movement tugs at his knot and he groans, cock twitching inside her as it fills her even further. His arms wrap around her, clasping her to his chest. Bellamy rolls her onto her side, body spooned against her back. He presses his lips to her shoulder, her neck, her ear, her hair.

“So good for me,” he murmurs. His fingers stroke at the place where they’re joined, feeling her entrance where it’s stretched tight around his knot. She shudders, letting out a whimper. “That’s it.”

Clarke feels so safe in his arms, so right, so good. Loved.

Alpha will provide, her omega coos, but her omega is just her now. Alpha will protect. And he will won’t he? He has so far, she thinks. Clarke relaxes back, surrounded by her husband’s hard body. She’s so tired now, so worn out by the fight and the fire and the frenzy. Her eyes blink once, then twice, then fall shut.

Bellamy keeps her warm as she falls asleep, tied up on his knot.

****

The next few days are a blur to Clarke, but Bellamy remembers each second, each minute with a stunningly sharp clarity.

He hoards each moment, savoring it with greedy fingers.

She’s so needy, in a way that feels so primally right that it’s almost a betrayal to the woman he married. Clarke is his wife, and his omega, and it’s her body he’s fucking, her mouth that begs for his knot, for his cum— but it’s not her mind, not really.

That knowledge prickles at the back of his consciousness as he rolls her over again, drawing her ass up to meet his thrusts. The room reeks of sex and pheromones, the smell almost cloying in its intoxicating deliciousness. The bed is covered with pillows and blankets he dragged in from the guest room, a gift for Clarke when she got restless.

She arranged them just so, just how she wanted them, then presented her pretty little cunt for fucking. Bellamy had obviously obliged.

He murmurs praises as he pounds his cock inside her, telling her how beautiful she is, how perfect, how good. How well she takes him.

He’s half in rut himself, he can tell, but it’s different than he remembers. Instead of red and violent and hazy, he feels incandescent, endless. He sleeps only between bouts of fucking, but he never tires. He eats when he feeds Clarke, which is not as often as he should given how much exercise he’s giving them both, but he never hungers for anything but her. He feels like he could stop a train, slay a dragon, snatch a bullet out of the air with his bare hands— so long as gets to keep his wife here, beneath him, filled with his cock and his knot and his cum.

He doesn’t care about time, doesn’t care about the Outfit, doesn’t care about anything other than watching his Omega writhe and scream in pleasure.

Sometimes, he doesn’t even take his cock out of her between bouts. As soon as his knot goes down enough to move, he starts again, fucking into her with short hard thrusts until he locks inside her again. He fills her so much that her belly swells, distended from all the cum locked up in her sweet cunt, like she’s already pregnant from their frantic coupling.

He knows it can’t be, knows she’s on birth control, that his seed won’t take, but his Alpha can’t be convinced. He strokes her tits, dreaming of them swollen and leaking, her belly round with his pups. She begs him for them, begs to carry his children, and Bellamy makes her lurid promises about keeping her barefoot and pregnant, his perfect wife. A whole litter of children, as many as he could fuck into her.

“You like that?” he asks as his knot pulses inside her, bathing her womb with his seed. “My sweet little Omega, begging to be bred.”

She does like it, or at least she does now. In heat, she likes everything and anything it seems, as long as it involves being filled with cock.

Is he in control of himself?

It depends on the definition of control. Maybe, maybe not. He certainly doesn’t stop himself from fucking her, from pinning her beneath him, from dragging her back to bed when she decides to wander. But he can smell her, smell how much she needs him, and so really who is to say he should stop himself? If he knots her when she’s only half-awake, it’s because he knows she needs to be knotted then, now. Clarke certainly doesn’t complain about it.

He doesn’t like how glazed her eyes look when she begs for him, when he leaves her burning for too long. It makes him feel—

It doesn’t. He doesn’t. All he feels is his sweet Omega, wrapped around his cock. All he feels is the clench of her cunt, the way she grinds against his palm, slick and hot and wet. The way she suckles at the fingers he presses into her mouth, against her tongue. The way she—

“Bite me, Alpha, please!”

Bellamy goes rigid. Clarke whimpers, grinding back. He grabs her wrists, pinning her down, but that’s worse. He’s stretched out over her now, his head hovering just over her neck. Her head is turned to the side, her throat exposed, and he can see her glands, swollen and red and shiny. Desperate to be touched.

To be bitten.

He made no promises he couldn’t keep. She’s right here, beneath him, begging him. She wants it. Wants to be his. Wants him to bite her, mate her.

He could do it so easily. Sink his teeth in right as he locks her on his knot, feel her shatter around him as he licks the blood from her throat. It would be natural. Easy. Right.

Bellamy hesitates.

She’s his already, he argues desperately with himself, feeling his previously clear mind grow dark and red and cloudy with each second he waits. Bound to him by marriage, if not by blood. She knows he’ll mark her, expects it. It was never a question of if, only when. She may claim not to want it, claim she won’t forgive him, but how could she not? Once they’re bonded, once they’re mates in truth, she’ll understand. She has to.

He leans down, presses his lips to her tender throat.

She has to.

Right?

Chapter Text

She doesn’t come back to herself all at once.

There’s no moment that Clarke comes to with a jolt, suddenly sane again. It happens slowly, each successive knotting leaving her just a bit more lucid. She’s not sure what day it is, or how long it’s been, but she starts to feel something other than the heat, something other than the burning desire to be bred by her Alpha, something other than sex and sweat and teeth on her skin.

She still needs him though. She feels it in her belly, how much she needs to be filled. How she was meant to be filled by him, by his cock, his seed, his pups. She begs for them less and less, but she still craves them. She doesn’t have to beg, of course. He’s there, always. Around her, over her, inside her. Just as ravenous as his omega.

This time he holds her in his lap, fucking up into her, his broad chest as hot as a flame against her back. She lets her head fall back onto his shoulder, feels his lips against her throat. Her weight is held up by his forearm against her sternum, his big hand gripping her jaw, holding her still for him.

“Please,” she thinks she says as he begins to swell inside her. “Please.”

She’s not sure what it is she’s begging for.

Her muscles start to feel sore, her body weak. The last time he fucks her before she falls asleep she calls out ‘Bellamy’ as she comes instead of ‘Alpha’. The name feels foreign on her tongue, like she’s not sure who it belongs to.

She becomes aware of the bruises first. They’re not something she’d bothered to notice, too caught up in the heat to see anything but her Alpha and the backs of her eyelids, but she sees them now.

They paint her body in the shape of his hands, imprinted on her thighs, her hips, her waist. They ring her wrists in purple and blue and green, the color bright against the paleness of her skin. She wonders where they came from, then doesn’t anymore as Bellamy pins her down once more, her arms locked above her head by his strong fingers as his body moves over hers.

When he’s done fucking her and she’s locked on his knot again, she puts her own fingers around the marks and squeezes. It’s sore, achy, and and she feels it run throughout her body, from the bruise itself to where she’s stretched around the thick girth of his knot. She does it again and her muscles tense. Bellamy feels her flinch and tugs her hands apart, murmuring apologies into her neck as he presses his lips to the marks. It doesn’t hurt when he touches them.

Or maybe it does. Maybe she likes it anyway.

The next thing to come back is her hunger. As the heat cools and the fire recedes, her belly starts to ache with something other than want. Her stomach growls and she licks her dry lips, suddenly parched.

Bellamy carries her to the kitchen before she even opens her mouth to ask, feeds her fruit and sandwiches and helps her drink water like she doesn’t know how to hold a glass for herself. And maybe in the not so distant past she hadn’t known, or hadn’t cared to. She doesn’t stop him, doesn’t take the glass away. She gulps the water down and savors the feel of his fingers on her tongue as he feeds her another slice of orange. The juice spills down her chin a little. He licks it away before she can think to wipe her mouth and then takes her lips, sharing the sharp flavor of the ripe citrus.

It’s almost over, she can tell. He can tell too, and his kisses are desperate, deep and searching, almost begging. For her? For more time? Clarke isn’t sure. The heat is fading but it’s not gone, not yet. Tomorrow, maybe she’ll understand, but not now. Not yet.

