Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Relena sighs heavily when she gets home. The day has been long and infuriatingly unproductive. She grabs a bottle of a fruity white that she knows Duo particularly likes, three glasses from her own cabinet, and heads down to the guest quarters that Heero and Duo are staying in on bare, stockinged feet. This whole palace is technically her home, and this wing, in particular, is closed off, so if anyone sees her wandering around without shoes on, well, fuck them.

The way she’s feeling today, it’s probably for the best that no one decides to be intrusive into this wing.

Using her elbow, she knocks on the door, and calls out, “It’s Relena.”

“It’s open,” she just hears Heero’s voice call through. She shifts the wine bottle into the crook of her arm and turns the handle, stepping in, getting ready to—hopefully—amuse her friends with the details of her day, only to stop in the doorway.

Heero is in one of the plush armchairs in the receiving room of the suite, but instead of sitting somewhere else, Duo is kneeling at his feet, an arm thrown over Heero’s lap, his head leaned against Heero’s thigh as Heero strokes a hand down his hair.

“I’m sorry,” she says immediately, getting the feeling that this sight isn’t for her. “I can leave—”

“You’re fine, princess,” Duo says, pressing into Heero’s thigh a little harder. He’s got circles under his eyes that she hadn’t noticed earlier, and they look a little red. Now that she’s really looking at him, he looks thinner than she remembers.

Holding up the bottle, Relena says, “I come bearing gifts? And hopefully stories to laugh at?”

Heero nods toward the couch—which is closer than she would have thought he’d want her when Duo is so obviously vulnerable—but as a rule, Heero doesn’t lie to make people comfortable, so if he’s telling her it’s all right for her to stay, it should be all right.

Gently, she kicks the door closed, then crosses the space to set the wine on the coffee table, along with the glasses. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. She knows they went to see a reproduction specialist today—they’d asked for her help to get the appointment—but she doesn’t know what exactly they were seeing a specialist for.

She watches as Heero looks down at Duo, and Duo tilts his head back a little to meet his eyes. They have a silent conversation that ends with Duo shrugging and snuggling deeper against Heero, wrapping both of his arms around Heero’s legs, hugging them. Though Duo looks fairly comfortable, Relena’s not sure she would be in Heero’s place.

Heero’s hand returns to stroking Duo’s hair as he says, “We were hoping to see if we could get Duo on a new suppressant, and the best suppressant developments have been in Sanq. Thank you, by the way, for getting us in.”

Pausing in twisting the cap of the wine cage off, Relena says, “I didn’t realize you were looking into suppressants.” It’s not quite a question. Since Heero and Duo haven’t volunteered information before now, she doesn’t want to intrude, but she is curious, so she wants to give them the option.

To her surprise, it’s Heero who looks away, almost as if ashamed, and Duo nuzzles his thigh, which makes him keep stroking his hand over Duo’s head. “I’m… not able to sire naturally,” Heero says. Naturally, that’s when the pressure on the cork gives way, and it pops off with a far too loud and intrusive sound.

“Shit!” she gasps, jumping to her feet. “Forgot this one was carbonated. Give me a moment.” She dashes to the kitchenette, finds the towels that are in every guest suite, and rushes back to clean up where the wine is spilling before it gets everywhere even worse. She’s not sure what it says that neither Heero nor Duo moved to help her.

“It’s fine,” Duo says.

And he is actually right. Even if they left it entirely alone, the cleaning staff would make it like new again after they’d gone—not that Relena thinks for a moment they’d leave it—but it didn’t have to be done right now.

“Easiest to get it now,” she admits, having successfully sopped up most of the overflow. It hadn’t been that bad, at least. “I apologize for that.”

“Don’t,” Heero says heavily, and that’s when she notices that he’s now resting his hand beneath Duo’s braid, over what is surely his mating mark on his neck. That explains why Duo, at least, didn’t move to help her. “We’re sorry to impose.”

Giving him an unfriendly look, she sits back down on the couch, shoving the damp towels out of the way for the moment to pour their glasses. “You’re my friends,” she says in a warning tone of voice. “You aren’t imposing. I’m happy to help however I can.” She frowns, feeling useless as she moves the bottle from the first glass and sets it aside. She has a feeling that neither of the pilots will be much interested in a glass, but she needs one after today. “I’m sorry that the appointment didn’t yield more options.”

Duo sighs. “Just the same fucking thing that the others have said.” She tilts her head curiously, crossing her legs and fighting down the urge to ask. Fortunately, her body language seems to be enough of a request because Duo takes mercy on her. “They all keep telling us I need to mate with a ‘proper’ alpha.” His voice is thick with disdain as he clearly mockingly repeats their suggestions.

Naturally, he says it the moment Relena raises her glass to take a sip, and she nearly chokes on it. Taking a moment to clear her throat, she says, “Can I ask?”

Heero sighs, sinking further into the chair, returning his hand to stroking Duo’s head instead of on his mark. “Go ahead,” he says.

“How many specialists have you seen that’s given you that antiquated, designation-first advice?”

Wincing and closing his eyes, Duo says, “Five. Six if you count Sally.”

Relena stares, unable to wrap her head around it. Sure, designation-first people—people who feel that the biological need to breed and be bred that most alphas and omegas experience defines their lives more than who they are as individuals—but it’s hard to believe that Sally would buy into that bullshit.

As if knowing where her thoughts are going, Duo sighs. “I’m prime,” he says, as if that simple statement is explanation enough.

And it—horrifyingly—is. “You’re prime?” she asks, feeling awful for repeating it like it’s a cancer diagnosis, but a cancer diagnosis feels like it’d be more manageable. “I mean, are they sure—no, forget I said something that stupid. If you’ve seen five specialists, you’re obviously sure.” She presses the cool bowl of her wine glass to her forehead as she processes that and takes a deep breath. Finally, she lets the breath out and lowers the wine glass again, then asks, “You said I could ask?”

Duo gives her a rictus, humorless smile. “How did I make it to twenty-five without popping out a few if I’m prime?” he asks. That’s not at all how Relena would have asked the question, but nicer words wouldn’t have made the meaning behind the question any different. She nods. “When I presented, we just happened to have a bunch of unmated alphas working on Deathscythe. You know the phenomenon where most people who join the rebellion are alpha designations?” She nods, taking a sip. “Anyway, that was true of the group working on Deathscythe at the time—in fact, G was sure I’d present as an alpha anyway, even though I was short and pretty, he thought it was just the malnutrition, you know?” He doesn’t wait for Relena to respond before continuing, “Anyway, I present, and a young, fertile omega with all those unmated alphas around was kind of a nightmare, so he gave me some—apparently—super-experimental suppressant that pretty much worked for the next ten years.”

Doing the math, Relena says, “So you presented at fourteen. Ten years, so it wore off last year?” It’s his turn to nod. “By then, you were already mated and with Heero.”

“Except G wasn’t the only one playing around with experimental suppressants,” Heero says, and she can hear the frustration and—dare she suggest it—helplessness in his voice as he continues. “J went a little farther though. He removed my knotting tissue.”

Relena gasps and almost drops her glass. Recovering before spilling it, she sets it on the coffee table, almost too firmly. “That’s—” She can’t find the word for it. Horrifying is too mild a word. Removing a young alpha’s knotting tissue? It’s not just a violation, it’s a mutilation. “I’m so sorry,” is what she finally lands on. It’s not even close to enough. There is no apology that could be anywhere near enough. Neither is there anything that can undo the harm that’s been done.

“Not your fault,” Heero says, even as Duo rubs his chin along Heero’s thigh again.

“I know,” she says, feeling helpless. She feels even worse after she realizes the additional implications, and lifts her hand to her mouth to cover it as she looks at the mated pair. “Oh no,” she says, barely more than a whisper. “If you can’t knot, and Duo is prime…” Her own heart practically leaps into her throat at the utter unfairness of it all, even as both Duo and Heero look away, Duo’s eyes especially looking a little glassy.

“Heero can’t breed me,” Duo admits softly. “We didn’t really know what happened when my suppressant wore off. I went into heat for the first time, but we were kind of excited… could be fun, you know?” His voice goes tight and chokes off a little at the end. “Probably couldn’t get pregnant, but not a big deal—wasn’t really something we’d planned on anyway.”

There’s something so incredibly pained in his voice, and Relena can only imagine what’s driving it.

“But something went wrong,” Relena guesses, lacing her fingers together tightly.

Duo rubs his face into Heero’s thigh, and Heero says, “He couldn’t come.” Relena can feel her eyes widen in horror. Not being able to come during a heat would be torture for an omega. When he continues, she can hear the pain—and self-loathing—in Heero’s voice. “ No matter what we did. He couldn’t—”

Raising himself up a little, Duo twists to face Heero, putting his head more directly in Heero’s lap, wrapping his arms around Heero’s thighs rather than his calves. It’s a beautiful and intimate scene that Relena is suddenly very sure she should not be privy to, but she can’t bring herself to go.

Heero strokes Duo’s face tenderly before he clears his throat and continues on. “I know it’s not my fault, and at first we just thought we could get Duo back on some more mainstream suppressants.”

Given what they had asked for her help with here, Relena already knows that didn’t work. Still, she needs to say it aloud. “But they didn’t work.”

Nuzzling Heero’s hand a final time, Duo shifts to be able to face her again, and Heero’s hand goes back to petting his hair. Given that he’s made no move to get up off the floor, the need to submit to his mate must be incredibly strong at the moment. “No,” Duo confirms. “It didn’t work. And two months later, I had another heat.” A visible shiver goes through him, and Relena is suddenly sure she understands why Duo has lost weight.

“You got the original prescription from Sally,” she guesses, and Duo nods. “When that didn’t work, you went back to her for more tests… and she said you need another alpha.”

“To be fair, Sally said we needed to consider a third, not that I needed to leave Heero,” Duo says, and his arms visibly tense around Heero’s legs, as though he’s hugging them. “She was pretty sure that I was already developing Prime Disorder, but she referred us to a specialist, who took one look at my blood tests, and said I needed a ‘real alpha.’”

Prime Disorder. Just hearing the words makes Relena’s skin crawl. It’s the number one argument designation-first people use to support that designation supersedes individual desires and will. More than half the population exhibits a designation, but of that half, only a fraction of a percent are what is clinically described a prime designation. Some studies hypothesize that it’s an ancient throwback to when breeding was more critical, but it manifests similarly in both alphas and omegas—rare though it is.

If non-designated humans can experience a ticking biological clock pushing them to breed, and designated humans tend to experience that desire even more strongly, for primes, it is less a desire than a physical requirement. Primes are almost always mated and have either sired or given birth by twenty. There are multiple—terrible—court cases on the books where prime alphas who have been isolated to prevent them from breeding with undesired partners break free and rape the first available omega. In most of those cases, the prime alphas have been acquitted because—by that point—it’s clear that they are less humans than animals, and are unable to distinguish between right and wrong.

It doesn’t matter much. Separating them from their victim-mates is a death sentence. Though acquitted, they’ve lived out their days in pure torture. For non-prime mates, the pain is not as debilitating, but primes experience hyperfertility, and their victims are almost always impregnated. Attempts to abort have killed the victims on more than one occasion, the mating bite of a prime instilling powerful—and little understood—preservation mechanics that will prioritize the litter over the mother.

Prime omegas have been known to become living baby farms. The need to be bred is incredibly powerful, and they don’t need to be mated to conceive, just knotted. Alpha and omega primes both are extremely resistant to any kind of suppressants. If a prime is kept from breeding for too long, they fall into Prime Disorder—where the need to breed starts replacing other needs, such as hunger and thirst. It’s all but considered fatal if untreated, and the only treatment is to be mated and to breed.

Duo is—as best they can tell—twenty-five. No wonder that once whatever suppressant he was on failed, he almost immediately fell into Prime Disorder.

“Anyway, all the docs got the same diagnosis and the same solution,” Duo says, sounding exhausted and suddenly looking it. He and Heero have been mated since they were sixteen. A nearly ten-year-bond isn’t going to easily break. “Get a real alpha.” His face twists in disgust.

“Duo…” Relena says, trying to think of something—anything—to say.

“You need to find a new mate,” Heero says, and his voice is shockingly steady as he says it, even though his face is a study in grief.

Twisting with that shocking speed she often forgets Duo is capable of, he hisses, “Never going to fucking happen!”

“Duo…”

“No,” Duo says firmly. “It’s you or bust, ’Ro. It’s always been you.” He sighs, and softens his tone when he adds, “It’s my choice. I never thought I’d see sixteen, forget twenty-six. If I’m going out, let it be on my terms.”

Tears spring to Heero’s eyes, making them shine, and his mouth twists as he clearly tries to hold back sobs. If Relena thought she shouldn’t be here before, she really feels like she shouldn’t be here now, but her own heart aches for them both.

Duo doesn’t try to comfort Heero—probably because there’s nothing he can do other than change his mind to comfort him—and instead turns back to Relena. “What’d you come here to rant about, princess?” he asks with a faint shadow of his old good-natured teasing.

Her problems seem so incredibly small and petty in light of what she’s learned. It actually takes her a few moments to even remember what she’d planned on coming to talk to them about. “Oh,” she says, batting back her own tears and rubbing surreptitiously beneath her nose, hoping Duo will pretend he didn’t notice. “It’s… stupid.” It’s so unbelievably stupid.

“Tell us anyway,” Duo says, giving her a ghost of his old smile. “We could use the distraction.”

“I… don’t…” She fumbles for words—something she almost never does—trying to figure out how she could possibly be sensitive considering… “Just… stupid rich, overprivileged alphas doing stupid, rich, overprivileged alpha things,” she finally decides on. She has to rub under one eye to catch the tear that wants to fall.

“Like what?” Duo asks.

Fuck, complaining about it feels so petty and insensitive, but Duo is watching her with genuine interest, and he probably does want a distraction. The specialist they met with today must have been their last resort. “Stupid non-designated males who refuse to see a female alpha as an alpha instead of a female,” Relena admits, and feels small and stupid for even being irritated. “They just want me to breed, and ideally that means with another alpha in their eyes. That’s all.”

Alpha-alpha pairs can breed, but it’s difficult. Female alphas tend to report a lot of dysphoria and mental distress at being pregnant, and they experience rut, not heat, so they often need special fertility regiments to even make conception likely. Though she’d like a mate—and would like to be a father—Relena has never had any desire to be a mother at all, and finds the idea repulsive. Given her research, that’s a pretty common sentiment among female alphas.

It does not stop stupid, non-designated men from thinking they’re female before alpha and should be the ones carrying.

Duo gives a weak attempt at a chuckle. “It’s almost like we’ve got the same problem on opposite sides of a cred,” he says. “People shoving alphas at you, when what you’d want is an omega, and people demanding I get a new alpha when I already have the one I want.”

Although she really hasn’t had near enough wine to blame the idea that sparks on, if it upsets them, she’s going to blame the wine anyway. Before she can think too hard or second guess herself, she says, “What if we could solve each other’s problems?” she asks. Both Duo and Heero sit up a little straighter, but it’s a listening posture, not a defensive one. She puts her hands up in a calm down motion anyway. “Just—hear me out.”

“We’re listening,” Heero says.

“Well, I’m being pressured to mate and breed. They want me bred with an alpha—and let’s be honest, probably one of their choosing anyway—but as long as I mate and breed, they’ll shut up. Duo needs to be bred, and omegas can’t conceive without natural knotting.” Heero winces but nods. “So it’s not that you can’t impregnate Duo, it’s just that you can’t do it alone. You need an alpha who can knot, but you don’t have to break up for it. You just need a third who is willing to share Duo.”

Neither of them look like they want to kill her, so she’ll take that as a win. After a moment, Duo says, “You want to be our third.”

It’s not a question, but she answers it anyway. “We have joked for years that if either of you ever got sick of each other, I’d take either of you,” she reminds him. “You may have been joking, but I… wasn’t really.” Her fingers tighten where they’re laced together, but she doesn’t move them, because suddenly, this option is real, and now that it’s real—and not a joke between friends who have always been a little unusually close—she’s their next of kin, and she’s theirs—she realizes how much she’s wanted it. And not just one of them—she’s wanted them both. She just hadn’t dared to let herself realize it before.

But this is a problem they can’t solve alone. Not only that, it is a problem that will kill Duo, and probably much sooner than later. While he has a healthy respect for death, Duo has a frightening lack of fear of it. If he feels like he’s losing his mind, there is no doubt in Relena’s that he’ll end his own life.

That doesn’t have to be the only choice, though.

Duo and Heero look at one another while she thinks, sharing that silent communication of theirs that she finds both envious and frustrating, before Duo turns back to her and asks in an unusually timid voice, “You’d be willing to do that for us? You’d be mated to us—”

She doesn’t mean to, but she laughs. It visibly takes both Duo and Heero aback—too loud and too sharp in the quite room—and she takes a moment to gather herself.

