A Dose Too Late

"Y-Your Highness, w-wait—!"

Even pinned down as he was, Cesare squirmed desperately, trying to claw back some measure of space. But every time he reached out a hand to push away, it met nothing but dense, unyielding muscle, and the vicious alpha pheromones bearing down from every direction were strangling the breath out of him bit by bit.

Something, unmistakably, had gone very wrong.

Taking the full force of Leoneld's pheromones, pouring over him like a deluge, Cesare felt an unfamiliar heat begin to pool deep inside his body at a terrifying pace. His heart thundered as though all the blood in him had rushed to his head, and a strange, crawling numbness spread low through his belly.

Looking down at Cesare's breathing turning visibly ragged, Leoneld murmured in a low voice, his face flushed scarlet.

"...It appears you're in your Heat Cycle."

...Heat Cycle? What in the world is that?

Clawing at his dissolving consciousness and wracking his brain, Cesare suddenly remembered what his adjutant had said that morning, just before he left the mansion.

'My lord, there is little time left in your Heat Cycle. Will you be taking your suppressants?'

...Ah.

So that was what the "suppressants" had been for.

Regret, as ever, arrived at the most bone-deep moment possible.

"Hah, ngh...!"

A moan he could no longer contain finally slipped from between Cesare's lips. The instant the omega's scent burst past its final threshold, the fingers gripping the back of his nape tightened further still—and he saw the beast's blue eyes flip over entirely, gone completely feral.

"It was you, Duke... who made me like this first."

Leoneld's hot breath tangled over the nape of Cesare's bloodless neck, and the unfamiliar fever—one he had never once experienced in his life—bent his spine into a shameless, pliant arc. The alpha's pheromones, hot enough to melt him to the marrow, were spearing ruthlessly into the most secret depths of his body.

"Hah, ah, Your High...ness, ah...!"

There was no strength left in the fingertips that had been trying to push him away.

"Did you not say you wished for my happiness?"

"Th-That's, ngh, that's right, but—"

"Then kindly stay still."

That was the moment.

Rrrip—!

With that harsh rasp, his clothes were torn roughly from his body, and over the garments flung into the air, two people's ragged breathing tangled into a hopeless mess.

"The Duke brought all of this on himself, after all."

Gnashing the words out, Leoneld seized a pale thigh and spread Cesare wide in a single motion. The hidden place, already dampening under the fever of the Heat Cycle, was bared without mercy—the narrow passage that had never once received another person quivering of its own accord in response to the alpha's pheromones, trickling slick.

"Ngh, w-wait, just—ah!"

Without warning, two fingers drove roughly inside, and Cesare's head snapped back at the pleasure-and-pain that strobed white across his vision. The alien intrusion churned cruelly through his inner walls, and every time it pressed hard up against the most sensitive spot, his lower body clenched with a jolt of tingling heat.

"Ahhn, ah! Hah, ngh...!"

"Gripping this beautifully—however did you endure, all this time?"

Leoneld's eyes were already those of a beast with every trace of reason burned away. He had no sooner pulled his fingers free than his own cock, swollen to bursting, pressed its tip against Cesare's soaked entrance. And then, without a shred of mercy, he buried himself to the root in a single thrust.

"AAAHHH——!"

A tearing scream burst from between Cesare's lips. The pain of being split in half wrung the cry out of him as he raked his nails down Leoneld's back hard enough to dig crescents into the skin.

But that, too, lasted only moments. The massive presence plugging him full, and the dizzyingly thick alpha pheromones radiating from it, steadily deadened his sense of pain outright. He felt as though he were losing his mind.

As though refusing to grant Cesare even a moment to adjust, Leoneld immediately began to pound his hips.

Thwack! Thwack!

The raw, unvarnished sound of flesh striking flesh filled the room without restraint.

"Hah, Duke Valois. Look at me."

Thrusting his hips up savagely, Leoneld gripped Cesare's jaw and forced his face around. Cesare's unfocused eyes, brimming with tears of pleasure, wavered—his crushed inner walls closing around Leoneld's cock as if to swallow it whole—and Leoneld, reason gone, drove deeper and deeper still. At the sensation of his secret place being pounded without reprieve, clear liquid gushed from the tip of Cesare's cock in fountain-like spurts.

