A/N: This fic is like... what's even going on here? Anyway, introducing Christophe.

After getting his hair cut two days later, Kyle was bored. So, he decided to explore the castle. Alone. It was midafternoon, he had just had some sorbet as a snack, and now he was having a rather pleasant time traversing the marble hallways and peeking into different rooms, investigating some while leaving others. He was definitely lost, not that that was a problem. At any rate, after about an hour of this, he came across a pair of double doors that were very different. They were white with gold accents, and in the center of each was a coat of arms that he wasn't familiar with. It wasn't overly complex, just an ornate shield with two crossed swords behind it, but it was enough to give him the impression that whatever was behind them was possibly restricted in some fashion. So he hesitated as he put his hand on the knob, debating for just a second before he reasoned that he was going to be the Queen of Lossúrea next week, so no place in the palace was really off-limits to him. Even the thought was silly! After all, this place was his home, wasn't it, as everyone kept telling him.

Still, he was quiet as he slowly turned the doorknob and crept into the hallway. It was carpeted in here, with many closed doors, a window at the end before the hallway turned right. There was an almost professional feel to the place, so Kyle wasn't surprised to see that the gold placards on the doors included military titles. So this was where they had their offices. Well, that was boring. Disappointed, Kyle planned to only cursorily look around, that is, until he heard the muffled sound of someone's voice from down the hall. The person wasn't quite yelling, but they were loud and seemed upset, so Kyle couldn't help himself: he snuck down the carpeted hallway on his soft slippers, trying to figure out which office the deep male voice was coming from.

He discovered it easily: it was the first office on the left after he turned the corner. The placard read:

WENDY TIDEBREEZE
DEFENSE MINISTER

As he stood there to the left of the door, nearer the window, he soon heard another voice, a female one. It was severe yet even-toned, serene and low in comparison:

"I understand all that, Christophe."

The male let out a sound that was something between a grunt and a growl, which eventually devolved into a groan. Properly shouting now, he said, "Don't sit there and tell me you fucking 'understand.' You don't; you can't." What he said next was in a low, deep voice, and though Kyle couldn't make out everything, he did hear the following: "…Right in front me. And now you won't even let me tessutiaf her. You're fucked, Wendy. Fucked."

Just as Kyle was committing that word to memory, he realized there was no more sound coming from the office. He knew he should get out of here before he was caught, and he really was going to, that is, until he heard the female speak again, her voice slightly bitter now: "I'm not saying I know what it was like personally. I'm saying I sympathize with you." A moment later, she added more coolly, "Look, I'm not doing this because I don't care about you, or because I don't think your pain is valid. And contrary to what you may think, this is not a decision I made hastily. I put a lot of thought into it and came to the conclusion that—"

The male interrupted her and said, "That I'm a monster. Right? Just say it." He wasn't yelling now. "See, you're not even going to argue it. Because you know it's true. I know. Everybody knows." He went on to say, "But the funny thing is… War isn't civilized. You can send our troops over there in our fancy little outfits, with our shiny swords and bows, but it doesn't matter. It's still the same old shit. You of all people should know better than to think you can dress shit up like that."

"That comparison doesn't make any sense," the female said in such a low voice that Kyle could barely hear it.

"'Sense,'" the male echoed cruelly, letting out a low laugh, one that grew before dying down. Spitting, he growled, "Your sense is a fucking sham. Go fuck yourself."

Not a second later, Kyle heard heavy footsteps coming to the door, and it was then that he knew he was in trouble. Shit, shit, shit! Run! Now! Go! But as much as he yelled at himself, he couldn't seem to make his legs move; he was frozen there by the window, seeing the door open in slow motion, his senses assaulted by a deluge of alpha scent now freed from the confines of the room. From the door stomped out a huge male in a white uniform, with dark skin and short brown hair. He closed the door hard behind him, not quite slamming it, then took two harsh steps into the hallway before he froze and his gaze fell upon Kyle, his nostrils twitching.

They stared at each other for one long, frightening moment, during which Kyle barely breathed. He just stared up into the male's deep hazel eyes, seeing the flecks of amber in them almost pulse. His scent was like the wind, a force that could only be endured, not reckoned with. And that scent howled, crying the sound of nature itself: the woods, the pines, the things that lived there. It was so high elven in that regard, so painfully familiar, but it wasn't truly high elven – it was mixed with something else, something foreign but not unknown. That part was darkness, shadow, the strange scent of the mountains, where volcanoes roared and lava surged from deep within the black earth. As a whole, this living scent, this marriage of woods and flames, was so potent, so wild, that it flooded Kyle's pores, cutting to his very core: it penetrated his throat and his cock and his mind, swallowing him, devouring him, relishing him. Immobilized by fear and incapacitated by arousal, he stared into the male's wild eyes and twitching face, only able to wait for what would come next.