“Sorry,” she says, when she can speak. “I didn’t…” She’s a politician. Words are her canvas, her tool, her weapon, and she has not felt so bereft of their utility since Treize made her a mocking Queen of the World. The memory helps steady her a little bit. If she could find audacity and words at fifteen, under those circumstances, she can find them now, with the two people most dear to her in the world, even if the stakes somehow feel higher this time. “I just…” She takes another deep breath. “It would be my honor.” She gives them a slightly trembling smile. Trembling because she wants this so much she can barely speak. “In truth, I feel very selfish making the offer. You… need this, but I get an opportunity to have it.” She meets Heero’s eyes, then Duo’s, resolve strengthening her voice. “I am not merely willing, and it would not merely be my honor, but you deserve to know that it is something I want. You need to be sure, because once you’re mine… I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you up again, even if you change your minds.”

Standing, she straightens her skirt. “You shouldn’t give me an answer right now—even if you think you have it,” she blurts. Honestly, even if the answer is an unequivocal yes, she’s not sure she’s ready to hear it. Her mind is still reeling from the realization of exactly how much she wants this. To distract herself from that particular train of thought, she goes into planning mode. “Think it over. Remember what it’ll mean, being mated to me. Polymating isn’t unheard of, but it is unusual. Duo being prime would be a good reason to be part of a polymate arrangement—there’s still idiots out there who believe that prime omegas require multiple mates with their whole chests—but being mated to me does come with complications and expectations, especially for the children.”

And it will be children, because a prime omega is not going to only carry once. He won’t have the option for one-and-done or even two-and-done. They will have… likely a lot of children. She wonders Duo has even had time to process that fact? Is it part of why he’s so resistant to find another mate? Even if that’s the only way to save his life? Is part of the drawback being mated to someone who isn’t Heero, forced by his own biology to get pregnant and bear his new mate children over and over, each one a reminder that his mate is no longer Heero?

Is Relena including Heero enough of a reason to stay alive, even if he knows he’s probably got ten solid reproductive years to look forward to? She’ll have to look it up when she returns to her room, but she’d swear that prime omegas trade off their hyperfecundity by having a relatively short breeding term when compared to typical designated people, or even non-designated people for that matter.

They all have things to consider—the next question is how much time do they have to decide.

“Is there a date we need to decide by?” she asks as she gathers up the wine-soaked towels.

Heero shifts his hand, rubbing it under Duo’s forehead before sliding it back under his braid. Frowning, he says, “Not long. Two days? Maybe three. Duo’s heat recurrence has been increasing.”

That is both horrible and makes perfect sense. Duo is twenty-five, and he’s been holding off conceiving—even if not intentionally—for at least a year, despite descending into Prime Disorder. She almost has to attribute his resilience to residual influence from whatever treatment G gave him. There’s no way the scientist knew Duo was prime when he gave him the treatment, but it’s done its job well for a long time, but if it dumped Duo out into Prime Disorder immediately, then it didn’t entirely suppress his biological needs, just temporarily stalled them. It seems his body was still keeping tabs, and it’s calling the bill due.

“I’ll clear my calendar,” she says, then smiles. “Just in case.” She takes the towels to the sink and dumps them in it unceremoniously. Her hands are vaguely sticky from the sweet wine, and she runs them under the faucet to at least get the worst of it off. Then she returns to Duo and Heero, her barely touched wine glass still sitting there next two two that have not even been filled, and an open bottle.

Will we be popping a new bottle to celebrate this time next week?

Of course, if Duo goes into heat, and Relena joins them for it… by this time next week, Duo could already be pregnant. The thought almost makes her dizzy. “Should I—?”

“Leave it,” Duo says. “It’s a good bottle.”

She smiles at him, nods, then says, “I’ll let myself out.”

“Good night, princess,” Duo says.

“And Relena,” Heero calls, making her pause at the door. “No matter what the answer is, thank you.”

She gives him another tight smile, nods again, and says, “Sincerely, it would be my privilege… and my pleasure.”

Before she can say anything else, she lets herself out.

Chapter Text

When Relena returns to her room, instead of doing the dozen other things she could be doing, she goes straight to her computer and begins to research prime omegas. The first thing she finds is a lot of trashy romance featuring savior complexes and obscene numbers of children. Since tropey media is where Relena got most of her knowledge about primes, she starts digging for more official sources.

Obviously, primes are real, but they’re much, much rarer than popular media would have one believe. They’re especially rare among colonists, who already tend to have lower incidences of designations, since test tube babies and artificial insemination always results in non-designated children. The fact that all five of the pilots are designated is something of an oddity in and of itself, though not one she’s thought much of.

She’d honestly kind of thought that Duo was an alpha for a long time. Sure, stereotypes always show omegas—especially omega males—as beautiful, but that’s as much of a fantasy as anything. Omegas come in all shapes and sizes, just as anyone else, and Duo had never really pinged her radar as an omega.

Not until the last year, anyway. Not until his suppressant failed.

Just the thought of Duo, legs spread, slick glistening at his hole, ready to welcome his alpha, makes her own cock twitch between her legs, and she pushes the thought out of her head to focus on the information she’s looking for.

How fertile are prime omegas? That’s something she needs to understand. Given the efforts Duo and Heero have gone to in the past year, conventional medicine clearly believes that primes must breed and that normal suppressants and birth control are not effective with them.

It takes some work, but she finds some very useful sources. Most of the modern sources she finds reference an older resource. It takes her more digging than expected, and into some unusual historical files that she has access to. to find that source paper.

It’s the most awful—yet, paradoxically most helpful—source she finds. From pre-colonial days, written by a non-designated doctor who was experimenting on designated individuals, On the Nature of the Primitive. She knows without looking it up that primitive will somehow morph into the modern prime. It makes her sick to even read it—there have been cycles all over the world where non-designated people have seen designated people as inferior or even animalian, and also times and places where designated people have been revered as superhuman.

Primes, it seems, have widely been considered superhuman regardless of the social status. Especially prime omegas.

And this report is probably buried because the testing this so-called “doctor” did on designated people were cruel and inhumane—which fits, given he clearly didn’t see designated people as human at all. They were animals he bred and sold, and the notes he kept on them were much the same as a dog or horse breeder might. Reading over them makes her stomach churn, but she’s already found half a dozen other sources that had referenced this one, so it seems—as horrible and unethical his experiments were—his methodology was sound and his conclusions seem to have been largely confirmed.

Prime omegas need to breed. They will go into heats with increasing regularity if they are not able to become pregnant, and they will pursue partners they perceive can impregnate them with increasing ferality. They can only be impregnated by people who have alpha designations, because they require knotting to become pregnant. No amount of testing with artificial knots worked. If they still cannot become pregnant, their intelligence deteriorates and they become animals whose only relief is impregnation.

He also tested who frequently primes could breed. There appears to be some grace period from their first presentation—usually around puberty—and when the need to be impregnated usually kicks in, but the idea that primes usually breed by twenty seems to have been established by this man.

As she reads, she can see how much of his work has made its way into conventional knowledge about primes, and prime omegas, probably because most of the well-known examples of historical prime omegas bear out the same traits his experiments did, and his papers have an appendix of nearly every reliable history of a prime omega he could find.

Extremely high fecundity rate. Pregnancy during heat—as long as a partner can knot—is virtually guaranteed. The incidence of miscarriage is almost nonexistent without external factors. Prime omegas have a shorter gestation—only thirty-five weeks—and if they do not breastfeed, their heat cycle will typically renew about a month post-partum, and they can be impregnated again. Further experimentation finds that nursing is the only effective birth control for a prime, and that almost as soon as they’ve weaned, their heat cycles renew.

Not that it’s much of a cycle if it’s just enough for the omega to get pregnant again.

Feeling sick—and even sicker at the tiny part of her alpha brain that is practically salivating over the thought of how many litters Duo could bear her—she goes back to the more modern sources, but source after source, paper after paper matches the original findings of On the Nature of the Primitive. The compulsion to be bred, the unreliability of traditional birth control and suppressants, the dramatic decline in both physical and mental well-being for primes that could not breed—the side effects are attested to again and again.

Honestly, looking over the sources and documentation, the fact that Duo has managed to hold it together for a year is a minor miracle. Many of the primes in the On the Nature of the Primitive experiments began declining much faster, usually by six months.

Which means that the specialists are right—Duo doesn’t have a lot of time or a lot of options. If he isn’t impregnated, he’ll go mad and die. Relena can’t even find anecdotes of prime omegas who overcome the instinct.

And once he begins to breed, he will remain even nursing or pregnant until his cycles end.

On the balance, at least, it seems because their fertility burns so furious, it burns out more quickly than ordinary omegas or even non-designated women. The first pregnancy is usually recorded by twenty; the last is typically around the age of thirty—close to twenty years younger than many non-designated women.

If Duo holds to that pattern, he would likely experience three pregnancies in that time—though if he opted not to nurse, it could be as many as five or six.

For better or worse, it seems like the man who ran the experiment was a pure monogamist. At least, if it occurred to him to try breeding primes with multiple alphas, Relena sees no note of it in his files. She does find a few more recent papers hypothesizing that prime omegas with multiple partners are more prone to multiples, but only one actually has data that isn’t purely anecdotal, and even then, the sample pool was small and voluntary.

One of the studies she finds—however—is on a polycule centered around a prime omega. One of the partners was a non-designated man, and—when tested—the researcher found that the children conceived and born by the prime carried DNA of all of the potential fathers, even the non-designated man.

That leads her down a more interesting and less human-rights-violating rabbit hole of what’s called chimerism—when children inherit DNA from multiple parents beyond the usual mother-and-father. One particularly curious researcher—who apparently was a child of a prime omega with multiple mates—did a tremendous amount of legwork to track down and test not just prime omegas, but prime omegas who had multiple mates. The conclusions are fascinating.

Nearly all of the children of such arrangements carried some DNA from all of their mother’s mates, running hard against the conventional idea of one sperm fertilizing one egg.

But if she and Heero both mate Duo… their children may be parts of all of them. Their children will likely be all of theirs. If the thought of breeding Duo had been appealing before, the thought of breeding him with Heero is an exponential multiplier.

If the idea was appealing before, now it has her hard beneath her skirt. Sitting back in her chair, she shimmies her skirt up, allowing her cock to spring up, out from her underwear. It’s so rare for her to indulge like this, but she’s tired and her usual control is a little weaker now.

So she strokes her hand over her cock with one hand while she uses her free hand to reach up and undo the buttons on her shirt, giving her access to her breast. Leaning back, she closes her eyes, imagines Heero holding Duo, stroking over his chest, encouraging him to spread his legs. How pretty would his hole be? Would it glisten with his slick? Would he whimper and beg for her? How much could he be opened up? What would it be like seeing Heero spread him for her?

Would he climb onto her lap to ride her? Would he feast at her chest while she fills him and makes him whimper and whine? Would she be able to slide even more fingers into him and open him up even more, even as her own cock fills him? What would it be like to feel Heero slide up behind Duo as he rides her, feel his cock pressing alongside her own? Would they both fit? What would that feel like? How hot would it be? How tight would Duo be around them both?

She imagines Heero reaching around Duo to massage her chest, holding her eyes while he sucks and bites at Duo’s neck and shoulders. Would Heero teach her how to touch Duo, how to please him? How deep inside would they go? Could she feel the end of him? Could both she and Heero pour so much of their seed into him that his belly swells with it, as if he’s immediately pregnant?

God, Duo would be pregnant. Thinking about it makes her hand on her cock stroke faster, the way eased by the pre leaking from her. She gropes her chest more roughly, liking the edge of harshness, even as she imagines Duo with his belly heavy with their children. It’s said that sex with their alphas is very beneficial for pregnant omegas, and she hopes that’s doubly true for prime omegas. How much will his chest swell? How sensitive will it be? Will he always be slick and ready for them? Will he want to cuddle on her lap, her cock seated inside of him, warming her? Would Heero kneel between their legs, sucking off Duo’s cock while she fills him? Would his body milk her cock as though she could put another child in an already-pregnant belly?

Would she still knot? Alphas usually only knot during their ruts, but she’s heard that they can sometimes knot while their omegas are pregnant—especially near the end of the pregnancy. For years, she’s heard the crude jokes about knotting a pregnant omega to get them ready for the birth, opening them up, stretching them.

Is it true? Would Duo want to be filled and stretched even more as birth approached. He would be so, so beautiful with a heavy belly and the soft swell of breast tissue to feed their children.

And when he has weaned them, he’ll be needy and hungry again, ready to have his alphas take him, hungry to be pregnant again. Imagining Duo’s voice mewling Relena while Heero watches her with eyes gone almost black finally pushes her over the edge, and she comes all over her fist, and her skirt.

As she slumps into her chair, staring at her come-covered hand, Relena thinks that she should feel a little embarrassed, maybe even a little ashamed. Jerking off to the thought of her friends—her very involved friends, nonetheless, no matter how much flirting they’ve done—should feel like an invasion.

But they hadn’t just rejected her idea to mate them both out of hand. They even told her to be very sure. Seeing the come—almost pearlesct—glittering on her hand, she imagines Heero and Duo kneeling before her, cleaning her off, and her cock twitches again.

Forcing herself to her feet, she yanks her skirt down, wiping her hand off on it, since it’s already filthy, and turns off her computer. “This isn’t a decision that should be made with your dick,” she tells herself firmly.

As if to mock her, her dick twitches, and she knows that her rut is on the horizon. It would be almost poetically perfect timing if Duo’s heat is just around the corner—or maybe it’s his oncoming heat that’s dragged her rut forward. She shouldn’t have it for weeks yet, but she recognizes the signs too well to ignore them.

Ignoring her cock for the moment, she heads to her bathroom. She needs a shower and needs to sleep on everything she’s learned. In the morning, when her head is clearer, she can reapproach the idea. No decisions need to be made tonight.

At least, that’s what she tells herself. If she ends up masturbating in the shower again, it’s not like there’s anyone else there to call her on it.

Her sleep is deep enough—and graphic enough—that Relena wakes up with her nightclothes and bedding soaked in come. Another sure sign of her accelerated rut schedule. She doesn’t clearly remember her dreams, but she’s very sure that they prominently featured both Duo and Heero.

God, she wants them both. She wonders if Heero would allow her to take him as well, once Duo is through his heat? She knows it’s somewhat taboo for an alpha man to accept penetration—and it’s not something that she would gladly offer in return since the idea of being penetrated herself makes her skin crawl and her gorge rise—but the idea definitely has appeal.

Of course, given what has already been taken from him with his ability to knot, it wouldn’t be surprising if Heero hated the idea of being penetrated himself, so she suspects that fantasy will remain in her fantasies. Being able to kiss and touch him, jerk him off as he does her while they share him with Duo still seems like a dream. It’s hard to believe it’s been offered to her.

While in the process of clearing her calendar for the next several days—her phone rings. When she sees Lucrezia’s name pop up, she smiles and answers.

“Good morning,” she says.

There’s a pause before Lucrezia says, “Good morning,” in return, though there’s an odd note in her voice.

“Is something wrong?” Relena asks, turning her attention more away from her screen to pay attention to her sister-in-law. It’s not unusual for Lucrezia to call her to both touch base and share news about the kids—it’s not even unusual for her to do it at this time, since she usually has the kids off to school or at daycare. But it’s unusual for her to sound like this.

“No,” Lucrezia says, but the way she draws out the word makes Relena think otherwise. “You just sound… very happy.”

Blinking, repressing the urge to pull her phone away from her ear to stare at the screen, she says, “Is that so terribly unusual?”

There’s a beat before Lucrezia answers, which is pretty much an answer all on its own, but what she says is, “It’s not unusual for you to be… upbeat, but you almost sound… excited. Has something happened?”

Has something happened? Well, no, not yet. But does she want something to happen? Yes. Very much. She is excited by not just the idea, but by the whole package. Having Heero and Duo be hers, and having her be theirs… yes, she likes that very much indeed.

But she does her best to dial back her anticipation because nothing is set and decided yet. Instead, she decides to ask, “Out of curiosity, do you know anything about prime designations?”

She can practically hear Lucrezia blink over the phone, and yet again, there’s a pause before she answers. “Is… there a particular reason you’re asking?”

“Considerations in some proposed legislation,” Relena lies easily. It is absolutely not her place to disclose Duo’s designation status, much less that he’s prime. Unless and until they are formally mated—and even then—unless it’s medically relevant, there’s no good reason for her to disclose that information. “I’ve been doing some research, and I was curious if you had any personal experience.”

Yet again, Lucrezia hesitates before answering. Though she’s almost always careful when she speaks, taking care to ensure what she says is what she means, it’s exceptionally rare for her to gather herself like this. Unless there’s something she doesn’t want to share, anyway. When the silence stretches so long that Relena is about to prompt her again, Lucrezia sighs. “If you’re having issues related to being prime, you should really speak to your brother about it.”

That makes Relena straighten in her seat. “I was actually curious as to your experience with them as a non-designated person,” she admits. “Why should I speak to my brother?”

Apparently since she’s already started down this road, Lucrezia has decided to commit to the followthrough. “Because he is prime.”

Now it’s Relena’s turn to be silent before responding. She had known, of course, that Milliardo is alpha—as far as she’s aware, the Peacecraft line has been designated for at least a couple hundred years—but she didn’t know he was prime.

I suppose it says something about how much primes tend to guard that information if they’re able that I didn’t know. Gathering her thoughts, she says, “I wasn’t aware of that.” It’s meant to be a statement, not an accusation, but Lucrezia clearly takes it as one.