"Ngh, ah! Ahn! Hahh, there, not there—no, hah!"

"Where would a 'no' come from? It is already far too late."

Each of the alpha's relentless thrusts shook Cesare's body up and down helplessly. The pleasure was so savage he couldn't even register his head knocking against the arm of the sofa.

"Hahh, ah, ah, nghh...!"

Cesare's reason had severed just the same. His hard-won vow never to take a man inside him was long gone, and only omega instinct ruled his brain now—a need to take the alpha before him deeper, deeper still. Cesare raised his own hips and pulled Leoneld's neck into his arms.

"De-Deeper... nghh, please...!"

At that pleading moan, the last thread of Leoneld's reason snapped clean through. Gripping Cesare's hips hard enough to bruise, he moved like a beast, ferocious and unrelenting—and after several brutal thrusts, his cock slammed hard against the deepest part of Cesare, the very mouth of his womb.

"Ugh, nghaaah!"

Cesare's back bowed taut as a drawn bow, and he came first. In the same instant, Leoneld too began to pour an enormous tide of hot seed deep inside Cesare's body, wave upon wave.

"Hah... hah..."

Cesare's body sprawled limp. Between the vicious fever he had never once known and the lingering residue of relentless pleasure, he lacked the strength to twitch so much as a finger. His vision smeared beyond his unfocused eyes, and the strange heat filling him from the inside slid heavily downward.

But it wasn't over.

Leoneld's hands closed around Cesare's slender waist—waist whose fingers had been clawing at the sofa's leather—and hauled him up, then forced his body over without granting him a single chance to resist.

"...!"

Thighs and knees pressed into the seat of the sofa, upper body collapsed flat—he was arranged prone, hips bent at an unnatural height, the hidden place, red and swollen from taking the alpha mere moments ago, exposed in its entirety. At the sticky sensation of white seed and clear slick trickling down the insides of his thighs, Cesare flinched and shuddered.

"H-hah... hah, Your High...ness... ngh..."

He twisted his head around, cheeks burning with shame, but Leoneld tightened his grip on his waist and pinned him firmly in place. The merciless gaze raked point by point over the spread entrance and the finely trembling white curve of his rear. To an alpha with nothing left but instinct, the sight was stimulation beyond all compare.

His cock, already hard again with veins standing out as it swelled, pressed roughly against Cesare's soaked folds once more.

"Y-Your Highness, w-wait—!"

Cesare scrambled his legs in a hurry, but the movement meant nothing at all.

"Hah, Duke Valois...."

"AAAH! Hah, nghh...!"

Gripping Cesare's hips tight, Leoneld drove into him violently from behind.

And so, in that rest room of the Imperial Palace, Cesare's moans did not cease until dawn.

"...!"

The next morning, Cesare woke shivering from head to toe. His entire body was screaming—his lower back ached as though it had been broken, and the insides of his thighs burned as if scraped raw with sandpaper. Worst of all was the foreign sensation from the place that had been pressed into ruin, and without meaning to, he swallowed dryly.

When he dropped his gaze downward, the color drained from Cesare's face.

The area around the sofa was sheer devastation. Clothes, savagely torn open, lay strewn across the floor in disgraceful disarray, and the leather sofa itself was stained all over with dried fluids—as if to prove exactly how ferocious last night's coupling had been.

So that means, yesterday... yesterday, I...!

Yesterday's memories flickered through his head like shards. Leoneld, eyes rolled back like a beast, pinning him down and driving into him—and even his own pathetic self, drunk on some incomprehensible heat, clinging to that alpha and begging him to go deeper.

I'm losing my mind.

Cesare's eyes wavered beyond all control.

It's because of that Heat Cycle thing or whatever, isn't it!?

It was hard to believe. Judging by his own symptoms, a "Heat Cycle" was unmistakably a kind of estrus, and Cesare felt so wronged his very bones ached.

Damn it—how was I supposed to know about something like that and prepare for it?!

He was genuinely, deeply aggrieved. To put it crudely, no one had ever been robbed this unfairly in all their days! The omegaverse setting was a rigged scam, plain and simple!

