Old Soldier New Alpha

Content Warning:

omegaverse, alpha/beta/omega dynamics, eventual mpreg, breeding kink, breeding instinct, post-apocalyptic far future setting, genetically engineered humans

Author Note:

Quite a bit of world building in this one but I promise there's smut too. Decided to have fun expanding the setting a little while I was at it since I'd like this to be a fairly long series and I hope you guys enjoy! If not, well, I won't be mad if you scroll ahead to the sex, lol-- but consider coming back to read the rest once you get off, yeah? XD

Curious about his new home, Daniel was up early the next morning and intent on exploring. No easy task considering Oemi had slung one arm across the alpha's chest in his sleep, but the medic managed to slide out from under him without waking the omega.

Then again, a herd of elephants probably could have stampeded through the place and not woken Oemi after the night they'd had. Carried away by passion, the omega's pleas to impregnate him, and the comfort of an actual bed-- the pair had fucked relentlessly late into the night. Tempted though Dan was to wake his mate with a good ravishing, the poor omega still looked exhausted and the man felt enough shame for how completely he'd ravaged Oemi's body with his rapacious cock just hours before to leave him alone now.

The omega might be desperate for a baby but he still needed his sleep-- not everyone had a super-soldier's stamina, Dan reminded himself as he quietly dressed and slipped out the door of his newly assigned den. Still, he thought as he took a moment to stretch and take a breath of the cool morning air, his mate-- first of his new clan apparently, had endured his voracious sexual appetite admirably.

Strong, gorgeous, and eager to satisfy Dan's every sexual desire with his tight and tan little body Oemi really was the lover of most men's dreams, gay or not.

And he'd declared that every inch of him belonged solely to Daniel...

Dan wasn't the first up and about in the village but it was a close thing-- he only spotted a dozen or so people as he leaned against the railing outside his den and looked down into the atrium, desperate to distract himself from thoughts of his lover so he didn't turn around right back the way he'd come and wake the other man with a good, hard fucking.

Many of the people below all seemed to be moving in the same direction towards somewhere out of his line of sight on the second floor so the alpha followed suit.

"Good morning, Daniel Smith," a familiar man greeted Dan as the medic made his way down what had likely once been an escalator but had long since been replaced with stairs of reclaimed stone and wood. Fortunately he'd managed to regain some semblance of his self control by then and his dick was no longer threatening to go full mast at the slightest thought of his omega's greedy cunt.

"Daniel's fine," he said and slowed his stride to match the other man's. "You're the chief's--" Dan paused and fumbled for the right word, it hadn't come up thus far. "-- assistant?"

"I serve as Chief Jikal's adjunct-- his aide. You can call me Heysa, though."

"Heysa," Dan repeated thoughtfully, committing the name and the new word to memory. Sandy-haired and freckled with sharp features and a squint to his gray eyes that suggested the man was probably nearsighted, Heysa looked about forty and didn't stand out in the crowd-- especially compared to stunning outliers like Oemi or Isem. If he was the chief's adjunct, though, he likely wielded a great deal of influence that probably granted him his own allure within the community. Dan didn't experience the same kind of irresistible physiological draw to the man as he did to Oemi so the alpha assumed that meant he wasn't an omega-- and considering what he, Tirak, and Jikal were like he doubted he was an alpha, either.

"Nice to meet you," he said, then glanced ahead and asked, "Where's everyone going?"

Heysa followed his gaze and answered, "The bath house is this way. The earlier you go, the less crowded."

"Ah," Dan said, pleased by the news. He'd been bathing in nothing but lakes and streams since he woke up from cryo and the prospect of hot water was like a dream come true. "Would you mind showing me? I'm not sure what your customs are here and Oemi was sleeping so hard I didn't have the heart to wake him."

"Not at all," Heysa agreed readily, though there was a certain intensity to his gaze that made Dan suspect the beta had been waiting to be asked for a favor of some sort. "Would you mind answering some questions while I do?"

Wondering what he'd gotten himself into, but not sensing any animus from the much smaller man, Daniel nodded. "If I can."