That all lasted two, maybe three seconds. Then, as if torn from a dream, the male suddenly reached out for Kyle's arm, holding his bicep forcibly as he continued staring into his face. The look in his eyes was nearly insane now, the amber shifting erratically, like an earthquake. Vaguely, Kyle was aware that the male was shaking, and Kyle must have been too, his mind registering little beyond that smell. Everything else was bathed in the thickness of fear, his heart burning as it raced in his chest. He was afraid. And he was hard, dripping.

What happened next was shocking. The man didn't hurt him – in fact, he let Kyle go, his own fear drenching his fire like a storm that starts too soon, too fast, and then all at once. That fear took hold of him, and in that desperate moment, he took a few staggered steps back before suddenly ramming his skull into the wall with all his might. He did it again and again, his power wavering only by the sixth or seventh time and only slightly then. At that point, the door flung open and the female erupted into the space like a black tornado, her dark hair soaring, her eyes searching. First, they fell upon Kyle, and that was when her gaze became even more alarmed, darting frantically to the male to her right, who was kneeling on the floor now, continuing to beat his head into wall, though much more weakly now, the decrescendo desperate, agonizing. There was a huge hole in the wall now, with numerous dents beneath it, riddled with smears of pink blood. The dents went all the way down to where he was now, resting his head in a paltry one as he shook in waves, his breathing tattered.

But the female didn't go to him. Instead, she turned back to Kyle, demanding in a shaky voice, "Did he touch you?! Did he hurt you?!"

"N-no," Kyle said instantly, without even thinking about it.

For perhaps a second, she stared at him with huge dark eyes as if she were waiting for him to say "yes." Then, suddenly, she took his arm and said, "We need to get you out of here. Now." She didn't even say "Your Highness."

Kyle was so frazzled, so confused, that he just let this female – who was clearly an alpha too – basically drag him down the hall and out the door, taking him down the marble hallway to a small, windowless lounge.

After locking them both inside, she breathed hard for a moment. The anxiety was still strong in her eyes, perhaps even stronger now as she scanned his body, looking for injuries. It scared him. But then he remembered the hard sound of that male alpha's head colliding with the plaster and the wood, and he said, "What about him? You left him there! He's hurt!"

"Are you okay? He didn't touch you, did he?" the female alpha asked again.

"No! I told you he didn't!" Kyle bellowed. "Go help him!"

Swallowing, she implored, "Please stay here, Your Highness. And lock the door."

Nevertheless, she left slowly, tentatively, her eyes fixed on him as if he might suddenly shout out in pain. It was bizarre, incomprehensible, and he just stared at her as she left, reminding him to lock the door before her monochrome form disappeared into the hall.

Kyle stood there in that little beige and lavender room, trying to process what just happened. Distractedly, he sat down in the nearest chair, his mind revisiting the scenes like a flipbook, barely looking at one before another appeared. There was that scent, that tremendous, all-consuming scent; those angry words; that big hole in the wall; the grip on his arm; that poor male alpha. All of it was marinated in confusion: why did he bang his head like that? What was wrong with him? Why wasn't he allowed to go to Larnion? Why did he want to so badly? Why did he say he was a monster? Why did he smell like that?

He didn't have blond hair, Kyle realized. And though his skin was dark, it wasn't dark like the other sun elves'. The undertone of his skin was different, not rosy, but not cool, either. Not like the female's… And she was strange too. She didn't look like a sun elf, but she smelled like one, like the strength of an ocean's waves, the black depths of the sea in the night, her pale skin as white as the moon. Kyle had never seen a sun elf like her. Did she just dye her hair? Was that it?

She had told him to lock the door. His eyes veered to the doorknob, but he didn't reach up to lock it. She really thought that alpha was dangerous, didn't she? Dangerous enough to come running here and what, attack him? Kyle wondered if it was because he was obviously biracial, probably half-drow elf, half-high elf. But that wouldn't make him dangerous. And anyway, what the hell was he even doing here, hundreds of miles from Larnion and even farther from the Shevelesk Mountains? What was he?

Kyle could admit to himself he'd felt threatened; he could admit he'd been scared. But he wasn't a damsel in distress, damn it. He could fight an enemy off if need be. He could burn someone's fucking face off if it came down to it. So the question was, was that man truly a threat, or was he just a deranged madman, more a threat to himself than others?

One way or another, Kyle was going to get the answers to these questions.

Just then, the door whooshed open, and there was Bebe, her blond curls everywhere, panic all over her face. Out of breath, she looked at Kyle with huge brown eyes before saying the inevitable: "I just heard! Sunlight, are you okay?!"

"I'm fine," Kyle said calmly, praying that that would convince her. "But what about that… male?"

The fear in her eyes shifted then – it was still there, but now there was pain filling them, pain and desperation, so deep it was almost uncomfortable to look at.

"What?" Kyle asked. "Is he okay?!"

In a quiet, trembling voice, Bebe said, "I'm going to go to see."

"Let me come, maybe I—"

"No," she immediately said, which shocked him, being so sharply denied by a servant. He just stared at her. "I mean – oh, sunlight guide us. Forgive me, Your Highness. Please, please, just let us deal with this. We need to be the ones to deal with this."