His fingers are still sticky from the orange as he brings them back to their bed, sitting against the headboard with Clarke cradled in his lap. She tugs his hands away, taking each finger into her mouth and sucking it clean. Bellamy watches with dark eyes that gleam with hunger. A growl leaves his throat as she release the last finger with a pop.

One hand wraps under her ass, the other pulling her thighs open so she straddles his hips, her chest pressed against the hard planes of his own. He drags her upwards, her nipples brushing over his skin, and she drops her head back with a moan. His fingers span the breadth of her throat, holding her steady as he lines her up over his shaft. They slide back into her hair when he has her in place and pull.

Her tender cunt opens for him, slick and hot and aching. He pulls her down slowly, her walls dragging against every inch of him. She feels it, the exquisite mix of pain and pleasure so much brighter somehow than it has been, and know she’ll remember this last night. This moment. This sensation. This sweet, sweet ruin.

“Oh,” she gasps, the only sound she’s capable of making.

“Mine,” Bellamy rasps against her throat, and it sounds right even though she knows it shouldn’t. “Mine.”

Yours, she thinks, though she doesn’t say it. Her hands link behind his neck, clinging to him desperately as he pumps his cock up into her.

It’s almost too much, and almost not enough. Her chest aches in an odd way and she squeezes her eyes shut tight, focusing on the blinding pleasure her Alpha wrings from her body.

“My omega,” he groans and she nods frantically. Her neck hurts, something sharp and not quite right. One of her hands move to touch it but Bellamy pulls it away, licking over the skin. The burn turns into something sweet, ratcheting down through her core. She clenches down hard around his cock, shuddering.

“So good,” he murmurs against her skin. His cock swells with each stroke, growing impossibly longer and harder inside her. She takes it, and takes it, and takes it, just as she’s meant to. Just as she was born to do.

The thought grates in her head, stinging something raw, and she flings it away. She just takes him like she can. Like she wants to. Nothing more.

She wants this. Wants him.

She enjoys it, craves it. Loves it. Loves the way it feels, the way he makes her feel. Loves how tenderly his fingers trace her lips even as his other hand pulls her hair, even as he fucks into her with punishing strokes, filling her to the bursting.

The last of the heat wells up in her belly, wrapping into an inferno, a wildfire of need.

“Alpha,” she cries out. “Please!”

“What do you need, sweet girl?” he croons into her neck. He slides her down, impaling her on his cock. “This?”

She shudders, shaking her head. His hand slides down between them, stroking her clit until she comes, spasming around him. “This?”

The burning intensifies. She shakes her head again.

“What, then?” he asks, fucking her so slow it’s torturous. Her cunt clenches around him weakly, still rippling with aftershocks. “What do you need?” He bottoms out inside her, striking her cervix. “Tell me, Clarke.”

Her name on his lips. Her real name, not a pet name, not ‘omega’. Clarke.

She’s Clarke. Clarke Griffin.

And he’s Bellamy Blake. Her husband. Her— her Alpha. Because he is, isn’t he? How can she deny it after this?

“Your knot,” she begs, unable or unwilling to hold back. “Bellamy, please!”

He roars in pleasure, flipping her over and pounding into her body with a frenzied sort of violence until she’s writhing beneath him, breaking apart around him once more. Only then, only once she’s already coming, her cunt grasping at his unforgiving girth, does he give her what she needs. He begins to come with a deep groan, the base of his cock swelling until he can no longer work it free of her hot cunt. He spills his seed against her womb, filling her with his cum, and the feeling of being so full of him sets off another orgasm that Clarke doesn’t see coming.

Exhausted, she feels him roll them over, settling her atop his chest. One hand strokes the back of her head, the other hooked around her thigh to keep her hips tight against his swollen knot. She can feel his chest rise and fall with each breath, hear his racing heartbeat begin to slow.

“Is it morning?” she murmurs into his skin.

“Not yet, principessa,” Bellamy assures her, pressing his lips to her hair. “Not yet.”

****

He’s still asleep when Clarke wakes up.

Her heat is over, she can tell. Not halfway, not almost, but over; really actually over. Her body aches, her head throbbing. It doesn’t feel as bad as it had the last time, after the heat she’d spent alone, but she still feels like she’s recovering from the flu. She can tell she’s been expending more energy than she consumed, and she can tell, she thinks as she shifts uncomfortably, that she’s been fucked raw for days on end.

Clarke untangles herself from her husband as gently as she can, trying not to wake him. Bellamy shifts as she peels herself off him but his breathing doesn’t change, his eyes still shut. She looks at him for a long moment, taking in the powerful body stretched across the mattress. The hands capable of both violence and care. His face is soft, like it was the night she’d left him in that hotel room in Chicago, the night she’d married him.

It’s morning now.

She sighs, turning away and moving towards the bathroom. She’s sticky and filthy with sweat and fluids. It shockingly doesn’t disgust her, but her logical mind tells her she needs to shower, needs to wash her hair. Clarke drags a brush through it quickly before stepping into shower.

The water is hot, hotter than she usually makes it. She rinses herself off before soaping up, scrubbing her scalp with Bellamy’s shampoo because she hadn’t thought to go across the hall to use her own bathroom. She hasn’t been in her room since her heat began, Clarke realizes. When she thinks of ‘her bed’, she thinks of the one a few yards away, the one her husband is currently sprawled across. She’s not sure when that happened.

Her skin itches under the water, tingling as she rinses off. Clarke steps out of the shower and wraps herself in a towel, tucking it across her chest. She uses another to squeeze the water from her wet hair. Her neck stings as she bends it, the towel rough against a raw spot on her skin. She lets out a surprised yelp, pulling the fabric away and putting her fingers to the spot.

Clarke’s eyes go wide, her heart stuttering in her chest. The skin isn’t raw, it’s broken. There’s a wound there, a set of punctures half scabbed over that’s she’s accidentally reopened. There’s blood on her fingertips when she pulls them away.

Panic rises in her stomach, her pulse pounding. Is it— did he—?!

Frantic, she scrubs her arm across the foggy mirror. He wouldn’t— No, no, this can’t—!

It’s a bite mark. Clarke stares at it in shell-shocked fury, not even sure what to think. Her fingers trace the edge, following the curve of his teeth on her flesh. There are two of them, one on either side of her neck. The skin around it is purple and tender, the marks raised.

She can’t breathe.

He bit her.

She can’t breathe.

A bond can’t be undone. He knew that. He knew there was nothing she could do about it once it was done. He knew she didn’t want it. She told him. She told him she’d never forgive him, and he did it anyway. Without her consent, against her wishes. Bellamy— her husband, he—

She can’t breathe.

Clarke falls to her knees, her hands slapping hard against the tile floor. Her lungs burn but she can’t seem to draw in enough air. Her pulse races, an uneven staccato beat in her chest.

Bellamy’s behind her now, pulling her into his arms. She doesn’t fight him, doesn’t move, just falls limp.

“Breathe,” he tells her, stroking her back. “Just breathe.”

She tries, the air rushing out of her chest unevenly. She doesn’t want to even look at him.

Bellamy has no similar qualms. He’s looking her over, his eyes frantic, brows drawn together. “What is it, principessa? What’s wrong? Tell me.”

She can’t form the sentence, can’t put into words the utter betrayal she’s feeling. The horror. The fear. He should know. Why doesn’t he know?

Her hand flutters to one of the marks on her neck, and Bellamy’s eyes follow. His lips pull together. “Oh.”

He pulls back, kneeling in front of her. His fingers loop around her wrists, pulling her hands down to her sides. He swallows. “Clarke, look at me.”

She won’t. She can’t.

“Omega, look at me.”

She doesn’t.

Bellamy lets out a sigh. His voice is rough, pleading. “Please, just look at me.”

Her eyes dart to his, and stay locked there. She feels trapped. She is trapped, isn’t she? That’s what he did, that’s why he did it. So she could never leave him. Never. Never never, never.

His eyes are a warm, dark brown, his scent a comfort that she doesn’t want. He looks at her, his gaze calm and steady. Unwavering. Sincere.

“Just take a deep breath, principessa, and think. Feel. Do you feel any different?”