"Excellent," Heysa said, pleased, and picked up the pace.

The bath house was a rather large affair down a side hall on the second floor in what Daniel suspected had once been separate men's and women's bathrooms that had long since had the wall between them removed. All the original fixtures were gone, though it was obvious water still flowed through the pipes in this part of the mall given the long tubs that had been built along either wall. Runoff from both traveled down narrow channels to a smaller tub in the center around which men gathered after taking up a wooden bowl to rinse themselves with after undressing by the door.

Intrigued by it all, Daniel followed Heysa's lead and stripped out of his kinetic suit then took up a bowl to wait for a spot by the basin to open up. It was a good thing his time in the military living in close quarters with his squad had completely relieved him of any embarrassment around being nude as it was obvious the tribe had no concept of a nudity taboo. Then again, when everyone you knew had the same parts, he imagined the thought they should cover themselves for anything beyond purely practical or decorative purposes didn't occur to people these days.

The lack of pretense, he had to admit, was rather refreshing.

Their turn came and Daniel stepped up and used his bowl to splash himself with water he was pleasantly surprised to find was warm. He'd hoped it would be considering it was a dedicated bath house but he hadn't been sure.

"Does the water still come out of the original pipes warm or are you heating it elsewhere and funneling it in?" he asked Heysa as he followed the beta's lead and cut himself a piece of soap from a larger block with a simple blade left for that purpose then set about scrubbing himself.

"It comes from the pipes," Heysa answered with surprising eagerness. "I've always been curious as to how it works but the council has always been very against letting anyone perform any sort of in-depth study of them. Too afraid they'll break if disturbed," he explained with a sigh that made it obvious he had made the request himself at some point. He looked at Dan then, and asked, "They say you're an old-one-- is that true? Do you know how they work?"

The medic rinsed the soap from his body and confessed, "I know how basic household plumbing worked, but something on this scale would probably be a lot more complicated." His brow furrowed as he followed Heysa to one of the large tubs on the side of the room and added, "Honestly, I'm surprised it's still working at all."

He sighed as he settled into the water and Heysa was polite enough to let him enjoy the heat of it for a moment before asking, "You said yesterday you had been asleep for some time. Do you know how long?"

Daniel sighed again, more introspectively this time as he let his head drop back against the edge of the tub. "No. Judging by the state of the city, though, I'm guessing a very long time. Hundreds of years-- maybe more."

Heysa was quiet a moment, then said, "I'm sorry. That must be difficult-- I can't even imagine."

The medic offered him a small smile. "I didn't really have any family left when they put me under, so that's something-- but its still a shock how different it all is. A man out of time, as they used to say."

"Would you... like to talk about it?"

"Another time, maybe," he demurred firmly, but politely. To be honest, he was still processing just how much things had changed. While he was out in the wilds with Oemi and the others it had been easier to compartmentalize things, they way he did when he was out on a mission, but being here in a village built into the crumbling ruins of the world he'd once known...it was a lot. "How about I tell you what I know about plumbing instead?" he offered and Heysa's sense of intrigue returned full force.

The man had a thirst for knowledge and an excellent recollection for what he learned that made it quite plain why Jikal had chosen the beta as his adjunct. While he obviously knew many things, Heysa's passion was for the ruins of the old-world that loomed everywhere around him, though most of his contemporaries only had a passing interest-- and then only when it would directly benefit their daily life in some way. Everyone enjoyed and was quite protective of the surviving water system in the mall, for example, given the tangible way it affected the comfort of their daily lives. According to Heysa they kept records of what pipes they knew about to prevent future generations carelessly tearing down some wall or another and interrupting the whole system-- a problem the tribe had experienced in generations past.

"I've a collection of old-world artifacts, would you care to see them after breakfast?" Heysa suggested. "I'd be curious if you could tell me what some of them are."

Dan raised a brow, but was curious all the same-- amused too, as the thought that the other man reminded him of a certain red-headed mermaid from an old classic animated film crossed his mind. "You don't have to attend to the chief? I don't want him accusing me of distracting his adjunct from his duties just because I'm new here."