Honestly, it hurt hearing that. It hurt being told that yes, he really was an outsider here; these really weren't his affairs; this wasn't his kingdom, his home. While he'd known that all along, hearing it from someone he thought he might be able to trust was like a slap in the face, and he felt so stupid and wounded as he heard himself mumble, "Alright."

Once Bebe left, he scrunched up the fabric of his deep blue robes and stared at the fanciful pattern of leaves on the pale carpet. They were so ornate, unlike any leaves Kyle had ever seen, and he'd spent his whole life in the forest. He was the forest.

And so was that alpha.

xxxxxxxx

Eventually, Kyle managed to find his way back to his rooms. There, he moped for a while, lying flat on his back in bed with the blinds closed, only his bedside lamp on. In his mind, he ran over the events of the past hour, resentment creeping into his heart. He was still determined to get some answers, and he would absolutely flip out if he were denied them, if these people continued to act like he didn't have a right to know, even after such a crazy thing like that happened. The more he thought about this, the more he wondered if this was some weird sun elven cultural thing, as in, having someone flip out like that was probably something they would want to deal with quickly, to sweep under the rug. To sugarcoat. And isn't that exactly what that alpha had said? That you can't sugar coat war?

Nor could you sugarcoat your ethnicity. It didn't matter if you wore the Lossúrean military uniform or your Larnionian robes – you still didn't smell like fucking fruit, and everybody knew it.

But Kyle had never smelled a high elf, half drow elf before. And he wanted to smell him again. Just thinking about that smell was making him hard again. Goddess, all these damn alphas here and their scents. It made Kyle really, really anxious about going into heat here. Sometimes he really wished he'd have been born an alpha or at least a beta, that way he wouldn't have to deal with this shit. And as an alpha, he would've been able to rule his people, instead of literally having to pawn himself off. It wasn't fair. He would've been such a good ruler too.

But at least he'd been able to do something useful. He'd just have to keep reminding himself of that, otherwise he'd never survive here.

He spent perhaps another fifteen minutes going in drab and miserable circles with his thoughts, as if he were stirring a big cauldron of gray sludge, making no progress as he tiredly moved a wooden spoon through the mixture. Then, just when he was started to get annoyed again, someone burst through the two double doors, flooding the safety of the rosy room with an almost too-pungent scent. It was so much more intense than before, raging like rapids, like the crash of white waves upon Kyle's senses, igniting and enveloping him. He knew exactly what it was.

And, naturally, there was Gregory, with his long hair slightly disheveled and his face absolutely panic-stricken, as if he'd just seen the Goddess herself and she'd told him he sucked. He rushed over to Kyle on the bed, leaning over him and touching his shoulder. The anxiety in his blue eyes was apparent, which was so unnerving in conjunction with the smell and the unsolicited touch, the very first time they had ever touched.

"By the sun, I've been looking all over for you!" Gregory exclaimed in Lossúrean, completely out of breath. "Are you alright?!"

Kyle wanted to huff and turn away from him, wanted to say, "What's it to you?" and scowl, but Gregory, his blue eyes troubled, nearly frenzied, was hovering over him like a cloud in that military uniform, drenching Kyle in his scent like a rainfall, and as much as Kyle wanted to, he simply couldn't react. The most he was able to get out was a stunted "fine" in Larnionian as he breathed shallowly, wishing Gregory would either get away from him or have his way with him. In the end, Gregory did the former, though only after Kyle reiterated twice with more conviction that he was fine.

As if it were a struggle to do so, Gregory moved back somewhat, though he was still only a foot or so away from Kyle, so close it was stupefying. Despite the protective nature of Gregory's scent, despite this upsetting context, the proximity still felt horribly sexual, which was further distressing. It was distressing just seeing Gregory so upset; it was distressing being looked at like that period; and it was distressing having such an obvious, ridiculous erection tenting his robes. Breathing shallowly, Kyle tried his best to be discrete as he pulled the fabric of his robes into his lap, slowly moving backwards, deeper into the bed. There, he sat up, cross-legged, the folds of fabric in his lap effectively hiding his arousal. Nevertheless, he still felt wet, anxious as those blue eyes stared at him so worriedly, so intensely. Yet even with this additional distance, Kyle still felt like he had jumped into a pool of water, his foot touching the silt bottom as he was completely encapsulated by it, the surface so far off. He couldn't decide if he wanted to breathe or drown.

In a quiet, almost shaking voice that revealed real worry, Gregory inevitably asked, "Did he… touch you?"

Shouting in Larnionian, Kyle said, "No! Why do I have to saying this?! Nobody fucking touched me, okay?! And even if they did, I'm not a doll, okay, I can fend for myself. Goddess' leaky tit, what's the deal with you people?! I'm an adult, I can cast a fucking spell, for fuck's sake!"

Gregory just went on staring at him, his eyes wide, but increasingly opaque. He was breathing almost normally again, albeit perhaps somewhat deeply. "I trust that you can," he conceded. "I'm just trying to understand what happened."

"Well, weren't you just there? Didn't they tell you?" Kyle spat out cruelly.