“I know that a lot of people feel that it’s wrong for alphas to mate with non-designated women, but the stigma tends to be especially severe with prime alphas,” she says, a defensive tone in her voice. “Since non-designated women are much less likely to conceive easily, so prime alphas are less likely to have nearly as many children as they’d have with an omega.”

Relena was kind of aware of that stigma—and is even more aware of it after last night’s research—but she didn’t know her brother is prime, and she wouldn’t have cared even if she knew. All she’s ever wanted for her brother is for him to be happy and healthy—especially mentally—and—

Oh.

“Is… that why he was so unstable during the Eve Wars?” The question is out of her mouth before she fully considers the question, but it would just make so much sense. They didn’t tell anyone for almost two years—not till he took the assignment to Mars—that they’d mated almost immediately following the First Eve War, after Lucrezia helped recover him from Epyon’s remains. But Milliardo had been nineteen—turned twenty during the course of the First Eve War, and all of her research last night had been very clear about how quickly primes’ mental health could decline if not mated at that point.

She hears Lucrezia sigh heavily, but she says, “We believe so. But please—”

“My lips are sealed, of course,” Relena says quickly, though it does make her wonder about Duo. Duo who is twenty-five, who has been suffering with Prime Disorder for nearly a year. Maybe the only reason he’s not declined faster is because he already is mated, even if his mate can’t breed him like his nature requires.

Milliardo’s turnaround gives her hope, however. Because if he had been suffering from Prime Disorder—especially if it had been undiagnosed—his erratic behavior makes a lot more sense. His stability since mating with Lucrezia also takes on a whole new perspective.

Smiling, even though Lucrezia can’t see her, she’s sure she can hear it in Relena’s voice, Relena says, “I have always believed your relationship helped to save him. I just didn’t realize that might be in a medical sense.”

“Yes, well…” Lucrezia begins, no delay this time, but Relena can hear the pleased smile in her voice. “... I feel like we’ve been very fortunate. I wasn’t actually sure a non-designated mate would be able to fulfill his needs.”

Three children in the ten years since the war, and Lucrezia hadn’t gotten pregnant until they’d been assigned to Mars. It had been why they’d come back, in fact—that doctors hadn’t been at all comfortable with the idea of Mars-colonial birth in lower gravity, much less how it would affect the child. Relena doesn’t remember any discussion about ending the pregnancy, but she’s not at all certain she would be privy to—much less that she should be—any such conversations. But if Milliardo is prime, then it’s no wonder they came back instead of terminating. To say a prime alpha would react poorly to a termination is likely an understatement. Relena’s research had focused much more on prime omegas than alphas, but there is some amount of crossover in the literature.

Pregnancies sired by prime alphas have an incredibly low miscarriage rate, and there are documented rages in prime alphas when their partner intentionally terminates. It’s… messy to say the least. Messy and a bureaucratic nightmare to navigate. It’s also something that’s been used to try to limit designated rights. That primes are incredibly rare doesn’t matter.

It does bring the reality closer to home, however. If she mates with Heero and Duo, Duo will be pregnant by the end of his heat cycle. One of the many reasons prime omegas have been so abused over history is because they’re nearly guaranteed to give birth, and give birth to statistically healthy children. If she does this, she will be a parent in less than a year.

“Relena?” Lucrezia interrupts her thoughts, making her realize she’d been quiet too long. She tries to backtrack to what Lucrezia last said, but her mind is still swimming with the idea of being a parent and being mated.

“Sorry,” she says, which is all she really can say. “Just… thinking about what it might be like, to be parent.”

“I’m surprised you’re thinking of it,” Lucrezia admits, but her voice is warm and she sounds pleased. “I know that you’ve been getting a lot of pressure, but I didn’t think you were interested.”

To be fair, when it was just pushy men and alphas who thought she should be bred, she didn’t have any interest. But the idea of being with people she both likes and respects, that she can see herself spending her life with, that she may even—already—love a little bit? That’s infinitely more appealing. In fact, thinking about it that way makes the part of her that is alpha curl up in her chest and rumble a pleased growl.

“I’m just… considering my options, is all. The idea of being a father is a lot more appealing than that of being a mother, and all anyone else seems to push on me is the option of mother.”

Lucrezia chuffs softly, an amused, affectionate sound usually reserved for her family. “If nothing else, I can trust you to think through your options and what will work best for you,” she says.

That makes Relena wince a little. She doesn’t have a lot of time to think through this decision and mull it over—Duo’s heat will be here in a day or two. She needs to make her decision quickly, and once she makes it, there will be no going back.

Fortunately for her, she’s got a pretty good track record for making decisions under pressure. “Thanks, Lu,” she says, and hopes Lucrezia can tell how much she means it.

Chapter Text

Standing at the door to Duo and Heero’s quarters feels like a much bigger accomplishment than merely walking down the hallway. She’s barely had two days since they suggested this, and here she is, ready to mate and bond with them both, to share Duo’s heat, to impregnate him, her friend’s mate.

And before this heat is over, they’ll both be her mates, and she’ll be theirs as well.

Two days should not be enough time to contemplate the enormity of the decision, shouldn’t be enough time to even reasonably clear her calendar, to give her the time off necessary, but she had done it. Whether it’s fate or coincidence, it was a week that was unusually able to be cleared and put aside, and for perhaps the first time since she was a teenager, she’s putting herself and her own wants ahead of her job.

And she wants them. Both.

The certainty of that thought feels like it echoes down in her bones, and she knocks on the door. It only takes a few heartbeats for the locks to be turned on the other side and Heero to open it. Though she can’t see Duo behind him, she can already smell Duo’s pheromones on Heero’s skin—the first setting in of his heat—the cinnamon-nutmeg warmth of even just the whiff of his heat scent nearly causes Relena to lean forward to seek it against Heero’s skin.

His eyes are bright as he watches her, the blue even more intense than usual, and she realizes that they may have been preparing for Duo’s heat, but Heero is also going into rut. That’s probably less important to them than it should be, but she can feel the heat rising off his skin.

“Have you made your decision?” he asks her, not bothering with any more proper greeting, but that’s not unlike Heero’s normal demeanor. Really, the only thing that’s changed here is the unusual intensity of his gaze. Relena wouldn’t have believed he could get more intense, but she’s never had him look at her like this before.

Her own nature rises up, unwilling to back down to the other alpha. They will be together in this—they will be one another’s as much as Duo’s, and although it’s unusual, it’s certainly far from unheard of—and she isn’t going to let Heero bully her just because he’s used to being alpha.

He is alpha, not prime. Duo is the only prime here. She and Heero are on equal footing, and she’s not going to let the other alpha forget it.

“Are you sure you’re willing to share yourselves with me?” she asks, because she’s very, very sure of her own decision—more sure than she thinks Lucrezia or even Sally would be happy about—but she needs to know that they are equally as committed.

A growling rumble teases across her skin—more subsonic than audible—but Heero nods. “If you are willing to share with us both. All of us will bond, or none of us.”

He says it like an ultimatum but hearing him lay it out exactly as she envisioned, as she anticipated, makes some tension ease out of her chest. “Good,” she says simply. Her eyes dart past him, but there’s still no sign of Duo behind him.

Stepping back, Heero lets her in. “Duo’s in the bedroom,” he says, closing the door behind her and locking it. The sounds of the locks being thrown should be almost ominous, but Relena finds them reassuring. The decision is made now—for all of them. There will be no going back.

Anticipation thrills through her, especially as she realizes that Heero’s only wearing a T-shirt and the spandex shorts of old. They aren’t doing much to hide the growing erection he’s got.

He rolls his shoulders back, and says, “This way.” As if the rooms are big enough or complex enough that she needs to be shown the way, but she follows dutifully, for now. She does get impatient when he stops outside the door and turns to her. “Duo is prime,” he says, less like it’s a reminder than like a warning.

“I know,” she says. “I didn’t just spend the last two days all in my own head. I did research.”

His mouth quirks in the slightest upturn of a grin—one that’s pleased and goes straight to her own cock with how rakishly good it makes him look—and she can tell he’s pleased, though not surprised. “We thought you would,” he says, the grin fading, expression becoming more serious. “But most sources don’t talk about the physical changes primes go through, especially when they’re deep in Prime Disorder.”

Thinking back over the immense amount of information she’s read in the past few days, she says, “There was mention of… animalistic features?” She had dismissed them as just another way to dehumanize primes—the tones of the few papers that had mentioned them at all had made her skin crawl—but Heero is nodding.

“I don’t want you to be surprised by what you might see,” he says.

Raising an eyebrow at him, she says, “Should I expect to find him covered in fur?”

Heero’s mouth quirks back up in that half grin, and he reaches behind his head to pull off his shirt. Doing so also seems to be him giving himself permission to let his own pheromones out, because the rich scent of an incoming storm, of wet heat and steam wafts to her. She has a moment to process it before she realizes what she’s seeing.

Slashes cover Heero’s back, in a dozen different stages of healing. No, not slashes—claw marks. Relena steps forward and tentatively traces her fingertips down a set, and she can tell that they’re made by a human hand.

Looking over his shoulder with steady eyes, Heero says, “At the beginning, he only clawed a little,” he says. “Now…” He nods as best he can toward the mess that is his back. “I’ll do my best to protect you from his claws, but he can’t control them at all anymore, and they are very, very sharp.”

Pulling her hand back, Relena makes herself let out a slow breath. “So the animalistic features…”

“Are more real than he’d like. But his saliva has some healing components in it.”

That startles her. “It does?” Relena hadn’t read anything about that.

“Most of the research on primes we’ve found was inhumane at best,” Heero says. “Even when a prime deep in Prime Disorder was allowed to mate, they were rarely allowed to stay together, and breeding benches were often employed, so the natural bonding of the prime healing their mate was probably never observed.” He turns to more fully face her, and something about the movement brings his scent to her like a storm rolling in off the sea. “But I also heal much better than normal people. He might be able to help you heal, but there’s no guarantee you won’t still scar if he claws you, so I’ll do my best to help. But you can’t stop just because he draws blood. There will be blood.”

Drawing herself up to her full height—which is even with Heero’s own five-ten—Relena says, “I’ll thank you to stop assuming I’m no shrinking violet who will wilt at the first sign of danger or violence.”

That grin is back, approving, and Relena is equal parts irritated and enamored of it. “I didn’t think you were, but I wanted you to be prepared.” He tilts his head, and there is something oddly animalistic about the motion—something that reminds her more of a big cat or a bird of prey than a person—before he adds, “Last chance.”

“Not a chance,” she says, putting some growl into her own voice.

It gets the damn smirk again, and he opens the door to the bedroom.

If Heero’s scent is a storm, Duo’s is a bakery. It is sweet and rich, full of butter and decadence. Her eyes find the bed almost without consciously looking for it, and in a nest of bedding that’s been piled up around him, he lounges, looking exactly like the kind of lazy big predator that she had in mind when she’d teased Heero a moment ago.

Though she can’t see his entire body—partially hidden behind his nest as he is—his head leans out, and so do his bare shoulders, stretched out along the rim of the nest. His eyes, however, draw her attention first—not just because the color of them is more intense than usual like Heero’s, though it is—because she finally understands why Heero warned her about the animalistic features.

His pupils are slit like a cat’s, and he blinks lazily at her, rolling in such a way that makes her think his joints don’t bend in quite the same way a normal human’s do.

“Joining us, princess?” he asks, and his voice is still mostly his own, still has the echo of the Duo she knows and has loved as a friend—and never allowed herself to think there could be more—in it, but it’s not all there is. There’s a purr under the words, like a siren’s song, calling her closer, beckoning to her. He gets his elbows under him, pushing up his chest higher for her to see, and his nipples seem especially pronounced and pink, and her mouth waters.

Her attention does not go unnoticed by either man, and Duo gives her a sultry grin before glancing at Heero. “I guess she is.”

Clearing her throat and refusing to let another alpha answer for her, Relena says, “Yes, yes, I am.”

Duo laces his fingers together, making a little hammock to rest his chin on, and she can’t help but notice that the nails on them more closely resemble a cat’s claws than they do human fingernails. His eyes focus on her with a weight she’s sure only people he has hunted down have ever felt before, and the part of her that is alpha prickles at the challenge of an omega staring her down, even as another part of her realizes that a prime omega is not the same creature as an ordinary omega. Not at all.

People make the mistake of thinking that omegas are inherently submissive all the time, just because they are the penetrated partner, but Relena wonders how many omegas look at alphas as though they are the prey and the omega is the hunter. Is it a trait unique to prime omegas? Or perhaps it’s just a trait unique to Duo.

He grins at her, as if sensing her thoughts, and it flashes a little bit of fang. All alphas canines will elongate and descend for bonding bites, but omega fangs are not usually considered to be threats. There’s no doubt in her mind that Duo’s are every bit as much a weapon as the claws that tip his fingers.

“Before you come to me, you need to mate with Heero,” Duo tells her, even though she can see how hungrily he watches her. His instincts know that she is an alpha who can breed him, and he needs it, but he’s still in control… for now.

For how much longer, she wonders.

Not waiting for her permission, Heero’s hand darts out, reaching around to the back of her neck. It’s a vulnerable place for any designated person—for omegas, touching the nape of their necks without is akin to groping a person’s genitals—but for alphas, it’s more patting a man’s cheek in a belittling manner.

Rather than dodging the touch, however, Relena lets it land, then reaches out to touch Heero in the same place, and her fingertips find the indents of a bonding bite that stretches to the join of his shoulder. She hadn’t seen the mark among the dramatic slashes on his back, but she knows what she’s touching now, and a growl rumbles from Heero’s chest as he bares teeth.

Her own fangs getting longer, she bares them in return, growling just as fiercely. The bite of ozone grows heavy in the air, and she releases her own pheromones for the first time—the biting chill of the far north, fresh snow, clean air joining the heaviness of his storm-scent.

As if in unison, she can feel their natures feel one another out, decide if they like the joined scent of them together. It’s one of the biggest tests for alphas who bond a single omega—and one another—are they complementary? Their instincts draw them together, to each other’s scent glands, and they bury their faces in the join of one another’s neck and shoulders, inhaling deeply of one another before shifting to rub their own scents over each other.

Relena’s chest rumbles with a low growl of satisfaction that’s echoed by Heero’s own, and after liberally scenting both sides of their necks, they’re kissing.

She has never kissed another alpha, and she’s not sure she would have ever expected it to be like this. Their mouths come together, both open, both eager to taste one another, both sharing each other. Heero knicks his tongue on one of Relena’s fangs, and the taste of his blood explodes in her mouth like drinking from a downpour. When she’s drunk her fill, she seeks his fangs to catch her own tongue, but finds… normal human canines.

That is enough to make her pull away, and she stares at him, realizing that Heero’s knot is not the only thing that has been taken from him. His eyes look away, from both her and Duo, as if ashamed.

“He was so needlessly cruel to you,” she tells him, gentling the touch that had moved from his neck to his shoulder at some point. Rather than giving him time to argue, to justify, to excuse, she runs her own tongue across a fang and nicks it, then kisses him again, thrusting her tongue in his mouth, hoping that he tastes the blizzard in her blood the way she tastes the deluge in his.

His hands grip her, pulling her in tight, and he feasts, drinking her down, and they move closer till both of their bodies are pressed together, their erections rubbing through their clothing. Relena suddenly desperately wants all of the clothing gone, wants to feel Heero’s bare skin against her, wants to take his cock into her hand and stroke it till he begs her to come.

The bittersweet of fresh dark caramel suddenly fills her senses, and it makes them both break apart. Duo has twisted from his position, and is now looking at them from almost upside down. His knees are raised and spread, shoulders stretched along the length of the rim of the nest, and the slits of his pupils have expanded into perfect, almost too large circles, eating up the violet of his eyes with black desire.

Duo’s purr seems to reach across the space to them, and he spreads his knees wider, which adds the heady scent of a fresh-baked cake to the room. “Mine…” he says, eyes focused on them both.

Mine, her own instincts echo. Unable to resist, she darts forward and rakes her fangs along Heero’s scent gland, getting a gasp out of him even as she draws blood. It’s probably unfair—his human canines can’t so easily open her up—but he doesn’t seem mad. Instead, he looks at her with hunger as well.

Heero does lean forward and bites her own scent gland in retaliation, but she can tell it’ll be more bruise than mark. He probably can’t envenomate her either, and rage at Doctor J—who is long gone, and long dead—rises up in her chest.

“You’re wearing too much, alpha…” Duo says in a singsong tone that almost instantly cools her anger.

Clearly on the same wavelength as his mate, Heero strokes a hand down her chest, down the line of buttons on her shirt, not stopping till his hand rests over the obvious bulge beneath her own skirt.

“We want to see you,” he tells her nuzzling at the spot on her scent gland that will surely bruise, licking at it like he would if he’d marked her properly.

Relena suddenly resents the decision to wear something that is this annoying to get off. She doesn’t let herself tear it off—as satisfying as it would undoubtedly be to watch the buttons go flying—but she does work it undone as quickly as possible.

“Should have worn a robe,” Duo comments from his nest, watching her with hungry eyes.