Different.

Does she? Different how? Irrevocably changed? Trapped and bound and ensnared? Thoroughly caught?

She feels— she feels—

No.

No, she doesn’t. Not really.

She feels like Clarke. She feels panicked, and angry, and terrified, but those are her own emotions. She feels sore, and tired, and hungry, but that’s her as well. There’s nothing new there, nothing fresh. No cord, no tether. Nothing tying her to him.

Her voice is weak, surprised.

“You didn’t do it.”

“No,” Bellamy agrees. “I didn’t.”

The bites, Clarke now realizes, are too low, just wide of her glands. He bit her, but didn’t mate her. They remain unbound.

Tears spring to her eyes. She lets out a shuddering breath. “I thought—”

“I know.”

Clarke stands, and Bellamy stands with her, watching her warily. She brushes the tears away roughly with the back of her fist, swallowing hard. “I’m fine.” She pauses. “Thank you.”

Bellamy tilts his head. “For what?”

She shrugs weakly, wrapping her arms around herself. She can see his eyes flash, see his mouth tighten, and she knows he wants to pull her against him, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t move, like he’s afraid of scaring her away. Like she’s a rabbit, or a kicked puppy.

She turns away from him. “For doing what I asked. For not—”

His fingers reach out, skating over the angry punctures, and her words cut off. He caresses them, dragging his thumb over her untouched gland as he goes. Clarke sucks in a breath.

“Don’t you dare thank me, omega. I didn’t do it, but I came damn close. I wanted to.” She can feel his breath, warm against her gland. “You begged for it so sweetly, principessa. I couldn’t help myself.”

“But you did,” she breathes.

“I did,” he agrees. “To a degree.” He traces the marks almost reverently. “Does it hurt?”

Clarke shivers. Her eyelids flutter closed. “No.”

Bellamy presses his lips to her skin, feeling her flinch. “Liar.”

They stand there for a long moment, his chest against her back, warm and solid. Clarke leans into him, exhausted from both her long heat and the stress of the misunderstanding. Her head aches, and she lets out a yawn.

Bellamy tugs on her hand. “It’s early still. Come back to bed.”

She hesitates, resisting the pull. Her teeth dig into her lip, chewing nervously. “My heat is over.”

“Exactly,” he tells her. “You need sleep.”

She really does. She should go back to her own room, to her clean bed and starched sheets, alone. She should leave him, let him catch up on the work he must’ve missed while he was here with her. She should pull away as he guides her back into his bed and climbs in after her. She should be angry with him for biting her, even if he didn’t mate her. Angry that he’d mark her skin so obviously, in an area so hard for her to cover. She should leave this room, this nest of theirs. She shouldn’t nestle back into him as he curves his body around her own, shouldn’t lace her fingers with the ones that curl over her belly.

But she’s cold, and Bellamy is warm. And maybe that’s a good enough reason for now.

The rest can wait.

Chapter Text

He can’t seem to stay away from his wife.

Bellamy will be the first to admit that now is not the time to become more obsessed with his little omega, but unfortunately his body seems to have other plans. In the days following Clarke’s heat, they’ve reached a sort of tentative detente, something that is somehow both a little more and a little less than the uneasy normal they’d fallen into beforehand.

He’s missed too much while holed up in his room with her, but he can’t bring himself to care that much. He should, he knows. Things are unstable, and they’re not getting better. But he finds if he spends too long trying to fix them, too long trying to focus— he loses it. The focus, not his mind. 

He hasn’t fucked her since her heat ended, her body too sore and raw from days upon days of being knotted, but he can’t leave her alone either. Clarke has become something he needs to function, somehow, like a glass of water. Too much of her and he’ll drown, but too little is just as bad. So instead he takes steady sips of her all day, dusting out the office on the lower floor of the apartment for meetings so he can steal upstairs to pin his wife against a wall briefly and get his mouth on her. 

There are some times, however, when he has to leave. Some things that aren’t fit to be brought into the apartment, even if it’s not on the floor they regularly use. Frankly, most of the higher level men ought to fall into this category as far as he’s concerned, but he can’t make that obvious to them. They’re the ones he needs to sway, the ones he doesn’t trust, even less so around Clarke. Conducting meetings with them in his home is an ugly necessity. Other business however—

He sits casually at his desk in the club, looking over the papers in front of him.

“I know there’s more than this.”

His tone is light, easy, but it doesn’t seem to make the man in front of him feel any better. Maybe it’s the way he’s been pushed to his knees, or the way his arms are twisted behind him, locked in Miller’s iron grip. Maybe it’s the gun pressed to his temple, or the knife Bellamy flips in his hands. 

Maybe he’s hungry. Could be anything, really. Bellamy couldn’t care less.

“That’s everything, I swear—!” 

The stuttered spill of words cuts off in a whimper as Miller twists a little further. Bellamy clicks his tongue, slowly rising from his chair. He come around his desk and leans back against it. The blade glints in his hands.

“It’s not everything, because it doesn’t say what I want to know. Now, are you going to tell me, or should we move this off the carpet? I’d hate to replace it again.”

He couldn’t do this at home. Too messy. It’s bad form to bring people into a building you live in who may never come back out. Leaves too much of a trail.

“Please,” the man is saying, “That’s what you asked for. All the records—”

“Then tell what isn’t in the records. Tell me who your contact is.”

“I don’t know! I gave you everything I have, I swear to god—!” 

Bellamy makes an annoyed growl, ignoring the words. He looks instead at Miller, raising an eyebrow. “You believe him?”

Miller shrugs, the gun at the man’s temple never slipping, his grip still tight. “He’s a grunt, man. You tell your accountants any details?”

He frowns, twirling the knife. “Do I even have accountants?”

Miller snorts. “Only like a whole shell company of them. They manage things for the clinic, among others.”

Bellamy’s eyebrows pull together. “Why the fuck am I still doing my own books then?”

Miller gives a meaningful glance at the man on his knees who is watching the conversation with a mixture of fear and confusion, the one who just delivered a folio of damning evidence for fraud and money laundering. Bellamy sighs. “Right.” He waves his hand gesturing with the knife. “Bring the other one in.”

“And this one?”

Bellamy sits, glancing back up at the very rumpled looking man who has the misfortune of doing his enemies' books. “Let him go.”

The man babbles his thanks, practically bowing before him. Miller shoves him to his feet, hauling him to the door.

“Don’t be too grateful,” Bellamy hears him say. “Just because we don’t kill you doesn’t mean your employers won’t.”

His answering sob is cut off by the snick of the door.

Bellamy pages through the documents on his desk, looking again for anything useful. They’re not entirely useless, of course. Any documentation of wrongdoing by his enemies is helpful to some degree. It gives leverage, a way to get somebody briefly out of his hair, but every one of the upper crust of this world knows how to slither out of RICO charge. It’s all temporary.

He needs more. He needs to know who is consorting with them from inside his operation, and why. He doesn’t doubt money changed hands in some direction, but finding it will be damn near impossible. That’s not the sort of thing you have your accountants deal with. 

Miller knocks on the door again, and Bellamy straightens. “Come in.”

The man he shoves inside is no paper-pusher. He brings nothing with him, no offerings to buy his salvation. Instead he spits on the floor, the blood in his mouth staining the white of the carpet.

Bellamy narrows his eyes, lips curling as he rises from his chair. 

The last time he’d seen the man in front of him had been at the warehouse, the one where the boy had been killed by traitors in Bellamy’s own organization. He may not have been the one to shoot the kid, but he’d been complicit, been part of it. Helped Bellamy’s men pin him in. 

This man is no foot soldier, no nobody. He is to the Russians what Enzo was to the Outfit, heir apparent to one of the bigger families in the organization. He knows something.

“Hello Alexei,” he drawls. “How’s your father these days?”

“Fuck you.”

Bellamy lifts his gaze to Miller. “Where’d you pick this one up?”

“The dock transfer last Thursday. Attempted another ambush.”

While Bellamy had been fucking his wife senseless, the world had gone on without him, and without major disaster. Thank fucking god. “Put it down I guess?”

Miller smirks. “Murphy needed something to do with his vacation.”

