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After the last war, life in Konoha has been the most peaceful. Life as a shinobi has been remotely eventful at most.
Her life after Sasuke made it clear about his intention on staying away from each other has been… uneventful at best. And when he indirectly demanded they be disappeared from each other's life, he didn't merely act on the spur of the moment. He took matters to the greatest extent.
And that was already a month ago.
Her first mission with Sasuke turned out to be her last time as well. Her recent partners always made it clear to report to Headquarters, so she had no other purpose left other than to go home… every single time. It made things difficult to visit Headquarters with mission-related matters now—it feels as though planned that way.
As expected, she hasn't gone into any out of schedule heat in the time of not within the same vicinity with her presumably fated Alpha. While she is glad she hasn't encountered any hassle in handling her unexpected heat, she is indignant at the way she submissively follows through the captain's prideful plan.
Yet, she doesn't act on her sour inclinations and merely complies with his way of playing things as a person in power since she has none.
At least she knows that he tries hard. If the way she only had four to five-person missions as of late and no two-person mission is any indication. Possessive much?
Still, she is upset. She can't help it. She is upset because she couldn't stand her ground and demand answers from her then far from intimidating captain. She is upset because he purposely avoided mentioning the pressing matter between them. She is sure he knows something. The attraction between them is much too prominent for him not sensing anything. At least he knows just as much as she knows, which is all based on speculations and evidence-based knowledge—perhaps. But she is highly certain that he knows better.
Why is he so withdrawn? She had thought that they could talk things out to walk on the same ground….
Is he not accepting her as his fated mate? Is that it?
She can only bite her lips and form her hands into tight fists.
She is most upset at herself because as much as she wanted to ignore it, she couldn't—the fact that she is most upset because she can't see him.
And currently in heat on schedule, she can only think about him. Kissing him. Holding him. Doing it with him.
Previously, while she was in heat because of ovulating, she chose the most practical way to stop the heat; emergency injection.
Now, because she's had experiences of the best thing to stop the heat, she chooses the next best thing.
Uncurling her fists, she touches the places he would touch her with her hands. One hand fondles her upper mound, the other reaches down and slips through the waistline of her panties. Though just as stimulating by imagining him doing things to her instead of herself, she only has two hands. She can't mimic the way he sucks on her rosy peaks, laps on her private bundle of sensitive nerves, and fills her to the deepest recess inside her.
Feeling helpless, she climaxes to the image of him on top of her—brow contorting in concentration, persperation running down his neck, mouth panting and letting out suppressed groans, muscles on his broad shoulders flexing as he thrusts into her.
It is her first time touching herself—also her first time reaching to a climax with unbearable loneliness enveloping her curling form.
It happens so untimely.
Yet, she can handle it just like how it was supposed to be … before Sasuke came into the picture.
Because of her inclinations to be summoned into a moderate to big party of Anbu team, it is inevitable to have related missions that are strictly urgent and of important matters. So being an Anbu has finally started to take its toll on her, physically and emotionally.
It is a four-person mission; three Betas and one Alpha Captain leading the way upfront. Her target is, unsurprisingly, an Alpha escapee of Konoha Prison.
She doesn't know whether it is her physically and emotionally strained condition, or her Alpha captain, or even the running away Alpha that triggers the heat. Probably because her body has been set into Anbu mode at its prime that she is quick to acknowledge the prodromal symptoms before the real thing starts to strike. But back then it also happened during a mission… so, what is her explanation about that? Or, it could be because she has experienced enough that her body has been adept into identifying impending heat.
Whatever that is, she tries to ignore it. She only has one goal for the moment; bringing back the escapee and finish the mission without a glitch.
Slowing her pace and drifting away from the rest of the team, she then hides behind a tree trunk covered in moss. What to do next is engraved deeply on her brain and followed easily with her honed reflex. It makes what happened then a joke in her time as an Anbu. As if programmed, she draws out the emergency injection from her shuriken pouch, removes its cap, unzips her tights right at the anterolateral upper first third of her thigh (she does remember now that she had her Anbu suit customized for emergency purposes just like right now, she didn't then), and injects the medicine intramuscularly easily. All is done as if she has done it in a million times.