“I didn’t want to be that forward,” she admits, getting the shirt off. The moment she does, Heero’s hands are on her again, sliding across from the front of her stomach, back across her ribs, and finding the clasp of her bra blindly as though he’s done this before. The idea tickles something in the back of Relena’s mind, but she tucks it away for the moment, more eager and nervous to be naked with her mates than worried about the options they may have down the line.

Heero undoes the bra and strips it off her as though it’s taking all his will power to keep from just tearing it to pieces, but the moment it’s off, he cups one of her breasts and leans down to wrap his mouth around a nipple.

The aggression of the move almost takes her off guard—she’s not sure why, they’re here to have sex, and heat- or rut-fueled sex isn’t exactly known for being slow and romantic—but she digs her fingers into his hair, holding him close as though it was her idea to have him use his mouth to worship her. It’s not where she really would like to have his mouth, but there will be plenty of time for that—assuming Heero’s instincts allow it. The idea of kneeling before another alpha and putting their dick in her mouth is so vile, she has to immediately imagine it’s Duo she’s going down on instead, or risk losing her erection. Servicing an omega with her mouth, pleasing him and watching him writhe as she sucks him off and refuses to fill him immediately makes her cock harder beneath her skirt, and she groans, releasing Heero’s hair reluctantly to get her skirt off.

Duo purrs in pleasure, the sweet scent of his heat growing thicker in the air as he watches them. When she looks over, she can see he’s moved to his hands and knees, his ass up in the air, presenting to the headboard of the bed as he watches them. One of his arms is reaching back, rubbing over his hole, and when he catches her eye, he flashes fang, running his tongue along them with a facility that makes her ache in her underwear as she images what that tongue can do around her length.

“Show her to me, Heero,” Duo says, his voice still carrying that purring tone in it that she’s never heard before. “I want to see her in all her glory.”

With no hesitation, Heero fastens his hands on her waist, fingers sliding under the edges of her underwear, then kneels down, taking the underwear with it, freeing her erection finally. Seeing Heero kneeling before her, his face level with her erection, is hotter than she ever imagined, and she reaches out on reflex to grab a handful of his thick hair, dragging him closer to it.

At her side, Duo’s purring grows louder, the scent of his pheromones grows stronger, and the soft, wet sounds of him teasing his own hole make her mouth water.

“Fuck his mouth,” Duo tells her. “I want to see him suck you.”

Her cock twitches at the command, almost as if Duo can Command her the way alphas often Command their mates. The impulse to blindly do what the omega demands is there, but she would hate to be in Heero’s place and forced to service another alpha, so she uses the grip on his hair to pull his head back a little more.

“Do you want me?” she asks him, and she barely recognizes her own voice with the gravel growl in it.

The blacks of his pupils swallowing most of the stormy blue of his eyes, Heero rasps out a, “Yes.”

That’s all the answer she needs, and she yanks him forward. He opens his mouth willingly, taking the head of her cock in, then half of it back, till it jabs in the back of his throat and he has to back off or choke.

“Be rough with him,” Duo croons to her. “He likes it rough…”

Feeling her own desire rising—not her rut, but the growing density of pheromones from both Heero and Duo clearly affecting her—she’s rougher than she might have been with her thoughts clearer, forcing her way into Heero’s mouth, battering at the back of his throat, reveling in the wet heat of it, and even loving the way his throat tightens around the head of her cock as he gags and chokes on it. That feeling is… heady.

Lost in the pleasure, she doesn’t hear or notice Duo climb from his nest till his hands touch hers in Heero’s hair, tracing lightly over the backs before stroking down over Heero’s ears, his neck, then encouraging him to lift up his face more.

“Take yourself out, love,” he purrs, and Relena would swear it vibrates straight through her cock. “Let Relena see how much you’re loving this.”

It jars her enough out of the spell of the heat haze that Relena almost pulls back in horror at how rough she’s been, but Heero’s hands shove down his shorts, and his cock springs free, hard enough to be pointing straight up, beads of precome pearling at the head.

Duo kneels down behind him—and there’s something unbelievably sexy about seeing an omega kneeling behind his alpha like that—and strokes his hands down Heero’s chest, till one teases down to free his balls, while the other strokes up the length of his cock, gathering the seeping pre. He lifts the pre-covered hand from Heero’s length and brings it immediately to his mouth, where he licks it off as though he were licking off chocolate or ice cream. As he does, he watches Relena with predatory eyes.

“Take his throat,” he tells her, the hand at Heero’s balls moving back up his chest until it’s circling his neck. “I want to feel you stretch him from within before you do the same to me.”

If there is a way to disobey that command—true Command or no—Relena doesn’t know it. Her body jerks forward, as if it is a Command, and with the way Duo has tilted Heero’s head back, she slides right past his gag reflex and into his throat.

“Don’t you dare come!” Duo snarls, squeezing Heero’s throat, and it feels like he’s squeezing Relena’s cock painfully as Heero chokes around her. The moment the grip eases, she pulls out of Heero’s mouth, her length throbbing, and not just with how hard it is.

Kneeling up at Heero’s side, Duo kisses him, and if she has ever imagined what an alpha and omega kissing during heat looks like, this was not it. It is Duo who clearly dominates the kiss, driving into Heero’s mouth, as if chasing the taste of her pre in Heero’s mouth, and Heero gathers Duo into his lap in effortlessly strong arms, cradling him close even as he’s the one who ultimately whimpers.

They are beautiful together.

The brutality of the kisses ease back to something so tender and soft that Relena feels like she shouldn’t be allowed to witness it, before Duo strokes Heero’s face and says, “Stand up, alpha.” Then he turns to face Relena even as he leans his head against Heero’s shoulder.

She should feel silly, standing with her skirt and underwear just around her ankles, naked, with both of their eyes on her. She’s… never done this before, and she hadn’t really considered that fact before she made this decision. It just hadn’t been worth the risk an accident when suppressants did their jobs perfectly well to keep her ruts almost entirely under control. No one has ever looked at her like this, but while she could feel self-conscious and insecure, with their eager, appreciative eyes raking over her, all she feels is beautiful and worthy.

That feeling is only further reinforced when Duo murmurs, “Gorgeous…”

For the first time, she realizes that Duo’s hair is fully loose, and held so effortlessly in Heero’s arms, large cat eyes, fangs glimpsed behind his mouth each time he speaks, the claws making his hands seem longer and more tapered, he is the one who looks like something out of some kind of myth or legend.

And he is hers. Just as Heero is hers. And she is theirs.

It’s only a step to close the distance between them, and because they are hers, she closes it, reaching out to stroke a hand over Duo’s hair. It’s every bit as soft and silky as she expected it to be, but it’s somehow still shocking in its fineness. Duo purrs in Heero’s arms, lifting his chin, baring his throat to her, and she doesn’t have to bend down far to rub her scent gland along his.

This close, she can smell Heero’s storm mingled in the sweet bakery scent of him—like summer celebration. It makes her think of roasting marshmallows, of melting chocolate, of too-sweet brightness of a maraschino cherry. He purrs and lets out more of his pheromones, coating her, and now it’s warm cocoa and ice cream to cool the summer heat. It’s warmth and happiness and things she doesn’t think any of them ever actually experienced, but it feels like it is in their blood, in their very cores.

One of Duo’s hands darts out, grabbing the back of her neck and dragging her away from scenting to taste of her mouth. If she thought Heero’s kiss were aggressive, Duo’s borders on violent. One of her hands reaches out, trying to grab something to steady her as Duo opens his mouth, his tongue pressing into her even as he somehow sucks hers into his. Caramel-topped ice cream, or perhaps a caramel frozen coffee seems to be poured down her throat as she drinks of their mingled scents, and all she thinks is that she wants more.

Then there’s warmth next to her ear as she’s drowning in the addictive taste of them, and Heero’s voice, low and rich and rumbling in a way she feels in her bones, says, “Touch him, alpha.”

Somehow, without noticing, she’d taken some of Duo’s weight, enough for Heero to free a hand up and guide her free hand to Duo’s behind, cupping it, then easing her fingers to his crack. It takes nothing to follow the trail of cooling slick—she never thought that slick might be warm, but it is—she finds Duo’s hole, and presses a finger into it without entirely meaning to.

Whining, Duo breaks the kiss, and she realizes he’s also helping to hold himself up, an arm slung over each of their shoulders. His eyes have gone black with his heat, and given the way that his pheromones are pouring off of him now—almost thick enough to be a physical sensation—she can tell that they’re losing him to his heat.

“Alpha…” he keens, his hands tightening their grips on their shoulders, and Relena can feel the shockingly sharp claws beginning to dig into her skin.

“Bed,” Heero says. “Now. He’s not going to be coherent much longer.”

It is strangely effortless to work in tandem with Heero to cover the relatively short distance to the bed, leaving clothing and shoes behind. Duo is strangely light in their arms as they move over to the bed, sliding him into the cradle of the nest. His claws make sharp cuts into her shoulder when Heero climbs on to pry him off of her, but they do worse on Heero’s. The pain is negligible and entirely forgotten as Duo arches his back, bares his throat, and spreads his legs. His slick glistens around his hole and balls and thighs—all the places it’s leaked and smeared—and it catches the light in stunning ways that makes her need to touch.

“Go ahead,” Heero tells her, grabbing Duo’s wrists in his firm grip and shifting until they’re pulled up above Duo’s head as he fights the restraint.

Moving by instinct to between Duo’s spread legs, Relena can’t help but touch, surprised again by the way the rich scent of the slick fills her senses and makes her fixate on Duo’s hole—

—Duo’s slightly open hole.

Her erection throbs, and a growl rises in her throat as she forgets her concern about Duo being restrained and presses two fingers into Duo. He gasps and stops fighting, spreading his legs even wider, though he keeps his feet on the bed to rock his hips forward, trying to drive her fingers deeper.

“Have you been preparing him for me?” Relena asks, meeting Heero’s eyes even as she revels in the slick, tight heat of Duo’s body and her cock strains to be buried in it.

Heero shakes his head. “That’s the heat,” he says. “You don’t need to prep him. He’s ready for you.”

Safe sex lectures and reminders over years and years of schooling have told her that she should always, always prepare an omega before knotting, even if conventional porn insists it isn’t necessary. She doesn’t want to hurt her omega their first time together.

Seeming to realize where her hesitation in coming from—or at least guessing well—Heero says, “Duo is prime.” The words crack across them like they’re a reminder. “He’s not a normal omega, and he’s suffering from Prime Disorder. His whole body craves being taken. So take him.”

It seems to take Heero genuine effort to hold Duo’s wrists apart from each other, pressing them to the bed. The bright, sharp scent of blood fills the air as Duo claws at the wrists, trying to pin him down.

“But—” she protests, even while the normal copper scent of blood seems to fill with the tang of ozone instead.

“If I don’t hold him down, he will tear apart your back. He needs you. Take him.”

It’s not a Command, but it could have been, and for the first time since she stepped foot in the room, Heero seems more himself than he has been. He is hungry, yes, and there is desire and need in him, but more important than his own desire is helping Duo. Helping his mate.

“Shouldn’t we do it together?” she asks, remembering the original idea, though it’s getting terribly hard to think around the cloying humidity that seems to be generating between them all.

“We will,” Heero says. “But knot him first and take off the edge. He needs to be knotted.”

It feels too fast even as every fiber of her feels like it’s straining to do what Heero is telling her.

“Alpha…” Duo whines in a tone she’s not only never heard from him, it’s one she never imagined he could make. “Need…”

“Take him,” Heero says, then meets her eyes. “I want to see.”

The thin thread she was hanging onto her self-control with snaps, and she yanks her fingers out more roughly than she means to. Duo cries out, but Heero snarls, “Take him!”

Her body lines up her cock with Duo’s entrance like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and then she’s thrusting in, burying herself in his tight, slick heat, and both of them moan loudly as they come together, Duo’s body welcoming her in like a perfect, velvet, pulsing sleeve. He arches his back, pressing his chest high, as if he can force himself down on Relena’s length more quickly, but she forces herself to keep her pace steady until her hips come to rest against his behind.

Anchoring his feet on the bed, Duo tries to get the leverage to fuck himself on her, and Relena shifts to try to get his legs up over her arms, to give herself the leverage and control back. He makes a sound of pure, visceral need, deep in his chest, even as his body clutches and clings to her. Already, she can feel the knot tissue at the base of her cock beginning to expand.

“Yes…” Duo pants. “More… now…”

“Take him,” Heero tells her, and since she has no idea why she’s resisting, she stops. Her body finds a natural rhythm, rocking into Duo with long, deep strokes, even as each stroke out requires a little more effort to clear the swelling knot, and each thrust in needs a little extra force to shove in as well. When she’s buried all the way in, she feels something at the end of Duo inside, like another barrier, another tight muscle that she’s almost sure she can get past.

Instinct takes over, and she leans forward, folding Duo’s lower half up to brace herself on the bed and pound deeper. Sounds of pure hunger and pleasure pour out of Duo as she takes him, mates him, drives in and fills him, interspersed with encouragement and pleading as he gets closer to his orgasm, seeming to match her own.

“Fill him,” Heero says, meeting her eyes. “Knot him. Claim him.”

Just as before, she can no more resist Heero’s directions as if they were Commands, even though there is none of the weight of an alpha Command behind them. As she gets closer, Duo descends into incoherent, animal sounds, and his attempts to claw at Heero to try and free himself redouble.

“He needs your knot to come,” Heero reminds her. “So knot him, alpha.”

The Command blindsides her, and her orgasm hits her like the blast radius of a bomb. Her knot goes from slowly swelling to fully engorged and locked in Duo between two thrusts, and she and Duo both throw back their heads, screaming out their orgasms as she pumps her come deep into Duo while he splatters his chest with thin, omega ejaculate.

She doesn’t know how long it goes on, just that it’s pulse after intense pulse—Duo’s body feeling like it’s actually sucking down her seed and welcoming it in, even as her knot traps her in place. When the fuzziness of the shockingly powerful orgasm finally settles, she realizes that she and Duo have been moved to their sides and he’s snuggled up, seemingly sleeping, against her chest, even as she’s still tied to him.

The satisfaction of the coupling clears, and she looks around for Heero, relieved when he steps out of the bathroom, at least, she’s relieved until she sees the bandages wrapping his wrists and forearms—specifically the blood that’s already seeping through them.

Leaning up on a forearm, she asks, “Are you okay?” Then, as if compelled, she strokes a hand over Duo’s hair, and adds, “Is he?”

“He hasn’t been able to achieve an orgasm in heat for nearly a year,” Heero tells her. “I think the intensity of it just knocked him out. I’ll be fine. I told you—omega saliva has healing properties that help. I just didn’t want him to tear you up like this.”

She can’t help but want to pull Duo in closer to her, protect him more fiercely. She hasn’t even given him a true mating bite, and already she knows he’s hers on a visceral level she can’t explain. “Is that… normal? For him to just…?” She’s not sure how to explain it. One moment Duo had been… at least recognizably still himself. Then he very suddenly had just been nothing but a ball of animal need.

“It’s been getting worse with each heat,” Heero admits, sliding back into the bed, easing his way into the nest until he’s pressed up against Duo’s back. “Once the heat really starts… he’s… not home anymore.”

They both stroke hands over Duo’s arm and side, as if they compulsively need to touch him. They probably do, if she’s honest.

“That must have been terrifying,” she says, her heart aching for them both.

“For us both,” Heero admits, and it says a lot that he can admit it. “I don’t know how lucid he’ll be when he comes around. I’m hoping that being properly knotted will bring him back to himself…”

But he doesn’t know for sure. He doesn’t say it, and Relena doesn’t need him to. It’s clear from the way his body curls around them, the pain in his eyes, the tenderness with which he touches his mate. Duo is not the only one who has been suffering from Prime Disorder, even if he’s the one who is actually diagnosed.

It’s suddenly no wonder that Heero’s back is a mess of scratches, scars, and slashes. If Duo is that out of it the entire time, if he finds no relief without a knot, it’s almost more shocking that Heero’s back isn’t a red ruin.

“We should rest,” Heero tells her. “His last heat was five whole days.”

Her heart feels heavy, imagining them both suffering through that incredible, insatiable need, and still finding a way to be together, still persisting with one another.

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to do this?” she asks. She doesn’t really want to, is terrified of the answer, but stress eases from Heero at the question, and a tenderness comes into his expression.

Lifting a hand from Duo, he strokes it down Relena’s arm. “We wouldn’t have offered if you were not truly welcome,” he says. “We… have actually… discussed it, over the years. Not… seriously, but it has come up.”

She and Duo have especially flirted outrageously over the years, walking the line between friends and tipping over into something more, while her bond with Heero remains something that neither of them have ever been able to truly put into words. She loves them both—they’re precious and important, irreplaceable people in her life, but she had never allowed herself to really dream they might have a place for her, much less a place like this.

“I’m glad you asked,” she admits. “That the chance came up, though I would never have wanted it like this.”

“Duo was prepared to die,” Heero says, his voice going tight on the words, and her heart aches with his at the thought. “He would not have agreed to this if we were offering less than all of us as part of the deal.”