Heysa laughed. "My time is my own until the council meeting in a few hours. Your omega will be there as well-- I can return you to him then."

Daniel snorted but agreed and they soon left together. Breakfast was a quick, communal affair in one of the larger former stores that encircled the atrium at ground level and they took theirs to go-- wrapped in a sort of flat bread somewhere between a tortilla and naan. It was good, better than what they'd been eating on the trail, but then that was hardly surprising given they had access to a much wider array of ingredients.

They finished eating by the time they reached Heysa's den up on the third floor, not far from Jikal's. They were better furnished than Dan's own and more elaborate-- no doubt a perk of being the chief's adjunct. As the beta had promised, he had a large collection of artifacts from centuries past though some of them were so incomplete it was hard for the marine to guess what they might have been.

Still, he could identify plenty of them and spent a strange but pleasant hour or so going through the collection while Heysa took notes on a series of slates to later transcribe onto more valuable paper.

"And what about this one?"

"Oh, game controller," Dan said as he took the ancient piece of plastic from Heysa and turned it over in his hands. Both the sticks were broken or missing but it still had most of the buttons, which was a surprise given what it had likely been through.

"A game? How do you play?" Heysa asked, baffled as he leaned in a little to look closer at the thing as if doing so might somehow answer his question.

"No, it's something you'd use to play a game-- it's not the game itself. Like having a bowstring but no bow

or

arrow."

Heysa made a face and sighed, clearly disappointed by the news, but he still seemed satisfied that he hadn't missed some sort of obvious answer about its purpose.

"Anything else?" Dan asked as the beta finished taking his notes, chalk tapping lightly against the framed piece of slate. "You've got quite the collection here-- even bigger than I expected."

"I do, actually-- I only display my more interesting pieces and we've hardly time to go through it all today." Heysa paused, as he considered something, expression turning solemn, then asked, "That said, I have one other I'd ask you to look at, if you don't mind. I only hesitate because its quite dangerous."

Concerned, Daniel asked, "A weapon?"

"I can only assume so after what it-- well, after what happened. We didn't dare destroy it, but I've kept it in a box all these years to keep someone from stumbling across it..."

It was clear thought of the weapon in question disturbed Heysa and the thought that the tribe might be keeping something dangerous in something as simple as a likely un-shielded box was enough to make Dan ask to see it despite the potential threat.

The box was quite small when Heysa produced it-- about the width of a palm and almost twice as wide. As he'd guessed, it was of simple wooden make but they had at least made an effort to tie it shut with sturdy twine and carved warnings into every face.

Daniel wasn't sure

what

he expected to find within, but after the beta took a minute to undo all the twine and carefully open the box on a nearby table, what it contained proved not to be a weapon at all.

Well, not technically.

"Oh," he said, surprised and took the titanium ampule out of the box without a second thought. An injection needle protruded from one size but Dan knew from personal experience it was empty and no more dangerous than anything else with a needle poking out of it.

Heysa paled and gasped when Daniel handled the thing with what to his eye was no doubt inexcusable recklessness. "Put it down!" he gasped. "You'll--"

"It's empty, don't worry," the alpha reassured him, regretting the careless manner he'd picked it up in if only for the beta's sake. "Even if it wasn't, it couldn't hurt me."

Heysa lowered his hands from where he'd pressed them to his mouth and clenched them, shaking, in his lap. "What is it?" he asked, voice rough and quiet, gaze fixated on the little cylinder.

It was about the size of Daniel's thumb and he'd seen its like before-- or something close, anyways. "It's a nanite injector," he answered, then hesitated as he realized there was no way Heysa, or anyone else in the village for that matter, would have any idea what that meant. "It's-- think of it like medicine. Kind of. But it doesn't just make you feel better when you're sick; if you've taken it, it prevents you from getting sick in the first place. The really good kind can even help you heal faster if you're wounded."

Daniel would know-- he'd had a full military grade nano-suite installed just as soon as he'd finished puberty and Project Nephilim had loaded him up with cybernetic enhancements ranging from sub-dermal armor to a net-deck at the base of his skull that had once fed him up to the second data feeds from central command or whatever database he wanted to access for intel. Most of those features were completely inaccessible now but considering he hadn't become gravely ill or got anyone else around him sick with century old viruses they'd have no immunity to Daniel was confident his nanites were still functioning.