It takes effect almost instantaneously that it drives her unwilling to believe. Barely a minute has passed, she is a functional being once more as if the unexpected heat hadn't happened.
Hinata nibbles on her lip and when she deems herself to be stable enough to move, she leaps to a nearby branch in her attempt to catch up to her teammates.
Her body is definitely not the problem here. Contrary to what she has made herself to believe, her body isn't resistant to emergency injections available out there. Quite the opposite really, it responds surprisingly nicely.
Comparing the two options side by side, it is becoming even more difficult to shrug off the more implausible option. It is becoming more … believable, even.
It isn't too far-fetched now to call it as fact.
The fact that Uchiha Sasuke is her fated partner.
Finishing her mission without a glitch in her mission adjusted form was supposed to be her goal. Even though her physique and mind have been trained to adapt in any unpredictable situations, she can't seem to push aside the new revelation—one that is terrifyingly disconcerting—that she has recently discovered not an hour ago.
Throughout the mission, she is feeling lost.
So it isn't surprising when once she is face to face with her target, she is inevitably losing.
Despite of what is expected of a certified Anbu, she is mentally unprepared when the target springs over from out of nowhere and is targeting her neck with a chakra infused kunai. Immediately she activates her Byakugan and slides to the left to spare herself from the stab. Hinata is swift, but her opponent is quicker. As if he has encountered the gap through her weakness, or just what she has made herself to belief to save face from admitting her lack of ability, the Alpha manages a deep cut on her left leg. One thing she is most fortunate about is the fact that the weapon wasn't gleaming in blue chakra when it happened.
She manages to land a couple of hits and gentle fists to the Alpha, but with only one effective strike at the nape of her neck, she is rendered defenceless and her Byakugan is forcibly deactivated.
She is one hair away from another strike had her teammate kicked the Alpha in the gut a second too late.
For a moment, she feels grateful… to Gods who are watching her, to a certain someone who has made it a priority to make sure she is assigned with a greater party, so that she has a lot of hands available in any case of... disastrous downfall.
At the end, she is hurt, but a Beta, whose mask is painted with the face of a devil ray, has spared her from getting fatal injuries in which her deepest wound, for now, is easily controlled with a tight bandage. But the Alpha target has escaped into thin air, and the captain relies the message from the higher up—for them to retreat immediately.
Her mission comes out as a failure.
It is near midnight when the gate of Konoha meterializes in between familiar branches of Konoha's forest. Once the group arrives at their hometown, they dispatch to their intended destinations; the captain sets to Hokage Tower, one Beta—who is the most senior—rushes to Anbu HQ to notify persons of importance of their failure and strategize countermeasures, while the last two persons walk in a leisure pace, that from outsider's point of view looks as if they were heading to the same place. But there isn't any outsider; they are the only one walking on the damp street while the villagers are resting inside the comfort of their homes.
When the two finally meet a fork, Hinata makes a halt before voicing her concern. "Mine is left, take care." With that, she takes a step backwards then dips her head curtly.
The devil ray Beta too halts and makes no sign of approval or even disapproval. He just looks confused, that's all, as much as the mask can reveal, that is. "Aren't you going to the hospital?"
Hinata blinks slowly behind her mask. "I am not?"
"Aren't you injured?"
She resists the urge to shift her footing. "I am… but I can take care of it myself. I have the basic medical skills needed."
The white haired Beta crosses his arms over his chest, all the while eyeing her up and down, as if calculating the weight of her statement. Hinata resists another urge to shift her footing even though she can feel her left leg has been strained too much.
"Well, whatever," he finally says and Hinata suppresses yet another urge to release her breath. "Just make sure you stay alive outside my watch."