We, us. She remembers when she noticed Heero beginning to refer to them as a single unit years ago, remembers thinking of how far Duo had brought Heero. She’d been happy for them, and a little jealous of them—both for what they had together, in a general way, and that they had each other. It’s almost hard to believe that she could hope to be included in that “we, us,” language, and hopefully soon.

As much as she treasures the chance to take and knot Duo on her own, that is not all she wants from this relationship, and that is not all she agreed to.

“Do you think we can actually fit both you and my knot?” she asks, feeling how tight Duo’s body is still around her.

In their arms, Duo stirs, pressing into her chest, wrapping his leg more firmly over her waist. “You’ll probably have to stretch me,” he says, a yawn interrupting him before he can continue. “But Heero likes it rough.”

Since Duo actually sounds like himself, she doesn’t waste time asking if he’s okay. They don’t know how long he’ll be lucid and aware, and it’s stupid to waste what is likely limited time with questions they can do nothing about if the answer is no.

“There’s rough, and then there’s having your most sensitive place being… squeezed,” she says, finally deciding on the least silly but also least graphic description she can think of.

Duo chuckles softly, then nuzzles into her chest. “Heero’s come just from me clawing him,” he says. “Trust me—the pain is not a negative for him.”

Relena looks past Duo’s head and is surprised to find Heero slightly flushed and looking away. She thinks she can blame the heat and the amazing sex on her incredibly intelligent response of, “Oh.”

Duo’s chuckle makes his body vibrate around her, and her knot eases. Almost instantly, she sees panic come into Duo’s eyes as she slides free of him, and he whimpers at the loss.

Pressing close against his back, Heero says, “Hush.” He lifts Duo’s top leg, and slides his erection in, as if it’s his home, where he belongs, and some of Duo’s panic eases from his eyes and frame.

Some, but not all. Because he knows—they both do—that Heero’s cannot bring Duo off, cannot knot him properly.

“Lena…” Duo whines, reaching for her. Heero intercepts his hand, guiding it back until he’s reaching behind him to hold onto Heero’s shoulders.

“We’ll help you,” Heero reassures, kissing at the top of his head before looking back up to meet Relena’s eyes. “Use your fingers to open him up more.”

Frowning, she asks, “Are you sure he can take both you and my knot?”

“I’m supposed to give birth from there,” Duo tells her, and there’s a slightly hysterical thread in his voice that speaks to how he feels about that idea. “I think your knot and Heero’s cock can fit.”

Swallowing, she nods, then drops her fingers down to find Duo’s rim.

“Please her as she prepares you,” Heero tells him.

Relena almost asks what he means, but Duo seems to understand. He nuzzles forward, kissing along Relena’s chest until he takes one of her breasts into his mouth, watching her through his lashes as he uses his mouth and far too clever tongue to worship and tease her. Almost before she thinks she should be able to, her length is hardening again, and she hurries to press her fingers along Duo’s rim.

It’s tight.

Tight as it is, it takes less pressure than she expects for his rim to give and allow her finger in. He moans around her nipple, which is a new sensation that she definitely likes quite a bit.

“Tug at his rim to stretch it,” Heero suggests, his own voice getting low and rough, which also goes right to her length. She didn’t know she could get hard this fast again, but with Duo and Heero’s scents filling the air, she finds herself especially turned on.

So she hooks her finger inside Duo and tugs. Duo moans, lifting his top leg up further, wrapping it back over Heero’s thigh to spread himself wider. The blatant display of submission and welcome thrills something deep within Relena’s chest, and it echoes in her length again.

In the space she’d gained from tugging, she slides a second finger in, and Duo whimpers, his own cock coming rapidly back to life, and his scent growing even thicker, richer, almost like she’s breathing in syrup. It should be off-putting but Relena finds she wants more.

“Open for me,” she tells him, her own voice sounding raspy in her ears as she uses both fingers to tug Duo’s rim wider.

He loses his grip on her breast, cock grown hard again, and lifts his chin, baring his throat for her, even as his arms scrabble at Heero behind him. A thread of copper joins the scents around them, and that metallic tang should also be an off-putting note, but Relena finds she wants to chase that thread, taste it on her tongue.

She slides in a third finger, presses all three of them next to one another, and pulls.

Duo cries out, writhing and bucking, though he makes no effort to get away. If anything, he’s seeking more, deeper, and when she glances at his face, she can tell that the heat has overtaken him again. His slick is practically dripping from his hole, spilling over her fingertips, and Relena has a moment to wonder what she’d like more—to watch Duo drink his own slick from her fingers, to taste it herself, or to feed it to Heero?

Tucking the mental images away—all of them are so good, and she should have plenty of time during this heat to try them all—she pulls her fingers free. Duo almost sobs at the loss, but before he can reach for her, Heero grips his arms, holding them in place.

Duo’s cock is so hard, it’s turning purple, and there’s a moment where Relena considers seeing how long she can hold out, how beautifully she can make him beg, but now is not the time. Instead, she shifts forward, sliding a leg—not just between Duo’s already spread thighs—but between Heero’s as well, making space for her as she moves her length into place.

Once in place, she doesn’t warn him, just presses in. She expects to have to put a lot of force behind the thrust, but Duo’s body only resists her for a moment before it seems to relax, and she slides in, right alongside Heero’s length. If she thought taking Duo before was indescribable, she’s entirely at a loss for words for how it is to be inside Duo, rubbing up against Heero. Duo howls as she slides in to the hilt, bumping the end of him, nestling the head of her cock right up against his cervix, right next to Heero’s. Just imagining how deeply they’ve stretched him makes her knot begin to warm and prepare to expand.

Meeting Heero’s eyes over Duo’s shoulder, she can’t help but lean and kiss him, wrapping both of her arms around them, clinging to Heero to press Duo tightly to her as she claims his mouth.

Duo whimpers as they begin to rock in time with one another, not one sliding out as the other presses in, but both of them rocking back till just their heads remain in Duo, before shoving back in, opening him back up, battering at the end of him as though they can fuck into his womb directly.

More copper flavors the air, but she and Heero are in perfect sync, and almost as if they decided to, they break apart to fix their mouths on the sides of Duo’s neck. Duo’s scent fills her sinuses as she rubs up against it—swollen and hot to the touch. She runs her tongue over it, tasting it and his skin, not sure if she’s surprised it doesn’t taste like his scent or if she expected it. It tastes like sweat and skin, and the texture reminds her of marshmallow. As their thrusts begin to pick up pace, she feels her knot beginning to grow. It throws off her and Heero’s rhythm, catching on Duo’s rim, forcing her to use more force with each thrust, and Duo’s voice keens higher and needier, his cock leaking copiously between them, the spend hot against her stomach.

Heero locks into one of his scent glands first—even though he doesn’t have the fangs to properly envenomate him—and Duo tightens around them, locking her knotting cock inside as if refusing to let go. Right on the edge of her own orgasm, Relena leans forward and strikes, burying her fangs in his scent gland, gleefully drinking down the rich, caramel flavor of him, even as he cries out, his body spasming around them, and his own cock spilling between them.

Reaching an arm down, Heero lifts his thigh high, giving them more space, and they trust even deeper, not finding the end of him as they have been, instead finding some deep, tight place they drive into as they both orgasm. Relena’s balls pulse with each ejaculation, pouring out her seed as if she can fill up Duo so much, his belly will swell.

Thinking about Duo with his belly swollen because of her—because of them—makes her balls tighten again, and another pulse of seed is poured into Duo. As she rides out the intensity of the orgasm, she can feel Heero’s cock pulse against hers, as he’s surely pouring seed deep into Duo too, filling him up, even though he must be in pain with how his length is trapped by her knot.

They all kiss between one another gently, tenderly, sharing the tastes of skin and scent glands and venom as they wait for Duo’s body to release them. It seems to take a lot longer this time than the first knotting did—and Relena certainly comes much more this time—but she can see awareness returning to Duo’s eyes, even as he settles between them, obviously worn out, but in good spirits.

“That was fucking amazing,” he says, his voice hoarse, and Relena realizes he’d been making noise almost the entire time they’d taken him. Surely if they keep this up, he’ll completely lose his voice by the end of his heat.

Heero slides a hand in between where Duo and Relena’s torsos are pressed together, and makes both Duo and Relena groan when he presses lightly.

“We’re filling up your womb,” Heero says, a possessive growl in his voice. “You’re going to look as pregnant as you are by the time we’re done.”

When he pulls his hand back, Relena can’t help but notice how clawed up his forearm is—streaked in blood from fierce talons—but he doesn’t seem bothered, and none of the cuts seem dangerously deep. There’s really nothing any of them can do for them at the moment anyway.

Between them, Duo purrs, even though it’s a little croaky sounding, that just makes it more endearing. “You’re filling me up so good,” he whispers, wrapping a freed arm around Relena to pull her closer, while one remains reaching for Heero, pulling them both in tight.

“I hope it doesn’t hurt,” Relena says.

Duo’s eyelashes flutter as he opens them to meet her gaze. “Feels amazing,” he says, and follows the statement with a giggle that she feels vibrate down through her knot.

“Thank you,” Heero says to her, nuzzling at the top of Duo’s head, letting his bicep serve as a pillow. “For doing this with us. For us.”

“It’s not like I’m not benefiting from this as well,” she reminds him. “I get the two of you as mates and get to have the children that I’m being nagged constantly to have…” Children with the two people she’s admired and loved so much, and never imagined she’d be allowed to examine that “love” too closely. Admitting how much she wanted them—more than just platonically—was simply too great of a risk before they invited her. Before they had a reason to need her.

Running a hand over Relena’s side, Heero says, “He’s really going to be pregnant by the end of this.”

It’s not precisely a reminder or a warning, but something of both. “I know,” she replies, watching his eyes, trying to understand the guarded look in them.

“You’re going to be stuck with us both,” he says, and it is a warning this time.

Instinct moves her as much as thought does, and she leans forward to claim his mouth again. He lets her in, submitting to her, even though it makes them both shift in a way that has him whimpering slightly. She feels both of their lengths pulse with another gush of come, and Duo moans softly between them as he must feel it too.

“If I had any issues with being with you both—permanently—any at all, I would never have agreed to this. Trust me to have made this decision not because I’m overly self-sacrificing, but because it was something I wanted,” she tells him.

Heero holds her gaze for another moment before ducking his head and nodding, relief welling in his eyes. “Good. I’m glad.”

“Me too,” Duo says, sounding almost drugged as he rubs his face into her chest. “You're ours now. And we’re yours. All three of us together for the kits.”

“I look forward to it,” Relena admits. And she really, really does.

Chapter Text

They basically don’t leave the room for three days. They have a lot of sex, and Duo seems to want to have someone’s length in him at all times. His periods of lucidity, however, get longer as the heat progresses, but the moment sexual activity begins again, he immediately starts to sink back beneath the heat haze.

When Duo’s heat finally eases, however, the change is almost immediate.

Duo turns onto his back, stomach up, a slight bulge from where she and Heero have filled it with so much come—that should not be as hot as she finds it—and laughs, a little hysterically. “Jesus,” he says through chuckles. “I can’t decide if I want a shower or sleep more.”

Unable to help herself, Relena strokes her hand over Duo’s belly. “I do have a wonderful tub.”

“Would all three of us fit?” he asks, half joking.

“We can,” she says, and watches his eyes get big. “It was a bath made for very large men to bathe with their partners,” she explains with a shrug. “All three of us can fit.”

Heero is playing with Duo’s loose hair—Relena doesn’t actually remember when that happened, but she’ll bet it’s an absolute mess now because hers definitely is—and says, “You won’t be able to wash your hair very efficiently in a bath though…”

“No,” Duo agrees, still smiling, like he can’t help it, and it makes Relena want to kiss him. “But I’m not in any shape to deal with it anyway. We can just twist it up and deal with it once I’ve been able to rest.”

In a show of physical affection that Relena has gotten used to over the last three days, Heero kisses Duo’s forehead before he gets up. He holds out his hands. “Do you need help up?”

Rather than reaching for him, Duo lifts up a leg, then lets it fall back to the bed, giggling, still a little giddy from the endorphins still clearly in his system. “I don’t think I can walk.”

Looking at her, Heero asks, “Mind getting the bath started? I can carry him.”

“Sure,” she says, but when she pulls away to go do exactly that, Duo turns and grabs her wrist—so lightning fast she actually gasps.

Duo looks apologetic for a moment, then nuzzles at her hand. “Stay,” he says.

A small smile curling at the edge of Heero’s mouth, he says, “I’ll go get the bath started. You two can cuddle,” he says. “I should have known Duo would still be clingy after his heat. He usually is.”

Not sure if she should apologize or indulge, Relena nods. “I’ll stay with him. If you grab my phone, I can ask the staff to come in and remake the bed while we’re in the bath.”

As Duo’s heat is dissipating, so is her tolerance for being in a bed that is honestly gross with spend, slick, and sweat.

Heero blinks at her for a moment before he says, “That’s… useful.”

As she settles back in next to him, Duo snuggles up by her side. “After the first round of this hell heat, we moved them to the guest room. It usually takes a couple days for me to stop being clingy long enough to really clean up the bed and whatever else we trashed during my heat,” he explains. “Having staff who can do it while we take a bath is… a little embarrassing—but not like your staff didn’t know what was going on in here—but also a relief.”

Giving into the urge, Relena kisses his mouth. Without the heat distorting his judgment, she more than half expects him to flinch in reflex, but he submits automatically, opening his mouth, welcoming her in. She is well and truly sated and the mouth-watering bakery scent of Duo’s heat has all but vanished, but she suddenly wants to pleasure him again. Stroking a hand down his side, she cups his shapely rear, teasing fingertips into his crack but not quite touching his hole.

With reluctance, she breaks the kiss and begins to pull her hand back, but Duo grabs her wrist again, holding it in place.

When she meets his gaze, his eyes are still clear, though his pupils are expanding. “You can touch me,” he says.

“Even though it was your heat, you must be tender…” she says, thinking about how many times they were all tangled together, both Heero and her knot locked inside of him, stretching him till she and Heero could press in together without bothering to stretch him in the slightest, even after hours of sleep.

“I’m yours now, too,” Duo tells her, and she half expects to see the heat-hazed eyes staring at her, but it’s obvious that Duo is still home and still in control. “If you want to touch me, then touch me.”

Giving him an unimpressed look, she says, “That assumption of permission has been a problem fueling alpha-entitlement—”

“I’m not the only one of us who likes things a little rough,” Heero says, making her jump. She had, only distantly, noticed the water was running on the bath, but she hadn’t heard Heero come back. “But more specifically, Duo likes when his partner manhandles him.”

Duo hums in agreement. “It’s not just in heat that I like my partners to be grabby and handsy,” he says. “If I’m ever not okay to be touched or handled, you can ask Heero—I will make it absolutely clear. In general, though, more touchiness is better. Intimate touching is the best, but not always appropriate.”

“If Duo wore skirts in public, he’d be an indecent exposure crime waiting to happen,” Heero says, with a fond teasing in his voice that Relena’s only ever heard him use with Duo.

Pink colors Duo’s cheeks adorably, but his protest isn’t exactly convincing when he says, “I haven’t actually tried to get you to fuck on a train.”

“No,” Heero agrees. “But I bet Relena would love to see you in the skirt.”

The pink blush darkens, and Relena can feel arousal beginning to churn in her loins, even if her cock feels well and truly spent. Even with Duo’s heart pheromones giving them both seemingly negligible refractory periods, she can tell even she’s a little chaffed.

But just because the flesh is weak doesn’t mean the mind isn’t willing. She slips her hand forward, sliding her fingers back into his crack, but this time not stopping till she finds his hole. Almost lazily, she traces the rim, teasing her fingertip right around the very edge of it.

“You’re still stretched enough that I don’t think you’d be tight if one of us took you by ourselves,” she realizes, almost shocked at how open he still is.

Duo’s eyes flutter closed, but the more-than-half-expected pheromone flood doesn’t come. Instead he hooks his top leg over her hip, giving her better access.

“Fortunately, hands are bigger than dicks,” Duo tells her, a wicked grin curling his mouth as he obviously sinks into the sensations.

Stepping around, Heero comes to sit on the end of the bed, right at Duo’s hip, watching where Relena’s fingers are playing with intensity. “I’ve never opened him up this much,” he admits, though he doesn’t seem bothered by the fact. “And he usually loves to be fingered when he’s open like this.”

Humming deep in his chest, Duo says, “It’s so fucking sensitive when it’s open like this.”

Heero puts a hand on Duo’s waist, then slides it up his ribs until he’s palming one of Duo’s pecs, kneading it. “You don’t even always get hard from being played with when you’re like this. It’s like having a human-sized cat who likes to be pet… if petting were finger fucking.”

The terrible analogy makes Duo laugh, and Relena dips her fingers in, but Duo does press into her touch and practically purrs, so she can’t quite blame Heero for the bad comparison.

“I look forward to learning what all you both do and don’t like outside of heat and ruts,” she tells them.

Humming again, Duo opens his eyes almost lazily. “And we’re definitely going to enjoy learning what you do and don’t like, princess.”

Given how they’re all covered in bites, bruises, scratches, and hickeys from the past three days, Relena thinks they’re already off to a splendid start.