"That can't possibly be," Heysa objected with a vehemence that took Daniel off guard and a closer look at the beta made it clear something awful must have happened when the man had originally unearthed the artifact.

The alpha carefully placed the injector back in its box on the table to help set the other man at ease. "Something happened when you found this, didn't it?" he guessed. "Something awful."

A pained expression overtook Heysa's sharp features and, after a moment, he nodded. "I wasn't the one that found it, actually-- it was my brother." Withdrawing a little, the older man dropped onto a nearby divan and made himself comfortable then motioned for Dan to join him. When the alpha took a seat, Heysa continued, "I don't know how it was for you old ones, but brothers aren't always close here in the tribe as most children are raised together in the creche. Harth, my brother, and I didn't just share a mother, though, we shared a womb together."

Twins, Daniel realized, only to be brought up short by the word 'mother'. It had changed over the centuries but he recognized it for what it was from context and realized that a lack of women didn't mean a lack of mothers for this new version of humanity. Now, it seemed, the word was used for the man who had given birth to you.

"You were close, then," Dan guessed and Heysa nodded with a distant, melancholy smile.

"Extremely. He was the one who was always interested in old world relics-- I only really picked it up after-- well..." he hesitated and ran one hand through his short, sandy hair. He glanced sidelong at Dan and seemed to gain the strength to continue when he saw him watching with dark, patient eyes. "I'm sure you've noticed the village is built into an old world ruin."

Daniel nodded. "It was a mall," he said, then, knowing Heysa had no context for the word, continued, "People came here to buy things." He actually wasn't sure if people still used currency in this day and age, but looking around he'd come to the conclusion they'd likely gone back to the barter system so he added, "To socialize and trade."

Close enough.

"All this for a trading hub?" Heysa asked, fascinated by the prospect. He seemed ready to ask more, but caught himself and waved a hand as if to dispel his own distraction then continued his story instead. "There are fewer of us than there once were-- less than half the people that made up my grandparent's generation, according to the elders, so parts of the building have fallen into disuse. Children often like to sneak away from their minders in the creche to explore and Harth like to stray further than most."

Considering young people, and even adults, had been exploring old, abandoned buildings for as long as buildings had existed to be abandoned Daniel wasn't surprised to discover the tradition continued in spite of the changes their species had undergone. It would have brought a smile to his face if not for the inevitable tragedy looming at the end of the other man's tale. "You're saying your brother found the injector here in the mall?" Daniel asked, surprised by the prospect. It certainly wasn't the kind of thing that would have been sold there during his time, and he doubted that would have changed even during the complete societal collapse that had occurred after he went into cryo. He could, however, see how some military group or another might have left a cache of supplies hidden there that they'd never returned to collect.

And then it'd gone and gotten some poor kid killed when he stumbled naively across it a thousand years later.

"He found a section of floor that had collapsed after a particularly bad storm-- I remember it rained more than normal that season. There were all sorts of things in the room below and we climbed down with some rope and a few other boys. I-- I barely even remember what else was in there now; we were only eleven at the time..."

The beta's words trailed off and Daniel reached out to lay a comforting hand on the other man's shoulder. Heysa smiled weakly in gratitude and placed his own hand over the alpha's before he continued, "The... injector?" he looked at Dan for confirmation and the alpha nodded. "It was one of the first things Harth picked up. I didn't-- I swear it didn't have a needle at first but when he grabbed the thing it pricked him and he dropped it just as quick but it... he didn't drop it fast enough, he..." Heysa pressed both hands to his face and fought to take a few long, steadying breath, shaking under the weight of such a terrible memory.

"You don't have to go into detail. I can guess what happened," Daniel murmured quietly and, after a moment, carefully pulled Heysa in against his chest in an effort to comfort him. Despite having just met the man that day, Daniel found himself feeling oddly protective-- perhaps this was another facet of his being an alpha and Heysa a beta?