"I spoke with Wendy briefly, but she said she didn't see what prompted it. So then I went to that room to find you, but you were gone."

Letting out a long sigh, Kyle was about to relent and just tell him, but then he had a better idea. "First, tell me who he is. Because I know he's not a sun elf."

Gregory didn't respond immediately. His nostrils flared slightly. Kyle narrowed his eyes, determined to get an answer out of him, especially if Gregory came in here thinking he could just squeeze Kyle like a sponge and get the information he wanted.

Carefully, Gregory replied: "His name is Christophe. He's a soldier in the army."

"He's not a sun elf," Kyle stated.

"No, he's not. He's biracial. Half high elf, half drow elf."

"Alright, so why is he here?"

"There are biracial elves here in Lossúrea, you know."

"So, what, you're saying he was born here?"

"Well, no. He found his way here from Larnion."

"'Found his way here,'" Kyle echoed back. "What do you mean, he fucking walked here?"

"I'm not sure of the word for it in Larnionian; we would say grazelldiaf. It's when you accept rides from strangers to get somewhere. Though for him, it's not quite that he had a destination in mind; he was just wandering."

"Oh. Havrensyl."

Gregory repeated the word to himself, as if to commit it to memory, and Kyle had to look away from him then, scowling and blushing from the way that made him feel. It shouldn't have made him feel anything.

But that also made Kyle remember something. And though he probably should have just waited and asked Pip, he nevertheless asked, "Hey, what does tessutiaf mean?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"Oh my Goddess," Kyle groaned, rolling his eyes. "Just tell me what it means!"

"It means 'to avenge.'"

Hm…

Then Gregory said, "Well. Now that I've answered your questions, would you please tell me what happened? And how you ended up in that part of the castle in the first place?

Kyle narrowed his eyes at him. Honestly, he didn't want to tell him, but… he supposed there wasn't much to tell.

"I was just… exploring when I heard some people arguing. Then that alpha came out, looked at me for a second, and just started hitting his head on the wall. Don't ask me why, because I have no idea."

Pursing his lips, Gregory furrowed his brow fully now, in thought.

"What?" Kyle said.

"It's concerning," Gregory said absently.

"No kidding."

"Did anything else happen?"

Severely, Kyle said, "No."

"He didn't say anything to you?"

"No."

"What did you hear them talking about?"

Kyle pursed his lips, staring at him, invaded by Gregory's thick scent and unwilling to bow to his whims, as much as his body seemed to want to bury his face in his chest, to be wrapped up in him.

In the end, his response was as succinct as possible, spoken between his teeth: "Just that he wants to go to war." Then, he remembered something he was sincerely curious about: "He also said that everyone knows he's a monster. What was that all about?"

Gregory looked at him and pressed his lips together, his brow furrowed as if he were thinking about how to word something difficult to a child, which was suspicious, irritating. Finally, he said, "He has a low opinion of himself. For being biracial, that is. He's exaggerating, of course – we're very welcoming of biracial elves, of all elves. But that's how he feels."

"So then what, is he crazy or something? Why the hell would he bang his head like that?"

Gregory's voice was very grave as he said, "I don't know."

A deeply pensive look on his face, Gregory touched his chin with two fingers, rubbing it in thought, before he stood up and walked away, his back now turned to Kyle. Only then was Kyle able to let out a sigh of relief. The scent still consumed him as it did the whole room, but each additional foot of distance was like a blessing of sanity now. He thought Gregory would leave, but instead, he walked over and stood before the window, staring at the curtain, saying nothing.

As Kyle reflected on the past few moments, he grew irritated thinking of how Gregory had weaseled all that information out of him. Was that fair though, he wondered? Maybe he should've taken some shred of solace in the fact that Gregory was clearly worried about him. Kyle could smell it, after all. Goddess, could he smell it, he thought, closing his eyes and letting himself inhale a deep breath of it. Nevertheless, his pride, ever present, bludgeoned him: more than any animalistic whims, he hated having these people think he was so incapable, especially if it had something to do with his gender. With Gregory specifically, that was even worse. If Gregory had come here because he thought he had to check up on his 'property', then Kyle would really like to know so he could scratch his eyes out. Yet… what else could it be? And did Kyle even have the right to be angry when he'd signed up for this?

Presently, however, it was hard to know what was going on at all, harder yet to know what was going through the King of Lossúrea's head. Even worse, the room was silent now, allowing Gregory's scent to take center stage. Kyle squeezed his eyes shut, wanting to interrogate Gregory more about that Christophe person, but despite the distance between them, he struggled to form a coherent thought. All he could do was breathe that scent over and over, getting almost drunk off it. He crossed his legs, wishing he could squeeze his nostrils shut too, but Gregory could turn around any second and see that. It was torture, this scent, of rushing water in summer, of the heat of the sun and stars in August, watching over the land like an eternal vigil. And after experiencing Christophe's scent, it was too much for Kyle, becoming increasingly distracting as Gregory stood there in silence for no fucking reason.