He turns his attention back to the bruised and bloodied man glaring at him through bright blue eyes. “Why don’t you take a seat, comrade?”

He says it like it’s an offer, but Miller kicks out the man’s knees, forcing him down into the chair and securing his arms behind it. Bellamy steps around the desk once again, leaning against the corner. “Tell me how you knew where to go. How you knew when the exchange was happening.” 

The other man swears in Russian, struggling forwards against his bonds. His eyes bulge, his alpha clearly driving him into impotent rage. It’s not natural for an alpha to be caged, especially unsuppressed. It goes against everything their bodies tell them, moves them towards a state near madness. But Alexei has been held for days, and his strength is waning. 

The carpet is stained already from his spit, so there’s no reason to move. White never looks right after it’s been bloodied, not even once it’s cleaned. Bellamy flips the knife in his hands again and without warning drives it into the man’s thigh.

He howls. 

“Tell me,” Bellamy growls, twisting the blade sharply. Blood flows over the wound and drips down, turning the rug into a mosaic of red. “Tell me who your contact is.”

Alexei laughs, the sounds wild and unhinged. It cuts off as Bellamy grabs his jaw, gripping it tight in his hand and wrenching it up. 

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” the Russian says, the words slurred slightly by split lips and broken teeth.

He is, of course. The bastard deserves it, and Bellamy is hardly going to send someone back out who he knows is conspiring with the traitors in the Outfit. He’s going to get the information he wants, kill this man, then go home and knot his pretty little wife. She’s had more than enough time to recover, he thinks.

“I am,” Bellamy confirms. He squeezes the man’s jaw tight once more before releasing it. “But you get to decide how long we’ll play before I do.”

Alexei spits again, baring his bloody teeth. “I’m not going to tell you a goddamn thing.”

Bellamy tilts his head, grinning wickedly. “We’ll see about that.”

****

Clarke is gone when he gets back.

It’s morning already, the… conversation he had with the Russian taking much longer than Bellamy anticipated. They hadn’t gotten much out of him except blood, to Bellamy’s dissatisfaction.

The only useful thing he’d dropped was an accidental ‘she’, indicating that at least some party in the exchange had been female. Not much to go on, especially given the prominence of the matriarch of the former head boss’s family, a woman named Nia. But it didn’t sound like that was the she being referred to. Nia is too obvious, too distinctive. The phrasing made it sound like the she was someone else, someone he wouldn’t expect. He calls Raven, sets her on the hunt. Maybe she’ll have better luck than he has.

He’d showered quickly at the club, instructed Miller to take care of getting rid of the body and replace the goddamn carpet— again— and rushed back to his apartment, ready to feel the sweet clasp on his omega’s cunt around his cock, only to find said omega completely and totally absent from the premises.

He paces the empty bedroom like a feral animal once, twice; then pulls out his phone and tracks his wife like the overbearing alpha he unashamedly is. She’s at the goddamn boxing gym, the same place he’d collected her from a mere two weeks ago, naked and shaking and glorious. Delicious.

Surrounded by alphas.

It’s the last place he should go right now, knowing what she’s doing. Knowing she’ll be fighting, knowing she may get hurt, knowing he’s unlikely to be able to stop himself from intervening.

He’s in the car before he even realizes he’s made a decision.

Knotting her, he argues with himself, has given him a certain degree of security. Traditionally one might assume that the more intimate one is with their omega, the more intense the protective drive, but his relationship with Clarke is anything but traditional. He felt the crazed urge to protect her— to possess her— well before he’d even touched her. Maybe fulfilling the possession aspect—or at least some of it, he gripes internally, thinking about her unbitten glands—will even out the rest of his instincts, allow him to watch her learn to fight without causing a scene.

Maybe he is simply making up excuses in order to do whatever he wants to do. Frankly, he doesn’t fucking care.

He parks the car and slinks into the building.

He can smell her the second he enters the gym, her scent bright and sweet and his , layered like a ringing high note over all the others in the place. Mine , something purrs inside him, drawing him towards Clarke like a moth towards flame.

She’s in a side room, the door propped open, sun shining through from the windows beyond. Murphy gives him a nod as he approaches, sliding from his spot guarding the entry to allow Bellamy through. He doesn’t say anything, probably seeing something on Bellamy’s face that makes him keep his mouth shut.

Bellamy has the control to stand silently, waiting and watching. Nobody is throwing punches at Clarke, nor are they taking her down. In fact, no one is in the room with her at all. He glances behind him, spying Octavia and Indra sparring in a ring in another corner of the gym, then looks back to Clarke. Her hair is braided, a few loose strands glinting gold in the light of the sun as she moves. Her skin is slightly shiny with sweat, her face and chest pink from the exercise. He watches as she spins and strikes out with her foot again, connecting with a punching bag before wobbling slightly and stumbling forward, catching herself on the swaying bag.

“That’s a terrible move.”

Clarke straightens rapidly and spins towards him, eyes flashing. “What are you doing here?”

Bellamy ignores her, stepping into the room. He shrugs off his jacket and tosses it to the floor. “I thought you were supposed to be learning self defense.”

Clarke scoffs at him, watching suspiciously as he crosses towards her. “I am.”

He glances around at the empty room. “From who exactly?”

“I’m practicing.”

“You are,” he acknowledges. “But that move is useless to you.” She opens her mouth, ready to disagree, but he shakes his head and gestures her over. “Come here.”

Reluctantly, she does, coming to stand across from him with her arms crossed over her chest. “You didn’t come home last night.”

Her tone is accusing, and he almost smiles. He steps forward, tucking a curl that has come loose from her braid behind her ear. “Did you miss me, principessa ?”

She catches his hand and looks at it for a moment with narrowed eyes. “There’s blood under your fingernails.”

Bellamy doesn’t fail to notice it’s not a denial. “It’s not mine.”

She drops the hand and he allows it to fall. “Whose, then?”

It’s not an accusation, nor a condemnation. It’s a dare. She doesn’t expect him to tell her, doesn’t expect him to let her in on the details of Outfit business. On the ugly parts of his world, the bloody parts, which honestly is most of them. Bellamy decides perhaps it’s time to surprise her. “A man named Alexei Ivankov. His father is one of the bosses in the New York Bratva, the Russian mob. He was captured in an attempted ambush of one of our shipments last week.”

He watches Clarke take the information in. She nods slowly, tilting her head. “He had something you wanted?”

Bellamy nods. “Information.”

“Did you get it?”

He shrugs. “Some. Not as much as I wanted.”

Bellamy waits, watching as she forms her next question. It comes out carefully, her words measured. “Did you kill him?”

“Would it bother you if I did?”

“Not particularly, no.” She sounds almost surprised by her own answer, and he grins at her.

“Bloodthirsty girl.” 

Bellamy likes the way she doesn’t flinch away from the words, the way she doesn’t flinch away from his hands, so recently steeped in the blood of another man. So strong, his omega. Perfect.

He runs a finger down her jaw, slipping under her chin to tilt it up. A soft echo of the motion he’d used on Alexei earlier. “What are you doing in here all alone? I thought Indra was supposed to be teaching you.”

Clarke shakes away his hand, stepping back. “She has been,” she says defensively. “And now I’m practicing.”

“By all means,” Bellamy tells her, “Keep practicing.” She moves back towards the punching bag and he stops her, turning her around. “Not there. Here.”

Clarke raises a dubious eyebrow. “On you?”

He shrugs. “It’s a terrible move, one you shouldn’t use. You won’t hurt me.”

“But—!” She huffs at the smirk he gives her. “You know what, fine.”

She takes a step back, spins, and kicks out. His eyes never leaving her face, Bellamy reaches down with one hand and snatches her ankle before she makes contact. Clarke gapes at him red-faced, wobbling on one leg.

“See?” Bellamy asks serenely. He tugs gently but swiftly, taking her to the ground and covering her. His hand slips beneath Clarke’s shoulders and neck just before they collide with the mat, stopping her from hitting her head.

“I’m still getting the hang of it,” Clarke gripes, her breath coming fast. “It’s not like I’m going to be great immediately.”