They don’t immediately talk about the fact that Duo is almost certainly pregnant. Heero does mention that Duo’s post-heat behavior is much improved compared to his previous—unsatisfied—heats. Duo does remain clingy for the rest of the day, needing one of them in arm’s reach at least, but touching is better, but that only lasts the few hours they manage to stay awake, bathe, and eat a truly obscene amount of food—room service being another palace perk—before falling back in bed to sleep for a solid ten hours. When he wakes up, the intense need to be physically touching one of them is gone, though Duo is always tactile, he’s still aggressively touchy with her and Heero. Learning to accept that new level of physical touch—as someone who was raised with affection but strict decorum—is an interesting learning curve, but one Relena finds herself enjoying.

To be allowed to touch someone whenever she has the random impulse to do so, and to know that touch will be welcomed fully? It’s a different kind of intimacy, and while she remembers that early in their friendship, Duo was the only handsy one, she can see how Heero had been seduced to the tactile side, with Duo at least.

The cat comparison is amusingly adept, as well.

One change they notice almost immediately is that Duo begins to eat more. Considering how much weight he’d dropped from the Prime Disorder, it’s a relief to see it return with a vengeance. Duo and Heero move into her rooms at the palace, since they are the original monarchs’ quarters, but they’re also some of the most updated in the palace, and many places in it still feel more like a museum than home.

Having both Duo and Heero in her bed at night is amazing, however. They welcome her into their rhythm without seeming to miss a beat, and she knows it’s not going to be long before she forgets what it was like not to be with them.

Duo is still working, though he’s strictly running things from behind the scenes, coordinating security, providing feedback on mission proposals, and otherwise keeping himself out of physical harm’s way. He’d already been off the front lines because of his Prime Disorder, so it’s easy to keep in that pattern. Relena reworks her schedule to ensure she keeps the travel to the absolute minimum, and although they don’t publicly announce their mating immediately, rumors begin to circulate.

Fortunately, neither Heero nor Duo are public enough figures to hit the front pages, but the speculation that she’s mated is amusing.

It also seems to make both her mates more possessive.

One of the first ways she experiences that is the night she comes home, and Duo basically meets her at the door.

“Seems like you had a rough day,” he says.

It had been a budget meeting; they’re always awful. Rubbing at her shoulder, she says, “Not my favorite day, no.”

She expects Duo to let her in more once she closes the door behind her, but instead, he leans into her. She’s known for years that she’s taller than he is, but it’s still odd to realize it in quite this context, with him leaning up into her.

“Let me help you destress?” he asks, but it’s not really a question.

“Sure, just let me—oh!” she gasps as the moment she said sure, Duo drops to his knees, slides his hands up the back of her thighs, and his head up under her skirt. Before she can even finish her sentence, he’s nuzzling at her length in her underwear. Today’s skirt happens to be a loose one, so it gives Duo plenty of room to move, but before she can even really figure out what he’s doing, he’s sliding down her underwear, freeing her length, and then taking it into his mouth. She’s soft, so she easily fits, but feeling the warmth and wetness of him around her, she’s not going to remain soft for long. Especially not with Duo sucking on her as though he’s trying to drink her seed directly from her balls if he sucks hard enough.

As she hardens, he effortlessly takes her into his throat, and then works his throat around her. Wanting to see, wanting to watch, she yanks her skirt up to her chest to hold it out of the way. Duo takes a moment to blink before adjusting to the light. He doesn’t quite smile around her, but the skin around his eyes crinkles the way it usually does when he smiles, and he works his way to her base, so he’s effectively kissing the skin over her pubic bone.

She drives her free hand into Duo’s hair, always amazed by how soft and silky it is, even though she knows now that Duo’s far more low maintenance about his hair than she is. Running her fingernails over his scalp lightly, she makes Duo’s eyes flutter and he moans around her length.

That is a sensation. She does it again, and putting just a little more force into the scratch, and Duo’s moan deepens so much, she can feel it in her balls.

“You are so good for us, aren’t you?” she murmurs as he alternates between moaning and working his throat.

“He’s very good for us,” Heero agrees. His voice is so unexpected—though why, she’s not sure—she jumps, which makes Duo choke a little, but that actually feels incredible around her length, and before she knows it, she’s coming down his throat.

Despite being choked, Duo manages to keep her inside and swallow her down, and she’s quite sure that he’s quite smug about his accomplishment. When he slides off her, she uses the hand in his hair to yank him up and kiss him, chasing the taste of herself in his mouth. She can feel his smile against her lips, and she deepens the kiss further, still turned on despite the orgasm.

When she breaks the kiss, Duo licks his lips like he’s chasing the last of her taste and says, “Welcome home?”

Her underwear is around her ankles, she’s bare beneath her skirt, and her length is already twitching in anticipation again.

“I’m home,” she replies, smiling back and glancing past his shoulder to see Heero still watching in the doorway. “What do you say we reward our omega for taking such good care of us?” she asks, somehow sure that Duo had done much the same to Heero earlier.

Heero smirks back at her. “It’d be my pleasure.”

It’ll be all of their pleasure, she’s sure.

Duo is beating them both home regularly by the time a month officially registers. Not only that, but Heero tells her that he’s also sending Duo back to their rooms to take naps during the day, as he’s struggling with fatigue and exhaustion. Both have been ongoing symptoms of his Prime Disorder, and Relena can see the worry in Heero’s eyes to still see it, but she’s not sure that it’s the same cause now.

On an afternoon that she slips back to their rooms for a late lunch with Duo—dinner is going to be formal and much later tonight—she’s not terribly surprised to find him cuddled up on the couch with one of both her and Heero’s shirts clutched to his chest like stuffed toys.

Setting the tray of the lunch she brought up, she sets it on the coffee table before lifting the throw pillow Duo is using as a real pillow—it’s not one, but if he’s going to do this regularly, she should think about replacing it with one more suited to actual support while sleeping—and sets it back down on her lap, stroking a hand over his head. She’s not sure if the fact Duo barely stirs till his head is basically in her lap is a sign of his trust and comfort in their rooms or if it’s a side effect of the exhaustion that’s been dragging at him.

Still, when she strokes her hand over his head, he inhales deeply, then lets it out slowly, obviously waking but in no rush to do so.

When he finally opens his eyes, he gives her a tired grin. “Hey, princess,” he greets, raising his wrist to look at his watch. “What time—”

“Lunch,” she says. “I wanted to share it with you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, but he’s smiling, so she knows he’s pleased. Another thing she’s enjoyed learning about her new mates is that Duo loves to be pampered. It’s not something he usually does for himself, but he will let his alphas do it, and both she and Heero seem to enjoy it equally.

With a groan, he pushes himself up, and his attention focuses on the food almost comically. She doesn’t tease him—if only because Duo’s actually mentioned being worried about how hungry he is all the time now—but he’s quickly putting lost weight back on his frame, and she knows both she and Heero are relieved to see it.

Preparing for his appetite, she’d ordered enough for all three of them, and Duo inhales two portions plus picks at hers before he yawns and stretches again.

“Do you think it’s about time to take a pregnancy test?” she asks him, gathering the dishes into neat piles. There’s a dumb waiter across the hall that she can put them into to send back to the kitchen.

He turns to her, his eyes guarded for perhaps the first time since they mated. “We know I should be,” he says. “It’s been a month. If I weren’t, I’d going into heat again. If I weren’t, I probably wouldn’t be able to eat a third of this meal, much less keep it down.”

“I know—” she starts to say, but he shakes his head, cutting her off.

“You don’t,” he says, more sharply than she expects, and judging by the way he winces, more sharply than he expected either. He takes a sigh that heaves his shoulders, then in a more measured voice says, “Look, I’ve known I’m an omega since G and Howard got their hands on me. When eighteen came and went with no heat, I got myself checked out. The specialists I talked to had never seen whatever G dosed me with to suppress my heats. As far as they knew, if I was eighteen and wasn’t showing any signs of normal heats, I’d probably never get them. When I hit twenty-one, and there was still no sign of it… we just figured I’d never have them.” He shrugs as though it isn’t a big deal. Given that they now know he’s prime, Relena doesn’t see how that can possibly be true.

“I didn’t know,” she says softly.

Leaning back into the couch and lacing his fingers over his belly, Duo says, “No reason you would. It wasn’t something Heero and I talked to others about. Probably because of the suppressants, I didn’t ping a lot of radars as an omega to begin with, so we weren’t even getting the typical ‘when are you going to breed’ bullshit that you’ve had to deal with. When my heat did hit, and it was hell, and nothing we did made it bearable…” He trails and shrugs a shoulder again. “I was told my options were find a new mate or die.”

She had been told that, but now, seeing Duo recovering, being mated to him, she realizes that he had chosen death. Not just death, but a slow, painful death that wouldn’t just cost him his health, it would ultimately cost him his mind before he went.

Did you ever consider it before I offered? Did you even entertain the idea? Did Heero not offer to step back? The questions crowd at her mind, but she doesn’t ask them, mostly because she already knows the answers. No, he hadn’t considered it, probably hadn’t entertained it. Heero had almost certainly offered to let Duo go, to let him find another mate if it meant saving his life, but Duo wouldn’t have wanted to hear it. Duo had told him, with or without you, I’m going out. Are you going to leave me alone to do it?

And Heero had crumbled. She’s seen it with her own eyes, the sorrow and resignation in him, the helplessness.

Seeming to realize the silence has gone on, Duo sighs and says, “Anyway, I had a year to get used to the fact that my body wanted to be bred more than it wanted to live, and that unless I gave up the love of my life, I was going to die.” Turning to meet her eyes fully, he continues, “Then I found another love to share with him, am probably pregnant, and have had a month to realize I’m not only actually going to have a shot at living, but that I’m going to have those kids I thought were impossible.” The weight in his eyes, the heaviness of what he’s carried—and the new frightening future he has to look forward to—is almost physical.

Then it folds away, as if tucked behind curtains, and he quirks his trademark grin at her. “So if I need a little more time to process before I pee on a stick and get the official confirmation that we all already know is true… maybe I’ve earned it?”

Because the feelings filling her chest are overwhelming and she doesn’t know what to do with them, she leans forward and kisses Duo, softly, tenderly, because she needs to tell him she loves him—more than she would have ever imagined—and that she is looking forward to the children he’ll bear them, and she can’t wait to raise them with the three of them, and she loves them both more than she has words for—

Duo strokes her face gently and breaks the kiss with equal tenderness. “I know,” he says, as though she’d poured all of her emotions from her brain, into the kiss, and he had understood them. “We love you too.” He sits up a bit and places a kiss on her forehead for a change, then stands. “You’ve got work to get back to, and so do I.” He holds out a hand to help her up, and she takes it even though she doesn’t need it because she really will take any excuse to touch her mates. “Just give me a little more time, okay?”

Leaning forward, she kisses his cheek, then his mouth again, but just a peck this time. “Of course,” she promises, and means it.

Coming home a week later, she finds Heero and Duo in the bedroom, Duo naked over Heero’s lap, soft music playing. They are beautiful together, and she leans in the doorway, watching as Heero scratches at Duo’s head with one hand, while the other teases his hole.

She’s not sure which one of them registers her first, because Heero pauses and turns to face her at the same moment that Duo opens his eyes and focuses on her.

“Welcome home, princess,” Duo says, his voice lazy and languid. He looks like he may have been dozing, which is interesting considering his current position.

Crossing the room, she bends down to kiss Duo before leaning over to kiss Heero. “Are you teasing him or yourself?” she asks, warmth in her voice.

“Neither,” Heero says. “Just comforting him.”

Caught off guard by the simple response, Relena arches an eyebrow and looks down at Duo.

He rolls his eyes. “I was empty,” he says, sounding unusually petulant. “Having one of you inside of me feels good, even if it’s just fingers.”

Sliding onto the bed, she strokes her own hand over his back, and he sighs softly, a quiet, happy sound. “I have to admit… comforting isn’t what this looks like.”

As if following her train of thought, Heero clearly changes what he’s doing because Duo gasps. When she glances over, she can see the way he’s stretching Duo’s rim, and she can’t help but notice that Duo has spread his legs wider.

“Would you like Relena to take you, love?” Heero asks, his voice growing deeper, richer. He hooks his fingers and tugs up, hard enough that it looks like he might actually lift Duo up by his entrance. It makes Duo make a delicious keening sound that goes straight to her own length, hidden in her skirt.

“Yes…” Duo hisses out. “Wanna be filled.”

Before she gets up, Relena grabs Heero’s face and kisses him hard. “Keep your fingers in him,” she breathes against his mouth when she breaks the kiss, and heat builds in Heero’s eyes.

As if sensing what’s coming, Duo shifts onto his knees, putting his bottom up, presenting himself gorgeously.

Using his free hand, Heero grabs the back of Relena’s neck and pulls her in for another kiss, licking into her mouth, making her try to fight her way into claiming Heero’s mouth in turn. When they break again, Heero says, “As you command.”

Duo whines, curving his back into an even more gorgeous arc as he presses his rear higher. Relena gets off the bed, takes just a few moments to undo the zipper at the side of her skirt, and drops the skirt and her underwear to the floor before kneeling behind Duo. Slick is already beginning to drip down his taint, so Relena doesn’t hesitate, pressing forward. She slides into Duo, relishing both his moans and the feeling of Heero’s rough, slick fingers against her length as she does.

There won’t be any knotting with this joining—hasn’t been since Duo’s heat—but it’s delicious all the same, especially when she can lean over and kiss Heero as they take Duo together.

Duo comes long before she’s ready to, and she and Heero continue to tease him, stretching him, Heero adding another finger alongside her cock. The slick sounds of sex fill the room as Duo rocks hungrily back on them.

When Relena notices Heero dropping his hand to his own lap as he continues to finger Duo. With a little twisting, she adjusts them until Duo’s head is in Heero’s lap, but Heero can still reach across to finger him. Duo requires no instruction to swallow Heero down with enthusiasm, and Relena kisses him hard, drinking down the sounds he makes as Duo pleasures him like he gets just as much pleasure from it as Heero does.

Relena’s not sure if their orgasms trigger one another or if they all come at the same time, but she swallows down Heero’s moans, while Duo drinks his seed, and his body welcomes Relena’s spend deep inside.

The amount that Duo can sleep and eat becomes truly impressive. Heero has him dial back the amount of work he’s doing because he only seems to have a few hours of actual energy to do anything with, and a good deal of them are spent eating.

In fact, he gains back so much weight that the slightest bit of a pudge is starting to show by the end of the second month. Relena is smart enough not to mention it—sure that’s it’s still too early for Duo to be showing—but she somehow doesn’t realize she needs to warn Heero not to mention it.

They’re snuggled up in bed together, Duo warming Heero’s cock this evening after dinner—he mostly takes turns, but when he’s awake, he has a borderline compulsion to be filled by one of them lately.

Stroking a hand down Duo’s chest, Heero’s hand lingers over the slight swell.

“Showing already?” Heero says, in a teasing tone of voice.

Duo hisses at him, twisting in his lap to look back, but not irritated enough to unseat himself. “I am pregnant, you know.”

“We don’t, actually,” Relena reminds him. “You still haven’t taken a pregnancy test.”

Duo gives her a long enough look that she’s not sure that he’s going to agree, but his shoulders sag, and he sighs. “Okay, I’ll take the test.”

She does wait until he has to go to the bathroom to give it to him, but she and Heero have no time to be stressed and nervous. Less than a minute after Duo goes into the bathroom, he comes back out, showing them the test.

“It pretty much lit up as soon as I peed on it,” he admits.

The Pregnant result makes something in her chest loosen up as soon as she sees it. She can’t help it, she starts crying, and Duo curses.

“Don’t start, you’ll get me going—” It’s already too late though, and tears well in his eyes.

Heero sweeps them both into his arms, and there are tears on his cheeks as well, and it’s not long before they’re all laughing and crying and clinging to each other.

Duo refuses to see any of the previous specialists he’d seen, and although Relena can’t exactly blame him when they virtually all effectively told him Heero wasn’t good enough, it does mean that she ends up calling Sally to get a recommendation for an obstetrician who is familiar with male omegas, and preferably experienced with primes. It turns out that the “male omega” is easier than the prime part, and it takes about a week for Sally to track one down that she trusts enough to recommend to Duo.

They attend the first appointment together, partially because she and Heero are equal parts nervous and excited, and partially because Duo is not nervous, he’s damn near paranoid.

Every step of the process agitates him—“What the fuck are all these questions? Who the fuck knows this shit?” to the medical history forms. Having to be separated for a few minutes to give a urine sample—“Why? We already know I’m pregnant.” “Because they need an official test for your file.”—almost undoes him. The private room they’re shown to—“Why the fuck is this place so fucking sterile?” “Because it’s a doctor’s office.”

“Were people staring?”

“No.”

Well, yes, mostly because Duo’s agitation is giving off serious danger vibes, and his agitation is making Heero loom, which, yes, is attracting kind of a lot of attention. If they weren’t being them, however, she doesn’t think they’d be being stared at.

Duo’s agitated enough that the nurse takes his vitals twice before giving him a sympathetic smile. “First time?” she asks kindly.

Before Duo can verbally or literally snap at her, Relena grabs his arm and tugs him over to press her forehead to his.