"Look, I need to… get ready for dinner," Kyle suddenly said, his tone emphatic, stressed. His face was hot, his throat tight.

Gregory glanced over his shoulder, not quite looking at Kyle. "Ah. Right," he said, not moving for another second or so. "I'll… speak to you later then, I suppose."

To that, Kyle said nothing; he just stared at the white fabric of Gregory's uniform as he partially turned around and nodded before making his way to the door. Kyle resented that he was savoring the last Gregory's scent, breathing it in through both his mouth and nose, as if he couldn't get enough of it. When the door shut with that solid sound, Gregory's scent still hung in the air, and Kyle savored it until it was but a wisp of its original strength. It left him both relieved and disappointed. Mostly the latter, honestly. He wished he could store all these alpha's scents in bottles so he could experience them privately.

Given the context, it was hard not to think of Stan, that safe mossy scent of the woods. And on top of everything, thinking of Stan now was enough to make Kyle feel like a crumbling stone statue, bombarded by the ages of sadness and arousal and longing like hell, never once satisfied in his twenty-one years. Not once. It always boiled down to his hand, his imagination, and other things. Those things were kept in a box locked with a magical seal, for which Kyle now scrambled off the bed to retrieve, his erection bobbing as he shuffled off to the little study where it had been placed on the desk, as if the damn thing housed writing utensils and stationery, rather than his small yet precious collection of sex toys.

There wasn't a question in his mind about which he was going to use: the blue glass one with the ridges, the diameter of which was perfect without presenting a problem, the length long enough to be reminiscent of a real dick. He was shaking, struggling to concentrate as he cast the spell to open the seal, which took him two tries to get right before he grabbed the thing and scurried off the bathroom. The place felt too huge to really be private. He ran over to pull the curtains shut, rolling his eyes at how absurd it was to have such a huge window in a bathroom. Next, he scrambled out of his robes and underwear, damningly conscious of just how absurdly wet he was between his legs, and then went over to the sink, making sure to look at the dildo and not his reflection as he ran water over the thing, annoyed that it took a few seconds for the water to get hot.

Now with a warm glass dildo in hand, Kyle hurriedly yet genteelly lowered himself to the cold tile, getting on his hands and knees. He took a shallow breath before pressing the dildo's fat head against his slick hole, rubbing it over it and exhaling deeply, squeezing his eyes shut as they rolled back into his skull. For a few moments, he just tortured himself like this, rubbing the toy over his entrance as his thoughts veered from Gregory leaning over him like a canopy, all encompassing, to the crazy look in Christophe's deep hazel eyes as he grabbed his arm. Kyle thought of how he'd smelled, like the wildness of the woods, the fervent glow of lava in the mountains that he had only ever imagined. Something unconfined, ferocious, wooden and beastly. There was familiarity in that smell, yet it was its incertitude that was arousing, the darkness of the woods at night, a place that hid creeping eyes. It was that that led Kyle to imagine that alpha appearing out of the darkness and pinning him to the leaf-strewn ground with. Licking him, tasting him, growling as he grinded against him, as he took him.

That was when Kyle began pushing the dildo inside him, his ass so hungry, so wet for it that it slid in with utmost ease. Breathing shallowly, trembling slightly, he fucked himself in little, excruciating increments as he gradually pushed it deeper inside of him. His thoughts shifted then, now focused on just moments ago, when Gregory had leaned over him with his entire body, shadowing Kyle in that scent that was so much different yet no less powerful. It was like being dunked in the middle of the sea, engulfed by crashing waves as the sun bore down all around him, searing the surface of the water and transforming it into a bed of crystal. As white and as gleaming as the sun was, as much as you couldn't look straight at it, there was something so affectionate about its power, about the warm way it lit up the world. Yet to be close to it was to burn, and Goddess, how Kyle wanted to be burned alive in the fullness of its raw, unmitigated strength, how he wanted that sun to hold his arms down and force his tongue into his mouth, his knot into his body.

And if Kyle had to be here in Lossúrea, then he at least deserved that, didn't he? Didn't he deserve to be pushed down, his Larnionian robes shredded as he was impaled by that cock? Didn't he deserve to be filled to the brim with royal seed, to have it locked inside him by the swell of that knot and the clench of his own muscles, clenching as tightly as they did now, around this toy? By the light of the moon, he did, and so he fucked himself harder, deliberately now with the dildo, angling it such that every time it surged back in, it hit his prostate with enough impact to force a strangled moan from his mouth. He hadn't even touched his cock yet; he was torturing himself still, remembering these scents, now going back to the scent that was safe to orgasm to, the one of home and heat and fleece-like softness, hearing in his head the gruff caliber that voice so rarely exhibited. It wasn't even words; it was just that voice hot on his ears, dancing on his skin lasciviously in a way it probably wouldn't, but that didn't matter for this; it never did. At least for that alpha's cock, Kyle had a visual, and that was what he imagined going inside him as he plastered his forehead to the tile, now using one hand to pump his own cock with frenetic desperation, the other using the dildo to fuck his ass with correlative ferocity.