He puts his fingers against her lips, ducking his head down to nose at her neck. Still smells like him, he notes, pleased by the discovery, unsurprising as it is given how thoroughly he's been scent marking her and how recently she's been on his knot. He licks over her glands for good measure, pressing kisses against the healing marks on her neck, feeling her shudder beneath him before he pulls himself back up. 

“Kicking is stupid for self-defense. It requires too much wind-up, puts you off balance, and makes you vulnerable. You don’t have the strength to make it worth it. You don’t need to practice, you need to adapt.”

She glares at him, fiery hot and beautiful. 

“I’m not weak.”

“No,” he agrees, “But you’re no match for the strength of an alpha and that’s not going to change. You’ll have to be faster instead, smarter.”

Bellamy rolls them both, settling with her seated atop him, straddling his hips. She places her hands against his chest for balance, frowning down at him. “Octavia kicks.”

“Octavia fights in the ring, with rules. It’s not the same.”

“It could be. I could fight in the ring too, once I get a little better. It looks fun.”

Bellamy’s mouth tightens. He wraps his fingers around her wrists. “No.” His tone is low, serious, brooking no argument. Clarke scoffs, tries to push herself off him, but he holds her down. “Look at me, Clarke, and hear me. No. ”

“Why not?!”

He flips them again, so quick he sees her eyes flare wide in surprise before she thuds against the mat. “You are mine, principessa . Mine to fuck, and mine to protect. I let you learn this so you can keep yourself safe, not so you can put yourself in danger. You will not fight unless you must.”

“You’ll let Octavia do it, but not me? There’re rules, you said so yourself. It’s not dangerous, not reall—”

“Octavia is my sister, not my omega, and she can handle herself. You would get hurt. Even if you win, you will get hurt. I— no, Clarke. Don’t ask me again.”

Her eyes don’t soften, necessarily, but the fight seems to drain out of them a bit. “Okay.”

He’s not sure why it’s so different, but it is. O knows how to fight, is good at it, enjoys it. She can take a punch, and give one. He doesn’t like it, per se, but he can’t stop her. Clarke on the other hand— No.

He releases his grip on her wrists and stands, helping her to her feet. “Show me what else you’ve learned. It can’t all be useless.”

She’s wary of him now, nervous, and he hates it. That isn’t the point of this at all. He’s not sure what is, exactly, but it’s not to make her afraid. “C’mon,” he tells her, slapping his chest. “I can take a hit.” 

Cautiously, she steps forward, her arm darting out to strike his stomach. He grabs out before she hits her target, but she knows his game this time and dodges, slipping nimbly under his arms. Almost gets away, too.

Not quite.

“Better,” he tells her, pride in his voice. He grins into her hair, her back pressed up against his chest. He can feel each panting breath she takes, each pounding heartbeat. Smell her sweat, her exertion, her determination. Almost as good as fucking. He's a good teacher, he thinks, and Clarke is a quick learner. He might as well show her a few things. After all, who knows more about taking down alphas than him? “We can work with that.”

Clarke grumbles under her breath and he releases her with a laugh, turning her to face him once more. 

“Again.”

Chapter Text

She’s getting stronger.

It’s not that Indra wasn’t a good teacher, but Bellamy— Bellamy knows her. Knows her body, knows how she moves, how she thinks, what she can take. He’s been inside her.

Or his cock has, at least, but maybe that’s close enough.

She still can’t beat him in a fight. To be perfectly honest, Clarke doubts that would be physically possible, barring the option of, well, a firearm of some sort, but she’s close enough to being able to stop him from killing her. Not that he would, but, she guesses somebody else might try.

They would, of course, have to get through both Bellamy and Murphy, so it seems pretty much moot. She still wishes he’d let her in the ring, let her fight like Octavia does, but— well, Clarke is no masochist, not really. She doesn’t need to actually get beat up, even if she could win.

She looks different than she did when she first came here, she knows. Softer in some places, harder in others. Well-fed and well-exercised, like some kind of prized horse. Well-ridden as well, now that she thinks of it. Which she shouldn’t, because she’s in public, and she still doesn’t have any damn suppressants, so any alpha walking past can tell exactly what she is thinking about. And considering the amount of Bellamy rubbed into her scent glands, exactly who.

Not that it’s a secret.

He doesn't come to the gym with her today—something about a deadline and legal—but it’s the first day in a long time. Indra is otherwise occupied and Clarke decides that sparring against a bag is probably going to do nothing for her without any coaching, opting for the more rote exercise of the treadmill instead. Murphy could’ve probably helped her, if he’d felt like it, but the one time she’d asked he’d laughed and laughed and told her he was way too attached to his limbs for that. She thinks he’s probably just being lazy.

He’s slumped in a chair as she runs, his expression something close to a coma patient watching paint dry. It’s almost impressive, how few times he manages to breathe during a minute. She makes a sort of game out of it, taking thirty seconds off her run every time she manages to guess correctly.

He’s surprisingly in shape for someone who’s goal in life seems to be to move as little as humanly possible. She supposes he must be, for Bellamy to trust him with her. The only time she’s seen him fight was when her heat had hit, and she’d been too distracted to pay much attention. Still, she’d the end result: how savagely he’d crushed the trachea of the alpha who’d made the mistake of coming at her. Of course then he’d turned and started moving at her himself, something Clarke still hasn’t quite forgiven him for.

It was only natural, given the circumstances, but still. Rude.

Indra had tranqed him instead of bothering trying to fight him herself, something that Clarke could interpret both as evidence that Murphy was more skilled than he looked and also that Indra was absolutely sick of the alpha bullshit. Clarke is fairly certain Bellamy does not know the particulars of why her bodyguard had been flat on his face when he’d gotten there given the lack of broken bones on Murphy at present.

She assumes it was the fight that had tipped him over the edge, the adrenaline and the heat pheromones making a toxic combo. Overall, he’s shown a remarkable degree of apathy toward her as an unmated, unsuppressed Omega. He, unlike Bellamy, is well-suppressed himself, but he’s still an alpha. And given the sheer number of hours he spends babysitting Clarke, it’s not like it’s likely he’s getting any on a regular basis.

Another reason why the job must suck.

She wonders, although she suspects she can guess the answer, why Bellamy assigned him to wife-duty over any of his other underlings. He must’ve served some function within the operation before Bellamy married her, and she can’t imagine it was bodyguard. She doesn’t know who else would even merit a bodyguard other than Octavia, and she knows for a fact Octavia shook off her guard well before Clarke showed up.

“What did you do all day before I came, anyway?”

Murphy glances up, raises an eyebrow. “Same thing I do now. Whatever the boss asked.”

Clarke hits the off switch and slides to a stop. She wipes her face with a towel, returning Murphy’s unimpressed expression. “You’re telling me that this—,” she gestures around meaningfully at the gym, at Murphy’s slumped position; “—is no different from what you did before?”

He glances away, an almost mournful look coming across his face as he stands. “There was a bit more murder.”

Of course there was.

“My condolences.”

Murphy seems to miss the sarcasm given the apparent sincerity of his response. “Thank you.”

Clarke rolls her eyes.

She takes a shower when she gets back, the apartment still empty. She’s less sore than she would be if she’d had a lesson with Bellamy, but she takes her time under the hot water anyway. It’s still morning, and she’s really got nothing better to do.

How different her life had been a year ago. It’s not just her body that is different, but almost everything. A year ago, she would’ve been studying for exams. She would’ve had class. She would’ve had her research. Now she fights, she fucks, and she showers.

It’s not just Murphy who’s bored.

She can hear Bellamy in his office as she dresses, talking on the phone with someone. He sounds frustrated, an uncommon emotion for him to express aloud. Irritated, she hears frequently, as with annoyed and enraged, but frustrated is different. Frustrated implies a degree of vulnerability, and admission of a certain amount of helplessness. She can’t help but listen in.

“—third one this week—If we could figure out where this was fucking coming from I’d kill them and be done with it, but— Yeah, I know. Probably have to put the jammers back up before we do it. But he’s incompetent as shit at least.”

Clarke moves a bit closer, trying to hear better.