“You are safe here,” she says calmly, staring him in the eyes. “And we are with you. This is both for your health and the baby’s, okay?”

He takes a deep breath, sighs, and after a few moments, he nods, and she lets him up.

“Yeah, first pregnancy,” he says to the nurse in a much calmer voice.

Checking his pulse for the third time, the nurse raises her eyebrow. “I wish everyone with white coat syndrome could get their heart rate to come down that easily,” she says.

When the nurse leaves after getting all the up-front information, Duo’s looking wrung out, but at least he’s not quite bouncing off the walls anymore.

“Thanks,” he says haltingly. “For being here with me, I mean.” He rubs at the back of his neck, which tugs at the collar of his shirt, flashing hints of his mating marks.

“We’re all nervous,” Heero says. “And your experiences with doctors not named Sally—even before this—weren’t great. We’re with you for a reason.”

Though Heero is very tactile and touchy in private, Relena is the one more comfortable with more public displays of affection, so she lets herself scoot onto the table with Duo and lets him curl into her, stroking a hand over his hair.

“What if something’s wrong?” he asks in a tiny voice.

“If something were wrong, I think there would already be signs,” Relena assures. “Besides, prime pregnancies are notoriously stable and healthy. If the condition is going to put you through such hell, at least the pregnancies tend to be stable.”

Duo rubs his face into her scent gland for reassurance. “I know.”

A knock at the door makes them all straighten, and a woman shows herself in, eyes bright, face creased with smile lines.

“Duo?” she asks. He nods. “May I congratulate you on your pregnancy?”

A tiny bit of tension goes out of his shoulders. “Yeah.”

Exuding warmth that makes Relena think of a grandmother she once knew, the doctor says, “I’m Dr. Castel.” She pulls up her stool and sits down. “It’s very nice to meet you and congratulations.”

“Thanks,” he says, a little hesitant, unusually reserved.

“According to your paperwork, you have two mates. May I assume?”

Nodding, he says, “Yeah, Heero and Relena.”

“Excellent,” she says with neither judgment nor a creepy kind of interest. “It’s wonderful to meet you both.” If she recognizes Relena by name or face, she must have gotten her reaction out before she came in. “Now, your last heat was eleven weeks ago?”

“Almost twelve,” Duo admits.

“Full first trimester, then,” she says. “With omegas, we’re able to measure conception from heat as opposed to non-designated people, where we’re guessing a little more based on last period. Would you mind lying back? I want to get the fetal heartbeat.”

Relena gets off the table, but stays close, and Heero crowds closer to her side. She takes Duo’s hand as the doctor prepares a wand as she instructs Duo to lift up his shirt. If Relena had thought Duo was starting to get a bit of a belly a few weeks ago, he’s starting to look well and truly pregnant. Relena wants to ask if that’s normal, but she doesn’t want to freak Duo out right after calming him down.

“All right, this will probably be a little cold, but let’s see if we can get a heartbeat.” Almost as soon as she touches the thing to Duo’s belly, a quick whooshing sound begins, and Dr. Castel smiles. “Ah, right away.” She does something, then nods, “Very strong, very healthy. Now…” She moves the wand, it crackles for a moment, then begins again. She pauses, looking at something on her monitor, then moves it on again. More crackling for a couple moments, then close to the Duo’s ribs, she finds the whooshing fluttering again.

“That’s… the baby’s heartbeat, right?” Heero asks, his voice tight, and when Relena glances over, she can see the banked awe in his eyes.

“It certainly is,” she says, pulling aside the wand, and Relena can feel her own giddy awe washing through her. She grabs a towel to wipe it off, then sets it aside, types in something on the computer, then pulls it over closer. “Now, I understand there were some issues with Prime Disorder before you conceived. Since you’re already at twelve weeks, I’m going to do an ultrasound as well. Are you ready?”

Relena doesn’t know that she is, and judging by how tightly Duo’s holding her hand, and when Heero takes her other hand, she knows he’s feeling things too.

“It won’t look much like a baby yet,” Dr. Castel says. “At the eighteen-week anatomy appointment, it’ll be much clearer.”

“I thought the anatomy scan was at twenty weeks?” Heero says.

“For non-designated women, it is. Omega pregnancies aren’t actually shorter, we just know more precisely when conception was because of a heat, so thirty-eight weeks of gestation is more standard, so we do the anatomy scan a little earlier too.”

Though she can see the screen, Relena doesn’t really understand what she’s seeing.

“Ah ha, there you are,” Dr. Castel says after moving the wand around several times, then she turns back to them. “Congratulations, Mr. Maxwell. It’s triplets.”

Later, the fact Heero is the one who passes out at that news will be absolutely hysterical.

Chapter Text

Relena has always struggled with her gender and her dynamic seeming to put diametrically opposed demands on her. As a woman, it’s her job to get married, be impregnated, be submissive. As an alpha, she should be controlled, commanding, and needs to knot regularly for optimal physical and mental health. She’s read other accounts from other female alphas, and she’s not surprised to find they often find they often feel the way she does. There are no correct paths to choose when her gender and her designation seem to be at odds with one another.

With Duo and Heero, however, she feels the overwhelming social demands put on her fall away. Duo is beautifully submissive with them, and as his belly grows—something that turns her on more than she ever imagined such a thing could—so does his need to be touched and handled by his alphas.

By the sixteen-week mark, he’s sporting a belly that many pregnant people would have at full term. Neither she nor Heero can get enough of it. They know—on a deep, visceral level—that what grows in Duo’s belly is theirs. The moment they’re in the room with him, they’re rubbing up against him, slipping a hand under his shirt to rub over the gorgeous swell of his belly, while their other hand is usually sliding down the back of his pants to find his hole.

At this point, Duo doesn’t even pretend to try to protest. In fact, if they don’t get to him first, he will often go to his knees, undoing pants with those shockingly adept hands of his, or diving under Relena’s skirts and dresses. He hungers for them, for their touches, for their seed, for their lengths. If they’re at home in their own quarters together, Duo will usually warm them—either with mouth or hole, or both, if he can. He seems to prefer both best—one of them in his mouth, the other inside him.

If the constant need for them upsets him, he shows no sign of it. It does mean he’s effectively given up pants in their rooms.

Something about having Duo seated on her lap, contentedly warming her cock, makes the part of her that is alpha very happy. She loves to have him snuggled in her arms, her hand slid up beneath his shirt, resting on the swell of his belly.

“Oh,” Duo says softly, his hand moving over it sharply.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, hooking her chin over his shoulder and putting one of her hands on top of his.

He pauses, then moves his hand quickly again. “No,” he says. “I think… I think I just felt them move.”

Relena’s breath catches, and Heero immediately sticks his head out of the bedroom, his acute hearing having apparently picked it up from where he was getting out of his uniform. He crosses the distance to them, stopping to kneel beside where they’re seated, staring at Duo’s belly intently.

Duo is the one who reaches out to him, smiling softly, carding his fingers through Heero’s hair. Relena will never tire of watching Heero become so soft and tender, so open when Duo touches him. He’s open with her, but not the same way he is with Duo, and she finds that it’s not upsetting to have him be more vulnerable with their omega mate than he is with her. She still gets to see him be more tender with her than she ever expected to, and although all three of them are mates, their relationships with one another are not all identical.

“You felt them move?” Heero asks.

Breath catching again is an obvious answer, and Heero reaches forward, but pauses before touching. Duo guides his hand forward, directing it to where he must have felt the movement. “I’m not sure you’ll be able to feel it,” he warns.

“Probably not,” Heero admits. “For non-omega pregnancies, partners can’t usually feel until after twenty weeks, but…”

They wait for a while, but nothing else happens, and Heero eventually sighs, moving to kneel between both their open legs, his ear resting on Duo’s belly.

“I can’t feel them,” Heero says. “But I can hear them.”

The quiet between the three of them is peaceful, and Relena finds herself marveling at how easy this is for them. It should be harder, surely? Yet she’s slipped into their relationship as though there were always a place meant for her.

Duo inhales sharply, drawing both her and Heero back to attention, but they’re not the only things coming to attention. Duo’s shirt only barely covers his length when he’s warming like this, and it tents obviously as he begins to get hard. He also tightened around her, making Relena’s own body begin to move from the contented arousal to active desire.

“Did the babies catch you somewhere unexpected?” Heero asks, a slow smile spreading across his features. It’s beautiful enough to nearly make Relena catch her breath, and her desire grows stronger.

“I don’t…” Duo trails off as Heero kneels up and takes his length into his hand. With his other hand, he pushes up, Duo’s shirt, and with Relena’s help, they remove it, leaving him naked on her, getting hard.

His belly isn’t the only part of him that’s been growing, and although they’re still small enough to dismiss as normal size for a man, but only if you weren’t familiar with Duo’s chest before he was pregnant. Heero kisses a trail up Duo’s belly while he strokes Duo to full hardness, then latches his mouth onto one of Duo’s fuller breasts.

With a soft cry, Duo melts back into Relena, letting his head fall back against her shoulder, opening his legs wider, as if offering himself. Relena moves one hand up to the other side of his chest, massaging the softer tissue there, twisting and pulling at the nipple, making Duo tighten up around her and pant as she begins to rock into him almost lazily. Watching Heero worship Duo’s chest with his mouth adds to the desire and heat building in her, and it builds even more when she feels Heero’s fingers bump against where her length fills him.

Apparently Duo feels it too as Heero runs his fingers around his rim, because he spreads his legs even further and murmurs, “Yes…” as though it’s a prayer.

Learning that it wasn’t only during his heat that Duo enjoys being intensely stretched had been delicious. Before he got quite this large, he relished taking them both at the same time. In truth, he probably still would, but the positions that is possible in become more restricted as their children grow. Considering he’s not even fully halfway through the pregnancy, it will probably become more challenging for her and Heero to take him together, but she’s sure they’ll get creative.

Just as they are now, with Heero pressing two of his thick, rough fingers in beside Relena’s length, and Duo reaches behind him as he cries out. He tries to rock into them both, tangling his hands in Relena’s hair while she fixes her mouth to his throat. He lifts his feet up, bracing them on the edge of the couch to give himself more control, and the sound of Heero’s hand stroking him gets more vigorous. Duo’s moans fill the air as he submits to them, spread and shameless, until he comes into Heero’s hand.

His orgasm pushes Relena over the edge, and she bites down on his throat, making him cry out again even as she claims him deep within.

As her aftershocks carry through her, Heero steps up onto the couch, pulling himself out—hard and obviously close—and Duo eagerly takes the head of his cock into his mouth. It only takes a moment or two of Duo sucking on the head and Heero stroking his length before he’s coming as well, and Duo drinks it down with relish.

When Heero finishes, Relena tangles her own hand in Duo’s hair, and turns his head, kissing him filthy and as deeply as the position will allow, chasing the taste of Heero in his mouth. He hums into the kiss, then whimpers as she slips out of him.

Heero strokes over Duo’s hair. “Don’t worry, love. We’ll take you to bed and fill you up again.”

Her own length twitching, Relena has to admit she’s looking forward to it.

By the twentieth week, they’re officially more than halfway there, and Duo goes on official leave. Relena would be worried about him not having enough to keep busy, but apparently the delay of his first litter has sent his nesting instincts into overdrive—or at least, that’s what the doctor suggests when she and Heero express concern about it. Duo is basically renovating their rooms to make them ready for the triplets.

Fortunately, he doesn’t need to do a lot of taking down or moving walls—the Peacecrafts were always considered a little bit of an oddity among royalty, and there are connected rooms specifically for young children in the royal quarters. Relena’s been using them as guest rooms, a home office, and even one as a lazy closet for some of the more elaborate gowns she possesses.

Duo doesn’t make any changes without at least running it past them first, but he does basically come to them with fully formed plans about everything he wants to do that would make it difficult to argue with even if they did disagree.

There isn’t much to disagree with, however. He actually—to Relena’s surprise—begins with overhauling Relena’s actual closet, adding space for his and Heero’s items, not actually taking up additional space, but reconfiguring the space so that it can be more efficiently used. When Relena expresses her surprise, Heero just grins at her and reminds her that Duo has always been exceptional with his hands, then says that Duo had been first brought onto the Gundam project for his mechanical skills, not his piloting skills.

“I didn’t know that,” Relena admits, not sure if she’s shocked or if she should have expected it. She knows that Duo does a ton of tinkering for various Preventers projects. “I would swear you’ve told me he’s the best pure pilot out of you.”

“He is,” Heero agrees. “In space, at least. Trowa might have him in atmosphere. But that’s not why he was hired to work on Deathscythe. Technically, when Operation Meteor was announced, he stole the Gundam.”

That’s not news to her, as it’s something that Duo will joke about among the right company. “I knew he stole Deathscythe, technically,” she says. “But I thought he was always meant to be its pilot.”

“No,” Heero tells her. “I’m not sure who was ultimately meant to pilot Deathscythe, but Duo did test pilot it, as far as I know—at least as far as he’s aware—G never meant for him to be the final pilot.”

“Huh,” Relena says, twiddling her fork in her salad as she considers that. “But he did tacitly give Duo permission to take Deathscythe, didn’t he?”

Heero shrugs, stabbing a large forkful of his own salad. “From how Duo tells it. I’ve never asked Howard, though I suppose I should.”

Thinking about it as she finishes up her own bite, Relena says, “Would he tell you the truth if you did ask?”

For a moment he blinks at her, then swallows and says, “Good question, actually. Maybe if we tell him we’ll name one of the pups after him, he’ll tell us?”

They both laugh, remembering Howard’s reaction to learning that Duo was pregnant with triplets. He’d made them swear not to name any of the pups after him—”Don’t you dare curse that child like that.” All of them agreed privately that the world could use more people like Howard, but they had promised.

The closet is the start, but apparently it’s just Duo being efficient, because overhauling the closet gives Duo something to do with the room Relena’s been treating as an extra closet. Which apparently is turn it into the home office—complete with desk spaces for all three of them to be able to use, though Duo and Heero’s are opposing sides of the same shared desk. When Relena expresses concern about that, they just tell her that they have a similar arrangement at headquarters, and it’s comfortable for them. It should feel tight, but somehow, with the way Duo has arranged it, it feels open and welcoming.

“Fei gave me a book on Feng Shui a few years ago,” Duo admits sheepishly when she tells him. “I’d like to say that it’s bullshit, but when I use the principles, rooms really do feel better.”

“That and you’re used to making optimal use of confined spaces,” Heero comments. Not that the “small” room Relena had been using for the gowns is, in fact, actually small by conventional definitions.

Duo laughs though, and says, “That too. Honestly, I mostly think that the Feng Shui stuff is mostly common sense stuff, it’s just codified. Where do you want privacy, where is it okay to be seen, how to make air flow efficiently in spaces. That kind of stuff.”

“If you say so,” Relena says. “Whatever you’re doing, it feels great in here.”

He beams at the praise of his alpha, and immediately sets about dealing with the big project—the nursery.

They agree not to find out the genders of the babies when they have the anatomy scan at twenty weeks. It does mean that they need to agree on at least three names, and if they want traditionally gendered names, then three for boys and three for girls. Relena likes the idea of making sure no matter what names they choose, the children have options to shorten them to have nicknames that are gender neutral.

“Naming kids after astronomical things is kind of a thing among Spacers,” Duo says thoughtfully one evening, lounging in Heero’s lap, warming him, hands resting on the apparently full-term swell of his belly while Heero keeps stroking it almost like it’s a worry stone. The touches don’t seem to bother Duo at all, and she’s grown accustomed to seeing Duo naked in their home in the evening. Seeing him bare the fullness of his belly even as he is filled by either of them both sends a possessive satisfaction through her, and also keeps her at a low level of background arousal. When she asked him, it does much the same for Heero. When Duo wants one of them inside of him, all he needs to do is ask, and they both seem to instantly find themselves at attention.

Relena does wonder—idly—if that’s something unique to a prime omega. If his ability to turn them on at the slightest inclination is unusual, but she doesn’t care enough to ask, and for what resources there are about prime omegas, the methodology behind them is far too tainted for her to consider them reliable. She can safely say, however, that Duo being pregnant in no way diminishes his alphas’ desire for him.

Leaning her chin on her hand as she pulls a notepad toward her, she refocuses on the topic at hand. “Do you have any you particularly like?” It’s not that Relena doesn’t have opinions, but before mating with Heero and Duo, being a mother had never been high on her priorities, and thinking about things like names for hypothetical children hadn’t been a game she’d found terribly interesting, even though she knew many girls who had when she was younger. “Mostly, I would just prefer not to give them names that set them up as obvious targets for bullying,” she admits, then winces. “Though, as our children, that may be a lost cause.”

Duo gives her a warm smile. “Bullying? A kid of ours?” he teases her.

She almost rises to the bait, about to protest that no child is exempt from other children’s cruelty, when she realizes he’s yanking her chain. “Oh,” she says, calming down, then shoots him a glare. He gives her an unapologetic smirk back. “Look, I went to school with a young woman named—very unfortunately—Gypsy. I think we can agree not to do that.”

Both Duo and Heero wince at that. “Yeah, I think pre-colonial slurs can be right off the table,” Duo agrees. “I don’t know, though—do you mind if we use a name that might be obviously Spacer?”