So much was building inside him now, so much that he was almost frightened to reach its apex. As he ascended further, Gregory resurged in his mind uninvited, the memory of his scent blossoming in his nostrils, the feeling of being beneath him still so alive on his skin. It was as if the king were here, holding him down on the bathroom floor, his long fingers entwined in his hair, tugging on it as he fucked him. Those wild, wet sounds would be even more obscene than this, and then, the girth of Gregory's knot would force its way inside him, binding them tighter even than a magical seal. Kyle would gasp, breathless at the invasion, daring himself to squeeze around it as the king began pumping his prosperity into the depths of his body, getting it in there good and deep, sealed off by the knot.

That royal seed would be so hot, so warm inside his body, oh Goddess, and then Kyle himself would come as he was coming now, so hard it destroyed reality, his life-source ripped from him as it drained from his cock in crushing waves, pummeling him with such force that he moaned and sobbed as he fucked himself through it, his eyes watering as he survived the storm of pleasure. It went on and on, the ejaculate spurting from his cock as he pumped it dry, his ass squeezing around the toy as if he were holding onto it for dear life. When it was finally over, reality, as usual, set in too hard and too gray: Kyle stared straight ahead at the white baseboard at the bottom of the gray-blue wall, unsure where to even begin with feeling appalled with himself. His hand was still around the base of the dildo. He removed it at once and slowly stood up, grabbing the edge of the sink with his hands, the toy dropping into the faucet with a stupid clanging sound. As if waking from a thousand-year dream, he raised his head to look at himself in the mirror, torn between thinking his rosy cheeks made him look more attractive and thinking he was completely pathetic, completely depraved, just sad and gross.

What the hell was wrong with him?

After getting dressed (in a pair of linen trousers he'd only ever worn once and a deep green paisley shirt), Kyle went out to discover Bebe on that lavender settee. As she stood and bowed to greet him, he noticed she seemed somewhat worn out, and with that, the afternoon's earlier events came to mind.

"Is he alright?" Kyle asked her.

"You mean Christophe?"

"Yes."

"Oh, yes, he's fine."

Kyle frowned, and something shifted in her brown eyes, making her look distressed in a very specific way.

"Well, is he?" Kyle asked. "Because it looked like he was trying to break his head open."

"No, he's fine, really." She was trying to sound convincing, but her gaze had drifted off, falling to the yard bathed in afternoon sun down below. "He's still a little disoriented, but he didn't hurt himself too terribly. It's nothing a couple of stitches won't fix." Upon returning her gaze in his direction, she tried to smile.

"He hasn't said why he did it?"

She mirrored his frown then, perhaps even more so. "No," she replied. "He's still too shaken to speak. So we're thinking it might have been something like a seizure."

If anything made sense, Kyle supposed that would be it. He let out a long, deep breath before asking, "Can I go see him?"

"Oh, I – I don't… I don't know about that. He's struggling enough as it is in the infirmary; he's a little weird about people touching him, especially his head…"

Being denied made Kyle ashamed he had even asked. In turn, he felt irritated, as if his royalty weren't even being acknowledged anymore. Maybe he shouldn't have asked Bebe to treat him like a normal person. Deep down, however, he agreed that it probably wouldn't do any good for him to go visit Christophe in the infirmary. As he considered this, he belatedly realized something: it seemed like Bebe knew Christophe in some personal capacity.

Thus, he asked her, "So, you know him? You're friends or something?"

"Aha, oh, no, no," she replied, sounding amused. "He's my son."

"What? No he's not."

She seemed confused, which was even more absurd, and Kyle felt almost silly having to spell it out to her: "He's not a sun elf. He's not even half sun elf."

"Oh! That's because he's adopted."

"Oh." Well, now Kyle felt dumb and embarrassed. He swallowed and said, "Well, uh. That's nice." But that sounded sort of bitchy, so he hastily added, "I'm uh, regretful he hurt himself. It was quite… intense."

In her eyes now, he could identify a mother's pain for her son, heartache not only that he was hurting, but that he had hurt himself, and that she didn't know why. Kyle hoped the answer would come to light soon and that it wouldn't happen again. Now that he knew Christophe was Bebe's son, he felt even more invested in his recovery. The memory of the wild moment in the hallway paled before the image of stitches being sewn into Christophe's skull, his jaw clenched as he endured his scalp being mended. Kyle just hoped it wasn't his own scent that had triggered a seizure in him. Even so, he supposed that was possible, in which case, he'd just have to make peace with never getting to talk with the one other Larnionian in this palace.

As they walked to dinner, Kyle brought that up to Bebe: "How old was he when you adopted him? Because Gregory said he hitchhiked here from Larnion."

"Thirteen, I think. No, wait, it was early autumn, so he must have still be twelve."

"So, what, did you get him at a… what's it called, an orphanage or something?"

Laughing, she replied, "So many questions! But no, he was never in an orphanage. He just stumbled into the palace one day and was so downtrodden from his journey that we took him in. And he's been with us ever since."

"You live here in the castle? Just with him?"