“No… no, don’t bother. I’ll deal with that myself. Just— yeah. Okay. As long as—” he cuts off abruptly, and Clarke freezes. “We can finish this later, Reyes. It seems my wife needs something.”

Damn.

She thinks, for a half a second, about retreating, but decides against it. It’s her apartment too, there’s no reason she can’t be wherever she likes. She pushes open the door and meets Bellamy’s gaze.

"Well?”

She ignore him. “You’re back early.”

“About to be out again.”

He sounds vaguely apologetic, which makes Clarke feel a little pathetic. She rolls her shoulders back.

“So where are the jammers?”

She doesn’t pretend she wasn’t eavesdropping, and in return Bellamy doesn’t pretend to misunderstand.

“Two blocks around the building.”

“This building?”

“Yes.”

She understands the set up. They’d had a similar one in Chicago. It was a way to keep the waters muddy for any official investigations. Hard to establish the comings and goings and not-ever-leavings of people without CCTV. But he’d said they’d have to be put back up. “How long have they been down?”

“A few months.”

That’s too long. She can’t understand why he’d allow that, unless—

“You did it on purpose?” He doesn’t dispute it. She can’t wrap her head around it. “Why?”

Bellamy leans back in his chair, raises one eyebrow. “Why do you think?”

Why? She doesn’t know why. The only reason would be if the need to be able to track someone’s whereabouts outweighed the need for privacy. If there was someone in the building he didn’t trust, someone who might—

Clarke flushes in a mixture of understanding and affront.

“Ah.”

“Ah,” Bellamy echoes.

She chews on her cheek, thinking through the embarrassment. So he’s been keeping tabs on her. She knew that. It’s not as though this is a revelation. “But now they need to go back up.”

Her husband shrugs. It’s a kind of practiced lazy motion, the kind that makes her doubt its sincerity. “There have been some visitors we would prefer did not come back.”

Visitors is a nice way of saying hitmen. “Who’s the target?”

“Not you.”

He says it so easily that it could be the truth.

“They’re not getting in,” Bellamy says, and its a promise. She believes this, at least.

“Not getting out, you mean.”

He laughs, and the air loosens. Suddenly he feels less like an adversary, more like a partner. He had promised her that, the night they’d married. Hasn’t delivered so far, but maybe with time—

He tugs her down onto his lap, and the thoughts leave her. They’ll be back, of course, they never go far, but for now— for now she’s here, with him. Bellamy nuzzles into her neck, shifting her hair to the side so he can brush his lips over her glands.

“You showered,” he says, almost accusingly.

“I went to the gym,” Clarke reminds him. Her voice is breathy, fingers tangled in his hair. “You were out.”

He hums against her skin. “Did you fight?”

“Against who?” His teeth brush over her throat and she shudders. “No—no, I ran.”

“Of course you did.” Bellamy laughs again, and she would be irritated. She would, if not for the heat of his palms circling her waist. If not for the way his lips find hers, open against her mouth to breathe her air into his lungs.

“I thought you were leaving.”

“Not yet,” he murmurs, lifting her, shifting her thighs apart so she’s straddling his lap. His hips roll against her. She presses back, the friction intoxicating. “Pretty girl. Yes, that’s right.”

They grind together like that for an amount of time that Clarke would probably find embarrassing, if she bothered to think about it at all. She doesn’t, however—can’t, not with how good it feels.

When he fucks up into her, it’s slow, unhurried. He whispers into her hair—encouragements and filth and Principessa, fuck, yes—over and over until she breaks with it, shuddering limp against him. Lets him hold her to him as he thrusts, kisses him back as he spills hot inside her.

It’s gentle, in a way it shouldn’t be. In a way that he isn’t. It feels like a trick. She doesn’t know why.

“Will you be back for dinner?” she asks when they are finished, and immediately feels foolish. It’s such a domestic question.

He pauses before answering though, for longer than she’d expect. Clarke looks up.

“There’s an event later.”

She tilts her head, waiting for him to continue. “Okay?”

“It’s a wedding,” Bellamy explains on a sigh. “DeLuca’s getting married to Caprio’s daughter. It’s expected that I attend.”

“DeLuca,” Clarke repeats, searching for a face to put to the name. One of the old guard, from the Christmas dinner. She calls up a craggy, jowly face, a shiny forehead, thin hair slicked over his scalp. His wife, maybe ten years his junior, had worn a navy blue gown. Caprio: taller, thinner, slightly younger than DeLuca but equally bald. Clarke doesn’t remember what his wife had worn but she does remember her being a real bitch.

She nods. “DeLuca’s son and Caprio’s daughter?”

Bellamy winces. “No, DeLuca has no sons.”

At his age, he must be in want of them. Maybe he has nephews, but in their world the men always want a son. A legacy to carry on their name. “But— his wife?”

“Passed. Ovarian cancer.”

Clarke blinks. It’s only been, what? Four months since she met Mrs. DeLuca? And now she’s not only dead, but her husband remarrying? Perhaps she’s getting confused, attached the wrong husband to the woman in the blue dress. “When?”

“It’s been about six weeks.”

Clarke’s jaw drops. So soon. Too soon, even in their world, for it to be anything but arranged. And if Caprio is the same age as DeLuca, then his daughter— “How old is the bride?”

Bellamy presses his lips together, shuffling papers on his desk. “Isabella. She’s twenty-one, if I remember correctly.”

Clarke’s age.

God, that could have been her life. Married off to a friend of her father for breeding stock. She shudders at the thought of it, the horror, the helplessness, then pauses.

That is her life, to a degree. The only difference is that Bellamy is young, handsome. Powerful.

“You’ll attend?”

Bellamy nods. “DeLuca’s one of the few my people have marked as a solid supporter, and Caprio’s on the fence. To not would be a snub.”

She nods stiffly. He looks at her, like he’s waiting for her to say something, but she doesn’t know what he wants her to say. He looks— almost shy? But that can’t be right. Not shy, but abashed. Uncomfortable. Stiff.

“Given the occasion,” he begins; “It would be expected that my wife attend as well.”

Oh.

She hasn’t been out to an event since New Years. Hasn’t gone anywhere but the gym or to private dinners since her heat. But for it to be this— the farcical echo of her own marriage— it makes her uneasy. Makes her want to say no, even when she shouldn’t, if only for the principle of it.

But saying no won’t stop the wedding. Saying no won’t make the bride any older, or the groom any younger, or the situation any less real.

“Of course,” she tells him, and he relaxes slightly. “What time?”

****

He doesn’t tell her to do it.

It’s a requirement, or an order, or anything. Clarke tries not to put to much meaning on that, on her making the decision herself. He doesn’t even realize it’s an option, she reminds herself. He thinks the ring is gone.

This is the first public event they’ve attended in months, and that means something. If not to her, then to all the others who will be there. The prying eyes, looking to pick holes in their relationship, in the agreement he has with Marcus, in Bellamy’s fitness as a leader. She did well enough at the last one, but well-enough isn’t well. She may have made excuses and he may have put the fear of God in his men, but it was clear that she—that they were a source of gossip. A black spot in his reign.

And now she’s been through her heat again, and she’s still unclaimed. Clarke is grateful, though she resents the idea that keeping her own mind and body are something she needs to feel gratitude for, but it will not be seen by others as evidence of Bellamy’s beneficence or control, rather it will be seen as weakness.

She knows this, is even more sure now that he’s told her about the attempted attacks on the building. No one would try that, not on the Capo’s own turf, not unless they thought he was vulnerable. She makes him vulnerable, but not because of any affection or—god forbid—love. She makes him vulnerable by making him look weak. An Alpha who cannot even put his omega in her rightful place. An alpha who lets her run amok, leaves her unmarked. She knows this world, knows its rules. She has to give them something.

So she digs in the back of her drawer, and pulls out the rings.

They’re nothing really. Not shackles, not chains. Just jewelry. They sparkle up at her, brilliant diamonds flashing like fire. Beautiful, truly. Her stomach knots, fingers shaking as she slides them on: wedding band first, then engagement ring.

A costume, just like the dress she slips into, just like the makeup on her face. A show, not an admission.

