Disclaimer: WHAT IS IN THE BASEMENT

Annie already hated being an omega.

Every muscle burned like fire, a pool of arousal scorching the pit of her stomach like liquid metal. She was hot, way too hot, sweat pouring down her skin as she writhed on the ground, whimpering and gasping. Grinding didn't help. Her fingers just wouldn't suffice. She needed the heat of another being against her skin, inflaming her, coaxing her own fire into a raging inferno.

Annie let out a long, broken moan, throat vibrating with her call. What seemed like years of screaming out for an alpha rendered her throat raw, the scent glands on either side of her neck throbbing and sore. The air was heavy with her scent; she faded in and out of consciousness as waves of agonizing want resonated from her core.

She vaguely remembered shifting into a wolf a few times during her heat, fuzzily remembered something that Ymir had told her about disguising herself from humans, but the thick fur of her winter coat and wolf instincts proved to be too much for her. She twisted on the cold,unyielding stone of the heat chamber and screamed as another blast of agony tore through her body, the keen ripping her vocal cords to shreds. Blood caught at the back of her throat and she gagged, spitting the red fluid out on the ground and coughing as the burning sensation of her throat regenerating swept up the inside of her neck.

Annie always regenerated startlingly quickly for someone who wasn't an alpha; she'd often hated the way it set her apart, made her different, but now the small part of her mind that wasn't overrun with raging instinct silently thanked the odd quirk as she stopped chocking on her own blood.

She mewled weakly, an Omegan plea for comfort, and curled up, one arm wrapping around her legs, the other reaching up to cup the nape of her neck. Her legs shook with another onslaught of burning warmth, her vision blacking out as her mind tried to shield her sanity from the attack of her own body.

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Annie hazily opened her eyes, feeling the grainy residue of dried tears scratching at her eyelids. She blearily pushed her fringe out of her face and bent over in a hacking cough, mouth parched, throat scratchy with injury and want of water. A speckling of crimson caught her eye and she frowned; apparently her healing aptitude wasn't as capable as she thought.

The exhausted omega weakly lifted her head and gazed around the heat chamber, the stone walls swimming in and out of focus. She eyed the boulder-blocked entryway warily for a long moment before catching sight of a pitcher and basin tucked away in the shadows of the far wall. Annie let out a soft breath of relief and moved to get up, but staggered and crashed to the ground as every nerve in her body screamed out in pain. The she-wolf squeezed her eyes shut and hissed against the ache, tears appearing in her eyes. She waited, heart hammering in her chest, then moved again, painfully crawling across the room to reach the water.

Her thirst finally sated, Annie leaned wearily against the wall, where she finally began to notice the effects the heat, none of them good or beneficial in the least.

She grimaced in disgust; her body was an absolute mess. Dried slick clung stickily to her thighs, practically coating her naval and smelling strongly of mating pheromones . She was horribly skinny, too; countless days of near-constant motion had taken its toll on her, even if she hadn't been mated. Red scratches crusted with congealed blood ran all over her stomach and chest from where she'd scratched herself. Sweat covered her skin in salt, making her uncomfortably warm and itchy. Her hair was oily and hung in her face in dank ropes of dull blonde, nothing like the burnished gold she took pride in. Not to mention the tattered remnants of her clothes hung off her thin frame in a way that could hardly be called attracti-

Annie cut off her train of thought with a snarl of horror. The real Annie Leonhardt never cared about her appearance. She'd never cared about a little blood- heck, Annie used to fall asleep practically covered in the stuff after a long hunt. Were her new Omega instincts influencing the way she thought, changing how she treated and saw the world? Annie sure hoped not. She didn't think she could bear it if the very essence of who she was was washed away by something as simple as an omegan heat.

She picked up the washcloth soaking in the tub and started to bathe vigorously, but no matter how many times she scrubbed at herself until she was raw and tingling, she couldn't seem to wash the scent of omega off her skin.

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A/N: Whew this was a short chapter~I originally intended it to be longer, but the need for dramatic flair caused me to split it into two parts. Not to mention the fact that I'm typing this in the Fanfiction doc manager instead of the communal Word, so as to keep it from prying eyes, and when you accidently delete half the document...whelp. There ain't any redo button.

Heat explanations included in next chapter.

~Breathing in Poison