"Of course," she says automatically, blinking and feeling weird. "Thank you," she then adds and feels even weirder. In a quick and borderline awkward movement, she bows then turns around to face her destination, giving the devil ray a sight of her receding back.
She doesn't know what is weirder; the fact that she skipped the hospital visit despite being notably injured (but still very much alive to walk the distance towards her house) or the unprecedented exchange between her and the devil ray. Either way, she puts aside the thought as she adamantly sets foot right to her house—without ever looking back.
But she can still feel a set of eyes is still watching her.
She shouldn't have passed the mandatory post-mission visit to the hospital.
She wouldn't have, really, had she born a Beta, or an Omega but certainly not an Anbu. Walking through the hospital gate in torn Anbu suit as an Omega is certainly the worst way possible to expose herself.
She should have set foot to Neji's… but thanks to a certain exchange between her and a certain someone, the thought hadn't occurred to her right in time.
Now alone inside her apartment, still in Anbu uniform full of grime and dried blood, with limited chakra and distorted pathway—perhaps, and bruised and sore extremities, all she feels is helplessness.
It takes time to peel her top off of her sticky skin, it takes even longer to remove her tights. She succeeds, for now, as long as she does things one at a time.
With her skin now exposed, she can assess the state she really is in. She doesn't have any deep wound—actually, on her left leg, there is one that is still oozing out blood that seeps through the temporary now filthy bandage, and shallow cuts are all over the usual places, so nothing new. But she feels extremely worn out, like someone has drained her chakra reserve dry. Yet, at the same time she can feel her chakra, implying it is there and just the adequate amount, but not reachable somehow.
There are shinobis who could mould their opponent's chakra flow at their will and unfortunately her Alpha target is one of them. Facing him—no, undertaking the mission in her distracted form in the first place, is the problem. Alas, all faults lie with her. She has no one to blame but herself.
Nibbling on her lip for reasons more than one, she carefully removes the bandage covering her left leg. Once removed, her right hand gleams with the usual green glow and with what reachable chakra left inside her, she tends to the deep cut with impeccable chakra control—one that even in her usual mission form wouldn't bother to execute. She can feel her tissues finding their way to mend the discontinuity. But the longer her wound transforms better in its local sense and on the eye, the worse she is feeling as a whole. Once it stops bleeding, her hand also puts an end to its green glow.
Hinata takes a deep breath. Treating her wound is even more exhausting than having the wound itself.
Another set of deep exhales and inhales later, her hand gleams again and someone just has to knock on her door.
As her hand loses its glow again, her eyes meet the clock hung on the wall opposite the one she is leaning on. It is almost three in the morning, does she have someone who would knock at three in the morning?
Absolutely, she doesn't.
A burglar would definitely never knock…
With more than little difficulty, she stands and in the meantime finally realizing the state she was in; unclad, save from her modest set of black undergarments.
"Fuck," she curses in undertone and never has she felt the word said in a more appropriate situation.
The guest's patience seemingly is running thin for whoever they are knock on the door more obnoxiously.
Hinata hastily picks up her night robe that was already inside her laundry basket, silently wishing whoever is knocking at her door would finally realize the time and go his merry way. She could risk activating her Byakugan, but she will need her chakra more to defense herself if the condition calls for it.
Once she's opened the door then gets a sight of who really was knocking on her door at three in the morning, her body stills.
Because the one standing behind her door at three in the morning is Uchiha Sasuke.
Author's Note :
In case my readers got mixed up, in this story there are two types of heat:
1) Ovulation Heat, occurs on schedule like how ordinary ovulation works in our ordinary life
mechanism: physiologically hormonal changes - ovulation - heat;
2) Triggered Heat, as how our Omega health specialist in training (Neji) has explained a couple of chapters earlier.
mechanism: triggers - pheromones upsurge - hormonal imbalance - ovulation - heat.
BOTH are dangerous time to have sex without protection... in case you're wondering.
Oh well, you've been waiting for Sasuke's pov aren't you? See you next update!