Bellamy’s eyes, when he sees her, make her throat go dry: dark black and full of smoky desire. So hot, she can feel them burning through the thin layer of silk covering her skin, blistering in their intensity. He sees the rings, she knows he does, but he doesn't say a word.

“Ready to go?” The words echo with a nonchalance she does not feel.

Bellamy nods, leading her to the elevator with a soft touch at the base of her spine. As the doors close in front of them, he brings her hand to his lips.

Clarke feels his hot breath over the metal of the rings, feels his thumb toy with the band, spinning it around her finger. She shivers.

Just a costume, she reminds herself. Just a show.

And Clarke, as always, will be an excellent actress.

Chapter Text

The wedding is, as far as mob weddings go, a joyous affair. 

Nobody seems to see the unevenness of the match except Clarke, nobody else seems to care. Clarke, for her part, shows none of her disgust. She is, after all, wife to the capo. If Bellamy approves the match, which is implicit by his presence, then so must she.

But she doesn’t. 

The ballroom is done up fantastically in white and gold, stuffed with flowers and guests and twinkling lights. The dinner is gourmet and tasteless, as catering generally is. Clarke pushes her food around her plate, pretending to remain engaged in the conversation around her. Nobody addresses her directly, which may be an insult, but it’s better than it was at Christmas. 

When the meal ends, Bellamy brings her to the dance floor for a single, perfunctory dance. She is light on her feet and warm in his arms, and the way he looks at her tells her how little of his patience is left. He doesn’t want to be there. He wants to be somewhere private, removing her clothing. 

For once, Clarke doesn’t share his fervor. The deja vu the event is causing makes her skin feel itchy, but not in a heat-like manner. It makes her feel itchy for cash, for passports, for a secret locker and an escape route.

The bride doesn't look half as trapped as Clarke feels. She seems almost happy, almost—

She's better at faking it than Clarke is. That must be it. How could she be okay with this, when Clarke can't even bring herself to wear her ring in the privacy of her own apartment?

It wouldn't have been so bad, really, if it weren't for the sudden appearance of the only person in New York who's managed to piss Clarke off more than her husband: Echo. Maybe it's petty of her to feel so against the woman when her only true crime has been hooking up with her husband before they’d married.

She sees her first during dinner, seated at a table at the arm of a man Clarke recognizes from Christmas and New Years. She’s stroking his arm, but her eyes are fixed elsewhere, conducting a thorough survey of the room. Clarke sees as she finds Bellamy, her lips twitching before she turns back to her dinner partner. 

She sits, stews a little. She does not bring it up to Bellamy, especially not after what had happened the last time Echo had been at an event they attended. Clarke remembers the jealousy she had felt, the useless burning rage, and feels a little embarrassed. Not embarrassed enough to fully forget the feeling however. 

Something about her and Bellamy’s relationship has changed since then. It could be the knotting, the heat, she could blame it on that if she was being lazy, but that’s not quite it either. There’s been a— softening, on both sides. It makes her uneasy.

When he laughs, she sees a man. A young man. When he touches her—not even sexually, but in the gym; when he adjusts her limbs, fingers curling around her fists—she doesn’t feel the blood on his hands. 

He wants to trust her, she realizes. He can’t, but he wants to. 

Sometimes, when he thinks she isn’t looking, he seems so tired. 

Bellamy takes DeLuca aside for a while, talking some sort of business. That leaves Clarke with his pretty new wife, who practically glows in her gown. She looks at Clarke without malice or distrust, a gentle ease that is rare amongst the women in her world. 

“Your dress is beautiful,” Clarke tells her, unsure what else to say.

The girl beams, twirling a bit. “Thank you! Daddy had it rushed from the designer for me. Normally it would’ve taken six months, but I had to have this one. It was just—”

“—the one,” Clarke finishes for her, with a gentle smile. She doesn’t know that feeling, envies it almost. The naivety it requires, under the circumstances.

“This whole night is just what I imagined! The dress, the flowers, the music.”

“The groom?” Clarke asks, knowing she shouldn’t. Knowing it’s wrong to prod, knowing it's none of her business. If the girl is happy, Clarke should let her be happy. 

She doesn’t seem to understand that Clarke isn’t being kind. “It’s a good match, don’t you think? He’s well-established, and I’ll be able to see my family all the time. Not as grand as marrying the capo, of course, but—”

“And how is marriage treating you, Mrs. Blake?” Echo cuts her off smoothly, butting into the conversation as though she’d been there the whole time. 

Two pairs of eyes find Clarke: one young and excited, the other full of thinly-veiled disdain. She clears her throat around a lump, heart thumping hard in her chest. “Very well, thank you.”

“I love your rings,” the bride exclaims, lifting Clarke’s hand. “So delicate!”

“Bellamy finally had them resized, then? Shame it took so long.” Echo is smiling, but her lips curl in a way that make it more feral than friendly. “He has other priorities, of course.”

Clarke sees her glance down, sees her find the healing marks on her throat. Sees her notice where they are, and where they are not. 

And okay, maybe her prior venom was justified. Echo is, in fact, a bitch. 

Clarke’s spine straightens, but she cannot form the words for a comeback. Her hand rises of its own volition, moving to trace the bite mark that spared her. Her ring glints like shattered glass in the twinkling lights of the ballroom.

“The Capo is a very busy man,” Echo is telling the new Mrs. DeLuca. “You should be grateful your husband is a bit older. The young ones— they’re hard to please. So hungry all the time. Never satisfied.”

She could be talking about power, or position, but Clarke knows she isn’t. 

“He’s very handsome,” the bride says, giving Clarke an apologetic look. “Your sons will be beautiful, and they’ll keep you busy.”

Clarke suppresses the knee jerk reaction to recoil. Is that all she is? Is that all they both are? Broodmares and future mothers? The producers of the next generation of alphas who will tear out each other's throats for the sake of territory and power? 

It is, to some degree. It’s what is valued in a wife, in an omega. Strategic value and breeding abilities.

And looks, if one is lucky enough to choose. Rarer still: affection.

“Daughters too, of course,” the girl adds nervously, as though this is the reason for Clarke’s prolonged silence. She manages a strained smile and a nod, her knuckles white around the stem of her wine glass.

“When can we expect a new addition? Soon, I’d think. It’s been several months, and knowing how strong Bellamy’s appetites can—” Echos cuts herself off, as if she’d misspoken. As if she hadn’t purposely spoken Bellamy’s given name, hadn’t purposely made it clear that she knew of his appetites first-hand. “Oh, how rude of me. Of course, I shouldn’t assume. You’re his wife, after all.”

She says the word like it's an insult.

“I’m sure he wants to take it—” Echo’s eyes fall meaningfully to the misplaced mating bites, and her lips curl. “— slow .”

Clarke resists the urge to give the woman a thorough accounting of just how much her husband likes to fuck her, and how often. She is immune to the implication that he doesn’t want her, immune to the fear of being unsatisfactory that Echo is trying to instill. If Bellamy had wanted her pregnant, she would be pregnant. Clarke is glad he does not.

It actually almost makes her laugh, how off-base Echo is with her attacks. If this marriage had been something Clarke wanted, if she’d been desperate to be the perfect wife, she would’ve been mated that first night. Mated, knotted, bred. Content and complacent, just like the new Mrs. DeLuca. 

He didn’t choose you , Echo is trying to tell her. 

But he did. That was the problem.

If Bellamy had been apathetic towards Clarke, perhaps she wouldn’t feel such an urge to run. If she had merely been a token, a marker of the agreement he’d made with her stepfather, maybe he wouldn’t have been so possessive, so controlling. So— eager. It’s not perfunctory, the way he treats her. Clarke knows him now, more than she had. She understands him. He’s not rigid, not in the same way that the other men—the other alphas—in their world tend to be. He hasn’t been cruel, not on purpose. Hasn’t hurt her, even when she’s done things that any other man would’ve killed her for. He’s lenient, with the people he cares about. Human. 

It goes against everything she’d thought about him, everything she’d heard and seen. He was a legend, a monster amongst monsters. He’d gained his position through massacre, held it only by sheer might and terror. Uncrossable, unbeatable. Clarke knows it’s not all myth. Has seen the proof of it splattered crimson across his skin. And yet—

If he hadn’t chosen her, he might have let her go.