"And with my husband, yes."

"What does your husband do?"

"She's Lossúrea's Defense Minister. You saw her earlier, actually."

Now this was even more surprising. "Really? That was her? With the—" But Kyle stopped himself before he said "black hair." Maybe that would be rude. "I mean, the one that was with Christophe. The female."

"Yep, that's her," she said, sounding almost amused again as they stepped into the private dining room.

Kyle tapped his lower lip as he sat down, ripped from his thoughts only when the waiter came by to ask what he wanted to drink. Barely even thinking about it, he heard himself order coffee. As he sat there in silence with Bebe, he felt conflicted. Now more than ever, it felt so obvious to him that he was an outsider here, not just in that he was different, but in that he had had a whole life in Larnion while the sun elves were here having their whole lives in Lossúrea. Yet now, he had been snatched from Larnion and was pathetically hoping (and so far, failing) to craft some semblance of life here in Lossúrea. The problem was that these people already had their own lives, and they didn't need him in it. They just needed his body. He was a vesicle.

It hurt, and it was humiliating.

"Are you alright?" Bebe asked him gently after the waiter left again, having placed the coffee and cream on the table.

"I'm fine. But… When he feels better, I want to talk to him. I want to know that he's okay, or at least see it, because I was the one who saw him hurt himself." He said this firmly – he refused to hear something like, "Oh I don't think that's a good idea." She wasn't his mother.

But Bebe didn't deny him. All she did was smile weakly and say, "I'm touched by your compassion for him, Kyle. I'll let you know when he's feeling better and we can arrange something that works with his schedule." Smiling in an almost bittersweet fashion she added, "I have to warn you though: he's a boy of few words. You'll be the one doing most of the talking."

And that was fine. Because Kyle's problem was that he never shut up.

xxxxxxxx

Over the weekend, the palace felt increasingly frenetic as last minute wedding preparations were made. Kyle spent Saturday afternoon with a designer, who matched his red wedding robes with an extravagant ruby necklace and earrings. Then on Sunday, Bebe showed him the chapel were the wedding would take place and told him all about Lossúrean wedding traditions. It was a huge bore, and Kyle might have fallen asleep if it weren't for the fact he was trying to work up the nerve to ask her when he could see Christophe again.

Then, he had the amazing idea to ask her if he'd be at the wedding rehearsal tomorrow.

Her eyes seemed worried, but her response was an upbeat, "Hopefully!"

Kyle wanted to probe more, but he didn't. He just waited until the next day, when everyone was in the chapel, and looked around for Christophe but didn't see him anywhere. That was the one thing he had to look forward to today. So here he was, having to deal with this horrible shit. Right now, he was in the back of the chapel, wearing his wedding robes, which were a serious crimson color made of many layers with gold accents. It was really too hot for the coastal environment, and he was sweating a little, though he knew that was really due to nervousness. The good thing was, at least all these layers would hide his erection.

"Everything's going to be fine," Bebe said, touching his arm. "I promise."

Kyle glanced at her, seeing how beautiful she looked in that pale green dress. It made him feel weirdly silly, though he wasn't entirely sure why. She just seemed so serene and composed all the time, like someone who could get through anything with grace, whereas Kyle just felt like a ridiculous, anxious kid.

It didn't help when he stepped out of the room and saw Gregory down on the altar, in a beige suit. They made eye contact for one horrible moment, and Kyle froze, his eyes huge as they stared into Gregory's crystal blue ones. He averted his gaze at once, looking anywhere else, but there were a hundred tanned faces on him, and he felt like he did the first time he ever saw Gregory but so much worse. He didn't even know how he started walking again – maybe it was the Goddess bestowing some mercy upon him during this nightmarish time. Either way, he somehow managed to proceed down the aisle, getting ever closer to that smell that consumed him like freezing water on his bare skin. The whole chapel felt impossibly stuffy, that single scent rising above the rest, taking it over. He felt almost drunk, his head fuzzy and confused, simmering with the beginnings of arousal. When he made it up to the altar and stood in front of Gregory, he looked anywhere but his face. In the end, he stared straight ahead, such that he was looking at the front of his suit.

The whole thing felt surreal. The priest was there standing next to them, and Kyle tried to concentrate on the words he was saying in Lossúrean, his gaze having drifted up to the tan skin of Gregory's neck, fixating on his Adam's apple. He wanted to bury his face in that neck, to sniff it to his heart's content, taste it, lick it. And as he was thinking this, he felt so impossibly hot and aroused but also sort of sick, the walls of the church beginning to swim as if he were underwater. Trying to stabilize himself, he blinked a few times and wiped the sweat off his forehead, but that did nothing, and just a few seconds later, the corners of his vision began to darken until it was gone entirely, at which point, his limbs went totally lip and his body crumpled.

He did not collapse onto the marble altar, however.