“You’re their mother,” she points out. “You are a Spacer. That is part of your heritage, so it will be part of the heritage of any of our children. If you’d like to honor that with names Spacers would like, I’m sure we can find some we all agree on.”

“Ares,” Heero says.

Duo twists in his lap. “Like the astrological sign?” he asks.

“Or the god of war,” Heero says with a shrug.

Narrowing his eyes to glare at Heero, he says, “You think you’re fucking hysterical, don’t you?”

Relena gets it, and is really glad she hasn’t actually taken a drink of her water, because she would have absolutely spit it out all over her notepad if she had. “The child of an infamously pacifist line and two war heroes being named… for the god of war.” She’s almost gasping as the helpless giggles fight to make their way out.

“Relena thinks I’m funny,” Heero says with triumph in his voice, which only makes her lose it harder.

“I could kill you, you know,” Duo says flatly.

Innocently, Heero offers, “Arial? You know, A-R-I-A-L?”

“That’s a font.”

Whatever modicum of control Relena had, she loses. She’s laughing so hard that she’s crying, and Duo’s, “Look! You broke her!” only makes it worse.

They don’t get back to the names that night, but that’s okay. They have time.

Duo does hesitate at theming the nursery without them. They agree that they need to have the nursery available for them, close at hand, and—at least while the children are small—it makes sense to keep all three together. Though he doesn’t mention what will happens when he gets pregnant next—which he almost certainly will, he is prime after all—she can tell he’s eyeing adding either connecting more rooms to theirs or sealing off larger parts of this wing of the palace for when the kids get bigger.

“Do we need a nanny?” Relena asks.

Both Duo and Heero seem to pull back from that, though nannies were standard for her growing up. Trying to be pragmatic, she gently reminds Duo, “Unless you’re going to completely give up going on away missions…”

It gets a grimace from him. “I… honestly haven’t thought that far ahead,” he admits, rubbing a hand over the belly that—at twenty-four weeks—now looks like he could go any day. He’s also basically completely run out of pants that can fit him with any amount of comfort. Even if they can stretch to accommodate the growing belly, they apparently keep slipping off his ass or giving him wedgies. It does lead to Relena getting to go maternity dress shopping with him, which is far more fun than should be allowed, though she refrains from teasing Duo about how gorgeous he is in a dress.

And he really is. Once the babies are born, she wants to put him in some of her gowns, because she can only imagine how stunning he’ll be.

In the meantime, the dresses are very cute on him and make him very accessible to them, which is a fact that she’s quite sure that they all enjoy, even if Duo is a little flustered about wearing the dresses at first.

“Have you considered if you’d like to nurse?” Relena asks, putting aside the nanny question for now. They have time, yet, no matter how close Duo appears to giving birth, though probably less time than usual. Triplets are usually born early, but the doctor said the fact that Duo’s a prime might mean he’s actually able to carry to term. They’ll have to see.

Duo’s chest is still unremarkable for a pregnant person, but he’s definitely developing noticeable breast tissue, which the doctor says is to be expected, and he’s oddly self-conscious about.

“Do I need to decide now?” he asks in a pained voice.

Pausing in looking through his dresses—he’d gone to pick up a couple extra today on his own—she looks at him. “Of course not,” she says, hoping she’s as soothing as she means to be. “You don’t need to make any decisions right now. You’ll need to make a decision at some point, but you don’t have to until the babies are here. And if you decide to try to nurse and hate it, then you don’t have to keep doing it. You’re not locked into a choice until your milk dries up.”

He stops putting away the dresses she’s been through and sits on the bed with a heavy sigh. “This feels fucking unreal still,” he says.

Since he’s just out of reach, Relena gives him his space and simply asks, “How so?”

“I… I knew I was an omega, okay?” he looks down at his hands resting on top of his belly. “I knew that there was, like, a chance I could get pregnant. But from the time I presented and G dosed me on whatever he did, I never had a heat. After a while, I guess I just assumed… I never would.”

“Did that bother you?” she asks, curious.

He lets out a soft chuff of laughter. “No, actually. Till my heat set in and I just needed to be knocked up, I didn’t really feel any yearning need to have kids or be a parent. Not sure if the suppressant suppressed that too or what, but I was okay with just being with Heero. I liked having a life where I wasn’t tied down by anyone other than him. With few restrictions, we could go where we wanted, when we wanted, with just a go-bag… I liked that.” He strokes a hand over his belly, staring down at it.

Setting aside the dress in her hands, she gives in and goes to sit beside him, not quite touching, though Duo doesn’t hesitate to lean over and rest his head on her shoulder as soon as she’s close enough. She puts an arm around his waist to make the snuggling more comfortable.

“And now?”

“Now we’re with you too, and that’s amazing in different ways, but we’re also going to have the kiddos…” He rubs his hand over his belly again. “Life’s going to change in ways I never thought it’d have to change, and not only is it going to change with these… I’m going to need to be pregnant again. I’m going to need more. It’s not like we’re one and done here…”

Putting her free hand over Duo’s on his belly, she asks, “Are you scared?”

“Yes,” he says with a laugh that’s thankfully not hysterical. “I never really thought about getting pregnant, much less the fact that getting pregnant would mean giving birth, and that’s fucking terrifying. But being a parent might be the scariest part of all…” His hand tenses under hers, and Relena can feel the stress in his frame. “They’re just going to give us these kids, Lena… Just gonna send us home with them—no test, no certification, just ‘you popped these out, take them home now!’” He gets to his feet and begins to pace. “Doesn’t that seem weird to you? Just hand triplets to a bunch of twenty-five-year-olds? What if we’re psychos?” He laughs again, this time sounding a little more hysterical. “Arguably, Heero and I are psychos! No one should trust us with children’s lives.”

Getting to her feet as well, Relena takes Duo’s hands in her own. “It does seem kind of insane,” she admits, squeezing his hands. “But we have one another, we have wonderful support structures. We have everything there is to give these children the very best life and very best chance.”

Looking into his eyes, there’s such deep pain that she doesn’t understand, and hopes she never will, but it makes her heart ache to see it in Duo’s.

“But how many kids have you seen who had everything and still ended up being screwups?” he asks her.

“I don’t think I’ve known any who grew up with the love and support of their parents who turned out that way,” she says.

It banks the fear a little, but it’s replaced by a look of such annoyance, she’s not sure it’s much better. “You know that’s not a guarantee, and that’s not what I mean.”

“I do,” she admits. “But we’re going to do what parents have done throughout all of history.” She waits a beat, and he looks at her with a raised eyebrow. “We’re going to love them and do our best. That’s all we can do.”

Duo sighs. “Everything about this is terrifying,” he admits. “But the most terrifying part is how right it feels. Everything about this should be weird and unsettling and make me uneasy. I should feel like my body isn’t mine, and gross, and huge, and—let’s be real, I’m enormous—but… it feels right.”

Since Relena’s almost certain that she would be feeling all of the horrible things Duo expects to be feeling if she were pregnant, all she can say is, “You are prime.”

He gives her another soft chuff. “I guess so, huh.”

“We have each other, and we will have them, and we will do our best. That’s all we can do,” she reassures.

There’s something almost unbearably sad when he meets her eyes again, but he says, “There are never any guarantees in life.”

“No,” she agrees softly. “Never.”

“I love you, Lena.”

It’s not the first time he’s said it, but it’s still new enough that it makes her heart flutter. “I love you too.”

Taking one of her hands, he guides it up to his chest, stepping into her—as much as he can with his belly anyway—and drawing her other hand behind him.

“Show me how much?” he asks.

Groping his behind and his chest, Relena leans in and kisses him as Duo’s hands come up to wrap around her shoulders.

There’s still more than enough to talk about, but it can wait. Right now, her omega needs physical reassurance, and that’s no hardship at all to give.

The nursery is finished with a sea-and-sky theme, constellations meticulously hand-painted on the ceiling by Duo. His belly continues to get larger till it’s genuinely comically large, especially on his still relatively slight frame. It’s so big and protrudes so far that it looks like Duo needs to support it every time he’s standing or walking.

As the due date approaches, Duo’s sex drive goes into overdrive. Not only does he constantly need one of them inside of him, but he usually wants them both inside of him. It gets to the point that when he has only one inside, he whines and keens with need, begging for more. The first time he’s begging so hard that he’s sobbing with need and Relena adds fingers, she’s almost shocked at how well he responds.

When Duo says he wants more, he means it.

The doctor’s visits are becoming more frequent, and the doctor kindly saves them the awkwardness of asking about Duo’s increased libido by telling them that it’s very common for omegas—in general—but male omegas especially, to seek extra stretching and penetration in preparation for giving birth. She also encourages them to indulge it as far as they feel is safe, since pre-birth stretching is closely associated with easier, shorter labors and births.

Watching Duo writhe and beg as they first double penetrate him, then fist him, then open him up with both of their fists is a lot hotter than Relena would have ever thought. That Duo prefers to have one of them in his mouth as they open him up so wide it seems like he will never close again just makes it even more amazing.

It probably should not be a surprise that Duo’s water breaks during sex.

Labor comes hard and fast, so hard and fast that Duo is unable to walk within minutes of his water breaking. They could rush him to the hospital—Heero can physically pick him up—but given how close the contractions are coming, Relena’s almost certain they’re not going to make it.

Fortunately, as they’ve gotten closer to the promised day, they’ve talked about their options, and a home delivery was one they discussed. Since it’s triplets, it would be better to be in a hospital, but Duo is prime, and if anyone can get through a home birth of triplets that are only a week shy of full term, it will be a prime omega. They call the doctor, then do their best to get things ready while they wait. Clean water to bathe the children, what is probably every single towel in the wing, hands scrubbed to surgical cleanness in the minutes they can take turns tearing themselves away from Duo…

Twenty minutes after Duo’s water breaks, Relena’s glad they made the call for the home birth, because the first of the triplets is coming.

The head is dark as it presses at Duo’s entrance, but Duo’s body gives, and between one breath and the next, a baby’s head is revealed. Only one more push, and Heero is gathering their first child—a daughter—into his arms, from beneath where Duo has knelt up to give birth.

“It’s a girl,” Heero says, sounding awed as he swaddles the child up, not bothering to cut her cord, just cuddling close to Duo’s side as his belly tenses and it’s clear the next one is coming.

The first two—two girls—are born before the doctor arrives.

“Next time, I think I’ll stay closer to the palace as your time approaches,” Dr. Castel tells them. She’s got three assistants with her, and while there seems to be a lull in Duo’s progression, she allows Heero to cut the first child’s cord, then Relena to cut the second. The assistants turn a corner of the bedroom into what’s pretty much a mini hospital room to do all the things that are usually done with newborns, such as cleaning them and weighing them. Heero’s able to give them the exact times of their births for the birth certificates. There’s one more child to come, but she and Heero are both looking glassy-eyed with joy and awe.

“I think the last one’s coming,” Duo groans, kneeling back up. It’s both terrifying and somehow wondrous to see his entire belly tighten and get smaller as he gives birth. Already, it’s back down to less than half the size it was only an hour before.

It’s amazing to watch the blond head of hair arrive last—both of their daughters have darker hair, though it remains to be seen if they’ll end up with Duo’s warm brown or Heero’s darker one—but the child comes with as much seeming ease as the first two did, and the last is a boy.

A boy who doesn’t cry at all, but opens up eyes that are Duo’s pure purple, even though the shape makes her think more of Heero.

Duo demands to cut the final cord—”I gave birth, I get to do the fun part now,” he gripes at them, and they’re all teary-eyed now.

“Have you decided on names?” Dr. Castel asks as the first daughter—with dark hair but with Relena’s own bright blue eyes—is handed to Duo to attempt to nurse while they wait for the placentas to pass.

They had a list. A pretty long list, actually. In the end, they’d chosen names they all liked, but told Duo that as he is the one giving birth, he gets the final say.

“Oh, that’s fu—” Duo cuts himself off, looking down at his daughter, who has apparently latched. “That’s weird, but she’s on.”

“As I’ve told you before, if you can do the first three days of nursing, that would be optimal—”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Duo says, as he relaxes into the bed more. The look on his face as he looks down on their daughter is one that makes Relena reach for her phone and grab a picture. The sound of it being captured makes Duo look up at her, but his eyes are soft and he’s breathtakingly beautiful, so she takes another one. “Don’t forget to get pics with you and Heero and the kiddos,” he says, voice soft and warm. “I want to have pictures of you guys too.”

Clearing her throat, Dr. Castel says, “Names?”

Duo smiles, nods at the daughter Relena’s still holding. “Florentina—Tina.” Relena’s heart catches in her throat, because Florentina had been her favorite—Florentina roses are her mother’s favorite—but she hadn’t wanted to be pushy. Then Duo looks over to where Heero’s holding their son. “Orion.” Heero’s eyes go wide, his smile becoming tremulous as he cradles their son with such aching tenderness, it brings the tears back to Relena’s eyes as well.

Finally, Duo looks down at the daughter in his arms. “Penelope. Penny.”

“Perfect,” Relena says, leaning in to kiss him. “And you’re amazing.” His mouth opens to her automatically, soft and receptive, and tasting of happy tears. When she leans back, Heero leans in to claim his mouth again, and Duo opens to him just as willingly.

The triplets are a month old, and Duo is still nursing, but nursing triplets is effectively a full-time job. Both she and Heero have parental leave, and though Relena will likely have to return to work before Duo and Heero need to—politics don’t take a break just because she’s stepped away, and her desire to make this world an even better place for her children has done nothing but renew her passion—she’s going to take every single day she can. She’s not sure how long Duo will be able to keep up with the nursing, but Dr. Castel had told him that full-time breastfeeding will delay his heat from returning.

As a prime, it’s about the only option he has to delay his heat, so Relena suspects he’ll continue to nurse until he either can’t tolerate it anymore, the children wean themselves, or until he decides he’s ready for more.

In the meantime, watching Duo hum softly to one or two of the twins as he nurses them in the rocker is quickly becoming one of Relena’s favorite sights.

“I thought you were supposed to be sleeping,” she says softly into the early morning quiet.

“I was,” he says, stopping in his rocking to raise his face for a kiss as she crosses the room. Relena obliges him happily. She’s not surprised when she hears a shuffle behind her, and sees Heero with Orion in his arms. She’s relieved that the triplets can be told apart at a glance just by virtue of their hair colors—Penny’s the warm caramel of Duo’s, Tina’s being Heero’s dark chocolate, and Orion having Relena’s own wheat-blond.

When Heero had expressed surprise that all three of the triplets seemed to have features from all of them, Dr. Castel had explained chimerism to them, a phenomenon where children acquire genetics from more than two parents. Apparently it’s very rare—usually only seen in multiples—for most women and omegas, but prime omegas have been particularly documented with a high incidence of chimeric children when more than one mate is present.

It had made tears fill Heero’s eyes again, to be reassured that he wasn’t imagining his own features in the triplets. That he was equally their father as much as Relena is. Since Duo’s hands had been filled, Relena had crossed the room to reassure him that he was absolutely the triplets’ father, and that he was both hers and Duo’s. Apparently, he’d had some deep-seated fear that only Relena would be the father and he would be pushed aside.

“I heard Rion when I got up,” Heero says.

Considering Rion is sleeping soundly in his arms, Relena doubts it, but she doesn’t call him on it—yet. Her mother says that you can’t spoil an infant.

“Five minutes after I got up?” Relena asks him, her voice soft in the early morning stillness, but she’s smiling.

“You’ve been standing there watching me for twenty minutes,” Duo tells her, grinning up at her.

She blinks back down at him. “No, I wasn’t.”

The fact he just grins back at her tells her that she was, but that doesn’t change the fact that Heero probably heard them up and not Orion. Instead of dignifying Heero with a response, she steps to what’s become her rocker, to Duo’s left. Before she can sit, however, Duo says, “Take Tina.” At this point, they’ve all become experts at handling the infants with one hand as they hand them off to one another. “Come get Penny, and give me Ri-ri,” he adds to Heero.

“He’s sleeping,” Heero warns, but he waits for Relena to finish taking Tina before he switches Penny for Rion.

“Yeah, and he’s got as big of an appetite as his sisters combined,” Duo says, chuckling. Sure enough, as soon as he pulls Rion into his arms, he begins to sleepily root and finds Duo’s chest. Relena thinks if Duo were able to go longer between feeding the triplets, his chest would be fuller, but as it is, he doesn’t have a lot of time to get filled up. It’s something they might enjoy later. Currently, all of their libidos have taken a backseat to the needs of the infants.

They’re all tired but happy, settling into life with their new family. It’s exhausting and terrifying and full of more love and wonder and joy that Relena ever knew she could feel.

“Thank you,” she says into the quiet. Both Heero and Duo turn and give her curious looks.

“You’re always welcome,” Duo says. “But for what this time?”

“For giving me a chance.”

At Duo’s right side, Heero says, “Thank you for saving us both.”

“Thank you for loving us both,” Duo adds.

Heero’s not the only one who cries more easily now, and Relena finds herself wiping under her eyes to catch the tears that spring there. “Thank you both for loving me.”

“How could we not?” Heero asks, his voice soft and tender enough to warm her down to her toes.