Above all—it had been his first time, of all things...! His first time, and in this manner...!

Just as Cesare was trembling from head to toe,

"You're awake, Duke."

A low, gentle voice drifted from behind him—the voice of the very alpha he had spent the night in fever with. Cesare flinched and cranked his head around, stiff as a board. There stood Leoneld, immaculately dressed, holding a set of fine clothes in his arms.

The man whose eyes had spun back in his head yesterday was nowhere to be found; he was as calm and composed as ever.

"...Ah. Y-Yes, Your Highness."

At the sight, Cesare's stomach churned and burned even as he squeezed out the reply.

Damn it all. I actually ended up taking it!

And from Leoneld, of all people!

His teeth ground together at the oncoming tide of humiliation and shame, and Cesare balled his fists. He wanted to seize the man by the collar and unload every curse he knew, but his whole body ached as though every joint would crack apart, and even that much was beyond him.

"You must be terribly sore—don't try to move. I brought you clothes. Change into them."

Leoneld stepped up beside the sofa with a tender smile and carefully laid a shirt against Cesare's pale shoulder. His touch was painstakingly gentle, almost solicitous—as though handling a glass that might shatter.

But every time that touch landed on him, all it did was crawl goosebumps up Cesare's skin.

Damn it, damn it....

The sensation of being crushed beneath those hands yesterday was coming back to him, vivid as life. Hiding his goosefleshed arms, Cesare could only remain rigidly still while Leoneld dressed him, piece by piece.

When he had at last finished, Leoneld gently smoothed back Cesare's disheveled hair and asked,

"Will you take a meal? You were drained all night, after all, so you must be hungry."

At those words, Cesare's face flared up in a rush of crimson—because he understood all too well what "drained" was meant to imply.

"N-No, that's...! I have urgent business, so I'll be on my way."

Cesare shot up from his seat like a man fleeing a crime scene. A searing pain lanced through his lower back the moment he stood, but he gritted his teeth and bore it, determined not to let it show. Behind him, Leoneld opened his mouth as though to say something more, but Cesare didn't so much as pretend to listen as he stumbled out of the rest room on ruined legs.

"......"

Listening to those footsteps fade away, Leoneld's ears had gone red.

The moment Cesare returned to the mansion, the butler and the servants surrounded him, faces white as sheets.

"My lord, what on earth happened yesterday? You never returned all night without so much as a message—the entire household has been turned upside down."

"......"

In place of an answer, Cesare dragged a dry hand down his face and swept his bangs back, again and again. No matter how hard he tried to wipe it away, last night refused to leave his head.

"My lord...?"

"...Something... came up."

The words came out chopped and halting. Cesare turned his head aside, dodging their eyes, his ears burning red enough to burst.

"So... don't ask me anything further."

At that, the staff traded glances, and in an instant the look in their eyes turned very strange indeed. Red welts glimpsed faintly between the gaps of his clothing, their master trembling with shame instead of wearing his usual frost-edged ferocity—for anyone with sharp eyes, the traces left more than enough to piece together the situation.

"...!"

The butler caught on at once. He hurriedly dispatched the other servants, then fell into step behind Cesare as he headed for his study.

"My... my lord. You seem to be pushing yourself far too hard, so it would be best to cancel your schedule for the day and rest. I will see to it myself, so please don't concern yourself. And...."

The butler stole a glance in every direction, lowered his voice, and broached the matter with great care.

"Is there... any possibility you may be with child? Given how close this was to your Heat Cycle, I believe you ought to keep the possibility in mind...."

"...!"

Cesare's footsteps stopped dead.

...A pregnancy?

His mind went numb, as if someone had dumped cold water over his head.

That's right. This was that goddamn rigged omegaverse world.

An omega could conceive even as a man. Which meant, possibly....

No.

At the eerie premonition crawling up from the soles of his feet, Cesare shook his head quickly. It wouldn't happen. It must not happen. There were still ways to stop it even now, contraceptive potions included, and Cesare resolved to throw every means at his disposal at the problem.

But things never quite go the way one wishes.

Because the result had come out before a single month had passed.