And knowing that is almost worse. 

The realization unsteadies Clarke. Puts her off-balance. She has spent so long being enraged with Bellamy, resenting him, resenting the hand she’s been dealt, that she has never bothered to think about his motivations. Never bothered to process the new information, to integrate it with the old. He’s not a monolith, her husband.

That, more than anything, makes him dangerous to her. There is something specific, something about Clarke, that Bellamy wants. Something that makes her worth the trouble. If it had been about his pride, he would’ve killed her already. If it had been about sex, he would’ve mated her when she’d begged for it, the way he’d told her he would on their wedding night. If it had been about nothing but strategy, he wouldn’t have bothered to take her out to dinner, to museums. Wouldn’t have bothered to know her.

Which means it’s something else. Something she doesn’t know. Something she isn’t sure she wants to know.

Clarke has missed something in the conversation, she realizes. Both of the other women are staring at her; the bride in mild concern, Echo in gleeful malice. She could just guess at a response, but she refuses to give Echo anything more to work with. “Excuse me, could you repeat that?”

The bride gives her a tentative smile, an offering. It’s clear Clarke intimidates her, which is a somewhat refreshing change from the other wives she’s dealt with so far. 

“Do you ever worry?” the girl repeats; “About your sons’ futures?”

“No,” Clarke replies honestly, because her marriage is a farce. Because her current problems far exceed any existential wondering about potential futures.

She’s thought of children. Thought of them in a longing way, in the way her omega compels. Thought of the despair of raising a child in the same environment that stole her own autonomy before she had even learned to speak. But those thoughts always end the same way: with a push down the road. Another problem for another day.

The bride’s face falls, her face flushing slightly. The topic is not a common one, not fashionable for women in their world to talk about it. About the uncertainty, the fear. It’s an expression of doubt, of weakness. It implies something other than full confidence in their men, which is seen as a sort of betrayal, no matter how true it may be.

Clarke feels bad for reinforcing that norm, one she’s never approved of. She pivots. “It’s the lot we are dealt. Their father will keep them safe.”

She wishes she hadn’t said it. Not like that. 

She said it because it was what was expected. She would’ve said parents, but Echo would’ve just laughed at the implication that Clarke was capable of anything but lying down and taking it. So she said their father, as in any father her child might have.

But that’s not what was heard.

It makes her think of Bellamy, of Bellamy and children. Bellamy’s children. Brown haired little boys, round cheeked and grinning. Their father, with his hands covered in blood. She doesn’t doubt that he would kill for any child of his. That he would die for them. 

She thinks of him with Ilian, the way he crouches down to talk to the boy, the way he ruffles his hair. Bellamy as a father is too easy to picture. But the capo, the Rebel King—

It’s a moot point. All hypothetical. For children to occur, Clarke would have to stay. She would have to permit it, or Bellamy would have to force her. She cannot see either happening in the near future.

“How brave,” Echo purrs. “For a woman in your position.”

Clarke whirls on her, finally snapping. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just that the line of succession is a dangerous place for a child to be. Especially around here.”

There’s an implication there that Clarke doesn’t understand. One that the bride must, because she looks away.

She refuses to ask, cannot ask. It would give Echo too much, to react. There is power in knowledge, and weakness in ignorance. This whole night is about power. About unity. About strength. So Clarke stares down her nose at the other woman—or up it really, given the height difference—and smiles wickedly.

“Pressure forges diamonds. Haven’t you heard?”

****

She lets him fuck her in a back room, the party still going on in the room behind them.

Maybe it’s a mistake, maybe she shouldn’t. But the effort Echo has made to put a rift between her and Bellamy makes Clarke crave to prove to the other woman that she hasn’t succeeded.

For the first few minutes, she feels almost guilty, because Bellamy is so sincere. So hungry. So desperate. 

And Clarke is merely— willing.

She forgets that he knows her body. That he can sense her pleasure, her desire, her need. Can sense the absence of it as well. He brings his head up from the crook of her neck and pulls back, searching her face. 

His fingers stroke down her bare spine, her dress pooled around her waist where she sits on the edge of a table. She tries to tilt her head, tries to encourage him to bring his mouth back to her throat by pushing a hand through his hair, but he catches her jaw and forces her to meet his eyes. 

“Where are you, principessa ?”

His gaze is black, piercing. She shakes her head. “Here.”

Bellamy frowns. His fingers loop over her shoulder, cresting her collarbone. They find the scars at her neck and trace the pattern absently.

Clarke shivers.

He presses down again, fingers wrapping across the span of her throat to bridge the marks. Her mind goes blank, heat finally beginning to rise in her belly. His other hand glides up the inside of her knee. 

“This isn’t a duty,” he tells her darkly. “I’ll have you present or not at all.”

Her skirt rucks up around her thighs. 

“I’m here,” she promises, gasping, and it’s the truth this time.

He draws her forward off the table. Her dress, opened to the waist, falls to the floor. Bellamy helps her step out of it, his eyes never leaving hers. She feels pinned, a butterfly under glass. Fire licks over her skin as he turns her around, each place his fingers touch seared onto her awareness.

“Perfect,” he murmurs, then bends her over the table.

She doesn’t think of Echo, when he nudges apart her thighs. Doesn’t think of the bride, when his cock slides deep inside her. Doesn’t think of anyone but Bellamy and herself, here, now.

Her cheek presses into the table. Her eyes blink quickly, mouth falling open. Bellamy finds her hands with his own, links their fingers together. He pushes her arms up over her head, so she’s stretched out beneath him, long and naked. His body is hot against her back. She feels the band on his left ring finger click against her own; metal against metal, pressing the outlines of a circle into her skin.

“You want this,” Bellamy says, like he’s reassuring himself. 

His thrusts hit somewhere deep inside her, somewhere that makes her back arch and her breath hitch. 

“Yes,” she tells him. “Yes.”

This, if nothing else. This among everything is simple. Her body and his, together. The party is nothing, the guests nothing, the world nothing. Just this. Just them. 

Just now.

When they’re finished, when he’s sated and she is limp and full beneath him, he kisses the back of her neck. She feels wrung out, tired and satiated and only a little bit guilty. Her cheeks are wet, though she doesn’t remember crying. She wipes them before he can see.

They leave after that, winding through the crowd looking conspicuously rumpled, Bellamy’s hand splayed possessively over her back. She means to be catty, means to find Echo with her eyes and gloat, but she’s too tired to bother. It’s draining, being in a crowd after so long of just the same few familiar faces. She just wants to go home.

Home.

The penthouse isn’t home, not hers at least. And yet—

Clarke falls asleep in the car on the ride home. When she wakes, she’s in Bellamy’s arms being carried inside like a child, her heels gripped in one of his big hands. She doesn’t say anything, just watches his face as he walks. When he looks down, she closes her eyes again, feigning sleep.

He puts her down in his bed. His hands are gentle, careful as he slides the dress off her body. He knows she’s awake, and she doesn’t hide it, but she lets him help her. Kisses him back as he lowers himself over her, their bodies naked and warm against each other.

It’s lazy, sleepy. Bellamy wraps around her and she leans into him, curled into his broad chest. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, fingers lingering against her jaw. “I have something for you.”

She yawns. “Do you?”

“Or— somewhere, really.”

Clarke’s eyes open, perking up in attention. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you tomorrow.”

She nods, closes her eyes again. His arms are strong around her. She falls back asleep.

****

He’s gone, when she wakes up. 

It’s always jarring, the feeling of his absence. It used to be a relief, knowing that she didn’t have to act, didn’t have to deal with his barbs and his whims, but now—

In the morning, with sweat and tears dried on her bare skin, alone in his big rumpled bed; she feels cold. Lonely.

And those feelings—the growing dependence they imply—frighten her. 

The rings still sit heavy on Clarke’s finger, their weight suddenly suffocating. She rips them off, pushing out of Bellamy’s room into her own to deposit them on the dresser. 

It’s quiet in the apartment. No movement from the kitchen, no sounds of life. 

Just the rushing of her own blood in her ears.