Before he regained his vision, he was distantly, hazily aware of a lot of clamor, as well as the fact that he was enveloped in someone's arms. That scent was strong now in the same way it had been in his room the other day, enveloping him like a magical shield. When he was able to see again, he saw the beige fabric of Gregory's suit and he realized he was leaning onto him for support, his legs still so weak. Though his mind was still fuzzy and confused, he knew that he hated what was happening. At this point, he could now vaguely make out Gregory speaking to him in Larnionian, asking him if he was okay, and he did his best to stand on his own again, using Gregory's chest as leverage to push himself up, and he thought he had managed to do so, but his feet were still so unsteady. Goddess, he was so fucking hot, sweltering, feeling like he might vomit, and it was at that point that he felt his feet being lifted off the ground as he was carried by none other than the King of Lossúrea himself.

Maybe if he hadn't felt so sick and strange and hot, he would have died of mortification as he was carried up the aisle and into the back room again, where Bebe was already scrambling to get him out of his wedding robes. Actually died, as in, he wouldn't even be alive to register the fact that Gregory was still here, permeating everything with his stupid alpha scent and seeing him stripped down to his underclothes. But he was alive, which was how he knew what an incredible relief it was to be out of those clothes and feeling a cool wash cloth on his head a moment later. He was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, the hardness of reality taking shape now in his mind. They were talking about him as if he weren't even there, saying he must have gotten overheated in those robes, stupid shit in their stupid language. Worse, Gregory was still hovering not even a foot away from him, and it was intolerable, so humiliating he wanted to scream.

Bebe crouched down and began saying soothing things to him, sounding so worried as she gave him a glass of water, which he just held for a moment in his hand, his other hand keeping the cloth on his forehead.

"I need him to leave," Kyle murmured to Bebe, barely even aware that he was speaking Larnionian. "Please, make him go away." He sounded as desperate as he was.

Gregory was hesitating, Kyle could sense it.

Hanging his head, he shouted in Larnionian, "Go away!"

And though Gregory was slow to do so, he did listen, eventually, reluctantly. From the corner of his eye, Kyle watched those legs slowly move towards the door. Each second the king remained in this room was him rubbing salt in the wounds of Kyle's shame. It was brutal, made him want to scratch his face off and bury himself in the dirt forever, yet it also made him want to cast down a torrent of fire on Gregory's icy form, melt his imposing stature down until it was a few meaningless puddles of water. When the door finally shut, Kyle exhaled deeply, hanging his head and squeezing his eyes shut, the taste of defeat and shame burning down his throat, in tandem with the last wafts of Gregory's scent.

"I'm going to kill myself," Kyle said in Larnionian.

In an impossibly gentle voice, Bebe carefully said, "Sweetheart, I don't know what you're saying."

He glanced at her. "Sorry," he said in Lossúrean.

"Don't be sorry," she said. "Are you alright? Did you get too hot up there?"

Kyle let out a bitter, hollow laugh, staring at the carpet. "Yes. I thought I was going to vomit."

Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back, letting it rest against the wall. On the other side of it, was everyone in the chapel, who would never forget what just happened, never forget that Kyle was weak, a broodmare for the crown who fainted at the drop of a hat. Who needed rescued. Who couldn't even stand on his own two feet. The fact that he had to face them all again tomorrow seemed impossible, cruel. He wanted to burn this place down, burn this whole sun-drenched kingdom down. That was the only thing that made him feel better, imagining this whole damn world going up in flames of his own creation.

"I can't go back in there," Kyle said.

"Well, that should be alright. Here, why don't you drink some water, hmm? It'll make you feel better."

He didn't do so immediately. But a few moments later, he sighed and took a few sips.

That night, he slept extremely poorly. He would fall asleep only to wake up again from nightmares of the forest burning, of towns being washed away by mudslides, of humans putting elves in cages. At the end of one dream, Kyle had come to Lossúrea to beg for assistance – he was walking down the long driveway of the palace, and far in the distance, he could see Gregory up on the veranda, his hands on the banister, looking down on him. Looking down on the Princess of Larnionian, because he was the King of Lossúrea, and he held the keys to save Larnion.

While it humiliated Kyle on an unimaginable level that he had to do this, to turn himself over as chattel to the ruler of this impressive kingdom, he continued walking regardless. Yet though he could see the condescending glint in the king's eye clear as day, he never seemed to get any closer to the palace – rather, the driveway seemed only to stretch out longer, the distance between them extending no matter that Kyle was now running, desperate to save his people, his kingdom, his best friend.

Soon, however, Gregory stood up straight and turned around, the movement so slow that Kyle watched it happen in extended horror. That was when the world seemed to tighten, shorten again, and when Kyle looked around, he saw that the lawn was ablaze in blue flames, not destroyed but seemingly reinvigorated by the fire, the manicured shrubbery singing a melody that resounded like chimes through Kyle's head.

When he opened his eyes to the pale darkness of his room, that sound remained, just as fluid and beautiful as he had dreamed it, like water flowing in a crystal stream. It seemed to be coming from outside, wafting into his room sweetly and serenely from somewhere above. Someone was singing, but it was so early and he was so tired, that he didn't get up to investigate. The melody lulled him back to sleep, and he slept soundly for the next few hours.